Parenting,autism spectrum disorders and inner journeys

The importance of Early Intervention for children with Autism has been established however little attention has been given to the role of the parent and their perspective (Griffin & Shevlin, 2011). Research on Early Intervention has proliferated and innovative research on involving parents as partners has emerged (Carpenter, 2007; Hornby, 2011), however parents’ experiences of assessment, diagnosis and education have received little attention. This study investigated parental perceptions of Early Intervention services for children with significant disabilities. The purpose of this article is to describe how parents experience assessment, diagnosis and education, exploring the potential of utulising a parental lens in grasping these perspectives. It explored parents’ need to negotiate services and the difficulties surrounding their children's education in mainstream settings. Through qualitative, longitudinal, in‐depth case studies, parents (n 6) were interviewed over a fifteen month period. Interviews coincided with school terms. A major point of difference is the presence of parent voice. This research is dedicated to eliciting parents’ voice and exploring how this may influence current understandings of Early Intervention in Ireland. This research suggests that we need to explore what is needed by parents according to those parents, by acknowledging parent voice. Early Intervention and school settings may be a site of reconfiguration of parenthood where mutually, supportive mechanisms may confront the obscurities associated with their role and the fact that they are seldom heard.     

Negotiation Over Bids for Compliance of Three-Year-Old Kibbutz Children: A Narrative Approach

Thirty kibbutz children, boys and girls, whose ages ranged between 35 and 38 months, participated in a study on compliance to bids of mother and caregiver. Children participated in the Doll Play Interview, and were requested to determine whether a narrated child will indulge his or her wish or comply with opposing bids of a narrated mother or a narrated caregiver. Results indicated that narrated mothers were described more often as initiating close contact with the child, whereas caregivers were perceived as more strict and aggressive. However, narrated mothers were not perceived as more willing to accept child incompliance. Narrated children responded in either a more compliant or a more self-assertive way to bids of mother. Rather than choosing between complying or uncomplying with similar bids of caregiver, they tended more often to ignore them. In the presence of a narrated mother children expressed their thoughts and feelings more freely. They spoke with caregiver more often on actions and objects. Conflict with a narrated mother was associated with seeking close contact between the child doll and the mother doll, whereas similar conflict with a narrated caregiver resulted more often in seeking physical proximity outside the story, with the child's real mother.     

Meaningfulness of a learning experience: A measure for educational outcomes in higher education

Based on assumptions derived from the humanistic education theory that (1) the learners' perceived meaningfulness of a learning experience is an important measure of the educational outcomes, and that (2) the learner is a legitimate evaluator of his own learnings, this study attempts to develop a conceptual model for the meaningfulness and value of a course of study as judged by students in higher education. The model suggests that in a course, perceived meaningfulness and value are related to the perceived learnings in the cognitive-subject matter, affective-personal, and behavioral domains.A Course Valuing Inventory based on this model has been developed and tested on 141 students, participating in 19 university courses. Testing the Inventory showed that it is reliable, and that the relationship between the perceived learnings in the course and its value are as established by the conceptual model. It was also found that the tool successfully differentiates between graduate and undergraduate students, as has been hypothesized.The study was supported in part by the Jewish Memorial Foundation.     

Effects of a Learner-Centred Environment on the Academic Competence and Motivation of Students at Risk

This study examined the efficacy of a learner-centred environment in enhancing the academic achievements and motivation of high school students who are at risk of dropping out of school. Three groups of students at high academic risk were compared. The control group consisted of students who are exposed to a remedial academic program in a traditional school context, and the experimental groups consisted of students enrolled at schools that have implemented a structured academic program in a learner-centred environment. It is shown that a learner-centred environment yields significantly higher achievement scores and a somewhat higher internal motivational orientation. These results suggest that a structured academic program in a learner-centred environment could provide hope for students at academic risk and other students who are likely to be lost to the academic educational system.     

Student vocational teachers: the significance of individual positions in workplace learning

In most initial teacher preparation (ITP) programmes, learning in teaching placements is considered to be an important component for providing workplace learning experiences to develop the skills of being a teacher. This paper is based on a bigger qualitative study which explored the learning experiences of a group of in-service student vocational teachers prior to and during their one-year ITP programme in Brunei. The study examined these student teachers’ dispositions to learning as revealed through their experiences on different placements during their training. The findings of this paper highlight the importance of the student vocational teachers’ roles and positions relative to their teaching placements. Theoretically, the findings also extend Bourdieu’s thinking, where existing cultural capital in the form of subject knowledge which is valued in one context does not necessarily help the learning of individuals in becoming a vocational teacher in another context. In addition, the paper argues for a need to reconceptualise in-service teacher education, more specifically, the workplace learning aspect. Lastly, it concludes with recommendations to support these student teachers in their placements through creating more expansive learning environments.     

Teaching to write collaborative argumentative syntheses in higher education

Reading and Writing - Writing argumentative syntheses based on multiple sources implies integrating ideas from different, often conflicting, positions. This can promote more constructive learning,...     

Test Score Equating Using a Mini‐Version Anchor and a Midi Anchor: A Case Study Using SAT® Data

This study explores an anchor that is different from the traditional miniature anchor in test score equating. In contrast to a traditional “mini” anchor that has the same spread of item difficulties as the tests to be equated, the studied anchor, referred to as a “midi” anchor (Sinharay & Holland), has a smaller spread of item difficulties than the tests to be equated. Both anchors were administered in an operational SAT administration and the impact of anchor type on equating was evaluated with respect to systematic error or equating bias. Contradicting the popular belief that the mini anchor is best, the results showed that the mini anchor does not always produce more accurate equating functions than the midi anchor; the midi anchor was found to perform as well as or even better than the mini anchor. Because testing programs usually have more middle difficulty items and few very hard or very easy items, midi external anchors are operationally easier to build. Therefore, the results of our study provide evidence in favor of the midi anchor, the use of which will lead to cost saving with no reduction in equating quality.     

Finding an Analytic Frame for Faculty-Student Interaction within Faculty-in-Residence Programs

In this article we describe a case study analyzing how a Faculty-in-Residence program fosters student engagement. Using Cox & Orehovec’s typology to add granularity to the National Study on Student Engagement’s criteria for student engagement, we suggest best practices for the implementation of these in-situ faculty engagement programs.     

The effects of different approaches to reading instruction on letter detection tasks in normally achieving and low achieving readers

The present study used two letter detection tasks, the classic missing letter effect paradigm and a single word versus familiar word compound version of this paradigm, to study bottom-up and top–down processes involved in reading in normally achieving as compared to low achieving elementary school readers. The research participants were children in grades first to sixth who had been taught to read by three approaches to reading instruction (ARI): the whole language/global approach, the phonic/synthetic approach or the eclectic approach. Thus, the study attempted to clarify how different ARIs activate these processes in these two types of readers. The main hypothesis was that since low achieving readers rely on top–down processes for word recognition (see, e.g., Stanovich, 1980), the whole language ARI will reduce the difference in bottom-up tasks between them and the normally achieving readers. In the two experiments included in the study, participants were required to perform a letter detection task while reading short texts in Hebrew for comprehension. Contrary to this study hypotheses, the main finding was that the whole language ARI does not compensate for difficulties in bottom-up processes of low achieving readers. Moreover, the results of this study imply that any improvement in basic processes involved in reading proficiency produced by the whole language ARI for both the normal and the low achieving readers dissipates by grade three.     

Gender & Education Association: a case study in feminist education?

This article focuses on feminist activist academics who were instrumental in creating the UK Gender & Education Association at the turn of the twenty-first century. Drawing on my own intellectual biography (David, M. E. 2003. Personal and Political: Feminisms, Sociology and Family Lives Stoke-on-Trent. Trentham Books.) linked to the collective biography and life history of feminism in academia over the last 50 years, Feminism, Gender & Universities: Politics, Passion and Pedagogies (David, M. E. 2014. Feminism, Gender & Universities: Politics, Passion & Pedagogies. Farnham: Wheatsheaf.), I consider how we, as feminist educators, developed our pedagogies and professional approaches to gender and education. In so doing, I also look at three cohorts or generations of feminist academics, from the university pioneers of second-wave feminists like myself, through to those who might be considered third wave feminists. In this it is clear that whilst feminist values of women's liberation and/or gender equality shine through, there are clear differences of emphasis. This is in relation to personal, political and professional values, and approaches to education through teaching or the social sciences. Indeed, neither feminism nor gender was in the lexicon of higher education or public policy when we were starting out, and by the third cohort gender equality had become incorporated into forms of neo-liberalism. In reviewing the developments of feminisms in higher education, I also look towards what might be considered a feminist future in global higher education, given learning from previous waves to new waves of feminists such as fourth wave and beyond. Here I briefly consider the work of our EU Daphne funded research project (2013–2015) into challenging gender-related violence (GRV) through education and training for professionals working with children and young people.