An exploration into the criteria used in assessing design activities with adaptive comparative judgment in technology education

peer-reviewedThe use of design assignments for teaching, learning, and assessment is considered a signature of technology education. However, there are difficulties in the valid and reliable assessment of features of quality within designerly outputs. In light of recent educational reforms in Ireland, which see the introduction of classroom-based assessments centring on design in the technology subjects, it is paramount that the implementation of design assessment is critically considered. An exploratory study was conducted with a first year cohort of initial technology teacher education students (N = 126) which involved them completing a design assignment and subsequent assessment process through the use of adaptive comparative judgement (ACJ). In considering the use of ACJ as a potential tool for design assessment at post-primary level, data analysis focused on criteria used for assessment. Results indicate that quantitative variables, i.e. the amount of work done, can significantly predict performance (R2 = .333, p < .001), however qualitative findings suggest that quantity may simply align with quality. Further results illustrate a significant yet practically meaningless bias may exist in the judgement of work through ACJ (ϕ = .082, p < .01) and that there was need to use varying criteria in the assessment of design outputs

Pre-service and in-service teachers’ perceptions on the integration of children’s literature in mathematics teaching and learning in Ireland

The beneficial role that children’s literature plays in facilitating the meaningful integration and advancement of literacy and numeracy in the primary mathematics classroom has been well validated by research findings internationally. In Ireland, supporting the development of literacy and numeracy is a key educational priority. Consequently, a myriad of policy initiatives such as the Literacy and Numeracy for Learning and Life strategy have been introduced. All aim to address concerns about young people’s lack of basic literacy and numeracy skills and to consider new teaching and learning modalities to enhance same. Despite this, no official emphasis is given to incorporating literature in the Irish primary school mathematics curriculum. Therefore, it is pertinent and timely that this study seeks to ascertain pre-service and in-service teachers’ views on the use of literature to support mathematics teaching and learning and to investigate perceived barriers to and enablers for the integration of children’ literature in the mathematics classroom in Ireland. The analysis of the findings will be framed using Ajzen (1991)’s Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model. This research is part of a large international research collaboration (see www.mathsthroughstories.org), in which the beliefs of teachers with respect to children’s literature are investigated

Conceptualising examinable physical education in the Irish context: Leaving Certificate Physical Education

peer-reviewedA Physical Education Development Group (PEDG) was responsible for constructing a new school subject curriculum, Leaving Certificate Physical Education (LCPE), in Ireland. This paper provides an insight into this development group and explores the process of curriculum development, and the influence of roles and power-ratios within the group, in the construction of the LCPE curriculum. Figurational sociology concepts (Elias, 1978) were drawn on to make sense of the curriculum makers’ experiences. Interviews were conducted with 10 PEDG members. The findings suggest that the members’ roles had very little, if any, influence on the curriculum development process. Findings also revolved around the unbalanced power-ratios which existed in the PEDG and highlighted the socially powerful position of ‘strong, well-established’ (in the academic field of curriculum development – participant's words) members and the other members (predominantly representing practicing teachers). We express concern for the role of teachers in the curriculum process and argue that they play a crucial and significant role in the school subject curriculum development process. This paper supports Goodson’s (1983) and Penney’s (2006) conceptualisation of the contested and socially constructed nature of the curriculum development process.peer-reviewe

Reading from nowhere: assessed literary response, Practical Criticism and situated cultural literacy

School examinations of student responses to literature often present poetry blind or “unseen”, inviting decontextualised close reading consistent with the orientation-to-text associated with Practical Criticism (originating in the UK) and New Criticism (originating in the USA). The approach survives in the UK after curricular reforms and government have promulgated cultural literacy as foundational for learning. How is cultural literacy manifest in student responses to literature? To what extent can it be reconciled with Practical Criticism where the place of background knowledge in literary reading is negligible? This article explores their uneasy relationship in pedagogy, curricula and assessment for literary study, discussing classroom interactions in England and Northern Ireland where senior students (aged 16–17) of English Literature consider Yeats’ “culture-making” poem “Easter, 1916”. Using methods where teachers withhold contextual information as they elicit students’ responses, the divergent responses of each class appear to arise from differing access to background knowledge according to local though superficially congruent British cultures. The author proposes “situated cultural literacy” to advance the limited application of Practical Criticism in unseen tasks, acknowledge Richards’ original intent, and support the coherence of assessment with curricular arrangements invoking cultural literacy as a unifying principle