Adopting an active learning approach to teaching in a research-intensive higher education context transformed staff teaching attitudes and behaviours

The conventional lecture has significant limitations in the higher education context, often leading to a passive learning experience for students. This paper reports a process of transforming teaching and learning with active learning strategies in a research-intensive educational context across a faculty of 45 academic staff and more than 1000 students. A phased approach was used, involving nine staff in a pilot phase during which a common vision and principles were developed. In short, our approach was to mandate a move away from didactic lectures to classes that involved students interacting with content, with each other and with instructors in order to attain domain-specific learning outcomes and generic skills. After refinement, an implementation phase commenced within all first-year subjects, involving 12 staff including three from the pilot group. The staff use of active learning methods in classes increased by sixfold and sevenfold in the pilot and implementation phases, respectively. An analysis of implementation phase exam questions indicated that staff increased their use of questions addressing higher order cognitive skills by 51%. Results of a staff survey indicated that this change in practice was caused by the involvement of staff in the active learning approach. Fifty-six percent of staff respondents indicated that they had maintained constructive alignment as they introduced active learning. After the pilot, only three out of nine staff agreed that they understood what makes for an effective active learning exercise. This rose to seven out of nine staff at the completion of the implementation phase. The development of a common approach with explicit vision and principles and the evaluation and refinement of active learning were effective elements of our transformational change management strategy. Future efforts will focus on ensuring that all staff have the time, skills and pedagogical understanding required to embed constructively aligned active learning within the approach.     

A Gorilla with ‘Grandpa's Eyes’: How Children Interpret Visual Texts—A Case Study of Anthony Browne's Zoo

This article explores the multilayered nature of a single picture book by Anthony Browne and the sophisticated responses (including their own pictures) children aged 4–11 bring to interpreting such a text. Emphasis is laid on the high-level cognitive skills involved in reading visual images and links are made between seeing and thinking. Some features of the children's understanding are examined in detail; for example, how they interpret visual imagery and deal with a variety of challenging artistic features, and how their drawings show knowledge and feelings they are not yet able to articulate. The findings also suggest that some children who are not yet confident at reading print have developed impressive capacities for analysing image.     

Synthetic phonics and the teaching of reading: the debate surrounding England's ‘Rose Report’

The Rose Report, commissioned by the Secretary of State for Education for England, recommended in March 2006 that early reading instruction must include synthetic phonics. This paper evaluates the extent to which research evidence supports this recommendation. In particular, a review of international research into the teaching of early reading shows that the Rose Report's main recommendation on synthetic phonics contradicts the powerful body of evidence accumulated over the last 30 years. In this paper it is argued that action already taken by the UK government to change the National Curriculum in line with the Rose Report's recommendations represents a change in pedagogy not justified by research.     

Reading Lessons from the Eighteenth Century

The extraordinary nursery library produced by Jane Johnson (circa 1742–1747), entirely in the private domain with no thought of publication, holds pride of place in the Lilly Library's collection of early children's books at the University of Indiana, USA. It has already been celebrated in an exhibition and international conference held at the Fitzwilliam Museum and Homerton College respectively in Cambridge, UK, in 1995. One outcome of the interest aroused in Jane's educational materials by scholars from a wide range of disciplines was the publication of Opening the Nursery Door in 1997, which included two essays devoted to her enterprise by Shirley Brice Heath and Victor Watson. Since then, the Bodleian Library in Oxford has acquired and published in facsimile form a story written by Jane in 1744, alongside a fascinating assortment of family letters and other papers. In Opening the Nursery Door, Watson explored the sources for Jane's story, while Brice Heath considered the materials from a linguistic and anthropological point of view, but no one has yet examined them as reading materials. This is the focus the present authors have taken, based on their research into her life and work, alongside their exploration of the historical and educational context in which a mother might have taught her children to read in the eighteenth century. This article is devoted to examining Jane's nursery library, the philosophical and pedagogical influences on her approach, and the methodologies she used to teach reading, thus throwing a spotlight on domestic literacy and providing insights into the culture of Georgian family life.