Two computer-based learning environments for reading and writing narratives

In this brief paper, two computer-based educational tools are described. They are designed to support children learning the literacy skills of narrative comprehension and creation. We give an overview of these tools, and then discuss the educational hypotheses that we are planning to use them to test

Introduction: Sylvia, a New Zealander

Sylvia Ashton-Warner had an intensely ambivalent relationship with the land of her birth. Despite receiving many accolades in New Zealand – including the country’s major literary award – she claimed to have been rejected and persecuted, and regularly announced that her educational and literary achievements were unappreciated or insufficiently acknowledged by her compatriots. In her darkest moments, she railed against New Zealand and New Zealander, even stating in one television interview: “I’m not a New Zealander!

Ya got ta know when ta hold ‘em: Maori women and gambling

Gambling among Maori women is under-researched. In this study, I interviewed thirty Maori women to investigate how they got involved in gambling, what maintained their gambling and what they thought might help to moderate their gambling. I found that the whanau was central to understanding these issues. As children, my participants were exposed to gambling within their whanau. As adults, whanau and other social support relationships were an integral part of their gambling, which most commonly occurred in the context of card schools and housie. A sense of reciprocity was important in both forms of gambling. Card schools were reported to be close-knit groups within which the money circulated, giving all a chance to win. By playing housie, the women felt that they were contributing to the welfare of their marae. Through the social bonds of gambling and the acquisition of skills, gambling contributed to these women’s sense of identity. On the other hand, financial and relationship difficulties were identified as negative consequences of gambling. The women felt there was a need for Maori-focused services for problem gambling

Abstraction’s ecologies : post-industrialization, waste and the commodity form in Prunella Clough’s paintings of the 1980s and 1990s

This article’s aims are twofold: firstly, it argues that Prunella Clough’s engagement with consumer items in her paintings of the 1980s and 1990s constitute a sustained engagement with the fluctuating nature of the commodity form, moving beyond the established critical narrative whereby these works are understood as simply redeeming “everyday” materials. Secondly, in order to do this, it proposes new artistic frameworks for Clough’s work, moving away from her early association with Neo-Romanticism to foreground her relationship with Pop and Minimalism, and with Post-Conceptual painting. Clough’s late works, it finds, powerfully condense histories of industrial production and painting in Britain.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Writing with Your Family at the Kitchen Table: Balancing Home and Academic Communities

Prince Edward County, Virginia was home to my mother’s family. Her mother was born and raised there and my own mother spent the first five years of her life there, staying with her grandmother while her mother and father worked to set up a home in neighboring Richmond. Prince Edward was the site of family gatherings and the setting for most of the stories my grandmother shared with me. While it certainly represented a great deal of good, there was also pain and hurt behind many of the stories in this space. In 1959, Prince Edward County’s Board of Supervisors voted to close all public schools rather than face integration. The movement to impede Brown vs. Board of Education was part of a larger strategy throughout the South to resist the Brown ruling at all costs. Massive Resistance, the term coined to reflect this stance, was rampant across the South, but got its start in Virginia.1 Communities took various approaches to circumvent the Brown ruling, but none reacted quite as forcefully as Prince Edward. Public schools would remain closed for five years. While the white community created a private segregation academy to serve its children, the Black community struggled to craft intervention plans that were sustainable. I wrote my dissertation about the temporary one-year school system, the Prince Edward County Free Schools Association, that was established from efforts on the part of Prince Edward’s Black community, its allies, and President John F. Kennedy’s administration. The Free Schools were part of a litany of programs designed for and by the Black community. Using archival records and interviews with former Free School students, I argued for the Free Schools to be seen as an institutional response to the rhetorics of Massive Resistance.University Writing Cente

One hundred years of Sylvia Ashton-Warner: An introduction.

A biography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner is presented. She was born on 17 December 1908 in New Zealand. She studied at the Auckland Teachers' Training College and taught in several native schools including Horoera Native School and Pipiriki Native School. Later she started writing, starting with "Teacher," a book about teaching schemes and followed by "Incense to Idols," "Bell Call," and "Greenstone." Also, her travels to various places are mentioned

How can I encourage multi-stakeholder narrative and reflection on the use of ICT in Teacher Professional Development programmes in Rwanda?

This is an action research enquiry into how I can improve my practice to encourage multi-stakeholder narrative and reflection on the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Teacher Professional Development (TPD) programmes in Rwanda. I examine the complexity of the ICT-TPD landscape in the Africa Region. I describe two action research cycles in which I attempt to encourage reflection on ICT in professional development in Rwanda. In each cycle I explore the potential of an Activity Theory lens for probing the issues and examining the perspectives of the stakeholder community of teachers, teacher educators, curriculum developers and researchers affiliated to national ICT in TPD programmes and initiatives. I integrate a “Most Significant Change” narrative technique to engage participants in telling stories of significant change in their practice with technology integration. Through the rigour of the action research living theory approach I come to a number of conclusions about my own values and how I actually live my values in practice as I engage with partners in discourse and reflection for mutual learning on the issues of ICT integration in Teacher Professional Development

Service Bulletin (University of Chicago. Center for Instructional Materials) 02 (10) 1949

published or submitted for publicatio