Coping in complex, changing classroom contexts: An investigation of the bases of pre-service teachers’ pedagogic reasoning

Despite its central role in enabling professional judgements and decision-making in teaching, pedagogical reasoning is a slippery concept and difficult to pin down. Although pedagogical reasoning is understood to inform all aspects of teaching practice, we still do not know what pedagogical reasoning looks like. In this article, I present a set of conceptual tools, using concepts from Legitimation Code Theory (Maton, 2014), to analytically explore the differences between the abstraction and complexity of ideas expressed in the pedagogical reasoning of differently qualified pre-service teachers. I argue that pre-service teachers must be able to abstract and generalise their pedagogical reasoning, working with complex, specialised concepts associated with context-independent principles, in order to distinguish the ‘formal elements’ from the ‘material elements’ of teaching (Morrow, 2005). Being able to make this distinction, I argue, is likely to set pre-service teachers up to cope in complex, changing classroom contexts

“I haven’t had the fun that is portrayed”: First-year student expectations and experiences of starting at university

Often students have many expectations, and anxieties, about what university experiences would entail. It is against this backdrop that this study explored first year students’ expectations and experiences at university.  Three hundred and twenty-two purposively selected first year pre-service teachers participated in this qualitative phenomenological research study.  Social inclusion is the theoretical framework and Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory (2014) is the conceptual and analytic framework that underpins this research. The findings indicated that participants foregrounded social interactions as crucial to them feeling included (41%) and excluded (31%) at university. After six weeks at university participants continued to regard social interactions as paramount for them feeling included (40%) but less important concerning them feeling excluded (25%). We recommend that university orientation programmes place more focus on the academic demands of university as this was an aspect that participants did not focus much on

Enough on our plate? The National School Nutrition Programme in two schools in Katlehong, South Africa

M.A. University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities (Development Studies), 2012The National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) is a nation-wide programme aimed at children in the most deprived primary and high schools in South Africa. It has a three-pronged approach to nutrition: school feeding schemes, food gardens and nutrition education. This study has researched and analysed the way in which the NSNP functions, from the creation of menus at national and provincial levels of government through to the implementation of the programme via district offices and on to the management and experience of the programme at individual schools. Two case study schools were chosen for this report. They are primary schools situated in Katlehong township which falls within the Ekurhuleni South educational district of Gauteng. Their similarities and differences have been used to highlight significant factors that impact the effective management of the programme. This study investigates if and how the NSNP is a mechanism employed by the South African government to address disadvantaged communities’ needs and how it promotes social development through the improvement of education and food security

Resourcefulness matters: Student patterns for coping with structural and academic challenges

There is general agreement that there are many structural constraints beyond students’ control which influence the degree of success that students can attain as they learn to participate in academic practice. Less understood are the patterns of students’ experiences of the socio-economic environment of their schooling and university, their views of the enabling and constraining conditions of learning and their perceptions of their agency in overcoming these conditions. The data for our study were collected through a questionnaire survey of 591 Bachelor of Education students across three years of the degree at a South African University. Several patterns of resourcefulness and levels of articulation emerged which reveal complex sets of experiences and strategies as students reflect on adversities and challenges they encountered at school and at university. We argue for an in depth understanding of the nature of student agency which recognises its role in shaping their engagement with material, social, academic and affective challenges

Psychometric properties of the Child and Adolescent PsychProfiler v5 : a measure for screening 14 of the most common DSM-5 disorders

Introduction: The Child and Adolescent PsychProfiler version 5 (CAPP v5, 2014) is a measure for screening 14 common DSM-5 disorders in children and adolescents. The separation of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Specific Learning Disorder (SLD) by subtype results in 17 screening scales covering the 14 disorders. Theoretically then, the CAPP v5 should have a 17-factor structure, however, to date no published study has confirmed this. Additionally, there has been no comprehensive evaluation of the reliability and validity of the screening scales in this measure. These were examined across two different studies. Study 1 examined support for the 17-factor model of the parent-report version of the CAPP (CAPP-PRF) in a large group of adolescents from the general community. It also examined the internal consistency reliability and discriminant validity of the factors in this measure. Study 2 examined the validity of these factors in a clinic-referred group of adolescents. Methods: In Study 1, 951 parents completed the CAPP-PRF on behalf of their adolescents [mean (standard deviation) = 14.54 years (1.66 years)]. In Study 2, 173 parents completed the CAPP-PRF on behalf of their clinic-referred adolescent children [mean (standard deviation) = 14.5 years (1.84 years)]. Adolescents also completed a number of measures and tests for the purpose of assessing their behavior, IQ, and academic abilities. Results: The results in Study 1 supported a 17-factor model, and virtually all of the factors in this model showed acceptable reliability (alpha and omega coefficients), and discriminant validity. Study 2 demonstrated good support for the validity of the scales in the CAPP-PRF. Discussion: These findings indicate acceptable psychometric properties for the CAPP-PRF, and its utility for screening the more common DSM-5 disorders in children and adolescents. Copyright © 2024 Langsford, Gomez, Houghton and Karimi

Loneliness in Michael Ondaatje's : the English patient

This dissertation attempts to show that the phenomenon of loneliness is written into Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. The Introduction offers a description of the origins of loneliness as a field of study, presents key instances of loneliness in literature, and investigates the nature of loneliness. In the first chapter, the Villa is introduced as a figural and conceptual framework for analysis. The second chapter focuses on the patient’s room and the library, leading to a discussion of personal and existential loneliness, identity and naming. The third chapter investigates social loneliness with reference to the kitchen, garden and hallway, addressing notions of race and othering, home and family. The fourth chapter discusses the body and embodiment, as well as emotion and metaphor. The dissertation argues that the stylistic, thematic and structural features of The English Patient suggest and reflect the complexities and characteristics of loneliness.M. A. (English)Englis

The two-nucleon system at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order

We consider the two-nucleon system at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N^3LO) in chiral effective field theory. The two-nucleon potential at N^3LO consists of one-, two- and three-pion exchanges and a set of contact interactions with zero, two and four derivatives. In addition, one has to take into account various isospin-breaking and relativistic corrections. We employ spectral function regularization for the multi-pion exchanges. Within this framework, it is shown that the three-pion exchange contribution is negligibly small. The low-energy constants (LECs) related to pion-nucleon vertices are taken consistently from studies of pion-nucleon scattering in chiral perturbation theory. The total of 26 four-nucleon LECs has been determined by a combined fit to some np and pp phase shifts from the Nijmegen analysis together with the nn scattering length. The description of nucleon-nucleon scattering and the deuteron observables at N^3LO is improved compared to the one at NLO and NNLO. The theoretical uncertainties in observables are estimated based on the variation of the cut-offs in the spectral function representation of the potential and in the regulator utilized in the Lippmann-Schwinger equation.Comment: 62 pp, 13 fig

Utopian or Dystopian?: Using a ML-Assisted image generation game to empower the general public to envision the future

The rise of digital technologies and Machine Learning (ML)-Tools for creative expression brings about novel opportunities for studying creativity and cognition at scale. In this paper, we present a pilot study of crea.blender SDG-an online GAN based image generation game. We designed crea.blender SDG with two goals in mind: The first, to let people create images relating to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and through them, engage in large-scale conversations on complex socioscientific problems. The second, as a fun and inspiring gateway for public participation in research, generating data for the creativity and cognition research and design community. Specifically in this pilot, we study and affirm that the design of crea.blender SDG is flexible enough to allow users to create images that express both anxiety and hope for the future; affirm that user generated images express these ideas in ways that are meaningful to people other than the original creator; and begin to investigate which specific features of images are more closely related to dystopian or utopian ideas of the future. Finally, we discuss implications for future design and research with ML-based creativity tools