ENGAGING SCIENCE: PRE-SERVICE PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS�� NOTIONS OF ENGAGING SCIENCE LESSONS

If children are engaged in science lessons, their learning is likely to be better and, in the long term, careers in science and technology will remain open. Given that attitudes can develop early and be difficult to change, it is important for teachers of younger children to know how to foster engagement in science. This study identified what a cohort of 79 pre-service teachers in England considered to be engaging elementary science lessons and compared their notions with teacher behaviours known to be conducive to engagement. First, all brought beliefs about how to engage children in science lessons to their training. They tended to favour children’s hands-on activity as an effective means of fostering attentive participation in learning, although many had additional ideas. Nevertheless, the means and ends of their ‘pedagogies of engagement’ tended to be simple and narrow. Trainers need to ensure that notions of engagement are wide enough to cope with a variety of teaching situations, as when hands-on experience is not feasible, effective or appropriate. At the same time, teachers will need to recognise that one approach may not suit all learners. Without this, there is the risk that they will lack the skills to engage children in science. Nevertheless, these beliefs could offer a useful starting point for trainers who wish to widen pre-service teachers’ conceptions of engagement and increase their repertoire of teaching behaviours.     

A Dual Identity Approach for Conceptualizing and Measuring Children's Gender Identity

The goal was to test a new dual identity perspective on gender identity by asking children (n = 467) in three grades (M_age = 5.7, 7.6, 9.5) to consider the relation of the self to both boys and girls. This change shifted the conceptualization of gender identity from one to two dimensions, provided insights into the meaning and measurement of gender identity, and allowed for revisiting ideas about the roles of gender identity in adjustment. Using a graphical measure to allow assessment of identity in young children and cluster analyses to determine types of identity, it was found that individual and developmental differences in how similar children feel to both genders, and these variations matter for many important personal and social outcomes.     

The role of further government intervention in Australian international education

Trade in Australian education services has expanded rapidly over recent years. The sector is the third largest exporter of Australian services. In 2001–2002, exports of education were about $A 4.2 billion. Government assistance to the sector includes export market development, regulation of education standards, and funding education activities; university research and development, for example. This paper examines the case for further government intervention in the export of education, and the appropriate forms of assistance if further government intervention is justified. The paper predominately focuses on assisting higher education exports because this activity dominates education exports.     

Genetic influences in different aspects of language development: the etiology of language skills in 4.5-year-old twins

The genetic and environmental etiologies of diverse aspects of language ability and disability, including articulation, phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and verbal memory, were investigated in a U.K. sample of 787 pairs of 4.5-year-old same-sex and opposite-sex twins. Moderate genetic influence was found for all aspects of language in the normal range. A similar pattern was found at the low end of the distribution with the exception of two receptive measures. Environmental influence was mainly due to nonshared factors, unique to the individual, with little influence from shared environment for most measures. Genetic and environmental influences on language ability and disability are quantitatively and qualitatively similar for males and females.     

Child developmental impact of Pittsburgh’s Early Childhood Initiative (ECI) in high-risk communities: first-phase authentic evaluation research

The national debate surrounding the issue of school failure has renewed interest in the quality, efficacy, and outcomes of early childhood intervention programs that can promote early school success for children at developmental risk. Moreover, researchers and policymakers report the need to document developmentally-appropriate models for assessing and evaluating early childhood outcomes. We report on the first-phase results of Pittsburgh’s early childhood initiative (ECI). ECI is a privately-funded effort by a consortium composed of the business, corporate, foundation, and community sectors to implement high-quality early care and education options for children in high-risk neighborhoods. The overarching objective of ECI is to ensure early school success for high-risk children. Our Scaling Progress in Early Childhood Settings (SPECS) Evaluation Team implemented an authentic assessment and program evaluation strategy and an enhanced “constructed comparison group” statistical model to conduct longitudinal research on the child developmental impact of the ECI model. First-phase results on 155 high-risk children indicate that those who participated in high-quality ECI programs for the longest periods of time demonstrated patterns of progress that exceeded maturational expectations. Weekly collaborative consultation to teachers and caregivers by consultants about program quality using the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) standards as “best practice” benchmarks seemed to be associated with initial enhanced child outcomes and the particular impact of the ECI model.     

Serial rapid naming skills in children with reading disabilities

This study compared the performance of children with reading disability (RD) and normal reading achievement (NRA) on tasks of serial rapid naming, verbal fluency, letter-based word retrieval, and articulatory speed. The groups, composed of children at two discrete age levels, one younger and one older, were matched for age, gender, and neighborhood school. Analyses of the on-line measurement of the children’s serial rapid naming indicated that the children with RD had significantly larger reaction times and production durations than their NRA peers despite similar levels of accuracy. They also performed significantly worse on the categorical verbal fluency task, the letter-based word retrieval task, and the test of articulatory speed. The findings suggest that both access and post-access processes, such as oral-motor inefficiency that extends the duration of word production, may be implicated in the slower serial rapid naming that has typified many samples of children with RD. This work was supported in part by Basil O’Connor Research Grant 5-340 from the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, a Scholarly and Creative Activity Award and sabbatical leave from California State University, Long Beach and grant #DCO 1904-01 from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the NIH to the first author.     

The effects of college grade adjustments on the predictive validity and utility of SAT scores

Regressing adjusted grade-point averages on freshman SAT scores and high school grade-point averages results in large increases in the incremental predictive validity of the SAT. Even so, the SAT still changes no more than a small proportion of admissions decisions and does not result in substantively important increases in freshman grades. The test does, however, change the composition of the freshman class by altering acceptances to some major areas of study and by limiting the access of women and blacks.