Characterising the determinants of fruit and vegetable consumption in pre-school children

Fruit and vegetable intake in young children in England is low compared with national recommendations. Existing interventions to improve consumption levels have a limited but positive impact. The research reported in this thesis aimed to better understand the determinants of fruit and vegetable consumption in young children, and the way in which these determinants interact. This new information will help inform the development of more effective interventions. A mixed methods approach was used to explore, and develop a model of, the determinants of fruit and vegetable provision and consumption in pre-school children. A phased approach to the research was used to develop and refine a model of determinants. At each stage, a integrative tool, the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF), was used to better understand these determinants. The TDF consists of 12 domains which capture a collection of theoretical concepts that characterise barriers and facilitators to a particular behaviour; data was coded to the corresponding TDF domains and added to the model of determinants presented at the end of each phase. Results indicated that the most influential determinants included: the role of grandparents, parental role modelling (both social influences domain), and parenting style and practices (nature of the behaviours domain). Less influential but nonetheless important determinants included: feedback from the child, support from others (both social influences domain), time, cost, and availability of fruits and vegetables (all environmental context and resources domain). It is recommended that interventions which aim to improve the fruit and vegetable intake of pre-school children, particularly the intervention techniques and modes of delivery used, are informed by the results of this thesis. This will allow for interventions that are theoretically driven and thus more likely to be effective. It is acknowledged that intervention development should take into account ‘local’ contextual factors and the complex interplay of determinants

Performance interfaces and destabilisation

Interaction with technology is occurring increasingly in public and semi-public settings and as a result the roles of spectator and performer are frequently being challenged by the deployment of computing systems. In this paper we discuss how the spectator, performer and interface feature in what we class as performance, how we might analyse their interrelation-ships and how traditional roles have become destabilised historically and technologically. In studying these relationships, we examine technological and non-technological examples from art, performance and exhibition design

Personal Inquiry: lessons learned

The paper describes a school trial carried out to support inquiry learning between formal and informal settings supported by personal mobile technology. The aim of the school trial was to explore how a first version of the PI Toolkit facilitates secondary school students in performing a personally relevant scientific inquiry both in a science classroom as well as at home. An analysis of classroom video and interviews has resulted in a set of incidents from which we have derived design guidelines and challenges for implementing technology-supported inquiry learning where personal technology is used and within which personally relevant investigations are conducted by students

The evolution of research on collaborative learning

For many years, theories of collaborative learning tended to focus on how individuals function in a group. More recently, the focus has shifted so that the group itself has become the unit of analysis. In terms of empirical research, the initial goal was to establish whether and under what circumstances collaborative learning was more effective than learning alone. Researchers controlled several independent variables (size of the group, composition of the group, nature of the task, communication media, and so on). However, these variables interacted with one another in a way that made it almost impossible to establish causal links between the conditions and the effects of collaboration. Hence, empirical studies have more recently started to focus less on establishing parameters for effective collaboration and more on trying to understand the role which such variables play in mediating interaction. In this chapter, we argue that this shift to a more process-oriented account requires new tools for analysing and modelling interactions

Learning 21st century science in context with mobile technologies

The paper describes a project to support personal inquiry learning with handheld and desktop technology between formal and informal settings. It presents a trial of the technology and learning across a school classroom, sports hall, and library. The main aim of the study was to incorporate inquiry learning activities within an extended school science environment in order to investigate opportunities for technological mediations and to extract initial recommendations for the design of mobile technology to link inquiry learning across different contexts. A critical incident analysis was carried out to identify learning breakdowns and breakthroughs that led to design implications. The main findings are the opportunities that a combination of mobile and fixed technology bring to: manage the formation of groups, display live visualisations of student and teacher data on a shared screen to facilitate motivation and personal relevance, incorporate broader technical support, provide context-specific guidance on the sequence, reasons and aims of learning activities, offer opportunities to micro-sites for reflection and learning in the field, to explicitly support appropriation of data within inquiry and show the relation between specific activities and the general inquiry process

From research to design: Perspectives on early years and digital technologies

The three papers explore how we can use existing research traditions to create challenging new directions for design and development of technologies for the early years. The papers focus on literacy, numeracy and reflections on the design process

Towards a task model for mobile learning: a dialectical approach

Our approach to understanding mobile learning begins by describing a dialectical approach to the development and presentation of a task model using the socio-cognitive engineering design method. This analysis synthesises relevant theoretical approaches. We then examine two field studies which feed into the development of the task model