Ros Fisher

Breaking up the writing process: how wikis can support understanding the composition and revision strategies of young writers

Understanding how best to support immature writers in the development of their understanding of the writing process is an important concern for researchers and teachers. Social technologies have become key features of leisure and work place writing, yet knowledge about how to design educational settings that take full advantage of the affordances of Web 2.0 technologies to support early writing is scarce. This paper presents a small-scale study that investigated how writing in a wiki environment might facilitate and support students’ use of composition and revision strategies. Our findings show that wikis can enlarge young writers’ experience of the process of composition and revision both through their own efforts and by observing the process in others. In this study, students employed a wide range of types of revisions, both surface and text-based changes. These revisions took place during the process of composition as well as at the end. It is argued here that writing in a wiki not only provides young writers with experience of a mode of composition prevalent in the contemporary work environment, but also breaks up the process of writing in a way that may support students’ understanding of the processes of composition and revision.

Young Writers' Construction of Agency

This paper considers young learners’ construction of agency in the context of classroom writing lessons. It draws on data from the Esmée Fairbairn-funded project, From Talk to Text: Using Talk to Support Writing, which investigated the relationship between talk and writing in early years classrooms. The paper reports on results from in-depth interviews with pairs of children in six classrooms in the south of England. It is argued that, although human beings have the ability to shape and influence their lives, this capacity is circumscribed by the context within which their activity is located. In order to examine human agency, it is necessary to explore the social contexts and cultural tools that shape the development of human ways of acting. Data presented here indicate a sense of agency in young writers’ classroom choices but raise questions about the efficacy of these choices.

Understanding intercultural transitions of medical students.

Objectives The aim of this research was to explore the transition of medical students to an international branch campus of a medical university established in Bahrain. Methods In order to gain insights into this transition, we explored two culturally diverse systems of learning of the university and the local schools in Bahrain, using Communities of Practice as a lens for understanding transitions. Focus groups were conducted with secondary school teachers and first year medical students. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were conducted with university lecturers. Results The findings suggest that, while Communities of Practice have been influential in contextualising transitions to university, this model does not seem to help us to fully understand intercultural transitions to the case-study university. Conclusions The research emphasises that more attention should be given to learner individual agency within this theory as a framework for understanding transitions. It also challenges approaches within medical education that attempt to standardise systems of learning through acquisition of established practices.

Adopting Western Models of Learning to Teaching Science as a Means of Offering a Better Start at University

The most recent developments in secondary school science education in Bahrain include adopting inquiry-based curricula. This initiative is part of the government’s educational improvement vision which aims at aligning education in Bahrain with other international models and to produce graduates who are able to access higher education in many educational systems.

Book Review: Dimensions of Literacy: A Conceptual Basis for Teaching Reading and Writing in School Settings (2nd edition)

and speech training’ (p. 27), was firmly dealt with by Stoel-Gammon in Chapter 4. The evidence from a pre-post operative treatment study where a non-treated comparison group of children with Down syndrome was also included (Parsons, Iacono & Rozner, 1987) showed that tongue reduction in children with Down syndrome does not aid the development of intelligible speech. Chapters 3 and 5 on short-term memory and lexical development were my personal favourites. Given the possible causal link between short-term memory processes, phonological representation and lexical development, I would have preferred to read Chapters 3, 4 and 5 as a whole. This could have been achieved by clustering chapters into subsections each with their own research question and with a clinical section where the implications of the research were clearly stated. Of course, this design would have been contrary to the modular approach of the editors. On the whole I felt that the modular editorial stance of the book perhaps constrained the overall outcome, both from a theoretical and a clinical perspective. The theoretical background and clinical expertise of the individual contributors makes this a very welcome volume. As the editors acknowledge, there are still some very large gaps in the evidence base, so publishing this book was always going to run the risk of being premature. It is likely that having a clear description of up-to-date research which is written with the aim of informing practice will be a very useful resource. I came away from reading this book with a feeling that the editors respect the special population with whom they work, they respect the parents and carers of children with Down syndrome, and they respect the professionals who work with them. If this volume is going to have an impact on clinical practice then perhaps this respectful approach to the clinical field is one of its major strengths.