Teacher adaptation to flexible learning environments

Learning Environments Research - Teaching practices respond to the prompts, resources and inherent potential of a school’s physical, social and cultural landscape. This study involved how...     

Focus on implementation

This paper presents a model of the process of implementation of school change. The model has been developed from observation of and interaction with planned changes in a large number of schools, and traces the process through eight stages, from the initial climate for change to full field trials of innovative programs. At each of these stages the contribution of any of a number of components is discussed: the social context in which change occurs, organizational considerations, the role of evaluation, the development of innovative programs, and the role of the teacher, principal, administrator, and academic. The model is presented as a conceptual framework from which implementation strategies may be, and are being, derived for use in implementation of change in the schools.     

Program-Wide Positive Behavior Support in Preschool: Lessons for Getting Started

There is growing concern over the number of young children who display challenging behavior and preschool teachers are reporting children’s challenging behavior as their greatest concern. Program-wide Positive Behavior Support (PWPBS) is a promising model for supporting appropriate behavior and decreasing challenging behavior in early childhood programs. Implementation in early childhood settings is relatively new and guidance on how to implement PWPBS in early childhood settings is growing. This article documents the implementation process for an early childhood program serving children from 6 weeks to 5 years of age, shares lessons learned and offers practical advice for getting started with PWPBS.     

Associations between socio‐economic status (including school‐ and pupil‐level interactions) and student perceptions of school environment and health in English secondary schools

This article examines interactions between school‐level and pupil‐level measures of socio‐economic status for pupil reports of the school environment and a range of risk behaviours and health outcomes. The baseline survey for the INCLUSIVE trial provided data on pupil affluence and pupil reports of the school environment, smoking, drinking, anti‐social behaviour at school, quality of life and psychological wellbeing for over 6,000 pupils (aged 11–12 years) in 40 schools within a 1‐hour train journey from central London. The level of socio‐economic disadvantage of the school was measured using the percentage of pupils eligible for free school meals. Multilevel regression models examined the association between pupil affluence, the socio‐economic composition of the school and the interaction between these with the school environment, risk behaviours and health outcomes. Our findings provide some evidence for interactions, suggesting that less affluent pupils reported lower psychological wellbeing and quality of life in schools with more socio‐economically advantaged intakes. There appears to be a complex relationship for anti‐social behaviour. Where pupil affluence and school socio‐economic composition were discordant, pupils reported a higher number of anti‐social behaviours. This article provides further evidence that less affluent pupils are more likely to engage in a variety of risk behaviours and experience worse health outcomes when they attend schools with more socio‐economically advantaged intakes, supporting some of the mechanisms described in the theory of human functioning and school organisation.     

The construction and use of a metaphor for science teaching

While constructivism has emerged as a major reform in science education from the last decade, wide-spread adoption of constructivist practices in school laboratories and classrooms is yet to be achieved. If constructivist approaches are to be utilised more widely, teachers will need to accept a more active and constructivist role in their own pedagogical learning. One experienced junior science teacher was able to implement constructivist approaches in her classroom by using a personally constructed metaphor to guide her practice. Specializations: science education, teaching of thinking, professional development. Specializations: constructivism, professional development.     

FL-IDE: hypertext for structuring a conceptual design for computer-assisted language learning

A compelling problem for language pedagogues is teaching foreign languages to students so they can retain and use the language skills in real communicative situations. One way to help students learn these skills is to understand and improve current pedagogical approaches to language learning. New technology such as Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) provides pedagogues with rich, multimedia environments for presenting instruction. At the same time, deciding what to present and how to organize the instruction in CALL provides a new challenge. In response to this problem, we discuss preliminary results of a research effort for developing an instructional design environment (IDE) that is uniquely tailored to the needs of developing foreign language instruction. Hypertext features in the IDE software are used to capture and organize into one coherent framework the corpora of theoretical, instructional, and content material that affects foreign language instruction.     

Double degrees: double the trouble or twice the return?

Double degrees (also called joint or combined degrees)—programs of study combining two bachelor degrees—are increasingly popular in Australian universities, particularly among women. A case study using qualitative and quantitative surveys of current and past double degree students is presented. The study indicates that double degrees benefit students in providing a broad education and increasing skills and options. However, benefits are not fully realised because of administrative difficulties, lack of support and absence of ‘learning communities’. These problems arise because double degrees sit outside the disciplinary structure of universities. As such, however, double degrees have potential to provide transdisciplinary education. We suggest initiatives that would improve the experience, performance and persistence of double degree students. They would also build the skills of integration, boundary work, communication and teamwork associated with transdisciplinarity. These skills not only equip students for a range of employment; they are sorely needed in society.

Distress Tolerance and Emotion Regulation: Promoting Maternal Well-Being Across the Transition to Parenthood

Objective. This study examined the association between newborns’ daily crying and five measures of new mothers’ emotional states. Design. One hundred seven new mothers responded via a one-time, anonymous, online survey that assessed their stress, well-being, emotion regulation, frustration, and coping skills. Mothers also reported their infant’s daily cry duration. Results. Average daily crying was related to mothers’ emotional experiences, and relations also existed among the five mental health measures. Regression models indicate the strongest predictors of frustration were infant’s average cry duration, maternal well-being, and infant’s health status at enrollment. Conclusion. Mental health professionals can support families through the normative, but often stressful, experience of their infant’s cries. However, a re-evaluation of the clinical criteria for excessive crying is needed, as the results suggest that mothers whose infants cry considerably less than the widely used Wessel’s 3-hour-per-day criterion for excessive crying experience significant negative mental health.     

Nonverbal and Verbal Performance on a Number Conservation Problem and a Proposal about the Determinants of Nonconservation

This study compared the ease of verbal and nonverbal versions of a number conservation problem for 4and S‐year‐old children. The nonverbal task employed a ‘train‐transfer’ procedure in which children were first trained to a criterial level to make one response to stimulus pairs that contained two rows of the same number in one‐to‐one correspondence and a different response to stimulus pairs in which one of the rows was of greater or of lesser number than the other. Conservation performance was maintaining the learned response to the identical pair after one of its rows had been deformed. Taking both ages together the nonverbal task was the easier. However, children's justifications showed that verbal processes may have been responsible for both correct and incorrect performance in many cases. The data are interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that children interpret conservation terms perceptually when used by others in certain contexts in spite of what they know about the underlying fact of conservation.     

Speaking of books

Disadvantaged Child, Vol. I. Jerome Hellmuth, editor. Seattle, Washington: Special Child Publications, 1967. Pp. 499. $10.00.

Federal Aid for Schools. Howard S. Rowland and Richard L. Wing. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1967. Pp. 396.

Psychology of Human Adjustment. Lester D. Crow. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967. xv, 613 pp. $7.95.

School Children in the Urban Slum. Joan I. Roberts, editor. New York: The Free Press, 1967. xiii and 626 pp. $7.50.

Speech Handicapped School Children, Wendell Johnson and Dorothy Moeller, editors. Harper & Row, New York, 1967. Pp. 562. $7.50.

Edward Hitchcock, M.D., Founder of Physical Education in the College Curriculum. J. Edmund Welch. East Carolina College, Greenville, North Carolina, J. Edmund Welch, 1966. 315 pp. $5.00.