An exploratory study of teacher orchestration of collaborative Mathematics tasks in relation to learning and interaction in primary schools

This study explores what we can learn about the interactions between teachers and students during small-group collaborative Mathematics tasks, nested with in a classroom setting from the study of multiple audio-visual streams synchronised with each other and with a detailed transcript. The ability to capture and study large quantities of detailed data using new digital temporal analysis tools presents both a great challenge and a great opportunity for researchers. This study explores quantitative means of triaging this data, looking for salient features in teacher-student interactions. Patterns of association found to be present in the data were then qualitatively examined in detail using the tool. This examination highlighted the potential for new forms of synchronous temporal analysis to develop our understanding of important facet s of teacher-student interaction in small group collaborative Mathematics activities which were previously shown to be significant in past research but which were not developed in greater detail in large part because the data capture and analysis technology was not present. The study looks in detail at the Engle & Conant teacher interaction coding framework (2002), focusing on the specific use of problematization utterances in the tasks. The functions which these in relation to the success of a group of students is explored. The varied granularity of the data available in the temporal analysis also highlighted the importance of a teacher orchestration artifice which, though familiar to teaching practitioners, is overlooked in the research literature. The mini-plenary, a brief transition orchestrated by the teacher between group and whole-class interaction then back again was explored and the possible reasons why this was instigated were discussed. The practice is then discussed in relation to the existing literature on the orchestration of classroom interaction. , .It is part of the SynergyNet project which looked at developing tools and pedagogies to meet the challenges of technology rich classrooms, specifically focusing on multi-touch tables. Ninety-six 11 year-old students participated in the study from six different schools. Their grouping was varied by school, room orientation, gender and teacher

The 'new normal' and 'new normalisations' in early childhood education policy in Aotearoa New Zealand: Learnings from Covid-19

When New Zealand entered pandemic alert level 3 and early childhood centres were being ‘nudged’ to re-open in order to offer support for parents returning to work, the Ministry of Health advised both Early Childhood centres and parents that children were not at risk of catching or spreading the virus. Fast-forward to Level 1 and the Ministry of Health has advised that an infant, who arrived into the country from overseas together with its parents, had the virus and was in a managed quarantine. This paper discusses this apparent policy contradiction between guidelines and evidence by collecting and analysing discourses that the nation has received from government agencies regarding children and early childhood education. This paper uses these discourses to explore the 'body' of knowledge regarding childhood and early childhood education, discourses that make childhood and early childhood education possible. We then apply a range of theoretical and conceptual tools to suggest some possible conditions of early childhood education (leading up to, during, and post-Covid-19). We employ health and medical metaphors to highlight ongoing tensions for early childhood education as a patient for whom neither education nor health Ministries take sufficient responsibility. The use of a health as a metaphor additionally focuses this paper on the new ‘normal’ of early childhood education and education policy

The 'new normal' and 'new normalisations' in early childhood education policy in Aotearoa New Zealand: Learnings from Covid-19

When New Zealand entered pandemic alert level 3 and early childhood centres were being ‘nudged’ to re-open in order to offer support for parents returning to work, the Ministry of Health advised both Early Childhood centres and parents that children were not at risk of catching or spreading the virus. Fast-forward to Level 1 and the Ministry of Health has advised that an infant, who arrived into the country from overseas together with its parents, had the virus and was in a managed quarantine. This paper discusses this apparent policy contradiction between guidelines and evidence by collecting and analysing discourses that the nation has received from government agencies regarding children and early childhood education. This paper uses these discourses to explore the 'body' of knowledge regarding childhood and early childhood education, discourses that make childhood and early childhood education possible. We then apply a range of theoretical and conceptual tools to suggest some possible conditions of early childhood education (leading up to, during, and post-Covid-19). We employ health and medical metaphors to highlight ongoing tensions for early childhood education as a patient for whom neither education nor health Ministries take sufficient responsibility. The use of a health as a metaphor additionally focuses this paper on the new ‘normal’ of early childhood education and education policy

On the Obstructions to non-Cliffordian Pin Structures

We derive the topological obstructions to the existence of non-Cliffordian pin structures on four-dimensional spacetimes. We apply these obstructions to the study of non-Cliffordian pin-Lorentz cobordism. We note that our method of derivation applies equally well in any dimension and in any signature, and we present a general format for calculating obstructions in these situations. Finally, we interpret the breakdown of pin structure and discuss the relevance of this to aspects of physics.Comment: 31 pages, latex, published in Comm. Math. Phys. 164, No. 1, pages 65-87 (1994

Existence of Majorana fermions for M-branes wrapped in space and time

We show that it is possible to define Majorana (s)pinor fields on M-branes which have been identified under the action of the antipodal map on the adS factor of the throat geometry, or which have been wrapped on two-cycles of arbitrary genus. This is an important consistency check, since it means that one may still take the generators of supertranslations in superspace to transform as Majorana fermions under the adjoint action of $Spin(10,1)$, even though the antipodally identified M2-brane is {\it not} space-orientable. We point out that similar conclusions hold for any p-branes which have the generic (adS)$~{\times}~$(Sphere) throat geometry.Comment: 10 pages REVTe

Some applications of differential topology in general relativity

Recently, there have been several applications of differential and algebraic topology to problems concerned with the global structure of spacetimes. In this paper, we derive obstructions to the existence of spin-Lorentz and pin-Lorentz cobordisms and we show that for compact spacetimes with non-empty boundary there is no relationship between the homotopy type of the Lorentz metric and the causal structure. We also point out that spin-Lorentz and tetrad cobordism are equivalent. Furthermore, because the original work [7] on metric homotopy and causality may not be known to a wide audience, we present an overview of the results here.Comment: 24 pages LaTeX, 8 xfig figures available from A. Chamblin at [email protected], published in Jour. of Geometry and Physics, 13, pages 357-377 (1994

Covid-19 school shutdowns: what will they do to our children's education?

Evidence from unexpected temporary school closures and reduced instruction time suggests school closures will reduce educational achievement, both in the short and long term. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are likely to be affected more than others by school closures, with fewer family resources and less access to online learning resources to offset lost instruction time. In England, the total cost of the resources lost in each week of state school closure is more than £1 billion. Educational deficits from time lost to school shutdowns can be made up with additional hours of teaching when schools reopen, though schools might need to put back more hours than were lost and it may not be feasible to do this within the traditional school year. Compensating lost instruction time through additional resources, without additional hours, is likely to be even more expensive