Grace and Favour

This chapter shows that the life of Renaissance grace begins in earnest with Baldassare Castiglione's Libro del cortegiano (Book of the Courtier, 1516) and Raphael's portrait of Castiglione (1514–1516). It does so because preoccupations with grace and its multiple senses are central to both the book of manners and the painting, so much so that Castiglione came to be known as the great theorist of grace while Raphael was identified as its painter. Both have been referred to in countless studies from the sixteenth century to today as the embodiments of Renaissance grace. In addition, the network of interconnections between them makes Castiglione and Raphael a promising point of departure. It is an ideal testing ground for observing how grace behaves in different media and examining the extent to which it can be said to contribute to those interdisciplinary rivalries and friendships that allowed Renaissance learning, literature, and arts to flourish.

Promoting Personalized Learning Design: The Role of Online Pedagogical Intervention

Online learning technology and design has maximized and optimized the potential chances of personalized, customized, and adaptive learning. This theoretical paper is proposing a new dynamic pedagogical intervention model for effective personalized learning design. The author is trying to share a personal and practical answer to the following two questions: (a) What are the disruptive learning principles of the third renaissance learning paradigm that impact pedagogical engineering and intervention for personalized learning design? (b) What is the suggested model for effective online pedagogical intervention to promote personalized learning design? This perspective was guided by ten emergent disruptive learning principles of the third renaissance learning paradigm that impact online pedagogical engineering, management and intervention for personalized learning design. Effective online pedagogical intervention has four major dimensions that are grounded/interacted and focused on four metaphoric lenses: (a) types of learners (4Cs): Casual, Committed, Concentrated and Continuing; (b) pedagogical levels (4Ps): Intelligent, Agile, Distributed and Situated Pedagogy; (c) intervention levels (4Es): Enriching, Enhancing, Engaging and Empowering; and (d) online assessment frames (4As): Assessment of learning, Assessment for learning, Assessment as learning, and Assessment in learning.

Accelrated Reader Program: What do Teachers Really Think

What do teachers really think about the Accelerated Reader program, a widely used supplemental, independent reading program in which their students read fiction and non-fiction books of their choice and take brief online comprehension quizzes about the books? The Accelerated Reader (AR) program was designed by Renaissance Learning Company to increase students’ motivation to read and students’ achievement in reading; however, a review of the literature reveals inconsistent findings about its outcomes. Very few studies have been conducted seeking teacher input as to whether the program to achieves its intended outcomes. The goal of this study is to survey teachers (Grades 3 – 8) who use AR as a curricular component of their literacy program. We sought to learn about how teachers use the program and perceive its effectiveness as well as how it impacts their students’ interest and achievement in reading. We gathered data using an online questionnaire from teachers in urban, rural, exurban and suburban school settings in both elementary and middle schools. Teachers were asked to respond to items based on a 4 –point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree including an open-ended response section.The respondents were primarily from suburban and exurban districts and they have been using the program between 1-15 years. Most of the teachers indicated their students enjoy the program and most teachers require their students to take the AR quizzes.Results indicate most teachers believe that Accelerated Reader program motivates their students to read; however, they also recognize that AR is largely an accountability measure ensuring that their students read independently. Additionally, teachers recognize that AR measures comprehension at knowledge-recall level and is not an overall strong indicator of reading comprehension. Therefore, some teachers have made their own modifications to the program.

2. Medieval and Renaissance learning and practice

‘Medieval and Renaissance learning and practice’ describes the techniques used by the three major cultures of ambitious development in navigation—Chinese, Arab, and European. It begins with the ‘Arab compass’ that used horizon astronomy, the kamāl, and latitude sailing. It then describes the Chinese use of the magnetic compass, believed to have been first used at sea during the 11th century. By the 15th century, the Chinese were using the compass alongside dead reckoning and so could choose between coastal and latitude sailing. The use of portolan sea charts and sets of tables (toleta) in the Mediterranean and quadrants and astrolabes in the Atlantic in the 14th‐15th centuries is also described.

Reassessing the Accuracy and Use of Readability Formulae

Purpose – The purpose of the study is to review readability formulae and offer a critique, based on a comparison of the grading of a variety of texts given by six well-known formulae. Methodology – A total of 64 texts in English were selected either by or for native English speaking children aged between six and 11 years. Each text was assessed using six commonly used readability formulae via the Words Count website (http://www.wordscount. info/) which provides automated readability indices using FOG, Spache, SMOG, Flesh-Kincaid and Dale-Chall. For the ATOS formula, the Renaissance Learning website was used (http://www. renlearn.com/ar/overview/atos/). Statistical tests were then carried out to check the consistency among the six formulae in terms of their predictions of levels of text diffi culty. Findings – The analysis demonstrated significantly different readability indices for the same text using different formulae. It appeared that some of the formulae (but not all) were consistent in their ranking of texts in order of difficulty but were not consistent in their grading of each text. This finding suggests that readability formulae need to be used carefully to support teachers’ judgements about text difficulty rather than as the sole mechanism for text assessment. Significance – Making decisions about matching texts to learners is something regularly required from teachers at all levels. Making such decisions about text suitability is described as measuring the ‘readability’ of texts, and for a long time, this measurement has been treated as unproblematic and achieved using formulae which use such features as vocabulary diffi culty and sentence length. This study suggests that the use of such readability formulae is more problematic than may at first appear. Although the study was carried out with native English speaking children using texts in English, it is argued that the lessons learnt apply equally to Malay speakers reading Malay language texts.