What Matters, What Works: Advancing Achievement After School

This brief provides highlights from "Advancing Achievement: Findings from an Independent Evaluation of a Major After-School Initiative." The brief underscores the potential of after-school programs in the ongoing drive to advance children's academic achievement. It shines a light on some of the issues that matter most for programs striving to promote academic success -- namely, program quality and youth engagement. The brief also suggests what works by linking these program attributes to academic benefits. Like the report on which it is based, the brief draws lessons from the Communities Organizing Resources to Advance Learning (CORAL) initiative of The James Irvine Foundation

NEGLECTED AND MISALIGNED: A STUDY OF COMPUTER SCIENCE TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS, BELIEFS AND PRACTICES TOWARDS PRIMARY ICT

The present study attempts to explore aspects of teachers’ personal practical knowledge by investigating computer science teachers’ perceptions, beliefs, and practices towards Primary ICT just before a curriculum transition period and the replacement of the former program of studies with a “Computer Science” curriculum. For the needs of this investigation, an exploratory sequential mixed methods design was employed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 33 computer science teachers, while 157 were surveyed by means of a questionnaire developed from the analysis of qualitative data. The findings of the study indicated that there is a misalignment between the policy rationale towards ICT, teachers’ understanding of ICT and the implementation of ICT in the primary classroom. Due to teachers’ lack of professional-pedagogical knowledge, contextual factors and policy decisions, which consistently neglect teachers’ needs and personal practical knowledge, CS teachers have developed their own ways of theorizing, conceptualizing and practicing education in ICT. These findings are discussed within the light of the corresponding literature and suggest that structural and curricular transformations in digital education are condemned to carry within them the seeds of their own dismissal when they are not ingrained in the reality of classroom practice and on teachers’ practical knowledge, which entails their involvement in the design and formulation of any intended changes.  Article visualizations

Sustainable Human Development Across the Life Course

"EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. It is critical that the wellbeing of society is systematically tracked by indicators that not only give an accurate picture of human life today, but also provide a window into the future for all of us. This important book presents impactful findings from twelve international longitudinal studies that responded to the Agenda 2030 commitment to “leave no-one behind”. Exploring a wide range and complexity of global issues, it provides actionable strategies for policy makers and practitioners to strengthen the global Sustainable Development Goals framework and accelerate their implementation.

School-based service delivery models for students with exceptionalities: Stakeholders\u27 perceptions of effectiveness.

This study investigated the use of school-based service delivery models for students with exceptionalities and the perceptions of their effectiveness by key stakeholders: principals and vice-principals, classroom teachers, and special education teachers. There were 260 participants in this study; 29 administrators, 164 classroom teachers, and 67 special education teachers. An electronic survey was constructed and access to this survey was made available to the participants via their work intranet system. The survey solicited information using both quantitative and qualitative measures regarding participant demographics, the use of school-based teams, and perceptions of effective special education practices. In addition, two senior administrators from the school board were interviewed. There were significant differences between the groups in this study regarding the use of school-based teams, collaboration between special educators and classroom teachers, administrative support, and student success. Trends resulting from this study indicated a need to remove barriers to successful collaboration, that more human, financial, and material supports be made available, that greater options for programming and placements for exceptional students need to be available, that more training for classroom teachers is needed, and that formal school-based teams need to be implemented more widely to maximize effectiveness of special education services to students with exceptionalities.Dept. of Education. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2006 .B68. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-01, page: 0052. Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2006

Game-Based Learning, Gamification in Education and Serious Games

The aim of this book is to present and discuss new advances in serious games to show how they could enhance the effectiveness and outreach of education, advertising, social awareness, health, policies, etc. We present their use in structured learning activities, not only with a focus on game-based learning, but also on the use of game elements and game design techniques to gamify the learning process. The published contributions really demonstrate the wide scope of application of game-based approaches in terms of purpose, target groups, technologies and domains and one aspect they have in common is that they provide evidence of how effective serious games, game-based learning and gamification can be

NP3 – New Purposes, New Practices, New Pedagogy: Meta-analysis report

This is the main report of the findings of the NP3 project, which looked at children's use of ICT outside school and the extent to which this influenced pedagogy inside primary schools

Teachers Matter Improving Recruitment, Retention and Development of Teachers

This book highlights the global concern about the teaching workforce, from recruitment and retention of teachers to the development and quality of teachers in schools. The collection of papers in this book is international in scope, representing a range of research designs (from longitudinal studies using national and international datasets, large-scale surveys, reviews and syntheses of evidence to randomized control trials, value-added models and design-based action research). These papers exemplify the high standard of research in education

Challenges to Pedagogical Content Knowledge in lesson planning during curriculum transition: a multiple case study of teachers of ICT and Computing in England.

In September 2014 the new National Curriculum programmes of study for Computing became mandatory in England, replacing Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as a school subject and introducing Computer Science into schools. This posed a challenge for in-service ICT teachers without Computer Science subject knowledge: teachers needed to develop both subject and pedagogical knowledge to make the transition from teaching ICT to teaching Computing. This multiple case study explores teachers’ perceptions of the curriculum change and how they have responded in practical and pedagogical terms to planning lessons aligning with the new programmes of study. Nine teachers participated, each of whom had been teaching ICT pre-2014. The study used semi-structured interview questions while teachers engaged in lesson-planning activities, captured mostly using desktop-sharing via internet telephony. A modified version of Shulman’s pedagogical reasoning framework and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) facilitated analysis of teachers’ pedagogic practices in lesson planning. The study shows teachers’ concerns about the lack of clarity surrounding the curriculum change, and the lack of access to suitable professional development (CPD). Most highlighted the primacy of programming and Computer Science at the expense of Information Technology and Digital Literacy, the other two strands of the new curriculum. The study also shows the dynamic nature of lesson planning. Knowledge deficits slowed down the fluency of teachers’ lesson-planning processes, but the use of lesson materials created by others helped them to develop PCK. The term transitional pedagogical reasoning has been used to describe the process by which unfamiliar but necessary concepts are assimilated into the pedagogical reasoning process while the teacher develops sufficient subject knowledge and PCK. Recommendations have been made for Computing curriculum policies to recognise and promote Computing pedagogy. This understanding should underpin initial teacher education in Computing, CPD for in-service teachers, and strategic development of the subject in the longer term

Report to the Community 2010-2011

Contains foundation information, board chair and president's letter, president's report, program information, grant highlights, lists of new gifts and funds, financial summary, and lists of board members and staff