READ-ing Our Way to Success: Using the READ Scale to Successfully Train Reference Student Assistants in the Referral Model

The Reference Services Department at Radford University's McConnell Library has been developing a training program in the reference referral system for student assistants (SAs) over 3 academic years. The program's goal is to effectively instruct SAs in balancing high quality customer service with the importance of appropriately referring users to librarians and to assess the accuracy of their referrals and responses. The trainers have met these goals with the successful incorporation of a modified version of the Reference Effort Assessment Data (READ) scale, a reference transaction assessment tool developed by Bella Karr Gerlich, into the student training program.     

The effect of playing formation on high-intensity running and technical profiles in English FA Premier League soccer matches

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of playing formation on high-intensity running and technical performance during elite soccer matches. Twenty English FA Premier League games were analysed using a multiple-camera computerized tracking system (n = 153 players). Overall ball possession did not differ (P < 0.05) between 4-4-2, 4-3-3 and 4-5-1 formations (50%, s = 7 vs. 49%, s = 8 vs. 44%, s = 6). No differences were observed in high-intensity running between 4-4-2, 4-3-3 and 4-5-1 formations. Compared with 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 formations, players in a 4-5-1 formation performed less very high-intensity running when their team was in possession (312 m, s = 196 vs. 433 m, s = 261 vs. 410 m, s = 270; P 5 0.05) but more when their team was not in possession (547 m, s = 217 vs. 461 m, s = 156 vs. 459 m, s = 169; P < 0.05). Attackers in a 4-3-3 performed ~30% more (P < 0.05) high-intensity running than attackers in 4-4-2 and 4-5-1 formations. However, the fraction of successful passes was highest in a 4-4-2 (P < 0.05) compared with 4-3-3 and 4-5-1 formations. The results suggest that playing formation does not influence the overall activity profiles of players, except for attackers, but impacts on very high-intensity running activity with and without ball possession and some technical elements of performance.     

Louis Jouvet's l'ecole des femmes in New York City

This essay examines dramatistic criticism as a dialectical process. It argues that dramatistic symbolic theory establishes three criteria for evaluating critical action and that dramatistic criticism involves three necessary and mutually corrective phases of analysis, only one of which involves pentadic relationships.     

FEW and Far Between

Science & Education - The food-energy-water (FEW) nexus framework calls for a systems perspective on addressing complex sustainability challenges. As a sustainability science field, nexus...     

Speaking the unspoken in learning analytics: troubling the defaults

Abstract

Assessment and learning analytics both collect, analyse and use student data, albeit different types of data and to some extent, for various purposes. Based on the data collected and analysed, learning analytics allow for decisions to be made not only with regard to evaluating progress in achieving learning outcomes but also evaluative judgments about the quality of learning. Learning analytics fall in the nexus between assessment of and for learning. As such it has the potential to deliver value in the form of (1) understanding student learning, (2) analysing learning behaviour (looking to identify not only factors that may indicate risk of failing, but for opportunities to deepen learning), (3) predicting students-at-risk (or identifying where students have specific learning needs), and (4) prescribing elements to be included to ensure not only the effectiveness of teaching, but also of learning. Learning analytics have underlying default positions that may not only skew their impact but also impact negatively on students in realising their potential. We examine a selection of default positions and point to how these positions/assumptions may adversely affect students’ chances of success, deepening the understanding of learning.     

Cultural studies meets academic literacies: exploring students’ resources through symbolic objects

This paper reflects on a first year communication project in a South African engineering foundation programme which attempted to bring a cultural studies perspective to the teaching of academic literacy practices. In the project, students identify everyday objects that have symbolic meanings and examine these in a range of physical, cultural and communicational contexts. These objects are seen as catalysts for enabling student narratives and understandings to emerge. Objects also become a way of exploring notions of culture and cultural practices in the classroom and the tensions between convention and change they often index. This paper focuses on a particular manifestation of this tension, in the form of a moralistic discourse, or a discourse of ‘propriety’. The pedagogical implications of this kind of cultural studies project are explored, including the importance of opening up less regulated spaces to allow different competencies to be validated and, crucially, ways of framing and critiquing students’ resources in order to harness these constructively.     

Engaging with commonality and difference: Theoretical tensions in the analysis of working-class women's educational discourses

In this article the authors contribute to ongoing theoretical debates concerning the conceptualisation of multiple social identities and oppressions. The article begins by briefly tracing the path towards current critical/feminist/sociological positions 'between modernism and postmodernism', in which identities ('race', class, gender, etc.) are conceptualised as socially constructed, fluid, shifting and yet grounded in 'real' inequalities and oppressions. The article then builds upon, and contributes to, current theoretical dialogue by highlighting ongoing tensions and unresolved problematics within the theoretical approach, drawing out the particular implications of these for educational research. Issues are discussed with specific reference to recent work by Brah (1999) and illustrations are provided using examples from the authors' research with inner city, working-class women.     

The effect of standardized test information on teachers’ assessment of ability in their classes

Abstract

The responses of three groups of teachers to a rating task in which they were asked to indicate how many of their pupils were “bright”, “above average”, “below average” and “dull” were compared. In two of the groups, teachers had been provided with test information based on performance on nationally standardized ability and attainment tests. In the third group tests had been administered but no results were provided.

No differences between the groups were found in terms of the extent to which teacher ratings of ability levels correspond with mean ability test scores. In addition, teachers, irrespective of the group to which they belonged, were found to display a tendency to place more pupils in the above average categories than the below average categories. Finally, no support was found for an hypothesis which suggested that test information would differentially affect the ratings of teachers of classes with pupils who were typical and untypical with respect to age.

The fact that the correlation between mean ratings and mean test scores were found to be fairly high in all three groups (they ranged from .51 to .60) suggests a reason for the failure of test information to impact on teachers’ judgements. The degree of agreement between teachers and tests that the correlations reveal means that there is less scope for a convergence of ratings on tests to occur than might otherwise be the case.