Creativity and Enquiry in Action: a case study of cross-curricular approaches in teacher education

The current Key Stage 3 National Curriculum for England orders that our education foster determination, adaptability, confidence, risk-taking, enterprise, creativity and enjoyment in a cross-curricular context in pupils. To appreciate these dimensions student teachers need to have multiple opportunities to experience such a curriculum for themselves. However, initial teacher education is an intense and demanding experience; student teachers veer between phases of basic survival and personal innovation as they develop their individual pedagogy and personal philosophy. For new secondary teachers their own subject specialism forms a core feature of their emerging professional identity and can act as a barrier to collaborative practice beyond that specialism. This paper discusses one example of a cross-curricular approach in which Art and Geography PGCE students reflect on their experiences of a collaborative event designed to break down subject barriers while exploiting the potential of subject specialism. Data collected from semi-structured interviews conducted with a sample of students during the two-day event is discussed. Data revealed that critical outcomes of the event included the practice and development of genuine collaboration, negotiation, teamwork, and leadership

Assessing the Early Impact of School of One: Evidence from Three School-Wide Pilots

For more than 150 years, education has been organized around classrooms in which one teacher attempts to meet the needs of a large group of students who have a wide range of prior experiences, knowledge, and ways of learning. This structure makes it exceedingly difficult to ensure that all students meet the same standards of performance. School of One (SO1) is an innovative, technology-enhanced math program that seeks to "meet students where they are," by creating individual learning plans, offering multiple teaching strategies, and using daily assessments to monitor progress and adapt lessons as needed. This report evaluates SO1's impact on students' state test scores during the first year of school-wide implementation in three New York City middle schools. It also presents exploratory analysis examining whether exposure to more SO1 material, or mastery of SO1 skills, is associated with improved math performance. Given the early stage of the program's development, the authors caution that the evaluation should not be interpreted as a definitive assessment of SO1's effectiveness. Rather, the findings provide a preliminary assessment of SO1's initial impact on students' math achievement and offer insights that may contribute to the program's development and inform future research

What's in a face? :exploring components of social perception and social cognition in Williams syndrome and autism

PhD ThesisThe social profiles seen in Williams syndrome (WS) and autism (ASD) have often been cited as mirror opposites of one another, with hyper-sociable behaviours seen in Williams syndrome and a disinterest in social engagement evidenced in autism. Studies investigating the social-perceptual abilities of individuals with these neurodevelopmental disorders have found overlapping profiles, with a tendency towards using more featural processing strategies when interpreting information from faces, and deficits in recognising and interpreting the various facial cues that provide social information. It is therefore likely that differences in social approach behaviours in the two groups are driven by a more social-cognitive mechanism. The focus of this thesis was on answering the overarching question: What meaning do faces and socially relevant stimuli have for children with Williams syndrome and autism? Six experiments examined the recognition, attribution, description and understanding of emotions and social cues from faces and socially relevant scenes, amongst WS and ASD individuals relative to their typically developing peers. It was found that the social-perceptual profiles of individuals with the neurodevelopmental disorders were markedly similar, with accuracy for identifying emotions being at nonverbal mental (but not chronological) age level. A tendency towards differences emerged in terms of the types of attribution and descriptions that individuals made, with those with ASD focusing more on physical aspects of social and non-social stimuli whilst individuals with WS showed more of an atypicality in the understanding of emotions and social contexts. The lack of any clear differentiation between individuals with ASD and WS in both the social-perceptual and social-cognitive domains is in line with recent research pointing to the extreme heterogeneity seen in these groups. The issue of overlaps and dissociations within such heterogeneous groups provides the theoretical framework for this thesis

New York City School Survey 2008-2010: Assessing the Reliability and Validity of a Progress Report Measure

A growing number of cities and states are using surveys to collect vital information about school climate from students, teachers and parents. The New York City Department of Education's (DOE) annual survey of parents, students, and teachers is the largest of its kind in the United States. Since 2010, the Research Alliance has been working with the DOE to assess the reliability and validity of the survey's measures. This technical report provides an account of our statistical exploration of the School Survey

Fireside Chat with Dean Cole and Notre Dame Law Student Rachel Schneider

Dec 13, 2022 Dean G. Marcus Cole and Rachel Schneider \u2723 share their journeys to Notre Dame Law School, their connection to the Order of St. Thomas More, and the impact your gifts have on Notre Dame Law students