"White Paper is a wide-ranging prospectus for change"

Chris Husbands, director-designate of the Institute of Education, London, said: "We welcome anything which allows us to deepen and broaden our partnership with schools. The White Paper opens exciting possibilities to extend and improve collaborations between universities and schools." He was responding to the Government's White Paper, published today.

"This White Paper is a wide-ranging prospectus for change in education," said Professor Husbands.
"The proposals on the future of the teaching profession are critical.  Few things matter more to pupils' success than the quality of teachers. However, governments in England have had serious difficulty in articulating a clear vision for the teaching profession.

"This White Paper draws explicitly on the examples of some of the  world's best education systems, such as Finland and Singapore. The challenge for education professionals is to find ways to adapt and develop such examples to the often very different contexts of English schools.
"Twenty years of excellent research have given us a solid knowledge base of what world-class teacher education looks like, and it is interesting to see how the White Paper measures up.  In the best education systems, initial teacher education is based on close partnership between schools and universities, with  both working together on developing an evidence-led, highly knowledgeable profession.  
"The proposals to enhance the role of schools in teacher education could provide a basis for building more secure partnerships between the best of our schools and our universities.  The proposals for University Training Schools – especially if combined with the proposals on Teaching Schools – could provide the basis for a step change in the quality of professional preparation.

"Debate on teacher training is too often based on a now outdated view of the distinction between 'theory' and 'practice' - in almost no other profession is this distinction seen as a sensible way of organising thinking about professional learning. The opportunity – and the challenge – of the White Paper is for education professionals in England to develop innovative ways of working which genuinely go beyond these outdated distinctions.

"Universities are already working in very close partnership with schools to train teachers of the highest calibre. At the IOE we do this in a number of ways, including Teach First and other employment-based routes, and we look forward to working even more closely with schools in future.  We have a century of experience of working with London schools to improve children's lives, and we look forward with excitement to further developing this area" said Professor Husbands.

Notes:
The Institute of Education is an autonomous graduate school of education within the University of London. During the last Research Assessment Exercise in 2008, the IOE was judged to be the best HEI in the country for education research.
Any Journalist wanting more information please contact the IOE press office: James Russell on 0207 911 5556 / j.russell@ioe.ac.uk or Emily Brewer on 0207 911 5501/ e.brewer@ioe.ac.uk

"Step in early" to boost boys' literacy

Julia Douetil, Reading Recovery trainer/coordinator at the European Centre for Reading Recovery at the Institute of Education, London, responded to reports on boys' literacy. She said:
"BBC research has highlighted the number of boys who are still poor readers at age 11. Its reports are asking why investments in education are not showing up in national assessments. The answer is that it is extremely difficult to turn around a child who has failed in literacy. It is much more effective to step in early, as soon as a child shows signs of difficulty, and prevent them failing.

"That is what Reading Recovery is doing. But the number of children able to receive Reading Recovery is only just reaching high enough levels to make an impact on national figures, and the children now receiving it at age five or six won't show up in the statistics for 11-year-olds until 2015.

"The government has expressed a commitment to raising standards in literacy and closing the attainment gap. Reading Recovery is a valuable tool in achieving those goals. The government anticipate that improvements in classroom teaching, including systematic synthetic phonics, can be expected to deliver higher standards for the majority of children. Current evidence suggests that this alone will not meet the needs of the bottom 5% of the mainstream cohort.

"Even the schools that are the most effective in teaching reading, as identified by Ofsted), have up to 15% of children who did not meet national targets at end of Key Stage 1 – indicating that excellent synthetic phonics programmes may in themselves be unable to address all literacy difficulties."

Ends

For more information please contact Diane Hofkins d.hofkins@ioe.ac.uk or Emily Brewer e.brewer@ioe.ac.uk at the IOE.

Editors' notes

Reading Recovery is a school-based literacy intervention specifically designed for the 5% lowest attaining children at the age of five or six.

Last year 1,656 schools in England were able to offer Reading Recovery to the five and six year old children who were struggling most with reading and writing. Boys are over-represented among the lowest attaining children by three to two, but just over 9,000 boys were given intensive one to one support with a highly trained reading recovery teacher.

These boys had made almost no progress in literacy learning in their first year at school and nine out of ten of them were still non-readers.

The intervention worked, with almost eight out of ten boys lifted to age appropriate levels of literacy within two terms. They made five times the normal rate of progress, from reading ages of four years ten months to reading ages of six years ten months and were operating at very similar levels to girls.

Children who were so low attaining in Y1 would normally be predicted to score below national curriculum level 2 at age 7, and to go on to score at below age levels at age 11. But after Reading Recovery the number of very low attaining boys failing to reach national curriculum levels at age 7 was reduced by two thirds, with 66% gaining level 2 or above.

In 2009, seven out of the 10 highest performing primary schools in National Assessments and seven out of the 10 most improved primary schools were Reading Recovery schools.

The Institute of Education is a college of the University of London that specialises in education and related areas of social science and professional practice. In the most recent Research Assessment Exercise two-thirds of the publications that the IOE submitted were judged to be internationally significant and over a third were judged to be "world leading". The Institute was recognised by Ofsted in 2010 for its "high quality" initial teacher training programmes that inspire its students "to want to be outstanding teachers". The IOE is a member of the 1994 group, which brings together 19 internationally renowned, research-intensive universities.

Blind children – born to be musical?

28 January 2010

Children who have lost their sight because they were born prematurely are around 4,000 times more likely than sighted youngsters to develop exceptional musical abilities such as 'perfect pitch' -traditionally a marker of exceptional musical ability - according to a new study.

The research also shows that young blind children – including those with learning difficulties and autism are likely to have a greater fascination and interest in music than those with full or even partial sight.  "Blindness and learning difficulties need not prove a barrier to children's musical development and achievement – and may even be a "positive influence," says Professor Adam Ockelford, visiting research fellow at the Institute of Education, London (IOE), who carried out the study with Christina Matawa of the Wandsworth Visual Impairment Specialist Teaching Service.

Adam points out that there have been many famous blind musicians, including blues singer Ray Charles, soul musician Stevie Wonder, tenor Andrea Bocelli and Derek Paravicini, a gifted blind pianist with severe learning difficulties and autism, with whom Adam has worked for many years and who is popular on both sides of the Atlantic.
Professor Ockelford, a former Director of Education at the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), adds: "While perfect pitch is not a necessary condition for great musicianship – fewer than 20 per cent of professional musicians have it – it does seem to be necessary in the development of exceptional musicality among people with learning difficulties. Without perfect pitch, it is doubtful whether their sometimes exceptional performing abilities would ever get off the ground."The researchers observed a number of visually impaired children, who had been premature babies, in action at home and at school. They also surveyed parents, teachers and therapists, working with around 40 children, to find out whether their findings were more generally applicable. A group of parents whose children were fully sighted also completed the survey for comparison purposes.
The study found that 48 per cent of the blind children demonstrated great interest in everyday sounds, compared to 33 per cent of those who were partially sighted and 13 per cent of those who had full sight. Ninety percent of blind children were particularly keen on music, against 67 per cent of partially sighted children and 38 per cent of those with full sight. Sixty-eight per cent of the blind and partially sighted children played at least one instrument, compared to 41 per cent of the sighted group. Parents of the blind children also reported that music was particularly important as a source of comfort, helping youngsters relax and express their emotions.

Professor Ockelford comments: "Blindness from an early age is a common factor in the development of exceptional musical ability. Children's level of vision seems to be more important than their eye conditions, although there is some evidence that the effects of surviving a very premature birth may be an additional important factor in a child's developing musicality.  

"Music can allow young children to mark out events in their daily routine and can be a substitute language for children who cannot communicate in other ways. This is most important for blind children who can't see at all.
But the researchers emphasise that parents and teachers need to be aware of the different ways in which blind children learn music. While sighted children generally learn musical instruments by  taking lessons at primary age or (in their teens) copying what their friends do, blind toddlers often teach themselves by picking out tunes on a keyboard or other instrument by ear.  Learning difficulties can also have an impact on how these children gain skills, which maybe highly idiosyncratic, with consequences for adults seeking to offer support.
"Parents and teachers must be open-minded and respect how children with learning difficulties make sense of the world so that they are able to encourage and nurture their abilities," says Professor Ockelford. "The extent to which they achieve this will have a significant impact on the child's musical development."

Calling for greater investment in services and facilities to help visually impaired children realise their musical potential, he concludes: "Music has tremendous educational and therapeutic potential for blind people from infancy through to adulthood for children and young people". For those with learning difficulties it can offer an outlet of expression and an aid to their emotional development – areas which they might otherwise find particularly challenging."

The findings are presented in Focus on Music 2: Exploring the musicality of children and young people with retinopathy of prematurity, published by IOE Publications.

Ends

Further information and review copies from James Russell, 020 7911 5556, j.russell@ioe.ac.uk
Notes for editors
Focus on Music 2: Exploring the musicality of children and young people with retinopathy of prematurity, by Adam Ockelford and Christina Matawa, ISBN 978-0-85473-861-8, £12.99, paperback, 140 pages, published by Institute of Education Publications, December 2009, can be ordered from all online book retailers or directly from the IOE Bookshop,  Tel: +44(0)20 7612 6050.  Fax: +44 (0)20 7612 6407. Email: ioe@johnsmith.co.uk, www.ioe.johnsmith.co.uk.  

This study is the second in a series that is planned to examine the impact of different forms of visual impairment on the developing musicality of blind and partially sighted children and young people. Each volume will focus on the effects of a particular medical condition, which can cause varying degrees of sight loss, may result in learning difficulties, and which has been reported anecdotally to be associated with an unusual prevalence of exceptional musical abilities or interests.

The first study focused on children with septo-optic dysplasia, a congenital defect manifested by underdevelopment of the optic nerve and neural abnormalities, it can also be ordered in the same way as Focus on Music 2. The second concentrates on those with retinopathy of prematurity, which affects the immature blood vessels that would typically nourish the retinas growing at the backs of the eyes of premature babies. It accounts for between 3 and 5 percent of childhood blindness in the UK (60% in some developing countries). 

Adam Ockelford is professor of music at Roehampton University and a visiting research fellow - at the Institute of Education's International Music Education Research Centre (www.imerc.org). He was formerly director of Education at the Royal National Institute of Blind People. At the time of writing, Christina Matawa was head of music at Dorton House School for visually impaired children in Sevenoaks, Kent. She now works at the Wandsworth Visual Impairment Specialist Teaching Service.

The Institute of Education is a college of the University of London, specialising in teaching, research and consultancy in education and related areas of social science and professional practice. The Institute conducts over one-third of the educational research in the UK and last year's Research Assessment Exercise judged that 35 per cent of the work it had submitted was "world leading", while much of the remainder was of international significance.

Catching up with the middle classes – how can university access become more equitable?

While more students from poorer backgrounds are now going to university, "there is still a significant way to go in further widening participation and developing fair access to all institutions", said IOE's Director in a talk at City University this week.

In his lecture, Enhancing equity in higher education – are we making progress? Professor Geoff Whitty said more should be done to encourage and help students from lower socio-economic backgrounds into institutions seen as more "prestigious".

Although this is mainly because they lack the required qualifications, research shows that some of these students choose not to go to "top" universities even if they qualify. "This suggests that support at school and college is needed to encourage students for whom it is appropriate to apply to more prestigious higher education institutions," said Professor Whitty.

Meanwhile, evidence from Oxford Mobility Studies suggests that, as access to HE as a whole is broadening, people from middle-class backgrounds are attempting to maintain their positional advantage by attending highly prestigious institutions. So student access to the system as a whole did not mean access to the whole system for those from less advantaged backgrounds.

"This problem is now seen by sociologists as much more significant than it was during the 1970s expansion and only when both quantitative and qualitative inequalities have been successfully tackled can it reasonably be claimed that we have a equitable system."

Professor Whitty said a number of policy shifts needed to happen:
• A focus on narrowing attainment gaps much earlier in children's educational careers
• Better information and guidance provided by schools
• Regular and ongoing school-university links for all schools
• More work undertaken to encourage interest in HE in families and communities
• More sophisticated research to inform policy makers and institutional leaders.

Politicians are now taking these seriously, he noted.  "So we are making progress in getting the issues onto the agenda and in widening participation. We now need to make more progress in actually achieving equity, especially as the current competitive pressures on university places could well lead in the opposite direction if we are not very careful," he concluded.

Children with autism lack visual skills required for independence

22 December 2010

The ability to find shoes in the bedroom, apples in a supermarket, or a favourite animal at the zoo is impaired among children with autism, according to new research led by Dr Liz Pellicano of the IOE.

Surprising results from a study of 20 autistic children show that while autistic children generally outperform others in small-scale visual search tasks, they are much less efficient in large-scale search. Finding an apple on a fruit plate is a much different visual task than finding an apple in the grocery store.  Autistic children are generally better than their peers at small-scale visual tasks like the former, but large-scale tasks, like the latter, are crucial for independent living.

Pellicano and colleagues tested 20 autistic and 20 non-autistic children in a foraging game. Eighty per cent of the targets were on one side of the large space, a manipulation that would favor individuals who are drawn to understanding rule-based systems. Surprisingly, the control group outperformed the autistic children, who engaged in very inefficient searches. The researchers attribute this to an inability to form a global representation of the search space and problems with short-term spatial memory that prevent them from discerning the rules and applying them effectively

Contrary to previous studies, which show that children with autism often demonstrate outstanding visual search skills, this new research indicates that children with autism are unable to search effectively for objects in real-life situations – a skill that is essential for achieving independence in adulthood.

Dr Pellicano said: "It has long been thought that one of the strengths in autism is searching for hidden objects. Previous studies, however, have only assessed this apparent ability on computer screens or desk tops. We discovered that when people with autism are asked to search for something in a large-scale space their apparent advantage over others drops away.
"It is vital that we fully understand the strengths and disadvantages of autism so that we can help people, and especially children, with autism maximize their well-being in the long-run."
Further information:

The paper, 'Children with autism are neither systematic nor optimal foragers', by Elizabeth Pellicano, Alastair D. Smith, Filipe Cristino, Bruce M. Hood, Josie Briscoe and Iain D. Gilchrist is published this week[Monday 20 December] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Virus gives helping hand to leishmaniasis parasites

Joanna Carpenter

11 February 2011 | EN | ES

The leishmaniasis parasite can harbour a virus (in red)

Science/AAAS

A disfiguring form of the parasitic disease leishmaniasis has turned out to be triggered by a virus, raising hopes that it could easily be prevented by drugs or vaccination.

Transmitted by the sandfly, leishmaniasis is widespread across the tropics and has several forms —from the most common, cutaneous leishmaniasis, which causes skin sores, to the most serious, visceral leishmaniasis, which causes fever and is fatal if not treated.

Another form, mucocutaneous leishmaniasis, destroys the soft tissues of the nose and mouth, leaving disfiguring facial scars. It develops in people who had suffered from the cutaneous form, often many years previously.

"Nobody really understood why [one develops from the other]," Nicolas Fasel of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, a co-author of the study, told SciDev.Net.

Fasel, and colleagues from Washington University and the WHO, already knew that the leishmaniasis parasites, Leishmania braziliensis and Leishmania guyanensis, can themselves be infected with a virus.

Now they have discovered that those parasites responsible for the worst lesions carry the highest loads of this virus. When the parasite enters a human cell, the virus escapes and triggers an excessive amount of inflammation, creating the perfect environment for the parasite to take hold.

Currently mucocutaneous leishmaniasis is treated with the chemical element antimony with studies reporting a variety of success rates of 30–90 per cent.

But Fasel says the new findings, published in Science yesterday (10 February), could improve diagnosis and prevention. For example, cutaneous leishmanaisis patients whose parasites are found to be carrying the virus could be given treatment to prevent mucocutaneous disease developing.

And patients who already have mucocutaneous leishmaniasis could be given anti-inflammatory drugs alongside antimony.

"This makes the response much better," said Fasel, adding that he hopes to begin trials of this combination.

Debbie Smith, a biologist at the UK's University of York, said there is still some work to be done to verify the relationship. "They need to collect as many samples from patients as they can and confirm that there is a direct correlation between the presence of the virus and the effects they're seeing," she told SciDev.Net.

She is, however, excited about the findings: "This may open the door for new types of immunotherapy, whether that means anti-inflammatories or vaccination."

However, Jean-Claude Dujardin, head of molecular parasitology at the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp in Belgium, warned of difficulties with drug resistance. "Leishmania is very flexible and a master at subverting the host cell," he said.

Link to full paper in Science

Fish farms need monitoring technologies

Fish farming: could benefit from satellite data

Jose Aguilar-Manjarrez

[BOGOTÁ] Poor countries could reconcile the soaring demand for fish with the need to safeguard biodiversity and make the fishing sector sustainable by harnessing a raft of new technologies, according to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The farming of fish and shellfish is the fastest-growing area of animal food production, accounting for almost half of the total supply of fish for food, says The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2010, published last month (31 January).

And fish consumption is at an all-time high, said the report.

But, to ensure that wild fisheries and aquaculture continue to provide income for subsistence and small-scale fisheries — and protein for billions of people — poor countries need to embrace the internet, geographical information systems (GIS) and remote sensing, said the report. Technology has "reached the point of becoming an essential step in providing the enabling environment for the development of marine aquaculture".

The capacity to use GIS — computer hardware, software, data and personnel designed to collect, update and analyse geographically referenced information — takes up a chapter in the report.

Sensors can produce a wealth of data on temperature, the speed of the current, wave height and land and water use —whether they are on satellites, airborne devices, or the ground or are underwater.

"Spatial tools provide ways to obtain, organise, analyse and report objective and quantitative ways to allocate space among all users and stakeholders," said James McDaid Kapetsky, a specialist from the US-based consultancy company Consultants in Fisheries and Aquaculture Sciences and Technologies.

"The driver [for using these technologies] is fundamentally competition for space for fisheries and aquaculture."

The report said that GIS is already being used in developing countries, from Bangladesh to  Cambodia and from Colombia to Malawi, to monitor aquaculture development.

"The software is not costly," said José Aguilar-Manjarrez, aquaculture officer at the fisheries and aquaculture department of the Italy-based FAO. "There are many GIS and remote sensing software packages at low cost, plus the new trend is open source [free] software."

But, he said, creating infrastructure, training personnel, and collecting, processing and maintaining data are expensive processes.

In addition, some developing countries have limited understanding of the principles and methodologies associated with spatial decision-making tools in marine science. And there is a need to strengthen collaboration and data-sharing between organisations. 

John Selvaraj, specialist in fish resources management at Colombia National University, called for more training in GIS and remote sensing for undergraduate and graduate students.

The report cites Ecuador's use of the Epidemic Alert and Aquaculture Management System for Shrimp Farming (SAEMA) to monitor shrimp health in the Gulf of Guayaquil. SAEMA uses data from the satellite Landsat 7, and various multimedia technologies, to measure factors such as the monthly rate of production in the estuary.

Another example is the Chilean Aquaculture Project, which offers daily information about sea surface temperature, clarity of sea water and the amount of chlorophyll a in the water. The latter, for example, enables fish farmers to take action when they know that harmful algal blooms have multiplied to a level where they threaten farmed fish.

In Colombia, the Marine and Coastal Research Institute (Invemar) is implementing a tool called Geovisor which will help fishermen locate shoals more efficiently using satellite information.

Livestock surge may harm human health

Cattle: will rising numbers mean more disease?

[NEW DELHI] Livestock intensification in developing countries, especially in Africa and Asia, may increase the incidence of epidemics that kill both humans and animals, the Vision 2020: Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health conference, was told today.

Livestock numbers are rising sharply due to both population growth — small-scale farmers depend on livestock for their livelihoods — and the rise in affluence, leading to increased demand for milk, meat and eggs.

"The increase in density leads to increased contact between humans and animals —leading to transmission of pathogens," John McDermott, deputy director general for research at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), told SciDev.Net.

Over 60 per cent of human pathogens, and three-quarters of new human pathogens, are transmitted by animals, said McDermott and his co-author, Delia Grace, a veterinary and food safety researcher at the institute.

"Livestock," said McDermott, "is one of the biggest tools for poverty reduction but while the developed world has the capacity to deal with disease related to livestock-rearing, the cost makes this impossible for poor countries."

He said that livestock diseases are a double health problem since there is also the risk that human nutrition will be compromised if livestock die.

Rapid urbanisation may worsen the situation, he warned, if diseases move with humans, from rural areas to cities. Climate change, too, will force farmers to look for new grounds such as forests where they may interact with wildlife that carries pathogens.

Agricultural intensification in the developing world is typically focused on increasing food production and profitability, while the potential effects on human health remain largely ignored, they told the meeting (10-12 February).

Large-scale irrigation can also intensify the effect of disease, for example such as creating conditions to help the Rift Valley fever virus take hold in new regions, where occasional outbreaks kill hundreds of people and thousands of animals.

Per Pinstrup-Anderson, professor of food, nutrition and public policy at Cornell University, in the United States, said: "Contact between animal and human beings is the key issue here. Farmers need to be taught how to keep animals away from their living quarters".

McDermott said that countries should invest in disease surveillance and that this should include a participatory approach involving livestock-keepers because of their observational knowledge of disease.

Bt cotton yields come at hidden cost to farmers - study

GM has increased yields but may have exacerabated underlying problems

Flickr\World Bank Photo Collection

[NEW DELHI] Bt cotton has increased crop yields for small farmers in southern India, a study has confirmed. But the increase is less than claimed by some studies, is unlikely to be sustainable and has come at a substantial cost to the farmers.

The cotton farmers at Warangal in Andhra Pradesh, India, are known for their widespread adoption of genetically modified cotton that produces an insecticide that kills bollworm, a common pest.

Numerous studies say that planting Bt cotton increases the yield by up to 40 per cent. But there is also a 'counter-narrative' of agricultural failure, rejection of Bt cotton and even suicides attributed to use of the seeds.

Glenn Davis Stone, an anthropologist at Washington University in St Louis, United States, has conducted a study that differed from others in several ways.

First, he studied small farms in four villages in the area, comparing their outputs between 2003 and 2007. He then assessed the success not just at 'field level', based on the amount of cotton produced and pesticides used, but also at 'farm level', considering factors such as debt, income, access to labour, understanding of the technologies and indigenous knowledge.

Stone also surveyed the history of cotton growing in the area, particularly the adoption of other biotechnologies in the years before Bt cotton appeared. The study was published in the journal World Development.

Stone found that productivity rose by 18 per cent over the five-year period, which began when virtually no one used Bt cotton and ended with uptake at almost 100 per cent.

Pesticide use fell by 55 per cent, although predation by other pests, to which the cotton was not resistant, was rising.

But, for individual farmers, there were problems not revealed in these figures, the study found.

Before Bt cotton arrived, firms had deluged local farmers with proprietary hybrid cotton seeds, which dominated the markets from the mid-1990s to 2002. Farming these responsibly required skills that the farmers did not have, leading them to overuse and misuse pesticides, which caused the surge in bollworm in the first place.

The problem that Bt cotton solved, therefore, was caused by the misuse of the previous technology, said Stone.

This phenomenon of 'agricultural de-skilling', in which farmers do not understand the seeds they are planting, has continued, the study argues. By 2008 there were 281 separate branded hybrids of Bt cotton available in Warangal.  Stone has established that farmers choose which seeds to use by fad: neither they nor the vendors could explain the variation in popularity between different versions.

The technologies have damaged farmers' agricultural decision-making, making them more vulnerable to risks and losses, he said.

"My study looks at the larger context of cotton yields and argues that Bt cotton may be raising yields while exacerbating the underlying causes of distress,'' Stone told SciDev.Net.

"Hybrid seeds have been a contributing factor to agricultural de-skilling; in particular, proprietary cotton hybrid seeds in a poorly regulated market have been disastrous for farmers," he said.

"Bt seeds may be providing some short-term relief for problems with [bollworm] but at the cost of exacerbating the de-skilling.''

But S. V. R. Rao, senior vice president of Nuziveedu, an Indian company selling Bt cotton seeds, said that no one needed to prove the merit of Bt cotton.

"Farmers know it has doubled yields and India is number two in cotton production now. All the problems being talked of are imaginary,'' he said.

Link to full paper in World Development  (institutional repository version) [581kB]