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This article documents an extended Mexican family’s social practices surrounding literacy as they engage with bilingual children’s literature in a unique context that draws from both home and school without the pressures of curriculum mandates. The research is situated within the southeastern United States where English-dominant practices permeate the school and community. Sociocultural and third space theories provide a framework for understanding the complexities surrounding language use and literacy development. Findings indicate the new space, Story Nights, provides for the development of connections to Mexican culture and a notion of community-based literacy learning. The author makes recommendations for classroom teachers, teacher education programs, and educational policy to be more inclusive of Latino/Latina English learners.

This year-long qualitative study draws from multimodal theory and New Literacies Studies to document the digital literacy experiences of a diverse group of 2nd-graders using e-readers. Twenty-first century classrooms must expand traditional notions of literacy to prepare students for the ever-changing, media-rich world. Students participated in small-group digital reading workshops, where they read interactive picture books. The data mainly drew from transcripts of student interactions and open-ended interviews and were analyzed through a combination of comparative and discourse analyses. The author argues that multimodal texts offer opportunities for rehearsal of literacy practices, engagement, talk as a choice of reader response, and student agency. Even though personal digital devices offer opportunities for independent reading, young readers still need social interactions around books to co-construct meaning. The study found the students spent additional time reading and successfully mediated ...

To explore the funds of knowledge that six emergent bilingual students build upon as they produce multimodal texts, how the practices surrounding these events are mediated, and the role of student agency within an ethnographic social semiotics framework. Ethnographic methods were used to document this yearlong study that included videotaping small group interactions, writing field notes, conducting interviews, and collecting multimodal work samples. The researcher served as a participant observer in a third-grade classroom where she met with students two days per week to interact with mulitmodal poetry. The findings reveal the media-rich popular culture and home digital practices students bring with them to school and the ways in which these resources were utilized for designing multimodal poetry. Several essential factors are discussed including funds of knowledge, role of play and creativity, nonlinear writing structures, and agentive design decisions. Multimodal text making requires a revamping of classroom literacy instruction that embraces multiple modes especially noting the importance of images, central role of experiential learning, and space for student choice thus empowering them as learners.

This chapter considers the value of designing and implementing assessment and feedback to help engage students and support their development.

This chapter offers practical examples of active, student-centred approaches to large-group teaching, small-group teaching and designing for learning in diverse contexts.

This chapter offers practical advice and worked examples on how best to engage yourself and support others to engage in relevant CPD that is genuinely developmental.

Focuses on approaches which enable students to learn with and from one another within and beyond the curriculum. It considers students as partners in co-curricular projects.

The Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA) was formed in 1993 combining a number of predecessor organisations, including the Standing Conference for Educational Development and the Staff Development Group of the Society for Research in Higher Education. It was later joined by the membership of the Association of Educational Training Technology, SEDA Scotland and Flexible Learning in Higher Education. SEDA was set up to support members of the emergent profession of educational development, originally in the UK and subsequently internationally. In this article, the case is made that SEDA became a highly successful community of practice of individuals working in higher education institutions. It is proposed that features of communities of practice as proposed within the literature in the field can be evidenced in SEDA’s activities and in comments collected from SEDA members whose views were sought for this article.

Over 20 years, 25 books have been published to date in the SEDA series, and this review article aims to analyse the ways in which books within the series have contributed to thinking in higher education pedagogy over this time. We have approached the texts through three lenses, analysing them chronologically, thematically and by the orientation of the authors towards educational development. We demonstrate that the coverage of topics and the syntheses of ideas that the texts represent have holistically provided invaluable coverage of the key thinking in the field. Not only have the texts contributed to knowledge but also they have asserted the importance of the underpinning SEDA values which they represent in practice, helping to build the community of practice that is educational development.

In the two decades, since Staff and Educational Development Association was formed, educational development has become a mature and internationally recognised discipline, informed strongly by the scholarship of teaching. Writing about teaching, learning and assessment has helped to describe, distil, analyse and affect practice, and to change the way in which educational development as a profession has become regarded. Books have been of great importance in this transition, with educational developers in many parts of the world building a learning community through discussing the books on their shelves. This article provides a personal selection of 20 key books that have been highly influential, with the aim of promoting debate both on the choice of texts and the future of educational development books in the next 20 years.

Assessment at Masters Level is the subject of a three-year UK National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) project, ‘Assimilate’, which seeks to explore innovatory approaches in this field. More than 40 interviews were undertaken for the project with teachers at Masters level in the UK and internationally. Although national and institutional systems differentiate clearly in their documentation how assessment at M-level should differ from that at undergraduate level, in practice there is not necessarily such clarity. This article draws on how teachers and programme leaders on Masters level courses who were interviewed for the project described the differences in practice. It concludes that there is considerable confusion and ambivalence about what distinguishes one level from another and scope for further clarification.

In this article the author shares examples of reading conferences with 10 English learners over the course of a semester. The reading conferences are conducted by four monolingual, European-American teachers at a primary school in the Southeastern United States. Sociocultural and identity theories are used as a theoretical frame for the research study. Observations of the reading conferences reveal several themes inhibiting the literacy learning of English learners: lack of self-correction opportunities, unbalanced instruction, metalanguage, text difficulty, and book levels. In addition, the conferences with English learners are compared to native-speaking students in a cross-case analysis. Transcripts illustrate the complex factors affecting the learning and identity formation process for English learners. The author offers suggestions for reframing reading conferences with English learners.

The United States is becoming more multilingual with globalization. Public schools continue to enroll increasing numbers of students who speak a language other than English. This adds to the rich diversity of classrooms while at the same time offers challenges for educators. This collaborative-ethnographic style research study investigates the ways in which identities are constructed for and by an English language learner (ELL) as she uses language at school. The author explores classroom reading events and the ways one ELL negotiates these events with her peers in an English dominant classroom. Results reveal the fluidity of identities across classroom curricular structures at school.

Problems continue to pervade the educational experiences of many minority students, especially Latinos. Through a sociocultural framework, this ethnographic study closely examines the experiences of a Puerto Rican family at home and in an English‐dominant school. The study focuses on the school experiences of the family’s kindergarten son. The analysis reveals ways this family can broaden Eurocentric world views. Early educators will realise the extent to which they alter a child’s cultural identity, thus empowering or disempowering them as an individual. Implications for early childhood education include valuing funds of knowledge, code‐switching, and challenging assumptions.

Throughout the United States, deficit perspectives contribute to Latino students' failure in terms of school success. This happens because many educators still regard bilingualism as a deficit. We examined the discourse of one family to better understand how deficit, assimilationist discourse affected them and their two children. We came to understand that, influenced by deficit messages, parents celebrated accelerated English acquisition. Implications for teachers include the recognition and support of linguistic and cultural diversity in the classroom. We suggest a sociocultural perspective that embraces the culture and humanity of every student and helps support the maintenance of multiple cultures.

Sally Brown, Professor of Education at the University of Stirling and the new Chairperson of the Editorial Board of BJSE, has based this article on her keynote address to the Joint Conferences of the Scottish Support for Learning Association and NASEN on 23rd April 1994.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación Título, resumen y palabras clave en español e inglés Disponible la versión en inglés Monográfico con el título: “Evaluación en Educación Superior: ¿Qué hemos aprendido?” La evaluación universitaria varía considerablemente de unos países a otros, con diferentes expectativas sobre estándares y niveles, sobre qué son las buenas prácticas de evaluación y sobre los auténticos propósitos de la evaluación, así como la terminología especializada que se usa y qué prácticas se consideran aceptables. La gama de métodos y enfoques que se utilizan es igualmente muy variada, al igual que las expectativas sobre cómo debe darse y utilizarse la retroalimentación. Los sistemas de evaluación son administrados en diferentes formas a nivel mundial y no hay un acuerdo sobre qué es una buena conducta académica. Se plantea que tanto los académicos como los estudiantes pueden beneficiarse de orientación y formación sobre evaluación, y aboga por el diálogo sobre la manera de mejorar la evaluación, de modo que esté verdaderamente integrada en el proceso de aprendizaje. ESP

There is evidence of progress over the last decade in the quest for research to inform ideas of good practice in teaching. This function of research had achieved increased status and funding, and attention has focused on issues such as how teachers learn and evidence‐based practice. This has been supported by several ‘official’ initiatives, three of which are given special attention in this paper. Teacher/researcher networking has contributed to greater involvement of teachers in research and discredited simple‐minded ideas of ‘delivery’ models of evidence to be embedded in practice. However, placing research entirely in teachers' hands has revealed concerns about research quality. Different forms of collaborative relationships between researchers and teachers, and among projects within a programme, have increased understanding of the conditions under which research can impact on practice. What and how to disseminate evidence to wider audiences remains a challenge.

This paper explores, contrasts, and considers some of the implications of the different ways in which the culture of practice in pre‐school provision is construed by various actors (‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’) in the enterprise. ‘Outsiders’ means those with responsibility for the formulation of the curriculum, the inspection of provision and the training of pre‐school staff (typically managers and assessors). The perspectives of two types of insiders, that is, pre‐school practitioners and children, are considered. Differences are mapped out in the perspectives of outsiders and of insider practitioners and insider children, drawing on findings from a series of research projects carried out (between 1996 and 2001) investigating aspects of pre‐school provision in Scotland. The evidence suggests that outsiders adopt an espoused culture that envisages practitioners fulfilling prescribed roles to deliver a curriculum that will allow children to achieve planned outcomes and which is largely independent of contex...

SUMMARY This article emphasises the importance of research that helps us to understand how things are in early childhood education and care, why they are the way they are, what are the alternative decisions or actions we might take in order to change things and what are the implications of choosing among those alternatives. As an illustration of this, it focuses on the different ways in which outsiders and insiders make sense of practice in Scottish pre-school provision, and on the need to take account of such differences if changes are to be introduced to improve that practice. There is a common tendency to assume that the insiders, teachers and nursery nurses, share the same conceptual frameworks as the outsiders who wish to introduce change. The research reported here suggests that this is not a valid assumption. Some outsiders have been unhappy with this finding and its implication that they have not been ready to take account of the perspectives of others. Insiders, however, have been obliged to take...

Extant literature on professions suggests that there is a readily recognisable set of characteristics of a profession, but this is a contested issue, particularly in the area of recognising the professionalism of those who teach and support learning in higher education. In the UK, the Institute for Learning and Teaching was set up as a result of the Dearing report to recognise the experience and expertise of those working in these areas. The ILT offers a model for professionalising teaching, to which continuous professional development (CPD) is key. Geographers and those who teach related subjects are already in the vanguard of this activity.

This keynote offers a personal perspective on some of the key drivers for excellent teaching in ways that can lead to productive student learning. Arguing that outstanding teaching can be fostered rather than being an innate skill, it presents some of the features that scholarship suggests characterise teaching excellence, which can then lead to focussed, engaged and sustainable student learning. Moving away from a transmissive model of content delivery, it will be suggested that authentic, meaningful and long-lasting learning relies on an active partnership between teachers and the taught and that assessment plays a key role in making this happen.

This work brings together the experience of educators, trainers and students searching for ways of increasing student motivation. Links between motivation and training, learning and assessment processes are examined through case studies set in a broad range of subject discipline contexts.

This paper reports on research designed to explore alternative perspectives on playroom practice. Two perspectives on the role of practitioners were articulated. One was an outside, context-free perspective constructed in consultation with a group of experienced assessors of pre-school provision and presented as a Framework for Good Practice. Observations of acknowledged good practice (using the Framework as the observation tool) and interviews with practitioners supported its ready applicability to the range of pre-school settings typical in Scotland. The second perspective was an 'insider' view encapsulating the way in which practitioners think about their work in the playroom, their professional craft knowledge. The characteristics of each perspective and the insights that can be derived from each are discussed, along with the value of considering first the 'insider' perspective when staff are engaged in continuing professional development. Cet article fait etat de recherches concues dans le but d'expl...

The debates about the inclusion of children with special needs have usually focused on mainstream schools. Special schools have often been ignored or denigrated, but there is little understanding of what they do in practice. This paper examines the culture and practices of special schools from the perspective of head teachers and pupils. The head teachers report on the recent reforms within their schools, partly in response to policy initiatives, such as the national curriculum and devolved school management, and partly in an effort to secure their own future. The pupils describe their experiences of curriculum and teaching approaches, progress and their ambitions for the future. The paper seeks neither to praise nor bury special schools, but to encourage greater understanding of their current role and to argue that the debates on inclusion must take account of the contributions special schools claim to be making.

This paper looks at the impact of government intervention, the introduction of a voucher system, intended to expand pre‐school provision. Drawing on research designed to examine the impact of the Pre‐school Education Initiative during the pilot year in Scotland the authors argue that there have been significant changes in provision for under 5s and for the culture in which that provision is embedded. The paper identifies four kinds of changes. The first relates to what appears to be a substantial shift in what goes on in the playroom, in terms of prescriptions for practice and the curriculum. The second kind of change relates to the expectations which providers, parents and policy makers have for the purposes or outcomes of the provision. Thirdly there was a change in the parental role in pre‐school education and finally there were changes in the requirements for quality assurance and accountability.

The implementation of any curriculum initiative at classroom level depends largely on teachers’ existing ideas about their day‐to‐day teaching and the extent to which they regard the new policy as desirable and practical. Past records for curriculum initiatives show extraordinarily modest levels of pedagogical implementation, in part because curriculum innovators have failed to ‘start where the teachers are’. The extent to which curriculum initiatives have an impact on teachers’ thinking at classroom level is profoundly important given a world‐wide trend towards the introduction of national curricula. In the context of research which has focused on teachers’ classroom thinking against the background of Scotland's National Curriculum, the 5‐14 curriculum development programme, this paper explores two broad issues, one methodological and the other substantive. The methodological concern is with difficulties in gaining access to teachers’ classroom thinking. The paper argues that familiar interview ...

Part 1 Theoretical perspectives: introduction research into student learning research, teaching and learning - a symbiotic relationship the importance of applied research on improving learning processes research and learning in HE effects of funding

SUMMARY Higher education institutions (HEIs) are responding to the movement towards credit accumulation and transfer with varying degrees of enthusiasm and energy, and linked to this is a parallel series of developments towards modularization and semesterization. Some HEIs have highly developed and well advanced programmes of credit‐based modularity (PCFC, 1992), whereas others are just beginning to implement what we believe to be one of the most important and radical changes to affect higher education in recent years. This article is grounded in the experience of two universities which are currently moving towards modular schemes: the University of Northumbria at Newcastle and the University of Glamorgan. It uses a range of case studies based on actual experiences of colleagues in our own universities and those we have encountered in our workshops nationally. At the University of Northumbria, the term unitization is used to indicate that named routes are retained, whereas the term modularization is prefe...

Research into policy, practice and provision for children with specific learning difficulties for the Scottish Office Education Department included a survey of how learning support teachers viewed specific learning difficulties within their general role. The findings presented by Jill Duffield, Sally Brown and Sheila Riddell suggest that the difficulty is regarded as a discrete area within their overall task and poses a number of unresolved conflicts of demand upon them.

University Teaching in Focus provides a foundational springboard for early career academics preparing to teach in universities. Focusing on four critical areas - teaching, curriculum, students, and quality/leadership - this succinct resource offers university teachers a straightforward approach to facilitating effective student learning. The book empowers university teachers and contributes to their career success by developing teaching skills, strategies, and knowledge, as well as linking theory to practice. Written in a clear and accessible style by internationally acclaimed experts, topics include: learning theories, assessment, discipline-based teaching, curriculum design, problem-based and work-integrated learning, effective classroom teaching, and flexible modes of delivery. The needs of diverse student groups are explored and the scholarship of teaching and learning is addressed within a quality and leadership framework. The book also makes reference to seminal works and current resources. Real-world cases illuminate the theoretical content and 'Your Thoughts' sections encourage reflection and adaptation to local contexts. University Teaching in Focus explores ways that teachers can effectively engage students in life-long learning, extending their capacity to solve problems, to enter the workforce, to understand their discipline, and to interact positively with others in a global community throughout their professional lives. [Book Synopsis]

This paper looks at the contribution of school effectiveness research to the evaluation of schools. It examines the judgemental role in which findings from the research are used to publicise the relative effectiveness of different schools, and the role which such findings might potentially play in school improvement. The distinctive differences in the paradigms for the traditions of school effectiveness and school improvement studies, the paucity of theory and of sophisticated notions of how the two might be linked, the need for intermediate research of a third kind to help understand what goes on inside schools and rather dismal comparisons with the history of pupil assessment, lead to some pessimism about the likelihood of effectiveness findings having a substantial impact on improvement. The chances are that the political ‘summative’ function will outstrip the educational ‘formative’ function despite the best intentions of school effectiveness researchers.

Research on parents of children with special educational needs has revealed their lack of power and the difficulty of establishing genuine partnership with professionals. This paper focuses on a predominantly middle‐class group, parents of children with specific learning difficulties. In the light of the Government's recent emphasis on parental rights, the paper explores what educational provision these parents want for their children, the strategies they employ to achieve their goals, the extent of their success and the implications of their actions for other parents of children with special educational needs. It is argued that parents of children with specific learning difficulties, well supported by voluntary organisations, are able to fulfil the role of critical consumer envisaged by government and have enjoyed a measure of success in arguing for improved levels of resourcing. Few would argue that services for children with specific learning difficulties are adequate. However, there are other...

L'A. presente une analyse institutionnelle de l'evaluation de l'enseignement primaire et de l'enseignement secondaire en Ecosse, en considerant les projets de reforme en cours

(1975). Cognitive Preferences in Science: Their Nature and Analysis. Studies in Science Education: Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 43-65.

In this paper, we have identified a prescriptive model which we believe is implicitly used for evaluating science departments in Scottish secondary schools, and we have attempted to demonstrate that this is an inappropriate way of evaluating these departments. We have also briefly outlined two kinds of evaluation of these departments which we think would be appropriate. While the paper has been exclusively concerned with science departments in Scottish secondary schools, we suspect that some of the issues discussed may well be relevant to other subject departments and in the context of other national systems.

A cursory reading of Common's response to our paper (Common, 1983, this issue) led us to ask why she had used our work as a basis for introducing her own ideas on settings for innovations and on power as a condition for the implementation of innovations. At most, we would have expected that she would have referred to our contribution to the study of innovation as something concerned with issues different from those of her paper. A more careful reading, however, suggests that she was misled about our intentions. We are pleased to have the opportunity to point out where she has misunderstood our argument and thereby to clarify our position. We will also explore the extent to which Common's case for the importance of setting and power impinges on and is helpful to our own thinking. We start from the premise that an adequate understanding of educational events and systems will involve contributions from a variety of disciplines if that understanding is to serve as a basis for action. In our studies of innovation, therefore, we believe that it is crucial that account be taken of such things as power relationships, educational settings, and the sociology of knowledge. We also believe it is crucial to explore how individuals make sense of and construe the situations in which they find themselves and the options which are open to them. This implies that psychological theory and empirical study have a part to play in explaining the adoption and implementation of innovations. We are aware that in some countries there has been a sharp distinction drawn between sociological and psychological approaches to educational research, but in Scotland we have taken an eclectic view that chooses to invoke a variety of perspectives as necessary to the study of educational phenomena in general and the implementation of innovations in particular.' In the paper under consideration (Brown and McIntyre, 1982) we examine one among many factors influencing implementation in an at

In this paper we outline a framework designed to help analyse the sorts of factors that influence teachers' responses to, and decisions about, curricular innovations. The discussion is primarily concerned with the several types of barrier that exist against effective innovation in secondary schools. These barriers relate to: the meaning of the innovation, its perceived value, whether it is 'organisational' or 'pedagogical', the procedural clarity of its presentation, and departmental pressures. The four innovations we use for exemplification, relate to a course that has been adopted in many parts of the world Scottish Integrated Science (Scottish Education Department 1969) and each innovation has relevance for other areas of the curriculum. They are