Critical literacy finds a "Place": Writing and social action in a low-income Australian grade 2/3 classroom

In a study of socioeconomically disadvantaged children's acquisition of school literacies, a university research team investigated how a group of teachers negotiated critical literacies and explored notions of social power with elementary children in a suburban school located in an area of high poverty. Here we focus on a grade 2/3 classroom where the teacher and children became involved in a local urban renewal project and on how in the process the children wrote about place and power. Using the students' concerns about their neighborhood, the teacher engaged her class in a critical literacy project that not only involved a complex set of literate practices but also taught the children about power and the possibilities for local civic action. In particular, we discuss examples of children's drawing and writing about their neighborhoods and their lives. We explore how children's writing and drawing might be key elements in developing "critical literacies" in elementary school settings. We consider how such classroom writing can be a mediator of emotions, intellectual and academic learning, social practice, and political activism.

Teachers' and education students' perceptions of and reactions to children with and without the diagnostic label 'ADHD'

Thirty-four elementary school teachers and 32 education students from Canada rated their reactions towards vignettes describing children who met attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptom criteria that included or did not include the label “ADHD.” “ADHD”-labeled vignettes elicited greater perceptions of the child's impairment as well as more negative emotions and less confidence in the participants, although it also increased participants' willingness to implement treatment interventions. Ratings were similar to vignettes of boys versus girls; however, important differences in ratings between teachers and education students emerged and are discussed. Finally, we investigated the degree to which teachers' professional backgrounds influenced bias based on the label “ADHD.” Training specific to ADHD consistently predicted label bias, whereas teachers' experience working with children with ADHD did not.

Drama and languages education : authentic assessment through process drama

In this chapter I explore the ways process drama can enrich and enliven the assessment regime of a middle school beginner language program. The chapter draws on five months’ language teaching which I did to collect data during my doctoral research. I taught a secondary co-educational class of 12-13 year olds (first year secondary school) for their German lessons while the teacher who had invited me in observed the lessons. Throughout the project there was an emphasis on student participation through questionnaire, discussion and interview...

'Pretend I was Mummy': Children's Production of Authority and Subordinance in Their Pretend Play Interaction During Disputes

Purpose – This chapter examines an episode of pretend play amongst a group of young girls in an elementary school in Australia, highlighting how they interact within the membership categorization device ‘family’ to manage their social and power relationships. Approach – Using conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis, an episode of video-recorded interaction that occurs amongst a group of four young girls is analyzed. Findings – As disputes arise amongst the girls, the mother category is produced as authoritative through authoritative actions by the girl in the category of mother, and displays of subordination on the part of the other children, in the categories of sister, dog and cat. Value of paper – Examining play as a social practice provides insight into the social worlds of children. The analysis shows how the children draw upon and co-construct family-style relationships in a pretend play context, in ways that enable them to build and organize peer interaction. Authority is highlighted as a joint accomplishment that is part of the social and moral order continuously being negotiated by the children. The authority of the mother category is produced and oriented to as a means of managing the disputes within the pretend frame of play.

Editors' introduction : literacy, learning & culture

We come together as editors to prepare an introduction to this international volume at a time of economic turbulence, new uncertainties about the future, and a growing demand on the part of most governments for further alignment of education with the economy. Literacy, in particular, is in the vanguard, for literacy only too frequently is positioned as a proxy for education. What are the purposes of literacy teaching and how is it to be achieved? What counts as literacy in ‘new times,’ in ‘participatory culture’ where people ‘believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another’ (Abrams and Merchant, Chapter 23)? How can everyone be included as critical citizens of the world in whatever definition of literacy we endorse? What fresh perspectives, new ways of thinking, and good ideas for the understanding of literacy are out there? What are the possibilities for the future? An exploration of these kinds of questions and their answers, however tentative, provides us, we believe, with our best defense against the uncertainties of our age. In some respects this is our overall purpose in the volume, to explore our understanding and future possibilities by bringing together critical reviews of the major theories, methods, and pedagogical advances that have taken place in the past 20 years in the field of literacy research at the primary/elementary school level. Each chapter in the volume is newly written for the Handbook while overall the book is intended to be a distillation of key thinking and theory which offers new directions for research in literacy. It aims to revisit current interpretations, make novel connections, frame new possibilities, and encourage researchers to pursue innovative and compelling lines of inquiry...

Calibration of the biotrainer pro activity monitor in children

The unique physical and movement characteristics of children necessitate the development of accelerometer equations and cut points that are population specific. The purpose of this study is to develop an ecologically valid cut point for the Biotrainer Pro monitor that reflects a threshold for moderate-intensity physical activity in elementary school children. A sample of 30 children (ages 8-12) wore a Biotrainer monitor while completing a series of 7 movement tasks (calibration phase) and while participating in an organized group activity (cross-validation phase). Videotapes from each session were processed using a computerized direct-observation technique to provide a criterion measure of physical activity. Analyses involved the use of mixed-model regression and receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves. The results indicated that a cut point of 4 counts/min provides the optimal balance between the related needs for sensitivity (accurately detecting activity) and specificity (limiting misclassification of activity as inactivity). Results with the cross-validation data demonstrated that this value yielded the best overall kappa (.58) and a high classification agreement (84%) for activity determination. The specificity of 93% demonstrates that the proposed cut point can accurately detect activity; however, the lower sensitivity value of 61% suggests that some minutes of activity might be incorrectly classified as inactivity. The cut point of 4 counts/min provides an ecologically valid cut point to capture physical activity in children using the Biotrainer Pro activity monitor.

Community interventions to promote proper nutrition and physical activity among youth

In recent years a compelling body of knowledge has been accumulated to support the belief that physical activity and dietary behaviors carry important health consequences for young people. It has long been known that adequate nutrition and physical activity are essential for normal growth and development [1]. Recently, however, clear evidence has emerged that diet and physical activity during childhood and adolescence also affect an array of physiological factors associated with risk for developing chronic diseases; these factors include body composition (e.g., adiposity), blood lipid concentrations, blood pressure, and bone mineral density It also appears that physical activity and dietary behaviors and the physiological outcomes associated with them often track from childhood and adolescence into adulthood. Thus, risky health behaviors adopted early in life may negatively influence health in adulthood by having both a short-term effect on physiological risk factors and a long-term impact on health behavior.

Critical literacy finds a 'place': Writing and social action in a low-income Australian grad 2/3 classroom

In a study of socioeconomically disadvantaged children's acquisition of school literacies, a university research team investigated how a group of teachers negotiated critical literacies and explored notions of social power with elementary children in a suburban school located in an area of high poverty. Here we focus on a grade 2/3 classroom where the teacher and children became involved in a local urban renewal project and on how in the process the children wrote about place and power. Using the students' concerns about their neighborhood, the teacher engaged her class in a critical literacy project that not only involved a complex set of literate practices but also taught the children about power and the possibilities for local civic action. In particular, we discuss examples of children's drawing and writing about their neighborhoods and their lives. We explore how children's writing and drawing might be key elements in developing "critical literacies" in elementary school settings. We consider how such classroom writing can be a mediator of emotions, intellectual and academic learning, social practice, and political activism.

Shared book reading by parents with young children: Evidence-based practice

There is considerable recognition that shared book reading helps develop young children's early reading and literacy skills. Home is an important context in which children first start to develop their early literacy skills. This paper reviews Australian and international literature of shared book-reading intervention pertaining to the effects of two different strategies (dialogic reading and print referencing) on young children's early literacy skills. Further, a brief summary of findings of a recent Australian study are presented that showed some significant effects of shared reading on children's early literacy skills. This research used a pragmatic RCT (randomised controlled trial) to investigate a combination of these two forms of shared book-reading home intervention with parents and their children enrolled in the Prep year of school in Queensland. The paper concludes with a discussion of the significance of the findings and implications for parents and teachers to use an evidence-based approach to help children develop early literacy skills.

Early mathematical learning: Number processing skills and executive function at 5 and 8 years of age

This research investigated differences and associations in performance in number processing and executive function for children attending primary school in a large Australian metropolitan city. In a cross-sectional study, performance of 25 children in the first full-time year of school, (Prep; mean age = 5.5 years) and 21 children in Year 3 (mean age = 8.5 years) completed three number processing tasks and three executive function tasks. Year 3 children consistently outperformed the Prep year children on measures of accuracy and reaction time, on the tasks of number comparison, calculation, shifting, and inhibition but not on number line estimation. The components of executive function (shifting, inhibition, and working memory) showed different patterns of correlation to performance on number processing tasks across the early years of school. Findings could be used to enhance teachers’ understanding about the role of the cognitive processes employed by children in numeracy learning, and so inform teachers’ classroom practices.

Universal Access-NY User’s Guide

What is Universal Access-NY? Universal Access-NY is a complete online planning toolkit, www.UniversalAccessNY.org, where a One-Stop Delivery System can assess its practices, and develop work plans to improve physical and programmatic accessibility for all One-Stop customers. This web site and manual was developed by Cornell University’s Employment and Disability Institute, through the support and guidance of the New York State Department of Labor, with funding from two U.S. Department of Labor Work Incentive Grants (WIG 1 and 2). This web site was designed for use in a collaborative manner, bringing together One-Stop personnel, agency partners, business leaders and customers with disabilities. Universal Access-NY supports continuous improvement, with features that encourage multiple uses and incremental systems change.

What does the review of the Australian Curriculum mean for History in the Primary Years?

The recent introduction of the Australian Curriculum: History as a timetabled school subject has enhanced the teaching of history in the primary years. Previously, history was integrated with geography, economics and civics and citizenship; however, in the new curriculum students are introduced to history from their first year at school. The review addresses significant concerns about the scope and content in history in an over-crowded primary curriculum (Donnelly & Wiltshire, 2014; APPA, 2014). However, the history curriculum provides a rare opportunity to explore distinctive content and develop agency by investigating personal, local, national and international contexts. This paper examines the recommendations of the review and the implications for history in the primary years.

Kasvilajien tunnistaminen, oppiminen ja opettaminen yleissivistävän koulutuksen näkökulmasta

The purpose of the research was to determine how well Finnish pupils and students of different ages recognize plant species, which variables explain recognition of plant species, what plants and nature mean to the subjects and how plant species identification should be taught in general education in Finland. The subjects were pupils from: every class level of the primary schools (grades 1 6); lower- secondary school (grades 7 9); high school (grades I II); university departments of teacher education and classroom teachers and teachers from university involved with environmental teaching and also experts from education and botany. A total of 883 people took part in the research. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used. The quantitative methods were: a) plant species recognition test, where 70 plant species photos were shown to subjects and b) an experiment in which three experimental groups had a plant recognition test on the nature trail and the three comparison groups were tested on recognition of the same species in classroom. The testing materials consisted of 31 real plants outdoors and 31 photos taken of these real plant species that were shown to pupils from fourth, fifth and sixth classes (grade levels) from primary school. The qualitative methods were a questionnaire administered to pupils from elementary school and high school and students from the department of teacher education, to teachers from university and interviews, where 3 5 pupils and students who recognized the plant species best or worst in the recognition test were selected to be interviewed. Furthermore, classroom teachers from primary school and experts were interviewed. The research results showed that on average plant species were recognized insufficiently on every level of education. There was also variation between answers from primary school to university teachers. However, species recognition skills improved from primary school to university teachers. Among other things, sex and place of residence explained species recognition skills, because girls and pupils from rural areas knew plant species statistically significantly better than boys or pupil from cities. Almost every pupil, student and all classroom teachers wanted to recognize plant species better. Many pupils mentioned that a motivating teaching method would be to go outdoors and investigate the plant species themselves. University teachers and experts also mentioned that the best and most efficient learning and teaching method for species recognition skills, is to practice in nature. We should teach plant species in nature, using many senses and teaching methods. Also new technology could be used in teaching species recognition skills. Keywords: plant species recognition, plant species education, general education

Levottomat Tuhkimot : Etnografinen tutkimus nuorten tyttöjen suhtautumisesta väkivaltaan Levottomat Tuhkimot -tyttöväkivaltaprojektin keskusteluryhmässä

In recent years girls’ increased violence has been a topical issue. Including the voices of the girls’ themselves engaged to violent offending is therefore essential. The goal for this research was to make sense of girls’ stance toward violence in the project Restless Cinderellas’ discussion group for violent girls. The methodological approach was ethnographic and the data was collected by using the method of participant observation. Girls’ stance toward violence was explored by asking the data following questions: 1. What is the purpose of violent behaviour? 2. Which issues motivate for violence? 3. What alternatives exist for violent behaviour? In a thick description of research material this study also aimed to chart if there was any change in girls’ attitudes due to participation on violence preventative discussion group. The ethnographic data was extensive and consisted of observations, start, - middle, - and end point group discussion records, fieldnotes, self report-questionnaires and feedback documentary. The four girls that participated on this study were 14 -15- years old by the time of research. They came from one elementary school in the capital region. They were chosen to the group based on NFG’s youth workers interview. The girls were allocated to the group by the school’s student welfare group because of their violent behaviour on school time. The analysis was qualitative and the concepts were created through theory triangulation. These concepts were exploited to exam girls’ violent attitudes. The study shows that violence was used to pitch for justice, lesson and respect. The factors that motivated on using violence were experienced insult, betrayal and concatenation of violence. Alternatives for violence were the circle of success and value consciousness. In the dialectics between the research documentaries some changes in girls’ attitudes heaved into sight. However, the study could not show reliable connection between the changes and participation on discussion group.

Uskonnonopetuksen tunnustuksellisuus koulun kiistakysymyksenä : Evankelinen herätysliike oppivelvollisuuskoulun kristillisyyden asialla 1912-1926

In the early years of independence the Finnish school system went through a major change. Both the Compulsory school attendance act (1921) and the Religious freedom act (1923) were legislated almost simultaneously. Although the legislators were deciding on the whole content of the citizenship education given in the compulsory school, their attention was mainly concentrated on the issue of the religious education. The former study concerning the subject shows that this issue was strongly influenced by the political power struggle between the conservative and the socialist parties. One of the underlying factors was also the Church s decreased authority concerning the elementary school. The aim of this research was to study the Finnish evangelical movement s attitude and opinions on the issue of religious education and on its status and nature. Their opinions on the issue were especially investigated from the point of view of their own evangelical lower elementary school teachers seminar, which was deeply connected with the matter of confessionalism. The source material of this research of educational history consist of documents of the school administration and the Lutheran Evangelical Association as well as of vast collection of educational, Church s and evangelical movement s journals. According to the results of this study, the evangelical movement plead very strongly for denominational religious education. However, the confessionalism they were pursuing differed from the common understanding of the concept at that time. This became evident both because of their demands for increased education on the Christian doctrine and because of their sharp criticism against loosely confessional, generally Christian religious education. The evangelical movement s strict opinion was combined with their effort to emphasize the Lutherian doctrine in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Finland. The founding of the Evangelical seminar for lower elementary school teachers in Karkku was a significant indication of the evangelical movement s dedication to strive towards school s Christianity. The objective of the evangelical seminar was to change the school by means of training evangelical minded teachers. The seminar was only a part of much larger plans of evangelical education and home missionary work. However, maintaining the seminar proved to be impossible, especially as the National Board of Education was absolutely against it, claiming that it would endanger the unity of the compulsory school. The National Board of Education indicated that the objectivity of citizenship education would be forfeit, if every marginal ideological movement could educate their own teachers.