Reconceptualising Information Processing For Education

This book presents a novel conceptualisation of universal information processing systems based on studies of environmental interaction in both biological and non-biological systems. This conceptualisation is used to demonstrate how a single overarching framework can be applied to the investigation of human learning and memory by considering matter and energy pathways and their connections. In taking a stance based on everyday interactions, as well as on scientific practices, the conceptualisation is used to consider educational theories and practices, exemplified by the widely cited cognitive load theory. In linking these theories and practices more closely to scientific thinking, the book embraces an holistic approach to informational interactions, not limited to conceptualisations of pattern, signal or meaning. The book offers educational researchers and educators an opportunity to re-think their approach to instruction – to take all facets of student learning environments into account in increasing human knowledge, skills and experiences across society.

Feedback is a crucial element of teaching, learning and assessment. There is, however, substantial evidence that staff and students are dissatisfied with it, and there is growing impetus for change. Student Surveys have indicated that feedback is one of the most problematic aspects of the student experience, and so particularly in need of further scrutiny. Current practices waste both student learning potential and staff resources. Up until now the ways of addressing these problems has been through relatively minor interventions based on the established model of feedback providing information, but the change that is required is more fundamental and far reaching. Reconceptualising Feedback in Higher Education, coming from a think-tank composed of specialist expertise in assessment feedback, is a direct and more fundamental response to the impetus for change. Its purpose is to challenge established beliefs and practices through critical evaluation of evidence and discussion of the renewal of current feedback practices. In promoting a new conceptualisation and a repositioning of assessment feedback within an enhanced and more coherent paradigm of student learning, this book: • analyses the current issues in feedback practice and their implications for student learning. • identifies the key characteristics of effective feedback practices • explores the changes needed to feedback practice and how they can be brought about • illustrates through examples how processes to promote and sustain effective feedback practices can be embedded in modern mass higher education. Provoking academics to think afresh about the way they conceptualise and utilise feedback, this book will help those with responsibility for strategic development of assessment at an institutional level, educational developers, course management teams, researchers, tutors and student representatives.

As reform in all sectors of education continues, it is becoming increasingly important that we develop a rich understanding of what "intelligence" is, and how it can be improved. Reflecting current views on the manifestation, development, and assessment of human intelligence, this volume addresses a rich diversity of theoretical, methodological, and applied issues -- a number of which have not been raised previously. The contributors to this collection -- highly regarded experts from various countries -- propose perspectives for future research, their intent being not so much to predict the future, but to help shape it.

Reconceptualizing Disability in Education provides an essential critical exploration of problematic discourses, practices, and pedagogies that inform how disability is presently understood and responded to within the field of education. Luigi Iannacci interrogates and destabilizes ableist grand narratives that dominate every aspect of how disability is linguistically, bureaucratically, procedurally, and pedagogically configured within education. Ultimately, this book seeks to forward human rights for people with disabilities in educational contexts by clarifying and operationalizing inclusion so that it is not just a model necessitated by a hierarchy of legality, but rather a set of beliefs and practices based on critical analyses and a reconceptualization of current understandings and responses to disability that prevent inclusion and human rights from being realized. As the book is grounded in reconceptualist theorizing, it draws on multiple perspectives—including critical disability theory, post-modernism, critical theory, critical pedagogy, and social constructivism—to deconstruct and destabilize what is currently taken for granted about disability and those ascribed disabled identities within education. A variety of personal, professional, research experiences and data are offered and drawn on to critically address questions regarding philosophical, epistemological, pedagogical, organizational, economic, and leadership issues as they relate to disability in education. Critical incidents, interviews, documents, and artifacts are drawn on and narratively presented to explore how disability is presently configured in language, identification, and placement processes, discourses, pedagogies, and interactions with students deemed disabled, as well as their parents/caregivers. This critical narrative approach fosters alternative ways of thinking, speaking, being, and doing that forward a human rights focused model of disability that sees as its mandate the amelioration of people with disabilities within education.

A Modern Guide to Networks highlights the key dimensions of today’s networks, advancing knowledge of how networks operate and how they will likely function in the future. Combining academic perspectives with practice-based insights, it pushes disciplinary boundaries and provides unique insight into researching and participating in social networks.

Over the past ten years there has been increased interest in research on various aspects of teacher education, ranging from the preparation of teachers to continuing professional development. The increase of interest in how teachers become competent in very complex social settings is a result of a general recognition by researchers and policy makers alike that teachers are the key to any serious efforts at educational reform. This book addresses a variety of issues surrounding the field of inquiry into teaching practice that has become known as 'self-study', equivalent in many ways to the 'action research' movement, but at tertiary level.

Physical education curricula evolved to emphasize physical training, personal hygiene, character development, fitness development, sports competency, and health. These emphases led to different ways to conceptualize the curricula for primary and secondary schools. This book raises a need to re-conceptualize the physical education curriculum and proposes a life-scan perspective for physical education curriculum conceptualization. Reconceptualizing Physical Education proposes a conceptual framework to focus on the life journey of physical activity, which is guided by the monist perspective and a lifelong approach to physical literacy. Section I of the book lays out important theoretical articulation for a two-dimensional framework with the goal of educating the learner to take a lifelong perspective to personal health and physically active lifestyles. Section II presents curriculum frameworks designed for primary schools and secondary schools. In each framework chapter, the details of content and learning tasks are discussed in terms of the two-dimensional functions. Each framework may be used directly for curriculum development. The book is intended for curriculum scholars and researchers in physical education, graduate students in health and physical education curriculum studies, and teachers in physical education and health education. It may also be of interest of researchers and graduate students in kinesiology fields and public health.

Prompted by the ongoing debate among science educators over ‘nature of science’, and its importance in school and university curricula, this book is a clarion call for a broad re-conceptualizing of nature of science in science education. The authors draw on the ‘family resemblance’ approach popularized by Wittgenstein, defining science as a cognitive-epistemic and social-institutional system whose heterogeneous characteristics and influences should be more thoroughly reflected in science education. They seek wherever possible to clarify their developing thesis with visual tools that illustrate how their ideas can be practically applied in science education. The volume’s holistic representation of science, which includes the aims and values, knowledge, practices, techniques, and methodological rules (as well as science’s social and institutional contexts), mirrors its core aim to synthesize perspectives from the fields of philosophy of science and science education. The authors believe that this more integrated conception of nature of science in science education is both innovative and beneficial. They discuss in detail the implications for curriculum content, pedagogy, and learning outcomes, deploy numerous real-life examples, and detail the links between their ideas and curriculum policy more generally.