Educational attainment in poor comprehenders

To date, only one study has investigated educational attainment in poor (reading) comprehenders, providing evidence of poor performance on national UK school tests at age 11 years relative to peers (Cain & Oakhill, 2006). In the present study, we adopted a longitudinal approach, tracking attainment on such tests from 11 years to the end of compulsory schooling in the UK (age 16 years). We aimed to investigate the proposal that educational weaknesses (defined as poor performance on national assessments) might become more pronounced over time, as the curriculum places increasing demands on reading comprehension. Participants comprised 15 poor comprehenders and 15 controls; groups were matched for chronological age, nonverbal reasoning ability and decoding skill. Children were identified at age 9 years using standardised measures of nonverbal reasoning, decoding and reading comprehension. These measures, along with a measure of oral vocabulary knowledge, were repeated at age 11 years. Data on educational attainment were collected from all participants (N = 30) at age 11 and from a subgroup (n = 21) at 16 years. Compared to controls, educational attainment in poor comprehenders was lower at ages 11 and 16 years, an effect that was significant at 11 years. When poor comprehenders were compared to national performance levels, they showed significantly lower performance at both time points. Low educational attainment was not evident for all poor comprehenders. Nonetheless, our findings point to a link between reading comprehension difficulties in mid to late childhood and poor educational outcomes at ages 11 and 16 years. At these ages, pupils in the UK are making key transitions: they move from primary to secondary schools at 11, and out of compulsory schooling at 16.

Educational inclusiveness through Ludic engagement and digital creativity

This paper describes an approach to teaching and learning that combines elements of ludic engagement, gamification and digital creativity in order to make the learning of a serious subject a fun, interactive and inclusive experience for students regardless of their gender, age, culture, experience or any disabilities that they may have. This approach has been successfully used to teach software engineering to first year students but could in principle be transferred to any subject or discipline.

State of the art of learning styles-based adaptive educational hypermedia systems (Ls-Baehss)

The notion that learning can be enhanced when a teaching approach matches a learner’s learning style has been widely accepted in classroom settings since the latter represents a predictor of student’s attitude and preferences. As such, the traditional approach of ‘one-size-fits-all’ as may be applied to teaching delivery in Educational Hypermedia Systems (EHSs) has to be changed with an approach that responds to users’ needs by exploiting their individual differences. However, establishing and implementing reliable approaches for matching the teaching delivery and modalities to learning styles still represents an innovation challenge which has to be tackled. In this paper, seventy six studies are objectively analysed for several goals. In order to reveal the value of integrating learning styles in EHSs, different perspectives in this context are discussed. Identifying the most effective learning style models as incorporated within AEHSs. Investigating the effectiveness of different approaches for modelling students’ individual learning traits is another goal of this study. Thus, the paper highlights a number of theoretical and technical issues of LS-BAEHSs to serve as a comprehensive guidance for researchers who interest in this area.

Circles of support and accountability: criminal justice volunteers as the 'Deliberative public'

This paper provides a review of the role played by volunteers within one particular offender management and reintegration scheme in the United Kingdom. Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA) draw on the expertise of volunteer members of the public to create supportive monitoring frameworks around sex offenders following their release from prison. The paper presents evidence as to the motivations of these volunteers, and argues that they play a crucial role in the success of the scheme, as they provide an instrumentally-useful form of reintegrative social contact to a socially-excluded offender population, and perform a symbolically important role as representatives of the wider community in taking ownership of offender management practices on behalf of the wider society. This is particularly significant in grounding those processes in the communicative practices of the social sphere, providing powerful reasons for intervention that reinforce the work that COSA do.

Introducing children with special educational needs to theatre through ‘Relaxed Performances’

This short chapter explains how a growing number of theatres are beginning to offer families living with autism and other disabilities opportunities to attend without fear of alienation or rejection by other audience members. Using one small theatre as a case study, the chapter illustrates the sort of adaptations that are made to the performance and front of house arrangements.

When bookkeepers become beekeepers: why bee accountability

Accounting for biodiversity has received increasing attention from the academic accounting community in recent years. Despite a stream of research investigating the quality and quantity of biodiversity reporting in general, no academic research has focused on reporting related to one specific species. This paper explores the quality and quantity of corporate disclosures relating to bees. Society is becoming increasingly concerned about the accelerating fall in bee populations around the world. Colony Collapse Disorder has been spreading through global bee populations since 2006, decimating commercial hives. Concerns are fuelled by fears that pollinators may become extinct which would have dire consequences for the majority of world food production, leaving human pollination, at immense cost, the only alternative. On the basis of these fears, companies as well as other organisations, have started to establish programmes aimed at rejuvenating global bee populations. In this paper we explore the bee-related disclosures provided by a large selection of UK listed companies. We assess the extent to which companies believe they have a role to play in enhancing and protecting bee populations. Further we consider whether corporate accountability in this area derives solely from a business case or whether there is a deeper societal connection with bees as a species which is encouraging companies to protect their survival. The paper investigates the historical and philosophical connection between bees and human beings, for example the ways industrial production has been likened to honey production. We draw parallels between bees and human industrial organisation as well as between the role and responsibilities of the bookkeeper and the beekeeper.

Strengthening citizen agency and accountability through ICT

We investigated the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT, namely mobile phones) in support of citizen agency and its potential in calling authorities to account. We focused on Eastern Africa and we used a mixed methodology, which allowed us to explore the current uses of ICT to strengthen accountability and to forecast the growth of mobile phones' adaption in that region. Evidence from both analyses suggests that there are two main areas where citizen agency and ICT can reinforce each other in bottom–up and horizontal processes: participation and engagement of citizens, and the diffusion of information.

Young Children's Ability to Engage in Cognitive Therapy Tasks: Associations With Age and Educational Experience

Abstract. In two linked studies we examined children’s performance on tasks required for participation in cognitive therapy. In Study 1 we piloted some new tasks with children aged 5 to 11 years. In study 2 the effects of IQ, age and educational experience were examined in children aged 5 to 7 years. In study 1, 14 children aged 5 to 11 completed three tasks related to cognitive therapy; generating post-event attributions, naming emotions, and linking thoughts and feelings. Study 2 used a between-subjects design in which 72 children aged 5, 6, or 7 years from two primary schools completed the three tasks and the Block Design and Vocabulary sub-tests from the WISC III or WPPSI-R. Children were tested individually during the school day. All measures were administered on the same occasion. In study 2 administration order of the cognitive therapy task and the WISC III/WPPSI-R were randomized. The majority of children demonstrated some ability on each of the three tasks. In study 2, performance was associated with school and with IQ but not with age. There were no gender differences. Children attending a school with an integrated thinking skills programme and those with a higher 1Q were more successful on the cognitive therapy tasks. These results suggest that many young children could engage in cognitive therapy given age-appropriate materials. The effects of training in relevant meta-cognitive skills on children’s ability to use concepts in CBT may warrant further research. Keywords: Cognitive behaviour therapy, young children, cognitive development

Mapping Educational Specialist knowHow (MESH): the building of a knowledge management system for research informed practice

In this invited article the authors present an evaluative report on the development of the MESHGuides project (http://www.meshguides.org/). MESHGuides’ objective is to provide education with an international knowledge management system. MESHGuides were conceived as research summaries for supporting teachers’ in developing evidence-based practice. Their aim is to enhance teachers’ capacity to engage actively with research in their own classrooms. The original thinking for MESH arose from the work of UK-based academics Professor Marilyn Leask and Dr Sarah Younie in response to a desire, which has recently gathered momentum in the UK, for the development of a more research-informed teaching profession and for the establishment of an on-line platform to support evidence-based practice (DfE, 2015; Leask and Younie 2001; OECD 2009). The focus of this article is on how the MESHGuides project was conceived and structured, the technical systems supporting it and the practical reality for academics and teachers of composing and using MESHGuides. The project and the guides are in the early stages of development, and discussion indicates future possibilities for more global engagement with this knowledge management system.

Risk-taking for others under accountability

We let subjects take risky decisions that affect themselves and a passive recipient. Adding a requirement to justify their choices significantly reduces loss aversion. This indicates that such an accountability mechanism may be effective at debiasing loss aversion in agency relations.

Separating real incentives and accountability

In experimental investigations of the effect of real incentives, accountability—the implicit or explicit expectation of a decision maker that she may have to justify her decisions in front of somebody else—is often confounded with the incentives themselves. This confounding of accountability with incentives makes causal attributions of any effects found problematic. We separate accountability and incentives, and find different effects. Accountability is found to reduce preference reversals between frames, for which incentives have no effect. Incentives on the other hand are found to reduce risk seeking for losses, where accountability has no effect. In a choice task between simple and compound events, accountability increases the preference for the simple event, while incentives have a weaker effect going in the opposite direction. It is thus shown that the confounding of accountability and incentives is relevant for studies on the effect of the latter, and that existing conclusions on the effect of incentives need to be reconsidered in light of this issue.

The effect of accountability on loss aversion.

This paper investigates the effect of accountability-the expectation on the side of the decision maker of having to justify his/her decisions to somebody else-on loss aversion. Loss aversion is commonly thought to be the strongest component of risk aversion. Accountability is found to reduce the bias of loss aversion. This effect is explained by the higher cognitive effort induced by accountability, which triggers a rational check on emotional reactions at the base of loss aversion, leading to a reduction of the latter. Connections to dual-processing models are discussed.

Departmental differences in attitudes to special educational needs in the secondary school

As trends in favour of inclusion continue, questions arise concerning the extent to which teachers in mainstream schools feel prepared for the task of meeting pupils' special educational needs. Little previous research has considered how the subject taught impacts upon the attitudes of mainstream teachers towards pupils with special educational needs. In this article, Jean Ellins, research fellow at the University of Birmingham, and Jill Porter, senior lecturer at the University of Bath, report on their research into the attitudes of teachers in one mainstream secondary school. Building a detailed case study using documents, records of pupil progress, an interview and a questionnaire using a Likert-type attitude scale and open-ended questions, these researchers set out to explore distinctions between the attitudes of teachers working in different departments. Their findings suggest that the teachers of the core subjects, English, mathematics and science, had less positive attitudes than their colleagues. Further, pupils with special educational needs made least progress in science where teacher attitudes were the least positive. Jean Ellins and Jill Porter review the implications of these findings and make recommendations for future practice and further enquiry.