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What has happened to teacher assessment of science in English primary schools? Revisiting evidence from the Primary Science Quality Mark
Get PDFBackground:- An earlier article in this journal (Earle 2014) provided a mapping of primary science teacher assessment practices in England using teacher reflections written for Round 4 of the Primary Science Quality Mark (PSQM).
Purpose:- In the intervening years, the National Curriculum and statutory assessment system of levels has been replaced with a system of age-related expectations and a call for schools to develop their own systems of assessment. The aim of this study is to find out whether schools have changed their practices and to consider the ongoing changes they are making to their systems of assessment.
Sample:- The previous analysis of 91 Round 4 schools in March 2013 was compared to teacher reflections from 200 schools from across England in the more recent PSQM Round 13, June 2017.
Design and methods:- Qualitative content analysis was used to code the reported assessment methods in PSQM Round 13. The frequency of assessment methods were compared to the Round 4 mapping.
Results:- Reported practice in summative assessment in Round 13 included more ‘ongoing’ assessment information, which could potentially support a more valid sampling of the construct, but there was a lack of clarity regarding the use of data tracking systems. In the PSQM year, subject leaders described starting or developing the use of a range of published and school developed resources to support assessment practices in formative and summative assessment.
Conclusion:- Changing statutory assessment processes instigates change in school practices, but without support for teacher assessment literacy, the implementation of new assessment systems may not lead to clear processes for assessment which support learning in primary science
White supremacy in postgraduate education at elite universities in England: the role of the gatekeepers
Get PDFHome BAME students are under-represented on postgraduate courses in England, especially at elite universities, however, there has been little research on why this should be. This research starts to fill this gap, arguing that gatekeepers to postgraduate courses at some of the most elite universities contribute to maintaining white supremacy. Innovatively combining Critical Race Theory with Bourdieu’s tools, the study found that at these institutions, white supremacy is upheld firstly by an operationalising of discourses of meritocracy; secondly by non-transparent recruitment to programmes from UG courses which are mainly white; and thirdly by the gatekeepers interpreting the low numbers of BAME students either as ‘unconscious bias’, which in their view cannot be helped, or a result of individual or cultural deficit on the part of the students themselves. All of this, we argue, allows gatekeepers to excuse their own role and that of the institution in maintaining white supremacy
"Something important is going on with data": educators’ search for political agency to act as professionals in complex datafied contexts
No full textStarting from the position that ‘something important is going on with data’, the role of each educators’ political agency to act within complex datafied contexts is explored. After first examining broader efforts to make sense of data, and its processing and use in social science research, the HDI elements of agency, legibility and negotiability are discussed as complementary to a critical approach to data literacy. We add to this dialogue with other educators and experts in different fields, while validating the design of an open educational resource (OER) DataPraxis, which is a website with content and analytical tools that supports educators’ pedagogical activity to cultivate and foster critical data literacies. Analysis of our conversations with these colleagues brings to light diverse efforts to develop the political agency that educators envision. Participants’ discourses shape a half-weaved tapestry with entanglements that require further attention, critical debate and collective interdisciplinary work in our collective effort to grasp the inherent complexity of the datafied present and future. The chapter thus unveils the potential of individuals’ reflexive engagement with talks, content, resources, and lively discussion through DataPraxis as a mediator between each individual’s political agency and the current data culture in which we find ourselves
Exploring the carry-over of top-down attentional settings in dynamic conditions
Get PDFA top-down attentional set can persist from a relevant task to an irrelevant task, influencing allocation of attentional resources, visual search, and performance. While this “carry-over” effect has been found across numerous experiments, past studies have utilised paradigms that present similar tasks to the same spatial location. The present research explored whether attentional settings persist in more dynamic situations. In Experiment 1, participants played a computer game that encouraged a horizontal, vertical, or random spread of search. After 10 or 30 s, they moved 90° to their right and monitored a driving video for hazards. Eye movements to the videos were not affected by the characteristics of the preceding game, revealing no carry-over of attentional settings. One possible explanation for this was the visuospatial shift between the tasks. To explore this further, Experiment 2 adopted a similar paradigm to previous research; participants searched horizontal, vertical, or random letter strings before completing an image search. In one block the tasks were presented to the same screen, and in one block the tasks were presented to different screens (incorporating a 90° visuospatial shift mid-trial). Carry-over was found in the one-screen block, with a significantly wider horizontal search and a narrower vertical search in the pictures after a horizontal letter search. However, there was no carry-over from the letter to the picture task in the two-screen block. This indicates the flexibility of attentional control in dynamic situations, and it is suggested that persistence of attentional settings will be most costly under stable conditions
Ambient literature
No full textThe possible sites for literary experiences are multiplying. We consume literary texts in every room of the home, at any time of day or night, in every mode of transport and in every interstice of waiting time. What used to be called ‘the institutions’ of media production (the author, the publisher, the channel) have exploded into a constellation of content platforms at every scale connected through servers to readers across an unaccountable variety of sites. We read on devices that, unlike books, know where the reader is, how fast the reader is moving and which way up the device is being held, utilising an array of sensors that make the context of the encounter available to the data stream of content. Text can respond to context. Location can alter content, the media assets that constitute the story can be mixed and remixed on the fly.
Ambient literature, a range of literary media practices that respond directly to the reading context, provides a new poetics of situated reading and writing.
Where will story find itself on the street and in the home in the middle of the twenty-first century? Will there be a story machine? And, if yes, whose story will it deliver
Design for social imagination
Get PDFThis paper reports findings from a research project, ‘Connecting Roots’, funded by the AHRC UK. Based on the learning from delivering six co-creation workshops to local communities, this paper discusses how design can be applied to support communities to collaboratively imagine future possibilities of health and wellbeing. It sits within the context of scaling up nature and nature based activities (e.g. park runs, community gardens) as a non-clinical approach for better health and wellbeing. These workshops aimed to address the challenge of inequality of access focusing on Walsall, a metropolitan borough in the UK exhibiting some extremes of deprivation, a lower than average life expectancy, and ethnic and cultural diversity. Findings from the workshops suggest that social imagination is central to addressing inequality, where people are empowered and supported to imagine what is possible for health and wellbeing, and communities. The design-led creative approach adopted in running these workshops has become a catalyst of new possibilities within social reality, through engaging people at a deeper emotional level and forging a collaborative culture and mindset, which has allowed people to express themselves openly and creatively, and to negotiate and develop shared community values collaboratively. The positioning of design in the context of community imagination and transdisciplinary research is emerging at present and it is suggested future research focuses on evaluating the longer-term impact of this kind of design-led approach for a better understanding of its potential
Extraction old and new: toxic legacies of mining the desert in southwestern Africa
Get PDFThis visual essay draws on a 2017 journey from the South African Cape to the Khan valley of Namibia, tracing toxic (deter)mining legacies of roots and routes of mineral extraction. Copper, ilmenite, diamond, zinc and uranium exploitations encounter indigenous presence and resistance as colonial and corporate mineral ‘rushes’ intersect with local realities and cultural landscapes. Environmental mitigation efforts and ‘offsetting’ schemes also leave toxic heritage in their wake as they greenwash profit-driven extractive agendas. Images from sites visited evoke the materialities and atmospheres of these localities, and connections between them
Editorial - Postdigital-biodigital: an emerging configuration
No full textThis dialogue (trilogue) is an attempt to critically discuss the technoscientific convergence that is taking place with biodigital technologies in the postdigital condition. In this discussion, Sarah Hayes, Petar Jandrić and Michael A. Peters examine the nature of the convergences, their applications for bioeconomic sustainability and associated ecopedagogies. The dialogue paper raises issues of definition and places the technological convergence (‘nano-bio-info-cogno’) – of new systems biology and digital technologies at the nano level – in an evolutionary context to speculate, on the basis of the latest research, future possibilities. The paper also reviews these developments within familiar landscapes of posthumanism and postmodernism, raises the question of political bioeconomy and the role of postdigital education within it
A realist analysis of civilized tourism in China: a cultural structural perspective
Get PDFIn the discourse of value-laden tourism research, knowledge about the mechanisms that manifest civilized tourism is limited. This paper uses empirical research as a basis from which to explore the generative powers of civilized tourism at the structural level of society. It identifies the structural properties of civilized tourism and five situational logics. Civilized tourism is related to civility, China’s Dream, and social etiquette. These other ideas provide a condition for civilized tourism to exist. All the situational logics function to co-determine the nature of civilized tourism in the cultural system. Based on the findings, it concludes that the call for civilized tourism in China provides a condition for the formation of ethicality in tourism, which is not reducible to tourism stakeholders. The formation of ethicality is conditioned by the product of past socio-cultural interactions whilst engineered by the protective and corrective situational logics of the idealizations taking place in the present time