Abstracts - Earli

Supervising Masters research students: Project paper versus thesisVijay Kumar Mallan, Universiti Putra Malaysia, MalaysiaShameem Rafik-Galea, Universiti Putra Malaysia, MalaysiaSupervising postgraduate students is a challenging experience as it involves building life longskills. The process of scaffolding the learner is paramount in achieving many of the goals ofpostgraduate studies. One of such goals is to enable the researcher to become an autonomousresearcher. There appears to be a gap in knowledge about postgraduate teaching/learning practicesin some institutions where Masters‚ research students are given a choice to either completea research project or do a thesis as part of the requirements of the research degree. While the thesismay be considered a fully-fledged scholarly research which is subject to external evaluation, theproject paper may be viewed as one that is less demanding as it is not subject to any form ofrigorous evaluation. This study reports on a study that was conducted to identify the influence ofthe scale of academic output (project or thesis) on the scaffolding of students to autonomousresearchers. Preliminary findings suggest that both the supervisors and the research students havethe view that doing a project paper is terminal as such, training to become an autonomousresearcher is not viewed favourably. A number of factors influence this perception and theseinclude institutional practices, examination policies, cultural influences and the demographics ofthe research students. On the other hand, a thesis is considered a step towards further intellectualpursuit and thus is viewed as a process that warrants the development of a student to anautonomous and independent researcher.D729 August 2007 11:00 - 12:20Room: PP7Poster SessionPoster sessionChair:Éva Molnár, University of Szeged, HungaryWhat happens to thinking skills programmes in schools? The case of ACTS (Activating Children’sThinking Skills) in ScotlandDavid Leat, Newcastle University, United KingdomLucy Tiplady, Newcastle University, United KingdomKate Wall, Newcastle University, United KingdomThis paper uses a case study approach to investigate what happened to a well established ThinkingSkills programme, ACTS (McGuinness 2002) for primary aged pupils, when it was introducedinto schools in one area of Scotland over a 3 year period. In particular, this evaluation focused onwhat impact the programme had on pupils, teachers and schools and how transferable the skillswere when pupils transferred from primary to secondary schools. Data comes from projectdocumentation, a questionnaire completed by teachers involved in the project and interviews withlocal authority staff, teachers, headteachers and pupils. The pupil interviews included the use ofPupil Views Templates (Wall and Higgins 2006) with both current primary pupils and pupils whohave transferred to secondary school. These templates have been shown to enable the explorationof pupils’ thinking about learning and thinking (metacognition) (see Wall 2006). The teacher– 223 –