Disabled Children and Residential Schools: The Implications for Local Education Professionals

Jenny Morris, freelance researcher, David Abbott, research associate at the Norah Fry Research Centre at the University of Bristol, and Linda Ward, Director of the Norah Fry Research Centre at the University of Bristol, carried out research to look at whether the current system of legislation and regulation is adequately protecting and promoting the interests of disabled children placed at residential schools. This article summarises some findings from the research which investigated the decision-making processes leading to residential special school placements and explored the involvement of education and social services authorities after placements have been made. The research found that the needs of individual children are not central to these decision-making processes; and that the local authorities who make such placements do not pay sufficient attention to protecting and promoting children's educational or care needs once they have gone away to school. Jenny Morris, David Abbott and Linda Ward indicate some of the ways in which current practice could be improved; make recommendations for future developments; and call for further research into the role of special residential schools in the context of policy on educational and social inclusion.     

The literary works of Sir William Osler

A paper read at the first regular meeting of the Osler Society of McGill University, October 19, 1921.     

Altitude and wind effects on long jump performance with particular reference to the world record established by Bob Beamon

An analysis of long jump performance, including both the approach and aerial phases, is applied to Bob Beamon's legendary leap at the Mexico City Olympic Games of 1968. It is shown that the combined effects of altitude and wind assistance yielded an increment in the length of the jump of about 31 cm, compared to a corresponding jump at sea level under still air conditions. The main factor is shown to be the increased sprinting speed attained under favourable conditions of wind and altitude.     

Exploring Developmental Appropriateness of Multitouch Tables in Prekindergarten: A Video Analysis

This study explored how developmentally appropriate practices influenced the affordances of a multitouch surface in an early childhood classroom. Children, ages 4 to 5 years old, were videotaped while engaged in a storymaking application on a multitouch table. As a result of the study, we found that some challenges with the functionality undermined children's autonomous control. The researchers observed numerous instances of issues with control of the medium, including height of the table, sensitivity to multiple types of touch, and limited instructions and prompts. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Making sense of learner and learning Big Data: reviewing five years of Data Wrangling at the Open University UK

Most distance learning institutions collect vast amounts of learning data. Making sense of this ‘Big Data’ can be a challenge, in particular when data are stored at different data warehouses and require advanced statistical skills to interpret complex patterns of data. As a leading institute on learning analytics, the Open University UK instigated in 2012 a Data Wrangling initiative. This provided every Faculty with a dedicated academic with expertise data analysis and whose task is to provide strategic, pedagogical and sense-making advice to staff and senior management. Given substantial changes within the OU (e.g. new Faculty structure, real-time dashboards, two large-scale adoptions of predictive analytics approaches, increased reliance on analytics), this embedded case study provides an in-depth review of lessons learned of five years of data wrangling. We will elaborate on the design of the new structure, its strengths and potential weaknesses, and affordances to be adopted by other institutions.     

ROLF—an open learning delivery system

The Resourced Open Learning Facility (ROLF) has been developed by the UK Skills Training Agency (STA) as a means of delivering off-the-job skill training in the national network of 60 skillcentres. STA introduced ROLF as a pilot scheme in six skillcentres at a time when the government was introducing a new programme for the long-term unemployed (Employment Training). The authors evaluated the pilot scheme and concluded that ROLF was working well for low achieving adults. ROLF is also important because it is a systematic approach to open learning delivery in a chain of centres under the same management. Most educational technology literature about open learning features materials, rather than delivery.     

Transformative and emancipatory literacy to empower

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on sociological and critical educational frames, particularly Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence, in order to contest the dominant model of literacy education that is driven by the premise of a ‘knowledge economy’. Instead it foregrounds the political, social, and economic factors that marginalise learners. Data from two projects: an ethnographic study in a Further Education (FE) College in England and a study of community-based literacy programmes in Scotland, are probed to show how literacy classes can offer spaces to challenge symbolic violence and facilitate learners to reclaim identities of success. These changes are illustrated from the learners’ views of the contrasts between their experiences of school education and literacy programmes that use transformative and emancipatory approaches. Our research demonstrates how critical education can open up spaces for a more equitable approach based on the co-production of knowledge. It is argued that making changes to policy and practice could inform and shape the literacy curriculum and its pedagogy if adult literacy can disentangle itself from instrumental approaches driven by neoliberal fusion and instead create critical space for contextualised and emancipatory learning.