Young people’s views on sexting education and support needs: findings and recommendations from a UK-based study

Young people’s sexting is an area of increasing concern amongst parents, educationalists and policy makers, yet little research has been conducted with young people themselves to explore their perspectives on the support they need to navigate relationships in the new digital media landscape. To address this absence, an inter-disciplinary team of researchers undertook a participatory study with students, aged 13 to 15, in a UK secondary school. This paper outlines key study findings, including young people’s views on sexting, their recommendations for improved education around sexting in schools, their preferred sources of support, and their perspectives on the way adults should respond to young people’s sexting. Findings indicate that sexting education needs to be developed within the context of wider relationship issues, such as gender, power dynamics and trust between peers, and improved communication between students and teachers or other responsible adults. Findings may be used to consider ways of designing and communicating messages around sexting to young people within and beyond educational settings.     

Naturalistic Language Recordings Reveal “Hypervocal” Infants at High Familial Risk for Autism

Children's early language environments are related to later development. Little is known about this association in siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who often experience language delays or have ASD. Fifty‐nine 9‐month‐old infants at high or low familial risk for ASD contributed full‐day in‐home language recordings. High‐risk infants produced more vocalizations than low‐risk peers; conversational turns and adult words did not differ by group. Vocalization differences were driven by a subgroup of “hypervocal” infants. Despite more vocalizations overall, these infants engaged in less social babbling during a standardized clinic assessment, and they experienced fewer conversational turns relative to their rate of vocalizations. Two ways in which these individual and environmental differences may relate to subsequent development are discussed.     

游戏的教育应用价值研究

本文在对有关文献和游戏分析的基础上,从学习动机、学习成效、学习方式、学习环境等方面分析了游戏（包括单机游戏和网络游戏）的教育应用价值。研究结果表明游戏有助于激发学生的学习动机,能够帮助学生学习知识、提高能力、培养正确的情感态度价值观,也通够促进自主学习等学习方式,并有助于构建富有吸引力的建构主义学习环境。     

Referencing and borrowing from other systems: the Hong Kong education reforms

Abstract

Background: This paper analyses the role of, and approach to, policy referencing and borrowing in Hong Kong’s recent reforms that culminated in the creation of its New Academic Structure and the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education.

Main argument: It argues that Hong Kong has gone further than most jurisdictions not just in responding to global influences on education reform, but in taking explicit steps to internationally benchmark its curriculum and assessment, and in involving the global community at multiple levels in the process of education policy planning and implementation.

Sources of evidence and method: The paper is based on the documentary analysis of policy documents in Hong Kong, and 23 interviews with key stakeholders in the policy network, including policy-makers, practitioners and community leaders.

Discussion and conclusions: While policy referencing and borrowing in the Hong Kong context can, in part, be traced to a colonial legacy, the Special Administrative Region of China demonstrates a collaborative approach to education reform involving local and international engagement that may be relevant to other systems. Its approach was informed by a measured use of policy referencing that involved ‘horizon scanning’ of other systems’ policies and practices; international benchmarking; and engaging international expertise to facilitate implementation.     

The ambivalence of ownership: nursing graduate students as collaborators in action research

Collaboration is increasingly advocated within the research community. However, there has been limited exploration of the role of graduate students as collaborators. This article describes the ambivalence of ownership that developed during our encounter with collaboration as participants in action research. As a result of the authors' experiences, they began to challenge the traditional notion of collaboration that is pervasive in nursing research, and to explore the possibilities and limitations collaboration offered for graduate students. The authors argue that the participation and collaboration that are inherent in action research provide unique learning opportunities for graduate students and enable their expertise to be more fully realised     

Evaluation of Educational Animations: Taxonomy and Recommendations

Animations can communicate movement, changes in status, and various other temporal changes more effectively than static images. The potential for the use of computer animations in training and education in laboratory settings is tremendous. For example, algorithm animations have been used in computer science to make visible the essential steps of an algorithm. The need exists for a systematic approach to categorize and evaluate the effectiveness of an animation with respect to the subject matter. The goal of an animation is to communicate a message to the user. The effectiveness of the animation is determined by the extent to which its message is understood by the user. To facilitate evaluations of animations, a taxonomy is presented that outlines the critical elements of the interaction scenario, the objects, and the animations involved in a view. Suggestions for its use in evaluation of animation views accompany the taxonomy.     

Combining ‘subject knowledge’ with ‘how to teach’: an exploratory study of new initial teacher education for teachers of adult literacy,numeracy and English for Speakers of other Languages

This paper is based on a research project that explored a UK Government initiative to improve the quality of teaching adults, numeracy, literacy and English as a second other language. The findings will be of interest to teacher educators generally and also to those involved in teaching adults, language, literacy and numeracy. The paper reports on the main findings of the research and sets the context for the presentation of models and concepts for rethinking how to meet the diverse prior experience and qualifications of those on teacher training programmes, as well as the challenges of relating a deeper understanding of ‘what you teach’ and ‘how you teach it’. Among the many issues raised by this paper, priority is given to the importance of the sequencing and organization of teacher training courses to meet the individual needs of trainees, who in the context of teaching adults in the UK have very different levels of teaching experience, prior subject knowledge and learning needs.     

The constitutional dialectic

POETICS, RHETORIC, AND LOGIC: STUDIES IN THE BASIC DISCIPLINES OF CRITICISM. By Wilbur Samuel Howell. Ithaca, N.Y.: The Cornell University Press, 1975; pp. 267. $16.50.