Developing research capabilities in FE lecturers through practitioner led action research

This is an ESCalate development project led by Ian Minty of the UHI Millennium Institute and completed in 2007. The main aim of this project was to help develop research skills in Further Education lecturers who are involved in both Further Education (FE) and Higher Education (HE) delivery by establishing a mainly online discussion group to support practitioners. Many staff within the colleges that form UHI now teach at both FE and HE level and are increasingly expected to engage with research. However, currently there are limited links between the more traditional research establishments and staff in the colleges. Traditionally, however, college staff have not engaged in research and have therefore not necessarily developed the required skills. This project's aim was to support the development of basic research skills for such staff through the planning and execution of a small-scale project that related to one aspect of the individual's teaching practice. Action research was chosen as a methodology since it is by definition small scale and rooted in practice. It includes a final report and separate appendice

Word problems in primary mathematics : types of difficulties experienced by some "average" eight and nine year olds, and the effect of manipulating selected structural variables

This project investigates primary 4 children's difficulties when solving word problems. It consists of an exploratory study examining the feasibility of using task-based interviews in the school setting; and a main study divided into three phases. The tasks set to the children are selected/adapted word problems from SPNG textbook Stage 2. Phase 1 investigates the difficulties of forty "average" primary 4 children from five different schools. Task-based interviews are used in conjunction with an error analysis. Phase 2 makes structural alterations to six of the most difficult Phase 1 word problems to investigate more closely the possible cause of difficulty. These altered word problems are re-presented to the Phase 1 sample. The original problems are not re-presented to this sample as the task-based interviews allowed for considerable practice of these original problems. Phase 3 took place a year later than Phase 2 and presents the structurally altered word problems alongside the original problems to a different, but similar sample. This sample consists of 126 children from the five schools participating during Phase 1/2. It is suggested that the findings do not support the view that a small unvarying number of variables consistently affect problem difficulty. Rather the sources of difficulty are likely to stem from a number of highly complex interacting sources; and the language itself need not be the block it sometimes appears to be. Informal strategies were evidently important for a significant minority of children, particularly in relation to subtraction problems. This seems well worth investigating further. The use of these strategies suggested that the language of the word problem could be understood when the child could link it to his/her informal strategies. Also, given simpler numbers, the semantic implications of the problem could often be mastered

Disability, skills and employment: a review of recent statistics and literature on policy and initiatives (Research report 59)

"The Centre for Research in Education, Inclusion and Diversity at the University of Edinburgh was... commissioned to review the current literature, statistics and debates, in order to inform the Commission’s work aimed at narrowing the employment and skills gap between disabled and non-disabled people." - Page 1