Teaching common errors in applying a procedure

This study investigated whether or not the teaching of matched examples and nonexamples in the form of common errors would improve student performance in applying a procedure to previously unencountered instances, and whether the common errors would be most beneficial in generality form, in example form, or in both forms. Participants were 141 first-year music students, who were randomly assigned to four groups and given the task to learn a procedure that was presented in a self-contained booklet. A pretest-posttest experimental design was used, with a prerequisite test given as a screening device. The two independent variables were the absence and presence of the common errors in the generality form and in the example form (2 x 2 factorial design). Results indicated that the teaching of common errors in the generality form significantly improved learning a procedure at the application level of behavior.     

La Parte Chusca of a Pedagogical Here and Now: Oaxacan Teachers’ Heteroglossic Joking About State Repression and Educational Reform

Faced with repression and reform, humor has become tactical for public school teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico, engaged in a decades-old movement that after 2006 involved intensified street- and school-based pedagogies. This piece explores how humor adds to a political project via mocking names, images, and dictates of elite leaders to bring a here and now to what is taken as inaccessible in the teachers’ political lives. Humor forms part of an (e)sc(h)atology in which critical practices are part eschatological, a call for definite transformation, and part scatological, embodied vulgarity. La parte chusca (the funny part), its (e)sc(h)atological contribution, angles toward critical literacies in Oaxaca and beyond.     

Challenges and Opportunities in Religious Education: Re-Considering Practitioners’ Approaches in Scottish Secondary Schools

Abstract

In Scotland, and particularly with regards to non-denominational RE, known as Religious and Moral Education (RME), a current focus of debates is on how and why practitioners are implementing or deviating from legal and curricular expectations. Using the findings of a small-scale qualitative practitioner enquiry centered on one local education authority in Scotland, this article advances recent discussions and engages with comparative international scholarship by identifying the challenges and opportunities in relation to the provision of RME and arguing that practitioners are motivated by the demands of learners and the priorities of school leaders, rather than official expectations.     

Issues relating to curriculum,policy and gender raised by national and international surveys of achievement in mathematics

Scottish schools have provided performance data for five international surveys of attainment in mathematics since 1990. Performance measured against national targets and progression over time and between age‐stages have been monitored nationally, on a regular basis, for 20 years, within the Assessment of Achievement Programme (AAP) (Scotland). The 1994 AAP mathematics survey findings facilitated interpretation of the age 9 and 13 TIMSS results for Scotland. Both studies were influential in formulation of national policies to improve learning and teaching of mathematics, at ages 5–14. Research available to support policies recommended in 1997 is examined. Concerns about validity and reliability of findings from international studies are discussed in the context of a collaboration undertaken between Scotland and France in 1994. It is concluded that simplistic comparisons ignore important cultural and curricular differences. Outcomes of more recent national and international surveys are reported and performance findings from 1988–2000 that relate to gender are reviewed.     

How do instructional designers evaluate? A qualitative study of evaluation in practice

This study employed a qualitative research design to investigate how instructional designers use evaluation in everyday design practice. While past research has examined how designers spend their time, how they generally make decisions, and expert-novice differences, little attention has been paid to use of context, input, process, or product evaluation, from the perspective of practicing designers. Based on interviews of practitioners, our findings included ten themes regarding how designers use evaluation to improve their products. While these results substantiate to some degree the claim that practitioners believe clients will not pay for formal evaluations, they also suggest that practitioners use evaluation in important but less formal ways. Other conclusions regarding the role of evaluation in design are provided and future directions for training and research are discussed.