Shared Reading within an Apprenticeship Approach to Reading

Williamson & Carrington argued, in a recent edition of Educational Studies, the need for a major investigation of the effectiveness of an apprenticeship approach to reading. This paper considers some of the problems associated with such investigations. It also seeks to clarify some of the terminology in the whole language repertoire before looking in detail at shared reading as an important part of such approaches. The article concludes by suggesting that ethnographic studies are the means by which issues in the teaching and learning of reading may best be clarified, and teachers and children assisted.     

Mapping the educational experiences of children with pathological demand avoidance

‘Pathological demand avoidance’ (PDA) describes a pattern of difficulties increasingly recognised as forming part of the autistic spectrum. Although clinical reports suggest that children with PDA are likely to experience considerable difficulties in education, their educational experiences have not yet been explored in any systematic way. In the current study, 42 parents of children with PDA completed a questionnaire about their child's educational experiences. Parents' responses indicated that this group of children displays high levels of problem behaviours in school, and receives corresponding high levels of special educational need support and professional involvement. Despite this support, the group had experienced high rates of exclusion and placement breakdown, with only 48% now in mainstream education. Parents reported relatively high satisfaction in their children's educational placements, with success defined by parents in terms of child outcomes, school characteristics and PDA‐specific factors. Findings are discussed with reference to what is known about the educational experiences of children with more typical autism spectrum conditions and in terms of the implications for the inclusion of this group of children with complex needs.     

Strength,Weakness, Opportunity,Threat (SWOT) Analysis of the Adaptations to Anatomical Education in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland in Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic has driven the fastest changes to higher education across the globe, necessitated by social distancing measures preventing face-to-face teaching. This has led to an almost immediate switch to distance learning by higher education institutions. Anatomy faces some unique challenges. Intrinsically, anatomy is a three-dimensional subject that requires a sound understanding of the relationships between structures, often achieved by the study of human cadaveric material, models, and virtual resources. This study sought to identify the approaches taken in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland to deliver anatomical education through online means. Data were collected from 14 different universities in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland and compared adopting a thematic analysis approach. Once themes were generated, they were collectively brought together using a strength, weakness, opportunity, threat (SWOT) analysis. Key themes included the opportunity to develop new online resources and the chance to engage in new academic collaborations. Academics frequently mentioned the challenge that time constrains could place on the quality and effectiveness of these resources; especially as in many cases the aim of these resources was to compensate for a lack of exposure to cadaveric exposure. Comparisons of the actions taken by multiple higher education institutions reveal the ways that academics have tried to balance this demand. Discussions will facilitate decisions being made by higher education institutions regarding adapting the curriculum and assessment methods in anatomy.     

Methodological Choices in the Content Analysis of Textbooks for Measuring Alignment With Standards

With the recent adoption of the Common Core standards in many states, there is a need for quality information about textbook alignment to standards. While there are many existing content analysis procedures, these generally have little, if any, validity or reliability evidence. One exception is the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC), which has been widely used to analyze the alignment among standards, assessments, and teachers’ instruction. However, the SEC can be time‐consuming and expensive when used for this purpose. This study extends the SEC to the analysis of entire mathematics textbooks and investigates whether the results of SEC alignment analyses are affected if the content analysis procedure is simplified. The results indicate that analyzing only every fifth item produces nearly identical alignment results with no effect on the reliability of content analyses.     

Gender positioning in teacher education in England: New rhetoric,old realities

This article presents data from a series of life-history interviews with female student teachers of physical education. The intention is to forge links between the experiences of female student teachers, and their 'gender positioning' within the micro-politics of teacher education and the wider discourse that informs these interactions. On first entering teaching these women tended to adopt or enter 'survival mode', which endorsed particular professional identities that were consolidated by a form of instrumental rationality. These professional identities were closely tied to conventional conceptions of masculinity, and legitimated and contributed to, the reinforcement of particular gender inequalities in teacher education. The analysis suggests that a liberal discourse of equal opportunities masks the institutionalisation of social 'otherness' and inequality and supports the 'essentialisation' of male and female identities.     

Assessment in special schools: national early assessment procedures and pupils attending special schools in England

An implicit assumption that fostering inclusion means having shared systems encompassing the needs of all children is evident in many aspects of policy development over the past decade. Reflecting this, the implementation of ‘baseline assessment’ schemes (i.e. testing at around age 5 years) is a statutory requirement on all state-maintained special and mainstream schools in England since 1998. Our argument is that the enthusiasm for commonality has obscured the need to question the value and validity of baseline assessment schemes for children with special educational needs (and possibly some others such as children having English as an additional language). We illustrate this position with reference to data from our recent study on baseline assessment in England. The study encompassed survey data from a national sample of 982 schools, of which 107 were special schools. Between them, these special schools used 42 different baseline assessment schemes. Comparisons between our mainstream and special school respondents indicated that there were similarities in the nature and perceived value of the schemes used. However, special schools were less satisfied with their schemes. We suggest that a reappraisal of the nature and purpose of baseline assessment for pupils with special educational needs warrants greater critical debate. Without this, there is a danger that a stress on commonality, veiling an inclusion orthodoxy, will ultimately be counterproductive.     

Prejudices Unshelved: Variation in Attitudes toward Controversial Public Library Materials in the General Social Survey, 1972–2014

Using the General Social Survey from 1972–2014, we examine variation in attitudes toward retaining controversial materials in libraries. Previously controversial topics have become much more widely accepted. We find that other controversies remain, showing how global conflicts become intertwined in local cultural controversies, and how the perceived threat from particular groups informs public concern with disseminating information from those groups. We find that more frequent library users are somewhat less likely to want to remove controversial books from the shelves, although some of these relationships are explained by variation in the respondent’s age, race, and other characteristics.     

Validation of the Microsoft Kinect® camera system for measurement of lower extremity jump landing and squatting kinematics

Cost effective, quantifiable assessment of lower extremity movement represents potential improvement over standard tools for evaluation of injury risk. Ten healthy participants completed three trials of a drop jump, overhead squat, and single leg squat task. Peak hip and knee kinematics were assessed using an 8 camera BTS Smart 7000DX motion analysis system and the Microsoft Kinect® camera system. The agreement and consistency between both uncorrected and correct Kinect kinematic variables and the BTS camera system were assessed using interclass correlations coefficients. Peak sagittal plane kinematics measured using the Microsoft Kinect® camera system explained a significant amount of variance [Range_hip = 43.5–62.8%; Range_knee = 67.5–89.6%] in peak kinematics measured using the BTS camera system. Across tasks, peak knee flexion angle and peak hip flexion were found to be consistent and in agreement when the Microsoft Kinect® camera system was directly compared to the BTS camera system but these values were improved following application of a corrective factor. The Microsoft Kinect® may not be an appropriate surrogate for traditional motion analysis technology, but it may have potential applications as a real-time feedback tool in pathological or high injury risk populations.     

Enterprise Systems: Curriculum design and assessment

We present a curriculum that prepares students for supporting large Enterprise Information Systems (EIS). EIS is best explained through the evolution of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). These systems evolved over the last years driven by (1) changing business requirements and (2) new development capabilities provided by technologies evolution and software vendors’ innovation. These developments led to a new discipline—Enterprise Information Systems, which deals with issues whose focus is on creating and sustaining business benefits through the utilization of corporate IT infrastructure assets. Currently, EIS knowledge is essentially acquired on the job after substantial time of experience building and longer career ladder scale. This paper presents an experience of a curriculum implementation that prepares students for the pervasive EIS landscape in meeting today’s corporate needs. Our IT-based educational approach is evaluated as an alternative to prevailing Business-based approaches to EIS instruction. In this IT-rooted approach, the curriculum is divided into four sections: a Core IT block of courses followed by two progressive-levels of advanced EIS-related specialized subjects, and an industry-oriented field-training experience. Initially, a Core IT background provides a foundation for IT innovation in developing EIS components at sophomore-level. A junior-level of specialized instruction introduces integrated modules which form EIS platforms. Finally, supporting technologies of EIS-related processes and workflows are presented at senior-level of specialized EIS instruction. An assessment case study of the proposed Enterprise System programs is carried out through which we discuss the results of the curriculum performance.