Using mixed-methods to examine teachers’ attitudes to educational change:The case of the Skills for Life strategy for improving adult literacy and numeracy skills in England.

This paper reports on a longitudinal study that examines how a national reform introduced in England in the field of adult literacy, language, and numeracy is affecting teachers. The paper focuses on the use of a mixed methodology to explore teachers' attitudes to the reform and how these change over time. The quantitative strand includes the construction and use of a Likert-type instrument for measuring the attitudes of a panel of 1,500 teachers. The qualitative strand builds on the quantitative results and includes focus groups and in-depth interviews with a subsample of teachers in the panel. As the study is still in its initial phase, the purpose is not to present findings, but to discuss how quantitative and qualitative evidence can be combined in evaluation research.

The Critical Reading of the Images Associated with Science-Related News Reports: Establishing a knowledge, skills, and attitudes framework

For the majority of adults, the media constitute their main source of information about science and science-related matters impacting on society. To help prepare young people to engage with science in the media, teachers are being exhorted to equip their students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to respond critically to science-related news reports. Typically, such reports comprise not only text, but also visual elements. These images are not simply adjuncts to the written word; they are integral to meaning-making. Though science teachers make considerable use of newspaper images, they tend to view these representations unproblematically, underestimating their potential ambiguity, complexity, and role in framing media messages. They rarely aim to develop students’ ability to ‘read’, critically, such graphics. Moreover, research into how this might be achieved is limited and, consequently, research-informed guidance which could support this instruction is lacking. This paper describes a study designed to formulate a framework for such teaching. Science communication scholars, science journalists and media educators with acknowledged relevant expertise were surveyed to ascertain what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they deemed useful to engagement with science related news images. Their proposals were recast as learning intentions (instructional objectives), and science and English teachers collaborated to suggest which could be addressed with secondary school students and the age group best suited to their introduction. The outcome is an inventory of learning intentions on which teachers could draw to support their planning of instructional sequences aimed at developing students’ criticality in respect of the totality of science news reports.

Boys Reading Boys’ Writing

In this study stories written by boys were commented on and assessed by other boys and also by both male and female teachers. The results reveal boys’ attitudes and preferences with regard to writing and also indicate some differences in the responses of male and female teachers. For boys, the performative aspect of narrative writing is important. While English teachers, who are predominantly female, can identify the weaknesses in boys’ writing, they less often note what boys attempt and may do well, for example, ambitious plots, and lack ways to acknowledge and reward such efforts. A number of recommendations are made on ways in which teachers can assist boys both to enjoy their writing but also to improve at it.

Evidence from a Baseline Study of Teachers and Young People in Northern Ireland: Implications for Peace Education.

Peace education initiatives in schools are often based on social psychological theories assuming that social identity affects ingroup and outgroup attitudes and, in turn, behaviors relating to relevant outgroups. However, research evidence on the role of young people’s social identity has often failed to take account of different social identity dimensions or to conceptualise outgroup behavior in the context of young people’s understandings of the social world. While recent research relating to bullying and bystander behavior amongst young people has addressed the latter point, this has rarely been considered in conjunction with a differentiated view of social identity. This paper is therefore distinctive as it will address the role of social identity dimensions with regards to behavior as captured in bystander scenarios relating to intergroup discrimination. This is particularly important in the context of divided societies, where peace education initiatives are crucial in promoting positive community relations for the future and where such initiative may be hampered by communities’ concerns about loss of identity and hardened intergroup attitudes. Furthermore, previous research frequently highlighted teachers’ fears to tackle outgroup attitudes in the classroom, especially in contexts where pupils and the wider school community are seen as entrenched in community divisions (Hughes, Donnelly, Hewstone, Gallagher & Carlisle, 2010). However, there is no research investigating the relationship between pupils’ attitudes and teacher confidence to talk about such issues in the classroom, which is explored in this paper.

In the context of Northern Ireland, a divided society emerging from sectarian conflict, social identity, outgroup attitudes and outgroup behaviours have been key concepts addressed by peace educators for many years. Building on this work, this paper provides a detailed picture of young people’s strength of group identification and their willingness to explore ingroup perspectives, sectarian attitudes and their reported willingness to challenge sectarian bullying. Using data from a baseline survey, which forms part of a randomized control trial investigating the effect of an educational intervention aimed to promote reconciliation, the sample involved young people of different denominational backgrounds, attending separate school sectors. The baseline data will be used to compare with post intervention data. Therefore, the data and its findings would be of particular interest to educators and policy makers in other European countries who are working to develop peace education interventions in societies emerging from conflict. Additionally, this paper considers the results from a baseline teacher survey, collected before training and teaching of the intervention began. The teacher survey focused on confidence in tackling sectarian issues in the classroom, previous experience of teaching such issues and their hopes and concerns for the reconciliation intervention.

This paper therefore set out to investigate the relationship between dimensional concept of social identity, sectarian attitudes and pupils’ reported willingness to challenge sectarian bullying and to compare this with their teachers’ attitudes to teaching about sectarian issues in the classroom.



Method

The pupil sample included 35 primary and post-primary schools and about 800 pupils from 8-11 years old who completed an online questionnaire in December 2011 and January 2012. Main instruments for young people’s survey included an adapted version of the Multi-ethnic identity measure (Phinney, 1992) incorporating the dimensions identity affirmation and exploration, outgroup attitude scales, including an adaptation of the social distance measure (Bogardus, 1947), as well as a measure adapted from Palmer and Cameron (2011) involving scenarios to capture pupils’ intentions in bystander situations relating to intergroup discrimination. Results are analysed using regression analysis and take account of potential gender and religious differences. The teacher questionnaire was completed by the 35 primary and post-primary teachers who will deliver the intervention. Results are analysed in terms of how teachers’ responses compare with their pupil attitudes by considering their confidence in tackling sectarian issues in the classroom and how their previous experience and training relate to their hopes and concerns for the intervention.


Expected Outcomes

Results from the young people’s survey are discussed in the light of the role of social identity dimensions and their relationship to sectarian attitudes and reported bystander behaviour in sectarian school incidents. Furthermore, results related to pupils’ sectarian attitudes will be compared with teachers’ reported confidence in tackling sectarianism in the classroom. The teacher questionnaire also presents interesting findings in relation to teachers’ previous training and experience and how this may influence different perspectives on peace and reconciliation interventions and their expectations of what these could achieve. The paper concludes with potential implications for peace education initiatives and related teacher training in Northern Ireland and beyond. The implications will be of particular interest to policy makers, educators and those working in the area of peace education to design and implement interventions.


References

Bogardus, E. S. (1947) Measurement of Personal-Group Relations. Sociometry, 10: 4: 306–311. Hughes, J., Donnelly, C., Hewstone, M., Gallagher, T. & Carlisle, K. (2010) School partnerships and reconciliation: An evaluation of school collaboration in Northern Ireland. Belfast: Queen’s University Belfast. Available online: http://www.schoolsworkingtogether.com/documents/School%20collaboration%20in%20NI%202010.pdf. (accessed 27th Jan 2010) Palmer, S. & Cameron, L. (2011, May). What are the moderators and mediators of children’s bystander behaviour in the context of intergroup discrimination? Paper session presented at the UNA Global Biennial Conference 2011: Building Peaceable Communities: The Power of Early Childhood, Amsterdam, Holland. Phinney, J. S. (1992). The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure: A new scale for use with diverse groups. Journal of Adolescent Research, 7, 156–176.

Science Literacy and media Literacy: a missing link?

The study of science in the media is increasingly highlighted within science programmes and represents an authentic context for interdisciplinary collaboration. Yet the literature on ‘media across the curriculum’ makes surprisingly little mention of links to science and cross-curricular approaches to teaching about and with science-based media resources is an area that is under-explored. This research study focuses on science in the news. The project involved 28 teachers from seven schools and brought together science and English teachers to explore collaborative working with the aim of promoting critical engagement with media reports with a science component. Teachers planned, developed and implemented a school-based activity with an emphasis on ‘connected learning’ rather than the compartmentalised learning that tends to accompany the discrete treatment of science matters in science class and media matters in English class. Not only did the project raise teachers’ awareness of science in the media as a potential, purposeful and profitable area for collaborative working, but it demonstrated how the synergy of the different experiences and expertise of science and English teachers produced very varied approaches to a programme of activities with an enhanced capacity to promote criticality in relation to science literacy and media literacy.

The Brut Tradition

This article tracks the development of the Brut tradition, from its inception in the ninth century text the Historia Brittonum, via Geoffrey of Monmouth’s twelfth century Historia Regum Britannaie, Wace’s Roman de Brut and Layamon’s Brut (both twelfth century), to the myriad Prose Bruts, in Anglo-Norman, Latin and Middle English, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. It argues that the Brut is best understood both as a distinctive literary tradition and as a well-spring of mythography from which a range of late medieval, and post-medieval, writers drew. The article indicates the utility of the Brut tradition to emergent notions of English identity and the role the narratives recorded by the Brut tradition played in orchestrating English colonial attitudes to its insular and continental neighbours. The article concludes by assessing the importance of the Brut tradition for book culture and emergent models of literary taste in the later Middle Ages

Learning to read with a critical eye: cultivating discerning readers of media reports with a science component.

It is important for young people to be able to read science-related media reports with discernment. ‘Getting Newswise’ was a research project designed to enable science and English teachers, working collaboratively, to equip pupils through the curriculum with critical reading skills appropriate for science news. Phase one of the study found that science and English teachers respond differently to science news articles and eight categories of critical response were identified. These findings informed phase two, in which classroom activities were devised whereby pupils examined, evaluated and responded to science-related news reports. Science-English collaboration had positive outcomes for pupil understanding

Improving Science literacy through interdisciplinary collaboration using media reported science.

The capability to respond critically to science in the news is recognised as one aspect of science literacy. Consequently, science-related news reports are an essential resource for science teachers wishing to promote critical reading as the foundation of a critical response to media reported science. Consequently Science education in schools should prepare students to engage with informal sources of science, including news media, in the world beyond formal science education. An interest in science news media is not limited to the science specialist. Science news provides an authentic context for teachers of science and English to collaborate in promoting interdisciplinary learning. The challenges of using science related news, as a context for cross-curricular collaboration, highlight the professional development needs of both science and English teachers working in this context. This qualitative study with over 150 pupils involved secondary school science and English teachers working collaboratively using media reported science resources and collated data from interviews, pre and post intervention tasks, pupils’ classwork and teacher notes. The outcomes of the project showed pupil engagement and greater capacity to carry knowledge and skills across traditional subject boundaries. Teachers reported increased understanding of the pedagogy of the alternative subject specialist and increased confidence to move outside their subject in order to facilitate pupil learning. This study would suggest that adopting an interdisciplinary approach could enhance learning for pupils and increase the confidence and capability of teachers. Additionally teachers’ engagement in professional conversations focusing on pupil progress was noteworthy.