Asperger Syndrome and the English curriculum: addressing the challenges

A major criterion for the diagnosis of Asperger syndrome is an impairment of the imagination. This article focuses on the specific difficulties that students with Asperger syndrome have with the imaginative content of the English curriculum. It examines the problems with reading and writing imaginatively of a group of students with AS in a secondary school mainstream setting. Various strategies and interventions are considered and discussed which could aid their understanding and learning in relation to the imaginative element of the English curriculum. While acknowledging that this is an area of real difficulty for these students, recommendations include: treating students with AS as individuals; using a small group setting; providing support through structured frameworks.

From rhetoric to reality: advancing literacy by cross-curricular means

Cross-curricularity, literacy and critical literacy are currently promoted as components of a curriculum appropriate for the 21st century. The first two in particular are prescribed elements of classroom experience in Northern Ireland, which is the immediate context of this article, but also more widely in the UK. Teachers are implementing cross-curricular and inter-disciplinary initiatives, but rhetorical imperatives can translate into superficial realities. The reasons for this are explored, as are the reasons why inter-disciplinary studies, literacy across the curriculum and critical literacy are deemed to be of significance for education at the present time. The ‘Making Science: Making News’ project is described, in which Key Stage 3 Science and English classes worked together, with input from a research scientist and a journalist, to produce articles on space science which were published in local newspapers. The outcomes of the project are discussed from the perspectives of both teachers and learners. It is argued that this project is an example of genuine inter-disciplinary activity; that it went beyond literacy skills to a deeper development of scientific discourse; and that, through its media connection, there was potential for building an ongoing awareness in pupils of critical literacy and scientific literacy.

Group Design-Build-Test Projects as the Core of an Integrated Curriculum in Product Design and Development

The School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast introduced a new degree programme in Product Design and Development (PDD) in 2004. As well as setting out to meet all UK-SPEC requirements, the entirely new curriculum was developed in line with the syllabus and standards defined by the CDIO Initiative, an international collaboration of universities aiming to improve the education of engineering students. The CDIO ethos is that students are taught in the context of conceiving, designing, implementing and operating a product or system. Fundamental to this is an integrated curriculum with multiple Design-Build-Test (DBT) experiences at the core. Unlike most traditional engineering courses the PDD degree features group DBT projects in all years of the programme. The projects increase in complexity and challenge in a staged manner, with learning outcomes guided by Bloom’s taxonomy of learning domains. The integrated course structure enables the immediate application of disciplinary knowledge, gained from other modules, as well as development of professional skills and attributes in the context of the DBT activity. This has a positive impact on student engagement and the embedding of these relevant skills, identified from a stakeholder survey, has also been shown to better prepare students for professional practice. This paper will detail the methodology used in the development of the curriculum, refinements that have been made during the first five years of operation and discuss the resource and staffing issues raised in facilitating such a learning environment.