Ability as an additional support need: Scotland’s inclusive approach to gifted education

No abstract available

Ability as an additional support need: Scotland’s inclusive approach to gifted education

No abstract available

Using Open Access Peer-Reviews and Pre-Printed Submissions to Improve Students’ Comprehension of Academic Writing

One of the most difficult challenges that novice learners face is to read and assess verbose, complex journal articles, filled with a mix of subject-specific jargon and intricate analyses, challenged with understanding the terminology as well as the general concepts of the work. A recent blog captures this frustration, stating, “Nothing makes you feel stupid quite like reading scientific journal article” (Ruben, 2016); whilst a follow on looks to alleviate this issue by offering insights from experienced professionals on how best to approach articles (Pain, 2016). Yet while numerous rubrics exist for improving general structuring and writing (Derntl, 2014; Hillier et al., 2016; Kording and Mensh, 2016), few if any exist on how to improve conceptual understanding; a key skill required for students to support their own academic writing with evidence-based literature. We looked to address this issue by creating a mock ‘peer-review’ assessment as part of a portfolio of skills in our Masters-level conversion course; a cohort faced with the stern challenge of having to rapidly, and independently, learn to read and comprehend academic writing from a novel discipline over a relatively short time-span. Our approach involved three stages. First a brief explanation of the peer-review process using freely available online materials from publishers (e.g. Wiley, PLOS). Next an analytical discussion of open access peer-reviews of published articles (via PeerJ, Royal Society Open Science); i.e. a learn-by-example approach. Finally, the student’s own mock peer-review of one of three open access pre-printed journal articles (via PeerJ, PsyArXiv, etc) with specific guidelines to focus on the key aspects of theory, methodology and readability. Here we present qualitative and quantitative feedback from the students as regards to how this task improved their ability to understand complex academic writing, and how it has altered their approach to reading such articles in future

Into the Woods: Building Cross-Disciplinary Opportunities for Undergraduate Dissertation Students to Conduct Research in Applied Community Settings

Across Higher Education ‘embedding employability’ in the curriculum is increasingly emphasised (HEA, 2015). For example, undergraduate programmes are encouraged to provide learning opportunities that integrate theoretical knowledge and understanding with active engagement in wider issues in the community (Marshall, in Healey, Lannin, Stibbe and Derounian, 2013). Final year projects and dissertations are a key element in the process of engaging students not only in the active process of knowledge creation, but also in supporting students to develop an understanding of how their learning and knowledge can contribute to key stakeholders (e.g., businesses, communities) in society. . However social science research within Higher Education institutions is often criticised for over reliance on university students as participants (cf. Peterson, 2001). One way to extend research opportunities for our undergraduate students and facilitate use of representative samples is through partnerships with applied community settings in final year projects. This presentation will provide a review of a number of psychology projects that have been completed through partnership with the Children’s Wood, including contributions from supervisors, students and the community partner. The Children’s Wood is a community initiative in a wild green space that aims to provide opportunities for all children within urban settings to engage in the benefits of natural environments. We will discuss the role of research collaborations within a community setting in the context of: 1) developing graduate attributes; 2) the QAA enhancement theme of ‘student transition’ (QAA 2016), 3) Glasgow University’s 2020 vision where our mission is ‘to provide an intellectually stimulating learning environment that benefits culture, society and the economy’ (p 7)

Into the Woods: Building Cross-Disciplinary Opportunities for Undergraduate Dissertation Students to Conduct Research in Applied Community Settings

Across Higher Education ‘embedding employability’ in the curriculum is increasingly emphasised (HEA, 2015). For example, undergraduate programmes are encouraged to provide learning opportunities that integrate theoretical knowledge and understanding with active engagement in wider issues in the community (Marshall, in Healey, Lannin, Stibbe and Derounian, 2013). Final year projects and dissertations are a key element in the process of engaging students not only in the active process of knowledge creation, but also in supporting students to develop an understanding of how their learning and knowledge can contribute to key stakeholders (e.g., businesses, communities) in society. . However social science research within Higher Education institutions is often criticised for over reliance on university students as participants (cf. Peterson, 2001). One way to extend research opportunities for our undergraduate students and facilitate use of representative samples is through partnerships with applied community settings in final year projects. This presentation will provide a review of a number of psychology projects that have been completed through partnership with the Children’s Wood, including contributions from supervisors, students and the community partner. The Children’s Wood is a community initiative in a wild green space that aims to provide opportunities for all children within urban settings to engage in the benefits of natural environments. We will discuss the role of research collaborations within a community setting in the context of: 1) developing graduate attributes; 2) the QAA enhancement theme of ‘student transition’ (QAA 2016), 3) Glasgow University’s 2020 vision where our mission is ‘to provide an intellectually stimulating learning environment that benefits culture, society and the economy’ (p 7)

Moving beyond the ‘language problem': developing an understanding of the intersections of health, language and immigration status in interpreter-mediated health encounters

Health systems internationally are dealing with greater diversity in patient populations. However the focus on ‘the language problem’ has meant little attention is paid to diversity within and between migrant populations; and how interpreted consultations are influenced by intersecting migratory, ethnicity and sociodemographic variables. Our analysis of the experiences of patients, health care providers and interpreters in Scotland evidences the need to move beyond language, addressing multiple hidden inequalities in health care access and provision that operate in both clinic and, especially, home-based settings. We call for a practice-evidenced research agenda promoting cultural communication across health care and home settings, acknowledging immigration status as a social determinant of health. Sur le plan international, des systèmes de santé font face à une diversité croissante dans ses populations de patients. Cependant, l’accent sur ‘le problème de langue’ se traduit dans une manque d’attention à la diversité a l’intérieur même et entre des populations des migrants; et la façon par laquelle des variables migratoire, ethnique et sociodémographique influencent elles-mêmes des consultations interprétées. Notre analyse des expériences des patients, des professionnels fournissant de soins de santé et des interprètes offre des preuves du besoin de dépasser le problème de langue. Et en faisant cela, nous adressons des multiples inégalités, souvent cachées dans des contextes de soins de santé, dans les milieux clinique et domicile. Nous proposons un programme de recherche basé sur la pratique, qui favorise la communication culturelle dans des milieux clinique et domicile, et qui reconnait le statut d’immigration comme un déterminant social de la santé

A Cross-National Comparison of School Students' Perceptions Regarding High Performing Peers

This cross-national scenario based study exam-ined fourth-grade students’ perceptions of high-performing classmates in terms of their ex-pected intellectual abilities, positive social qual-ities and popularity among their peers across seven countries. The overall results show that high academic achievements predominantly lead to positive expectations within the peer group. However, pronounced differences were found between the countries. The results indi-cated that students from Spanish-speaking countries viewed their potential high-perform-ing peers most favorably, followed by students from Australia, the United Kingdom and Ger-many. The least favorable expectations, but by no means negative attitude, were exhibited by students from the two East-Asian countries Ko-rea and Vietnam. In contrast, the respondents’ gender and the gender of the hypothetical suc-cessful classmates had less influence on student perceptions of high-performers. These findings have implications for the educational provision of high performing students in different cross-national contexts

Embedding data skills in research methods education: preparing students for reproducible research

Many initiatives to improve reproducibility incentivise replication and encourage greater transparency without directly addressing the underlying skills needed for transparent and reproducible data preparation and analysis. In this paper, we argue that training in data processing and transformation should be embedded in field-specific research methods curricula. Promoting reproducibility and open science requires not only teaching relevant values and practices, but also providing the skills needed for reproducible data analysis. Improving students’ data skills will also enhance their employability within and beyond the academic context. To demonstrate the necessity of these skills, we walk through the analysis of realistic data from a classic paradigm in experimental psychology that is often used in teaching: the Stroop Interference Task. When starting from realistic raw data, nearly 80% of the data analytic effort for this task involves skills not commonly taught— namely, importing, manipulating, and transforming tabular data. Data processing and transformation is a large and inescapable part of data analysis, and so education should strive to make the work associated with it as efficient, transparent, and reproducible as possible. We conclude by considering the challenges of embedding computational data skills training in undergraduate programmes and offer some solutions