Podcasts about education public seminar

Dr Ann Childs, Dr Nigel Fancourt, Dr Roger Firth, Professor Ian Menter and Dr Ian Thompson, Department of Education, Oxford, give a talk for the Department of Education Public Seminar series. Abstract: During 2012, the National College for Teaching and Leadership, working in collaboration with a number of partners, designed a major research and development initiative entitled Closing the Gap - Test and Learn. The contract to run the project was awarded to CfBT who worked in partnership with CUREE and the Universities of Durham and Oxford to deliver the scheme from 2012-2015. They invited lead teaching schools in teaching school alliances to apply to take part in a national trial of seven particular intervention programmes, each of which had been identified as having significant potential in 'closing the attainment gap'. That is, they were programmes designed to improve the attainment of children who were low achievers. A total of more than 700 Schools joined the programme in its first year and bid to work with one or more of the interventions. Half of the schools went into the trial group and commenced the programme during 2014. The other half of the schools went into a control group and waited until the next academic year to undertake the programme. In all schools, a sample of pupils was identified for participation in the scheme and were given pre- and post-tests before and at the end of the Year 1 trial period. The scheme was thus designated as a form of Randomised Control Trial. In this seminar the Oxford team offer an analysis of the project as a whole, drawing not only on data gathered during its implementation but also on additional data derived from interviews with a number of participants. In particular we look at: • the 'policy origins' of the entire scheme, the ways in which it emerged out of: the development of teaching schools, the 'closing the gap' objective of the Coalition government; the desire to increase research capacity within the teaching workforce; as well as other elements; • the extent to which the overall methodology can indeed be described as a Randomised Control Trial. Although this was a very large scale initiative, the actual interventions were each carried out with relatively small numbers of pupils in a very diverse range of contexts; • the extent to which evidence emerged from the project to suggest that teachers in schools were becoming increasingly research-literate and that the 'school-led system' was developing research capacity through engagement in a scheme such as this; • the research ethics issues raised by such a large scale randomised controlled trial, and in particular the decisions around which interventions to include and continue, which leads on to an argument for a principle of educational equipoise.

Dr Ann Childs, Dr Nigel Fancourt, Dr Roger Firth, Professor Ian Menter and Dr Ian Thompson, Department of Education, Oxford, give a talk for the Department of Education Public Seminar series. Abstract: During 2012, the National College for Teaching and Leadership, working in collaboration with a number of partners, designed a major research and development initiative entitled Closing the Gap - Test and Learn. The contract to run the project was awarded to CfBT who worked in partnership with CUREE and the Universities of Durham and Oxford to deliver the scheme from 2012-2015. They invited lead teaching schools in teaching school alliances to apply to take part in a national trial of seven particular intervention programmes, each of which had been identified as having significant potential in 'closing the attainment gap'. That is, they were programmes designed to improve the attainment of children who were low achievers. A total of more than 700 Schools joined the programme in its first year and bid to work with one or more of the interventions. Half of the schools went into the trial group and commenced the programme during 2014. The other half of the schools went into a control group and waited until the next academic year to undertake the programme. In all schools, a sample of pupils was identified for participation in the scheme and were given pre- and post-tests before and at the end of the Year 1 trial period. The scheme was thus designated as a form of Randomised Control Trial. In this seminar the Oxford team offer an analysis of the project as a whole, drawing not only on data gathered during its implementation but also on additional data derived from interviews with a number of participants. In particular we look at: • the 'policy origins' of the entire scheme, the ways in which it emerged out of: the development of teaching schools, the 'closing the gap' objective of the Coalition government; the desire to increase research capacity within the teaching workforce; as well as other elements; • the extent to which the overall methodology can indeed be described as a Randomised Control Trial. Although this was a very large scale initiative, the actual interventions were each carried out with relatively small numbers of pupils in a very diverse range of contexts; • the extent to which evidence emerged from the project to suggest that teachers in schools were becoming increasingly research-literate and that the 'school-led system' was developing research capacity through engagement in a scheme such as this; • the research ethics issues raised by such a large scale randomised controlled trial, and in particular the decisions around which interventions to include and continue, which leads on to an argument for a principle of educational equipoise.

Department of Education Public Seminar delivered by Professor Theodoros Marinis on sequential bilingual children. The seminar will look at the acquisition of definiteness in sequential bilingual (L2) children, children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), and age­matched typically developing (TD) children across three languages: English, Dutch, and Greek. Accurate use of definiteness requires the acquisition of syntax, semantics, and discourse­pragmatics. Previous studies on the acquisition of definiteness have shown that L2 children and children with SLI are less accurate than TD children in the use of definite and indefinite articles and show errors of omission and/or substitution (e.g., Chondrogianni, 2008; Polite, Leonard, & Roberts, 2011; Zdorenko & Paradis, 2011). However, it is unclear whether the two groups of children have the same underlying difficulties in the acquisition of definiteness because different tasks have been used in each study and there is a lack of studies comparing the groups directly. Moreover, most studies have focused on production and very fewhave addressed the children’s comprehension. To address the acquisition of definiteness in these groups we used the same tasks in all groups: an on­line production task, involving short stories based on Schafer & de Villiers (2000), examined the use of definite and indefinite articles in different semantic and discourse­pragmatic contexts. A selfpaced listening experiment with grammatical violations tested the children’s subconscious reflex to grammatical violations caused by the on­line comprehension of sentences with article omission. The results reveal important between­group differences and shed light to their specific underlying difficulties. Moreover, they demonstrate that production data underestimate the children’s grammatical abilities.

Department of Education Public Seminar delivered by Professor Theodoros Marinis on sequential bilingual children. The seminar will look at the acquisition of definiteness in sequential bilingual (L2) children, children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), and age­matched typically developing (TD) children across three languages: English, Dutch, and Greek. Accurate use of definiteness requires the acquisition of syntax, semantics, and discourse­pragmatics. Previous studies on the acquisition of definiteness have shown that L2 children and children with SLI are less accurate than TD children in the use of definite and indefinite articles and show errors of omission and/or substitution (e.g., Chondrogianni, 2008; Polite, Leonard, & Roberts, 2011; Zdorenko & Paradis, 2011). However, it is unclear whether the two groups of children have the same underlying difficulties in the acquisition of definiteness because different tasks have been used in each study and there is a lack of studies comparing the groups directly. Moreover, most studies have focused on production and very fewhave addressed the children’s comprehension. To address the acquisition of definiteness in these groups we used the same tasks in all groups: an on­line production task, involving short stories based on Schafer & de Villiers (2000), examined the use of definite and indefinite articles in different semantic and discourse­pragmatic contexts. A selfpaced listening experiment with grammatical violations tested the children’s subconscious reflex to grammatical violations caused by the on­line comprehension of sentences with article omission. The results reveal important between­group differences and shed light to their specific underlying difficulties. Moreover, they demonstrate that production data underestimate the children’s grammatical abilities.

A talk from the Department of Education Public Seminar series given by Prof. Roumyana Slabakova (Universities of Southampton and Iowa) and Prof. Lydia White (McGill University). A much-studied phenomenon in first language (L1) acquisition concerns the fact that children have greater difficulty in interpreting sentences with pronouns than with reflexives, the so-called Delay of Principle B Effect (DPBE). To investigate this issue, we look at the performance of adult learners of English (L1s French and Spanish) on sentences with reduced and full pronouns bound by referential and quantified antecedents. We will demonstrate that advanced learners are as accurate as native speakers, and will speculate on pedagogical implications of our findings.

A talk from the Department of Education Public Seminar series given by Prof. Roumyana Slabakova (Universities of Southampton and Iowa) and Prof. Lydia White (McGill University). A much-studied phenomenon in first language (L1) acquisition concerns the fact that children have greater difficulty in interpreting sentences with pronouns than with reflexives, the so-called Delay of Principle B Effect (DPBE). To investigate this issue, we look at the performance of adult learners of English (L1s French and Spanish) on sentences with reduced and full pronouns bound by referential and quantified antecedents. We will demonstrate that advanced learners are as accurate as native speakers, and will speculate on pedagogical implications of our findings.