Building portals for evidence informed education: lessons from the dead

This paper considers the creation of quality assured reviews to build sustainable quality assured evidence sources that inform the training and professional development of new and experienced teachers. This makes use of the experience and evaluations of portals developed in England as part of the Teacher Training Resource Bank (TTRB). The TTRB was developed by a consortium of Universities supported by a software company and funded by a government agency responsible for what it called ‘Teacher Training’. This project ran from 2006 and ended in 2010 due to a change of government. The project was then ‘archived’ in a very restrictive manner. The paper explores the lessons learned from the project

Learning and inclusion in the Early Years

This paper considers inclusion in the early years from the perspective of a social model of learning articulated by Wenger (1998). This model is used to highlight key areas of teaching and learning in the early years that enhance participation and achievement. Implications for change in early years settings are considered alongside some priorities for professional development

Creatividad, cultura y education: creativity culture and education

This paper considers the role of constructions of creativity in the classroom and their consequences for learning and, in particular, for the assessment of creativity. The implications of assessing creativity in order to aid its development within and across subject. Enablers for creative teaching and learning are considered in order to propose a model of assessment and development for creativity

The principles of Educational Robotic Applications (ERA): a framework for understanding and developing educational robots and their activities

The original educational robots were the Logo Turtles. They derived their rationale from constructionism. How has this changed? This paper postulates ten principles that underpin the effective utilisation of robotic devices within education settings. We argue that they form a framework still sympathetic to constructionism that can guide the development, application and evaluation of educational robots. They articulate a summary of the existing knowledge as well as suggesting further avenues of research that may be shared by educationists and designers. The principles also provide an evaluative framework for Educational Robotic Applications (ERA). This paper is an overview of the ideas, which we will develop in future papers

What forms of evidence do novice teachers need?

The Teacher Training Resource Bank (TTRB) is a project, funded by the English Teacher Development Agency for Schools (TDA). It aims to articulate, represent and enhance the professional knowledge bases that underpin teacher education through the development of a knowledge portal. The TTRB seeks to link theory, debate and practice and raise the profile of teacher training research and knowledge creation. Records of TTRB usage since its inception in 2006 demonstrate widespread use of the resource within English initial teacher education (ITE) and in schools. An independent evaluation (Chambers et al, 2009) indicated a positive impact on trainee teachers by making a large range of recent research resource material easily available. Trainee teachers were further enabled to make connections between theory and research, and the quality of their academic work was seen to be improved. The paper draws on a spiral model of knowledge management developed by Nonaka, I & Konno, N. (1998) to discuss the ways in which the TTRB can support and democratise the construction of professional knowledge in ITE from the perspectives of novice teachers and their mentors and tutors. This study has findings that illustrate successful mechanisms that bridge the perceived divide between theory and practice that can be seen to have potential across Europe

Raising aspirations: increasing the participation of students with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (Social Communication Difficulties) in Higher Education: report of the HEFCE strand two disability ASPIHE project

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) funded a Social Communication and Understanding Project in Higher Education (ASPIHE) for a period of two years during 2000-2002. This was a strand two disability project, which aimed to promote and disseminate existing expertise and good practice across the higher education community. The focus was on support for students in higher education who have difficulties in social understanding and communication. This largely consists of students who may have a diagnosis of High Functioning Autism/Asperger Syndrome

Cohesion comunitaria, multiculturalismo y diversidad: ¿que necesitan saber y hacer los profesores? Community cohesion, multiculturalism and diversity: what do teachers need to know and do?

En este artículo se considera el impacto de la movilidad y la migración de las poblaciones; y las políticas de respuesta a este fenómeno, cuando existen conflictos entre los grupos étnicos y culturales existentes y los nuevos. Se consideran los diferentes enfoques de multiculturalismo y cohesión social con su repercusión educacional. Se critican estos enfoques educativos empleando los conceptos de resiliencia, (o lo que es lo mismo la habilidad de recuperase ante la adversidad); y la teoría del desarrollo de Piaget. Se argumenta que una síntesis dinámica puede ser la aspiración de una política educativa más positiva y realista. This paper considers the impact of mobility and migration of populations and the policy responses to these phenomena when difficulties occur between new and existing cultural and or ethnic groups. The different policy approaches of multiculturalism and social cohesion are considered with their educational implications. These educational approaches are criticized utilizing the concepts of resilience and the developmental theory of Piaget. It is argued that a dynamic synthesis may be a more realistic and positive educational policy aspiration

The e-Robot Project: a longitudinal on-line research collaboration to investigate ERA principles

The Educational Robotic Application (ERA) Principles provides a framework for evaluating Educational Robots and their activities. This paper presents the rationale behind the proposed e-Robot Project, an online community based research resource aimed at gathering data on the use of educational robotics. Collating the data against ERA is an iterative process that will simultaneously verify and improve ERA, which in turn will inform the design and application of educational robotics. e-Robot involves all aspects of the research process from research design to meta-analysis. The project can run indefinitely and will encourage participation from student teachers, teachers, researchers, developers, administrators, politicians and other interested parties

Semantic change in portuguese: Considering cerrado and vereda

© 2020, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Press. All rights reserved. This paper highlights the process by which meaning instantiates itself in word formation and discusses how semantic change installs subsequently in them, in this case, the Portuguese words cerrado and vereda. These two words have long individual histories that can be tracked back to their Latin or Celtic etymons, cerrado rooted in the origin of the Latin verb serāre, which gave origin to the Portuguese verb cerrar (to close, to seal) and vereda (narrow path) derived from the Latin word veredus (horse), which has its root in the Celtic word voredos. Yet, in the modern Brazilian context, Cerrado designates a particular ecosystem, the second largest biome in the country, that of short, closely-packed trees and foliage, and Vereda, a verdant subsystem of the same ecosystem. The discussion tracks the linguistic movement to arrive at these current meanings, showing how understanding the “history” of a word helps to understand both the uniqueness of its morpho-phonological and semantic constitution, as well as that of its relationship with the object it designates in the empirical world

Silk physico-chemical variability and mechanical robustness facilitates intercontinental invasibility of a spider.

There are substantive problems associated with invasive species, including threats to endemic organisms and biodiversity. Understanding the mechanisms driving invasions is thus critical. Variable extended phenotypes may enable animals to invade into novel environments. We explored here the proposition that silk variability is a facilitator of invasive success for the highly invasive Australian house spider, Badumna longinqua. We compared the physico-chemical and mechanical properties and underlying gene expressions of its major ampullate (MA) silk between a native Sydney population and an invasive counterpart from Montevideo, Uruguay. We found that while differential gene expressions might explain the differences in silk amino acid compositions and protein nanostructures, we did not find any significant differences in silk mechanical properties across the populations. Our results accordingly suggest that B. longinqua's silk remains functionally robust despite underlying physico-chemical and genetic variability as the spider expands its range across continents. They also imply that a combination of silk physico-chemical plasticity combined with mechanical robustness might contribute more broadly to spider invasibilities