Authentic Pedagogy and Students with Severe Disabilities

This paper describes a project carried out by the first author, an academic in special education, with the other authors, teachers of students with severe disabilities. It aimed to explore the application of the New South Wales (NSW) model of pedagogy, derived from authentic pedagogy, to the education of students with severe intellectual disabilities. The project was directed at students with severe intellectual disability who were unable to use spoken language for receptive and/or expressive communication and who were being taught augmentative and alternative means of communication. The group analysed and reframed the development of communication skills in relation to the elements of deep knowledge, deep understanding and higher order thinking, which are components of the dimension of intellectual quality in the NSW model. This analysis is presented here as an example of the way the authentic pedagogy framework can be applied to teach cognitive skills that are usually assumed by teachers of normally developing students.     

What predicts health students’ self-reported preparedness to work in Indigenous health settings?

Australian undergraduate programs are implementing curriculum aimed at better preparing graduates to work in culturally diverse settings, but there remains uncertainty over the role of extant student attitudes towards Indigenous Australians. To begin to address this, we obtained baseline data on student attitudes upon entry to tertiary education. 1175 health science first-year students (275 males, 897 females) completed an anonymous in-class paper questionnaire. On average, students reported positive attitudes towards Indigenous Australians, with female students reporting more positive attitudes than male and domestic students more positive than international. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that after controlling for demographic variables, interactional diversity experiences and attitudes accounted for significant variance in a range of measures of preparedness to work in Indigenous health contexts. The knowledge gained will inform the development of, and alignment between, curriculum and pedagogical approaches, leading to an improved facilitation model for educators in the Indigenous Studies context.     

认知教学设计理论比较框架

认知领域的学习一直是教育研究的热点，不断有新的教学设计理论和模型出现。该提出了一个比较认知教学设计模型的框架，包含学习类型、学习控制、学习焦点、学习分组、学习交互、学习支持几个维度，可以用来作为理解各种教学设计模型的工具.     

Faculty-student engagement in teaching observation and assessment: a Hong Kong initiative

There is now a worldwide focus on the quality of university teaching and yet there is general dissatisfaction in universities with the student evaluation of teaching system. Peer observation of teaching seems to hold much promise in the assessment of teaching quality, but such observation pays little attention to the quality of teaching as perceived by students. One approach to overcome this deficiency is for faculty and students to also partner in the assessment of a faculty member’s teaching, with a student trained in observation and feedback techniques acting as a peer in the observation process. This paper describes and evaluates an ongoing student consultant initiative at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. It presents faculty and student observations in terms of the benefits to faculty regarding potential enhancement of university teaching, and the benefits to students especially in terms of close collaboration with faculty and training in consultation techniques. The paper notes that the student consultant initiative has been more popular with students than faculty, and recommends further investigation of the potential of such programmes in Hong Kong higher education.     

Diagram information and its organisation in memory: Exploring the role of skill and experience

Two contrasting methods of investigation were used to characterise the basis upon which the mental representation of a scientific diagram was organised in individuals having different levels of experience and skill in the interpretation of this type of diagram. Each of these methods is described and several important methodological issues are discussed. In the first method (the Card Sort method), subjects performed a three-stage grouping of diagram elements in a card sorting task that produced an hierarchical ordering of the information constituting the diagram. In the second method (the Copy-Recall method), subjects copied then produced drawn recall of a given diagram. Measurements of the sequence in which diagram elements were produced and the time intervals between each production were used to infer the underlying cognitive structuring involved in the mental representation of the diagram information. Questions are raised concerning the way resulting data can be analysed and interpreted most effectively. Specializations: Mental representation and processing of scientific diagrams, characteristics of explanatory diagrams, visual aspects of problem solving, instructional design.     

Development of numerical estimation in young children

Two experiments examined kindergartners', first graders', and second graders' numerical estimation, the internal representations that gave rise to the estimates, and the general hypothesis that developmental sequences within a domain tend to repeat themselves in new contexts. Development of estimation in this age range on 0-to-100 number lines followed the pattern observed previously with older children on 0-to-1,000 lines. Between kindergarten and second grade (6 and 8 years), patterns of estimates progressed from consistently logarithmic to a mixture of logarithmic and linear to a primarily linear pattern. Individual differences in number-line estimation correlated strongly with math achievement test scores, improved estimation accuracy proved attributable to increased linearity of estimates, and exposure to relevant experience tended to improve estimation accuracy.     

Reassembling teacher professional development: the case for Quality Teaching Rounds

Conventional professional development, while still in full swing in many places, has been widely maligned for its passive approach to learning, its failure to address local differences, and its often single-event format. While the corrective move to more collaborative models of professional learning has been heralded, few empirical studies to date have demonstrated impact on classroom practice or student learning outcomes. What is missing in both approaches, we argue, is a focus on pedagogy that guides teachers’ efforts at improvement. To address this absence, we elaborate our ‘reassembled’ approach to professional development, Quality Teaching Rounds. We argue that bringing together approaches to teacher development that privilege collaboration, community, and context with a substantive pedagogical framework will deliver more powerful professional development that makes a substantial impact on practice and produces measurable effects.     

Multidisciplinary graduate training in social research methodology and computer-assisted qualitative data analysis: a hands-on/hands-off course design

Drawing on the experience of training graduate students and researchers in qualitative and mixed-methods analysis since the mid-1990s, the authors reflect on the evolution of a multidisciplinary graduate course developed in a Canadian university since 2007. The hands-on/hands-off course design based on the use of NVivo was developed in parallel with a conceptual and reflexive position on methodology and multidisciplinarity in the context of an action research supported by their institution. This article exposes the four basic components of the course and the constructivist assessment model based on a term-long team analysis of original data created specifically for this purpose. The balance between collective and individual work, in-class and online exchanges, hands-on experience with the software and hands-off reflection is described and compared to recent pedagogical literature on the subject. The interest of this blended approach in fostering the development of the methodological expertise expected from researchers and graduate students, as well as the main issues and challenges facing this type of training in a research environment characterised by new approaches and tools, are discussed.     

Word Train Puzzle: Adjectives

Instructions:Read the clues (information that helps you to find the answers) and write the answers in the boxes.Each answer starts with the last letter of the word before it.The last word finishes with the first letter of the first word.