Adopting and adapting: school leaders in the age of data-informed decision making

The concept of data-informed decision making (DIDM), a term used interchangeably with data-driven decision making (DDDM) and data-based decision making (DBDM), is relatively new to Irish education and the school planning process. This research sought to clarify what data principals use and how they use that information for school improvement considering new school self-evaluation requirements. The paper begins by charting the rise internationally of data use in school planning, decision making and accountability. It proceeds to describe the policy context in this area in Ireland and then reports recent research with school leaders around how data is collected and used in their work. Although the paper focusses on Ireland, it is tentatively suggested that school leaders, teachers and policymakers in other countries, and there are many, which have come late to the expectation that school improvement and accountability should be heavily data-informed may find the efforts of Irish principals in this regard of interest.     

‘Crossing’ the equals sign: insights into pre-service teachers’ understanding of linear equations

This paper reports on an exploratory study designed to determine and enhance the conceptual understanding of a group of pre-service mathematics teachers at one Irish university utilizing an established framework for understanding mathematics. 23 students on a one year Professional Diploma in Mathematics Education participated in the study, which involved the distribution of a pre- and post-test and engagement in a ten week intervention designed to enhance their subject matter knowledge (SMK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). The findings highlight that although there was an improvement in overall conceptual understanding across the entire cohort at the end of the intervention, within certain mathematical topics there was a statistically insignificant improvement and many deep-rooted issues remain. In this paper we focus on the pre-service teachers’ understanding of elementary algebra, in particular, how to solve a linear equation.     

Quantifying the long-term impact of zoological education: a study of learning in a zoo and an aquarium

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that zoos and aquariums do, as intended, educate their visitors. However, even though most zoos offer a wide array of educational experiences, few studies have considered if the duration of an educational experience affects learning or whether learning lasts beyond the immediate visit. The current study used matched-pairs surveys to investigate children’s knowledge, attitude and knowledge of positive behavior during both a five-day zoo camp and six months after an aquarium visit. The participants of the study included children aged 9–12?years some of whom had participated in a purposefully designed educational intervention. First, the impact of a five-day zoo camp experience on children’s learning was investigated. Second, learning retention was investigated six months after a school tour at an aquarium. Results showed that during the camp learning was positively affected by participation in the educational intervention and by previous zoo experience. Girls were more likely than boys to have an increase in learning six months after an aquarium visit. The study demonstrates that learning persists, but that education can be enhanced with longer programs. Thus, zoos can play an increasingly important role in igniting pro-environmental behavior.     

Metasearch accuracy for letters and symbols: do our intuitions match empirical reality?

The “familiarity effect” (Shen and Reingold, Perception & Psychophysics 63(3):464–475, 2001) is a phenomenon in which unfamiliar symbols perceptually “pop-out” when placed among familiar symbols (e.g., letters). In contrast, searching for familiar symbols among unfamiliar symbols is more challenging. Failure to account for effects such as these when predicting search performance could lead to overconfidence and error. This study investigated metacognitive awareness of the familiarity effect by asking participants to rate the speed and accuracy of search before they searched for either letter or symbol targets among letter or symbol distractors. Feature overlap between target and distractor and target presence or absence were also manipulated to provide concurrent cues to task difficulty. This study examined metacognitive awareness of the “familiarity effect,” and extended the findings from an earlier metasearch study (Redford et al., Memory and Cognition 39:1534–1545, 2011). Metacognition was accurate with respect to the familiarity effect. However, participants incorrectly predicted that they would detect a target’s absence faster than its presence. These findings suggest that people have metacognitive awareness for some aspects of visual search, even when patterns of search performance are complex and potentially counterintuitive. However, limitations exist in our metacognitive awareness of visual search. The results are discussed in relation to Koriat’s cue utilization framework and heuristic-based metacognition.     

Evidence-based teaching: a simple view of “science”

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the insistent claims by advocates of evidence-based teaching that it is a rigorous scientific approach. The paper questions the view that randomised controlled trials and meta-analyses are the only truly scientific methods in educational research. It suggests these claims are often based on a rhetorical appeal which relies on too simple a notion of “science”. Exploring the tacit assumptions behind “evidence-based teaching”, the paper identifies an empiricist and reductionist philosophy of science, and a failure to recognise the complexity of education and pedagogy. Following a discussion of large-scale syntheses of evidence (Hattie’s Visible Learning; the Education Endowment Foundation’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit), it examines in detail one strand of the latter concerning sports participation, which is used to illustrate flaws in procedures and the failure to take seriously the need for causal explanations.     

A surprising discovery: five pedagogical skills outdoor and experiential educators might offer more mainstream educators in this time of change

This article draws from the experience of outdoor and experiential educators working in the context of a radical, long-term formal public education research project. One of the accidental findings from the research is that experienced outdoor educators may have particular pedagogical skills, likely honed by the contexts in which they work, that can be of use to mainstream educators trying to expand their pedagogical repertoire, teach outdoors or be more environmentally focused in their practices. The article begins by contextualising the Maple Ridge Environmental School Project, describing the researchers and methods and explaining how the research team came to their insights. A discussion follows of five pedagogical skills identified by the researchers that outdoor and experiential educators may possess which might be offered more clearly to classroom teachers and formal teacher training processes and/or be more clearly enunciated for those involved in formal and informal outdoor and experiential training contexts.     

Optimally Engineering Traditional Introductory Physics Classes

This paper presents a measurement of the time and resources committed to traditional student actions such as reading and working homework. The perception of the educational value of each basic action for both students and faculty is captured. From this information, basic educational efficiencies are computed for a traditional mechanics course and a non-traditional hands-on Electricity and Magnetism course. The calculations show an allocation of resources in the traditional course which uses the most student time in the least educationally valuable activity. The computed efficiencies also show overseen student note-taking as potentially a very valuable general tool. The techniques presented allow any institution to carry out quantitative educational engineering of their course offerings at the highest level.     

The “madness” of market logic: mental illness and late capitalism in The Double and Nightcrawler

This paper examines representations of mental illness in popular film, particularly Richard Ayoade’s The Double and Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler. As I argue, both films trouble typical Hollywood narratives of mental illness by situating schizophrenia and psychopathy, for instance, within a socioeconomic context, specifically relations of production under late capitalism and the unfettered self-interest of neoliberalism. If mental illness is a product of the postindustrial workplace in The Double, it becomes a prerequisite for success in Nightcrawler, providing a cinematic depiction of mental illness at odds with the “personal pathology” paradigm that dominates the current neoliberal landscape.