Review of the Droichead Teacher Induction Pilot Programme. ESRI WP514. November 2015

The Droichead pilot programme is designed to provide whole-school support for teacher induction. The programme is innovative in being led at school level, by a Professional Support Team (PST) consisting of the principal, mentor(s) and other member(s). This working paper presents preliminary findings from a large-scale study of the programme, placing them in the context of previous international and national research on teacher induction

A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of the Relationships among Post-secondary Students’ Attitudes Toward Statistics and Statistics Achievement

Background: An understanding of statistics is essential in our data-driven world. Accordingly, successful completion of a statistics course is required for undergraduate and graduate students from many disciplines. Attitudes toward statistics is a multidimensional construct that expresses individuals’ positive or negative dispositions to statistics. A wide body of research indicates that there are statistically significant relationships among attitudes toward statistics and statistics achievement. However, the reported magnitudes of these relationships differ across studies.  Methods/Design: This review will examine the relationships among post-secondary students’ scores on the attitude components assessed by the Survey of Attitudes toward Statistics (SATS) and their statistics achievement assessed using a variety of measures. As the data allow, this review then will explore the impact of possible moderating research characteristics including, for example, those associated with research sources, institutions, courses, subjects, and the SATS and statistics achievement measures. Discussion: In the resulting journal article, this section will focus on the results and the strengths and limitations of the synthesized literature. We expect that the study will contribute to the literature on the relationship between attitudes toward statistics and achievement by synthesizing the individual research results. The availability of the required information and the quality of primary studies will be potential limitations for the current study

An Examination of Concepts of School Readiness Among Parents and Educators in Ireland

The Department of Children and Youth Affairs commissioned research through the Irish Research Council (IRC) to examine concepts of school readiness as they are understood by early years educators and managers, primary school principals, junior infant teachers and parents of children participating in the first Free Preschool Year in Ireland. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, involving interviews, an online survey and “draw and tell” sessions with children. Representative samples of FPSY settings and primary schools were selected and an online survey based on the findings of the qualitative phase was sent to 500 pre-primary settings and 500 primary schools. In this study, the concept of school readiness as understood by parents of children availing of the FPSY, and early years educators and managers, emerged as a multi-faceted and complex concept, influenced by and entwined with a range of interrelated factors at macro (policy), meso (interrelationships) and micro (pre-primary and primary) levels. These factors included children’s social and emotional skills, dispositions, language development, self-help skills, appropriate classroom behaviour and pre-academic skills. School readiness was clearly located along a maturationist-environmentalist continuum where readiness was associated with a child’s age as well as external evidence of the acquisition of specific skills. Interview and survey participants articulated a range of school readiness indicators, with significant differences in some instances between the importance allocated to these indicators by individual participant groups

Perinatal Brain Injury and Inflammation: Lessons from Experimental Murine Models

Perinatal brain injury or neonatal encephalopathy (NE) is a state of disturbed neurological function in neonates, caused by a number of different aetiologies. The most prominent cause of NE is hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy, which can often induce seizures. NE and neonatal seizures are both associated with poor neurological outcomes, resulting in conditions such as cerebral palsy, epilepsy, autism, schizophrenia and intellectual disability. The current treatment strategies for NE and neonatal seizures have suboptimal success in effectively treating neonates. Therapeutic hypothermia is currently used to treat NE and has been shown to reduce morbidity and has neuroprotective effects. However, its success varies between developed and developing countries, most likely as a result of lack of sufficient resources. The first-line pharmacological treatment for NE is phenobarbital, followed by phenytoin, fosphenytoin and lidocaine as second-line treatments. While these drugs are mostly effective at halting seizure activity, they are associated with long-lasting adverse neurological effects on development. Over the last years, inflammation has been recognized as a trigger of NE and seizures, and evidence has indicated that this inflammation plays a role in the long-term neuronal damage experienced by survivors. Researchers are therefore investigating the possible neuroprotective effects that could be achieved by using anti-inflammatory drugs in the treatment of NE. In this review we will highlight the current knowledge of the inflammatory response after perinatal brain injury and what we can learn from animal models

Understanding the knowledge demands of teaching statistics: Insights gained from examining practice

International audienceThis research examines the knowledge demands placed on 73 pre-service teachers who are observed as they plan, teach and re-teach data lessons in classrooms. Problems of practice are identified and categorized using the Ball, Thames and Phelps (2008) subdomains of common content knowledge (CCK), specialised content knowledge (SCK), knowledge of content and students (KCS) and knowledge of content and teaching (KCT). The results provide insights into the specific knowledge demands placed on early career teachers when teaching data and statistics and identifies the ways in which these knowledge demands are revealed as pre-service teachers engage in Japanese Lesson Study. The results illustrate that development of understandings in one knowledge subdomain can motivate and impact learning in another subdomain. These interrelationships were found to exist both within and between the domains of content and pedagogical content knowledge

Insights into the approaches of young children when making informal inferences about data

International audienceThere is growing awareness of the statistical reasoning abilities of young children. In this study the informal inferential reasoning skills of a class of 5-6 year old children are examined as they reason about data in the context of a week-long data investigation unit. The strategies young children use to make predictions about data are identified. A discussion ensues around what these strategies communicate about early understandings of statistical inference. The findings suggest that making inferences from data can be challenging for younger students primarily due to the powerful influence of their developing understandings of number. However, there is evidence that children possess some of the building blocks of informal inference most notably in the approaches that point to a pre-aggregate view of data. Situating data investigations within interesting and relevant contexts, alongside good teacher questioning and opportunities to listen to the reasoning of their peers, contributes to the creation of statistical environments that support and develop early understandings of inference