980 research outputs found
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Student teachers' positionalities as knowers in school subject departments
No full textStudent teachers in England, mainly on one-year courses, spend the majority of their time in schools. Secondary schools are primarily organised around subject departments, and these subgroups within schools have been shown to be significant for student outcomes and teachers’ experiences. However, research on school subject departments themselves is relatively limited, and developing better understandings of school subject departments is important for Initial Teacher Education and educational research more broadly. This paper draws on an ethnographic study of three secondary school geography departments to analyse student teachers’ positionalities as knowers within departments. Opportunities for professional discussions within departments are limited, and are often dominated by immediate practical concerns. A social realist concept of knower-knowledge structures is used to explore the kinds of knowers accepted as legitimate in these departments. A dichotomous view of teachers as knowers was found, being positioned as knowing or not-knowing particular areas of subject knowledge. This binary view is argued to be related to the language of the Teachers’ Standards in England. Suggestions are made for improving student teachers’ positions as knowers within departments by planning opportunities to contribute their expertise, and for developing more expansive discourses around subject knowledge to enable all to maximise opportunities to learn from the rich mines of expertise held across ITE partnerships
Book Review: Holistic Education and Embodied Learning
No full textBook review of: Holistic education and embodied learning, edited by John P. Miller and Kelli
Nigh, Charlotte, Information Age Publishing, 2017, 345 pp., $39.09 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-68123-840-
educationUndergraduate: Journal of undergraduate research in education (Volume 9)
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Bridging pedagogical discontinuity: to what extent can play-based learning be sustained beyond children’s transition to Year 1?
Philip Nicholson: BA (Hons) Education Studies and Sport
Teacher talk or teaching talk? Teacher perspectives on effective strategies for the teaching of speaking and listening in primary classrooms.
Sarah McBroom: BA (Hons) Education Studies and Sport
Making marks: the road to literacy?
An exploratory study into the role of the practitioner and the strategies used to support children’s emergent writing in the early years.
Louise Tomlinson: BA (Hons) Early Childhood Studies
How does the Maths Makes Sense scheme affect key stage one pupils’ confidence in mathematics?
Aliya Arthur: BA (Hons) Primary Education
The perceived benefits experienced by families as a result of engaging with Sure Start Children's Centres
Danielle Camp: BA (Hons): Psychology and Early Childhood Studies
How can positive inclusion and strategic pastoral care lead to a reduction in permanent exclusions in secondary schools?
A review of one schools’ journey from Rhetoric to Reality
Lynda Martin: BA (Hons) Psychology and Special Educational Needs and Inclusio
The Enigma of Autism: Genius, Disorder or just different?
No full textWhat does the word Autism mean to you? Perhaps your first thought is of someone with a medical condition that involves some kind of strange behaviour? But, what if you knew that the person in question is a lovely, intelligent and creative artist? Would that change how you thought about Autism and what impact does this have on how we as society interact with children and adults on the Spectrum? The Enigma of Autism is intent to serve as a recourse for everyone who is dedicated not only to research but also to education and wellbeing of children and adults on the Autistic Spectrum. The book provides a fully rounded account of the condition and challenges your preconceptions about what you think you know about Autism
Analyses of Sustained Vowels in Down Syndrome (DS): A Case Study Using Spectrograms and Perturbation Data to Investigate Voice Quality in Four Adults With DS
No full textSummary: Objectives. Automatic acoustic measures of voice quality in people with Down syndrome (DS) do not reliably reflect perceived voice qualities. This study used acoustic data and visual spectral data to investigate the relationship between perceived voice qualities and acoustic measures. Studydesign. Participants were four young adults (two males, two females; mean age 23.8 years) with DS and severe learning disabilities, at least one of whom had a hearing impairment. Methods. Participants imitated sustained /i/, /u/, and /a/ vowels at predetermined target pitches within their vocal range. Medial portions of vowels were analyzed, using Praat, for fundamental frequency, harmonics-to-noise ratio, jitter, and shimmer. Spectrograms were used to identify the presence and the duration of subharmonics at onset and offset, and mid-vowel. The presence of diplophonia was assessed by auditory evaluation. Results. Perturbationdatawerehighestfor/a/vowelsandlowestfor/u/vowels.Intermittentproductionsofsubharmonics were evident in spectrograms, some of which coincided with perceived diplophonia. The incidence, location, duration, and intensity of subharmonics differed between the four participants. Conclusions. Although the acoustic data do not clearly indicate atypical phonation, diplophonia and subharmonics reflect nonmodal phonation. The findings suggest that these may contribute to different perceived voice qualities in the study group and that these qualities may result from intermittent involvement of supraglottal structures. Further research is required to confirm the findings in the wider DS population, and to assess the relationships between voice quality, vowel type, and physiological measures. Key Words: Down syndrome–Diplophonia–Subharmonics–Voice–Phonation
How students perceive attending Church in Wales primary schools: A psychometric assessment of Section 50 inspection criteria
No full textA sample of 4,581 year 4, year 5 and year 6 students (8-11 years of age) attending Church in Wales primary schools completed six short scales designed to operationalise the Section 50 inspection criteria concerning aspects of the distinctiveness of church school ethos and concerning school worship. The data demonstrated the internal consistency reliability of the six measures and showed more positive attitudes to be associated with being female, being younger, and attending church. Overall the students displayed positive attitudes toward school ethos, toward school experience, toward school teachers, toward relationships within school, and toward school and environment. Attitude toward school worship was less positive
Can sharing education between home and school benefit the child with autism?
No full textThis qualitative research exploration uses interpretative phenomenological analysis of case studies to investigate the diversity and congruity of the lived experiences of families sharing education between home and school for children with autism. Using semi-structured interview and follow-up questionnaire it examines the perspectives of five mothers, and includes further input from wider family members and professionals.
Findings are presented as idiographic cases, examined through the ‘lens’ of nine research propositions to have emerged through the researcher’s complete-member orientation, and further presented in cross-case synthesis under three super-ordinate themes to have emerged: that shared education is a response to need; that it is a response to both perceived positives and perceived negatives in the school experience; and that it is used by parents as a ‘bridge’. Findings are considered in the light of similar studies (Kidd and Kaczmarek, 2010; Hurlbutt, 2011) into the experience of parents home-educating their children with autism, together with a study (McDonald and Lopes, 2014) into parents sharing the education of their autistic children between home and the Schools of Isolated and Distance Education in Western Australia.
Findings suggest that there is considerable agreement on the challenges faced by the child with autism in school, on the parents’ motivations for intervening and on the parents' endorsement of the literature-supported report on the importance of parental involvement in a child's education. Participants agree that sharing education between home and school can lead to benefit for their child, although the heterogeneity of the autistic population and the diversity of individual participant circumstances lead to a lack of congruity as to the form that this benefit may take
Capacity development and TVET: accredited qualifications for improving resilience of coastal communities: a Vanuatu case study
No full textFor countries like Vanuatu, climate change is the most significant single threat to sustainable development, in particular due to the large proportion of the population living in coastal communities. Additionally Vanuatu is the world’s most at-risk country for natural hazards mainly affecting coastal communities (Birkmann and Welle in The world risk index, 2015). One of the key barriers to improving Pacific Island Countries’ resilience to climate change impacts is the lack of local and regional capacity and expertise resulting from the absence of sustainable accredited and quality assured formal training programs in climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk management (DRM) (Jordon et al. in Climate change policy in the European Union: confronting the dilemmas of adaptation and mitigation. Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom, 2010; Martin et al. in Training needs and gap analysis. Suva, Fiji, 2015). The European Union funded PacTVET project has partnered with The Pacific Community (SPC) and the German aid agency (GIZ) Coping with Climate Change in the Pacific Region (CCCPIR) programme to support the delivery of the first accredited TVET certificate in Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction (CCDRR) in the Pacific Islands region. This TVET qualification provides outcomes based learning specifically focused on coastal communities through practical activities and field work involving vulnerable coastal areas throughout the provinces of Vanuatu. The delivery of the CCDRR course is being led by the Vanuatu government through the Vanuatu Institute of Technology and is leading regional and global developments in formal accredited TVET training for Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction
Seeing how we see each other : learning from quantitative research
No full textThe quantitative strand of the Young People?s Attitudes towards Religious Diversity Project, conducted by the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit, set out to capture data from over 2,000 students living in each of the four nations of the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales) and from London as a special case. Anonymity and confidentiality were assured. In total, nearly 12,000 students submitted thoroughly completed questionnaires. The project concentrated on schools within the state-maintained sector, but sought to obtain roughly equal numbers of students within each of the five areas attending schools with a religious character and without a religious foundation. The aim of the present paper is to collate, present and assess the findings from this survey that are relevant to the theme of this Special Issue, concerned with examining how a religion shapes the way of seeing the world and seeing other religious traditions. Highlights from the research include: students who are themselves religiously motivated hold more positive attitudes towards religious diversity; there is no evidence that schools with a religious character produce students who are less accepting of people from other religious faiths; religious education does work in the sense of leading to attitudes that promote community cohesion, lessen religious conflict, and promote the common good
To what extent are teaching assistants really managed?: ‘I was thrown in the deep end, really; I just had to more or less get on with it’
No full textThe main aim of this research was to secure a better understanding of how local authorities (LAs), senior leadership teams (SLTs) and teachers in state schools perceive their responsibilities for the deployment, leadership and management of teaching assistants (TAs). Current research in the field – some of which has been highly influential on policy – has largely focused on aspects of TA performance and pupil attainment. Importantly, we have chosen to investigate how TAs and SLTs themselves describe their experiences of management. TAs, teachers, senior leaders in primary schools and LA advisors, across two LAs, were surveyed. Based on 55 questionnaire responses, 23 interviews and 2 focus groups we found evidence of a dislocation of management priorities for effective TA deployment. What emerged was a strong sense of ‘otherness’ felt by many TAs, who believed themselves to be dissociated from their own management. We conclude that TAs make up a workforce that appears to be closely managed but which is in fact often poorly led, resulting in feelings of detachment