Advanced skills teachers: professional identity and status

The teaching profession continues to struggle with defining itself in relation to other professions. Even though public opinion positions teachers second only to doctors and nurses in terms of their professional status and prestige research in the UK suggests that teachers still believe that they have much lower status than other professions. With teacher job satisfaction considerably lower today than the past and on-going issues with teacher recruitment and retention, new government policies have set out to enhance the status of teachers both within and outside of the profession. The Advanced Skill Teacher (AST) grade was introduced in 1998 as a means to recognise and reward teaching expertise and was framed as a way of also raising the status of the teaching profession. As to what a teaching professional should look like, the AST was in many ways positioned as the embodiment. Using survey data from 849 ASTs and in depth interviews with 31, this paper seeks to explores the ways that the AST designation impacts or not on teachers’ perceptions of their professional identity. In particular, the paper considers whether such awards contribute in positive ways to a teacher’s sense of professional identity and status. The results from the research suggest that teaching grades that recognise and reward teaching excellence do contribute in important ways to a teachers’ professional identity via an increased sense of recognition, reward and job satisfaction. The results from this research also suggest that recognising the skills and expertise of teachers is clearly important in supporting teacher retention. This is because as it allows highly accomplished teachers to remain where they want to be and that is the classroom.

Vocabulary is important for some, but not all reading skills

Although there is evidence for a close link between the development of oral vocabulary and reading comprehension, less clear is whether oral vocabulary skills relate to the development of word-level reading skills. This study investigated vocabulary and literacy in 81 children aged 8 to 10 years. In regression analyses, vocabulary accounted for unique variance in exception word reading and reading comprehension, but not text reading accuracy, decoding, or regular word reading. Consistent with these data, children with poor reading comprehension exhibited oral vocabulary weaknesses and read fewer exception words correctly. These findings demonstrate that oral vocabulary is associated with some, but not all, reading skills. Results are discussed in terms of current models of reading development.

‘Superteachers’, saints and solitaires: an investigation into advanced skills teachers of drama

This paper reports on a survey conducted in 2010 among ASTs who identified themselves as being specialists in, or having responsibility for, the subject of drama. The survey endeavoured to explore the professional backgrounds and experiences of these ASTs and gain insights into what they enjoyed about the role. It was especially concerned to address the following questions: 1. What general skills do ASTs in drama think they need to possess? 2. What subject specific knowledge and skills do they feel are needed to satisfy the demands of their role? In addition, insights were sought into what training and support had been afforded them, how they regarded themselves and were regarded by others in the role.

The use of drama to teach social skills in a special school setting for students with autism.

For children with autism, social challenges may be both part of the disability and a barrier to accessing education. This paper reports on a project which used drama to address such challenges by drawing on the social skills of non-autistic peers in a special school setting. The paper demonstrates how drama’s flexibility may be harnessed in order to help students support each other’s development of creative and communicative skills. Focusing on two children in particular, specific examples are given to illustrate how they participated in group work, made imaginative contributions to verbal and physical representations, and engaged with abstract ideas. The project’s outcomes suggest, given a concrete structure and an invitation to collaborate, drama can be a powerful learning medium for children with ASD. The conclusion reflects on the diverse meaning of inclusive practice which can be achieved within specialist settings.

Lexical access, story re-telling and sequencing skills in adults who clutter and those who do not

Cluttering is a rate-based disorder of fluency, the scope of whose diagnostic criteria currently remains unclear. This paper reports preliminary findings from a larger study which aims to determine whether cluttering can be associated with language disturbances as well as motor and rate based ones. Subtests from the Mt Wilga High Level Language Test (MWHLLT) were used to determine whether people who clutter (PWC) have word finding difficulties, and use significantly more maze behaviours compared to controls, during story re-telling and simple sequencing tasks. Independent t tests showed that PWC were significantly slower than control participants in lexical access and sentence completion tasks, but returned mixed findings when PWCs were required to name items within a semantic category. PWC produced significantly more maze behaviour than controls in a task where participants were required to explain how to undertake commonly performed actions, but no difference in use of maze behaviour was found between the two groups when retelling a story from memory. The implications of these findings are discussed

The contributions of domain-general and numerical factors to third-grade arithmetic skills and mathematical learning disability

Explanations of the marked individual differences in elementary school mathematical achievement and mathematical learning disability (MLD or dyscalculia) have involved domain-general factors (working memory, reasoning, processing speed and oral language) and numerical factors that include single-digit processing efficiency and multi-digit skills such as number system knowledge and estimation. This study of third graders (N = 258) finds both domain-general and numerical factors contribute independently to explaining variation in three significant arithmetic skills: basic calculation fluency, written multi-digit computation, and arithmetic word problems. Estimation accuracy and number system knowledge show the strongest associations with every skill and their contributions are both independent of each other and other factors. Different domain-general factors independently account for variation in each skill. Numeral comparison, a single digit processing skill, uniquely accounts for variation in basic calculation. Subsamples of children with MLD (at or below 10th percentile, n = 29) are compared with low achievement (LA, 11th to 25th percentiles, n = 42) and typical achievement (above 25th percentile, n = 187). Examination of these and subsets with persistent difficulties supports a multiple deficits view of number difficulties: most children with number difficulties exhibit deficits in both domain-general and numerical factors. The only factor deficit common to all persistent MLD children is in multi-digit skills. These findings indicate that many factors matter but multi-digit skills matter most in third grade mathematical achievement.

Delivering high-level food industry skills for future food security through Advanced Training Partnerships

The UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council’s Advanced Training Partnerships initiative represents a significant investment in the provision of high-level skills for the UK food industry sector to address global food security from farm to fork. This paper summarises the background, aims and scope of the Advanced Training Partnerships, their development so far, and offers a view on future directions and evaluation of impact.