Bruce Allen Knight

Towards Inclusion of Students with Special Educational Needs in the Regular Classroom

This article discusses the philosophy of inclusion before outlining the advantages and some concerns of implementing inclusion into classroom practice. Advice is given on school policy, and the concept of ‘guided internality’ is introduced. The author warns against reproducing the features of a segregated school in a mainstream setting.

Assessing Teachers’ Beliefs about Literacy Acquisition: the Development of the Teachers’ Beliefs About Literacy Questionnaire (TBALQ)

In this article the authors describe the development of an instrument to measure change in teachers’ beliefs about how children acquire early literacy skills and how these skills should be taught. The questionnaire was originally designed for use in the evaluation of affective outcomes for teachers from literacy inservice training and development programmes. The content of the questionnaire has also proved to be of value as a focus for discussion in school staff meetings. Information is provided here on the design, development, validity and reliability of the instrument. The authors invite comment and feedback from researchers who may use the scale. The instrument may be particularly useful in countries where teachers’ beliefs and practices have been influenced to varying degrees by the ‘whole language’ versus ‘skills-based instruction’ debate.

Cognitive Theory and the Use of Computers in the Primary Classroom

Research investigating the role of computers in the primary classroom is closely linked to the body of knowledge concerned with theories of learning and child development. Research is presented as an attempt to provide scientifically supportable reasons why computers are effective in education. Having established a theoretical base for computer use in primary classrooms, this paper then examines the educational application of cognitive theory to classroom instruction.

Maximizing the Potential of Mentoring: A Framework for Pre-Service Teacher Education.

Within the professional placement component of pre-service teacher education, mentoring has become a strategy that is used during the practical application of learning to teach. In this paper, we examine mentoring in the pre-service teacher education context by proposing a theoretically based framework for mentoring in this context. Firstly, the nature of mentoring along with mentoring in the context of pre-service teacher education is explored. A mentoring framework that has been developed to enable pre-service teacher educators to maximize the potential use of mentoring during the professional placement component of a pre-service teacher education degree is then proposed.

Supporting beginning male teachers as they transform to skilled professionals

There has been much media speculation and general conversation about the crisis of masculinity, the lack of male role models – in particular, the lack of fathers, and how many boys are becoming a ‘lost’ generation. An 2002 Australian House of Representatives report ‘Boys: Getting it right’ investigated this issue in depth and made recommendations to the Australian Minister of Education, Science and Training concerning policy direction and strategies that could be developed for teacher education courses relating to boys and boys educational needs. The research reported here was designed to investigate the needs of male teachers as they enter their professional life in schools. This research is significant because it addresses a major area of concern, namely the retention of newly qualified male teachers in both primary and secondary school environments, as well as issues related to the male identity and the impact of older beginning teachers as they enter the profession.

Teaching Students With Special Needs

“It is clear that in an international setting the use of the term ‘special educational needs’ leads to confusion because it means different things for different countries” (OECD, 2005, p. 12). Inclusive education is today more broadly defined as a reform that supports diversity amongst all learners (UNESCO, 2001). Its aim is to “eliminate social exclusion that is a consequence of attitudes and responses to diversity in race, social class, ethnicity, religion, gender and ability” (Ainscow, 2005, p. 109). For this chapter then, the term will be used to include students with difficulties in learning, students with disabilities, students whose first language is not English and those who are disadvantaged and thus require resources such as specialist personnel and materials so that they can access the curriculum more effectively. The focus of this chapter is on teaching students with special needs but first to put this into perspective it is necessary to outline the complexity of needs and behaviours of students and then to briefly review the way in which governments implemented policy and how students with special needs were taught in the past.

Neo‐liberal higher education policy and its effects on the development of online courses

This paper discusses the managerialist approach to developing and implementing systems for flexible delivery of educational systems in the Australian university sector. Rapid advances in communication technologies have enabled the education sector to provide greater flexibility and diversity in the traditional areas of mixed delivery and distance education. Notes that educational policy is being shaped by neo‐liberal ideology, leading to systems of flexible delivery in which a concern with economic worth and efficiency can override the purpose of such systems. Asserts that, in order to develop effective online flexible learning systems, universities need to plan for, and invest heavily in, adequate programs to train academic staff in all aspects of the delivery of courses in the online flexible learning systems and to provide incentives to academics to become e‐moderators and managers of online flexible learning systems.

Mentoring amongst academics in Australia: A case study

A descriptive case study explored the general characteristics of mentoring relationships and the effects of these relationships amongst academics. An adult developmental theoretical framework was utilised in researching the problem statement, developing the survey instrument and analysing the data. The sample selection consisted of the 551 academics from Lecturer A to Professor at one Australian university. Positive survey responses supported the literature that describes a variety of significant favourable developments as a result of mentoring relationships. The majority of the respondents found the mentoring experience valuable for the mentee. Increased self-confidence was indicated most frequently as a positive change. Recommendations included several areas that warrant future research. Mentoring in Australia, particularly in academia, needs further study. Enhancing formal and informal mentoring relationships in the academic setting seems important.

Eye Tracking and the Learning System: An Overview

In everyday and learning tasks, the eyes have, firstly, the roles of locating and recognizing objects and then, secondly, directing the actions to make use of them (Land & Tatler 2009). The use of eye tracking can reveal important aspects about students’ learning processes. Because eye tracking provides insights into the allocation of visual attention, it is very suited to study differences in learners’ attentional processes. In this section of the book, the contributions focus on the visual processes that occur when participants are performing a task.

The Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE) used in an Australian context

Abstract Australian results on PISA 2000 (Program for International Student Assessment; OECD, 2002) show polarised reading achievement, with large proportions of strong readers (>40%) but also large proportions of weak readers (>30%). From the results it would seem that current instruction meets many readers’ needs, but not those of this lower third. With reading accuracy not emphasised in Australian reading instruction in recent decades, reading accuracy difficulties may underlie this weak achievement. This paper discusses issues that underlie the optimising of reading instruction in Australia, the importance of applied research at school level in resolving these issues, and the merits of use of rigorous reading accuracy tests in this research. The Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE) is discussed as a potential test for gathering such evidence and data, and the findings from testing of 1200 students in one Queensland region are discussed.