‘I'm going to feel stressed,but now I know how to handle it’: reducing test anxiety and improving student well-being at GCSE     

Kerry Brown  Kevin Woods  Clare Nuttall 《Support for Learning》2022,37(2):351-372

Test anxiety has become a widespread issue in many contemporary societies, having a significant detrimental effect on the attainment, health and well-being of many young people. This paper evaluates a school-based, multimodal test anxiety intervention framework, ‘Every Little Helps’ (ELH), developed by educational psychologists and delivered to small groups of GCSE students (aged 15–16) in two secondary schools in the North West of England. A quasi-experimental, mixed methods approach was adopted. Findings suggest that ELH is helpful in reducing test anxiety amongst GCSE students. Participants report a range of helpful outcomes including an increased sense of control and competence through increased academic attainment, enhanced control of emotions and more helpful ways of thinking. Participants also report beneficial wider impacts as a result of being able to generalise learnt skills and techniques to other aspects of their lives. Implications for educational policy and practice and future research are considered.  相似文献   

Narrative therapy with an adolescent who self-cuts: a case example     

Elaine Hannen  Kevin Woods 《Educational Psychology in Practice》2012,28(2):187-214

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence identifies educational psychologists as appropriate specialists to deliver interventions to promote the emotional well-being of children and families. A role for practitioner educational psychologists in providing specific therapeutic interventions has also been proposed by commentators. The present study reports an evaluative case study of a narrative therapy intervention with a young person who self-harms. The analysis of data suggests that the narrative therapy intervention was effectively implemented and resulted in attributable gains in emotional well-being, resilience and behaviour for the young person. The authors discuss the role of the educational psychologist in delivering specific therapeutic interventions within a local authority context and school-based setting. Consideration is also made of the development of the evidence base for the effectiveness of narrative therapy intervention with young people who self-harm.  相似文献   

Feeling Deprofessionalised: the social construction of emotions during an OFSTED inspection     

Bob Jeffrey  Peter Woods 《Cambridge Journal of Education》1996,26(3):325-343

In a qualitative study of a primary school, it was found that the technicist approach of an OFSTED inspection impacted against the holistic and humanistic values of the teachers, producing a high degree of trauma among them. This trauma was not a simple emotional response of the moment, nor was it a product of school failure or lack of leadership, for neither of these applied. It was, rather, socially and politically constructed. The teachers’ reactions have to be seen against the background of government reforms over the last decade. In this context, the particular emotions released suggest that the inspection examined here had a latent function of deprofessionalisation. Professional uncertainty was induced, with teachers experiencing confusion, anomie, anxiety and doubt about their competence. They also suffered an assault on their personal selves, closely associated among primary teachers with their professional roles. This took the form of mortification, dehumanisation, the loss of pedagogic values and of harmony and changed and weakened commitment. One of the ways for teachers to avoid such negative trauma is by shifting identity and status from professional to technician.  相似文献   

When group work leaves the classroom does group skills development also go out the window?   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Colin Baskin  Michelle Barker  Peter Woods 《British journal of educational technology : journal of the Council for Educational Technology》2005,36(1):19-31

In moving towards what Lemke (1996) terms the ‘interactive learning paradigm’, higher education has adopted two key principles consistent with group learning technologies:

• ? learning is always mediated by and occurs through language ( Falk, 1997 ; Gee, 1997 ); and
• ? learning is distributed across a range of other people, sites, objects, technologies and time ( Gee, 1997 ).

A third and relatively recent principle to emerge on the higher education scene that seems to ‘contradict’ accepted views of group learning technologies is that:

• ? many universities now choose to offer ‘learning resources’ online.

This paper asks whether Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are ‘robust’ enough to support, sustain and address industry, employer and government calls for greater attention to group skills development in university graduates. Data features an examination of respondent feedback (n = 171) in an ‘ICT‐rich’ group work setting, and the subsequent ratings of group skills development over a 13‐week period. This discussion offers an account of learner outcomes by adopting Kirkpatrick's (1996) four levels of evaluation of learning as a classification scheme for determining learner satisfaction (Level One), the effectiveness of learning transfer (Level Two), its impact on practice (Level Three) and the appropriation of learning behaviours by participants (Level Four). The contrasting patterns of ICT use between female and male users in the data are discussed in relation to building social presence and producing social categories online. Differences reported here indicate that ICT group work is moving forward, but opportunities to challenge rather than reproduce existing learning relations and differences, remain largely unresolved.  相似文献   

An investigation of user perceptions and attitudes towards learning objects     

Siong-Hoe Lau  Peter C. Woods 《British journal of educational technology : journal of the Council for Educational Technology》2008,39(4):685-699

This study empirically evaluates the technology acceptance model drawn from Information Systems (IS) literature to investigate how user beliefs and attitudes influence learning-object use among higher education learners by evaluating the relationships between perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude, behavioural intentions and actual use. In the study, 601 potential learning-object users were presented with an introductory demonstration of learning objects for a Digital Systems course. Following the demonstration and practice, data on user beliefs, attitudes and intention to use learning objects were gathered, while data on actual use of learning objects was collected at the end of the semester. Subjects with prior experience using the learning objects were eliminated from further analysis, resulting in a final sample of 481 users. structural equation modelling was employed to test the hypothesised study model. The analysis showed that both the user beliefs and attitudes have significant positive relationships with behavioural intention and that behavioural intention accurately predicted the actual use of learning objects. The results extend the validity of the TAM into a learning object context and clearly pointed out that it can be used to predict users' future behaviour.  相似文献   

Investigating the relationships between informal learning and player involvement in digital games     

Ioanna Iacovides  James Aczel  Eileen Scanlon  Will Woods 《Learning, Media and Technology》2012,37(3):321-327

In the last few years, digital games have become increasingly popular with both ‘hardcore’ and ‘casual’ audiences. At the same time, it has been argued that games can be powerful learning environments, since they are seen to encourage active and critical learning through participation in affinity groups and semiotic domains but there is a need for further empirical evidence to explore how this participation occurs and how prevalent it actually is. In addition the effectiveness of games within education indicates mixed results, though it has been suggested that this may indicate that learning through immersive worlds involves a more complex understanding of learning, one that is not so easy to tie to specified learning outcomes. It would seem the area would benefit from research that seeks to develop our understanding of how player involvement and learning come together in this context. This paper presents the preliminary results of a survey carried out in order to explore these issues. The initial findings suggest that how a player identifies as a gamer relates to what they think they gain from their gaming experiences with respect to learning.  相似文献   

Assessment Needs in GCSE Examinations: Some student perspectives     

Kevin Woods 《Educational Psychology in Practice》2000,16(2):131-140

This article explains the conceptual link between the special assessment needs of disabled; GCSE examination candidates and the assessment needs of ordinary, non-disabled; candidates within the context of the available guidance. It reports the results of a study sampling the views and experiences of 66 ordinary GCSE mock examination candidates by questionnaire or interview. The findings indicate a range of potential insufficiencies in ordinary examination arrangements which are testimony to the value of a student perspective in the EP assessment of assessment needs. The results challenge the validity of the distinction between special and ordinary assessment needs as presently constructed and also suggest the utility of more evidence-based functional data. Future research could usefully elucidate how the range of GCSE examination assessment needs are manifest and for whom. This may lead to examination arrangements that are maximally inclusive and offer equality of opportunity to both disabled and non-disabled candidates alike.  相似文献   

Teachers' Understandings of Dyslexia: Implications for educational psychology practice     

Teresa Regan  Kevin Woods 《Educational Psychology in Practice》2000,16(3):333-347

This study examines teachers' understandings of dyslexia and its assessment by educational psychologists. Participants are 36 teachers in two focus groups. The results are discussed in the light of the Division of Educational and Child Psychology report on 'Dyslexia, Literacy and Psychological Assessment'. Proposals are considered for effective educational psychology practice and for further research useful to practice in this area.  相似文献   

Using Activity Theory to explore the management of General Certificate of Education (GCSE) access arrangements     

Amanda Hipkiss  Kevin A. Woods 《British Journal of Special Education》2022,49(2):190-208

Access arrangements are the way in which awarding bodies for public examinations in England, such as the General Certificate of Secondary Education, make reasonable adjustments for students with special educational needs and disabilities. SENCos have expressed concerns about the onerous nature of managing requirements for access arrangements, both administratively and practically, but there has been little explanation of why an apparently straightforward process proves so challenging. In this study, the development of a whole-school system to improve the administrative and practical management of access arrangements is used to seek to understand how the requirements set (and re-set) annually interact with school systems and processes to render the administration of access arrangements potentially complex, time-consuming and unpredictable. Scotland's flexible, school-led framework of requirements for the management of public examination assessment arrangements is highlighted as potentially more fit-for-purpose for the organisation of statutory reasonable adjustments for educational assessment.  相似文献