The debate over open access is missing the point

Key points

• It is more important to a funder to know that the research advances knowledge and has an impact on the field than that it is published in a prestigious journal (or not).
• Improving journal quality assurance is more important than improving the business model.
• Focusing on open access misses the point that journals need to improve their quality standards.

     

Pupil Speech during Morning News: the effects of reducing teacher questions and increasing pauses and praise

Classroom discourse patterns were examined in the morning news sessions of a primary school classroom. The effects of reducing teacher questions and increasing rates of teacher pauses, praise and directives were investigated. Child words spoken and child expansions were recorded, as well as class call‐outs and teacher control statements. Frequencies of child words spoken showed no significant changes across the phases of the study. However, reducing teacher questions and increasing teacher pauses significantly decreased child expansions, while reducing teacher questions and increasing teacher praise significantly increased child expansions. Replacing teacher questions with directives had no significant effect upon child expansions. Class call‐outs and teacher control statements showed no significant changes across the intervention phases. The results of this study suggest that, for this teacher and class, teacher questions may be decreased without adversely affecting either child utterances or class behaviour, and that replacing questions with praise may increase children's contributions — particularly in the form of verbal expansions — to morning news talks.     

Vocational-technical programs: follow-up of students with learning disabilities

Recent research has examined the role of vocational-technical training in facilitating the transition from school to work of adolescents with learning disabilities. The present study provided 6-, 12-, and 24-month follow-up data on such students who had attended vocational-technical programs. Matched groups of students without disabilities from vocational-technical programs, as well as randomly selected students without disabilities from regular high schools, were also included for comparisons. Results of the study raised several questions about the value and purpose of vocational-technical training for adolescents with learning disabilities.     

Orthographic analogies and early reading: Explorations of performance and variation in two transfer tasks

Two experiments investigated the use of orthographic analogies in 6 year olds. In Experiment 1, 26 children were shown CVC clue and target word pairs sharing either rimes (`fork' – `pork'), heads (`fork' – `ford') or were controls (`fork' – `hurl'). A modest advantage for rime-clued over head-cluedtargets was unreliable over by-subject and by-item analyses. Improvements in target word reading were correlated with pretest scaffolding errors (e.g. `pork' misread as `park'). In Experiment 2, 50 children were pretaught three clue words for each target word before being shown words that shared either rimes (`leak' – `peak'), or medial vowel digraphs (`leak') – `bean'), or were controls (`leak' – `herd'). A modest advantage for rime-clued over vowel digraph-clued targets was again unreliable over by-subject and by-item analyses. Neither rime nor phoneme awareness measures were correlated with rime inference use. Vowel, but not rime inference, was correlated with scaffolding errors. Rime detection was the strongest predictor of reading ability, whereas phoneme segmentation was the strongest predictor of the use of scaffolding errors.     

Extinction and food-reinforced inhibition of conditioned salivation in dogs

The present experiment compared two methods of eliminating a classically conditioned response in dogs, extinction and reinforcement of nonsalivation, using both a within- and between-subjects experimental design. Eighteen dogs were trained for 16 days in Phase I, 16 days in Phase II, and 8 days in Phase III. In Phase I, each subject received classical conditioning training to two stimuli. In Phase II, Group 1 received extinction training to one stimulus and reinforcement of nonsalivation to the other stimulus. Group 2 received continued classical conditioning training to one stimulus and reinforcement on nonsalivation training to the other. Group 3 received continued classical conditioning training to one stimulus and extinction training to the other. In both the within- and between-subjects comparisons, responding to the stimulus associated with extinction was eliminated faster than responding to the stimulus associated with reinforcement of nonsalivation.     

Increasing the uptake of peer feedback in primary school writing: findings from an action research enquiry

This article reports on how an action research strategy was used to increase children's uptake of feedback during peer assessment in primary school writing. Several different strategies were used in the study that had been successful in increasing students’ uptake of peer feedback in contexts such as higher education. In order to evaluate how successful these actions were, several different data collection methods were drawn upon to triangulate findings including children's work, observations, informal interviews and mind mapping. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data generated. Findings are consistent with those from research in other settings which suggest that pupils make better use of feedback if: it is task-involving and useful; there is sufficient time given for them to act on it and discuss it with their peers; and they are asked to reflect on how it has been used to improve the quality of the assessed work.