“Hebdo-Chim,” a Web Application to Support Learning in a Chemistry Methods Pre-Service Course

The potential of the Internet for Education has been enthusiastically reported by many. It is clear, though, that science educators need to be prepared and supported in order to adopt it, as is the case with any innovation. But first they should be motivated; and one way to do this is by letting them experience the benefits of the innovation in their own learning. By showing them appropriate uses, no matter how modest, in teacher preparation courses, we can motivate and influence future science teachers; they, like any teachers, tend to model what is taught by example. This paper describes one use of the Web in support of learning in a course in Chemistry Methods for pre-service teachers at Université de Montréal. Designed as a weekly, it is a site meant to be an integral, if not central, part of the course. In addition to permanent access to links and course outline, course notes and information relevant to each class were posted every week. An assignment involving a treasure hunt on the Web is also described.     

Sequence Learning in 4‐Month‐Old Infants: Do Infants Represent Ordinal Information?

This study investigated how 4‐month‐old infants represent sequences: Do they track the statistical relations among specific sequence elements (e.g., AB, BC) or do they encode abstract ordinal positions (i.e., B is second)? Infants were habituated to sequences of 4 moving and sounding elements—3 of the elements varied in their ordinal position while the position of 1 target element remained invariant (e.g., A B CD, C B DA)—and then were tested for the detection of changes in the target’s position. Infants detected an ordinal change only when it disrupted the statistical co‐occurrence of elements but not when statistical information was controlled. It is concluded that 4‐month‐olds learn the order of sequence elements by tracking their statistical associations but not their invariant ordinal position.     

Cliff or Step? Posture‐Specific Learning at the Edge of a Drop‐Off

Infants require locomotor experience to behave adaptively at a drop‐off. However, different experimental paradigms (visual cliff and actual gaps and slopes) have generated conflicting findings regarding what infants learn and the specificity of their learning. An actual, adjustable drop‐off apparatus was used to investigate whether learning to distinguish a step from a cliff transfers from crawling to walking. Experienced 12‐month‐old crawlers (n = 16) refused to crawl over risky drop‐offs but novice 12‐month‐old walkers (n = 17) stepped repeatedly over the edge. Experienced 18‐month‐old walkers (n = 18) refused to walk over risky drop‐offs but descended using alternative methods. These findings suggest that infants do not acquire generalized responses like fear or wariness of heights. Rather, infants learn to perceive affordances for the experienced action.     

Do Learning Communities Effect Academic Outcomes? Evidence From an Experiment in a Community College

Abstract

Many postsecondary institutions utilize learning communities to increase social engagement and attachment to the college community. In recent years, these communities have proliferated as part of a trend fueled by low retention and persistence rates, increasing reluctance of 4-year institutions to provide remedial education, and pressure on colleges to be accountable for their outcomes. This article reports the findings of a randomized experiment of a learning communities program that operated in an urban community college. The 1-semester learning community, which focused largely on remedial English, had modest effects on full-time enrollment, the number of courses attempted and passed, remedial English pass rates, and credits earned during the semester in which it operated. Impacts diminished in postprogram semesters.     

Can Boards of Directors Think Strategically? Some Issues in Developing Direction‐givers' Thinking to a Mega Level

ABSTRACT The author argues that current corporate government legislation and practice is weighted too much in the direction of “board compliance.” It is, therefore, in danger of reducing the risks taken by boards of directors. In the long term this could slow significantly the growth of capitalism. He proposes a rebalancing of the fundamental board dilemma—how to strike a dynamic balance between driving the enterprise forward and keeping it under prudent control—in favor of “board performance” and raising the competence of “Mega‐thinking” on the board. This requires integrated board developmental activities so that their directorial accountabilities and liabilities are differentiated from the executive's, and that the requirement for rigorous strategic thinking has total commitment. Often fear and irritation by newly‐promoted executives has to be overcome here. The author introduces the “Learning Board” model and its associated annual rhythm for a board's year. Three approaches to developing strategic thinking are discussed including the Thinking Intentions Profile, and an updated version of the PPESTT analysis.     

Liberating Tongues?: A Theoretical Analysis of the Work of a full‐time Embedded Spoken Word Educator in a Secondary School

This article will discuss my often challenging transition from radical political poet to full time poet teacher in a Roman Catholic secondary school. Can the counter‐cultural art form of spoken word education thrive within the institution of school? By looking at classroom and after school experience, student poems and relevant theory, the paper will consider the opportunities and complications of using spoken word education to stage marginalised voices.     

Implementing a case‐based e‐learning environment in a lecture‐oriented anaesthesiology class: Do learning styles matter in complex problem solving over time?*

This study explores how students' learning styles influence their learning while solving complex problems when a case‐based e‐learning environment is implemented in a conventional lecture‐oriented classroom. Seventy students from an anaesthesiology class at a dental school participated in this study over a 3‐week period. Five learning‐outcome tests and two course‐satisfaction surveys were implemented during the case‐based instruction using a blended approach (online and face‐to‐face). The results of one‐way ANOVAs with repeated measures revealed that the four learning styles (active–reflective, sensing–intuitive, visual–verbal, sequential–global) did not influence students' learning experience and learning outcomes during the implementation of case‐based e‐learning. However, the pattern of the students' performance graph and further analysis with a liberal approach implied that the active–reflective learning style may influence learning outcomes slightly at an earlier time during the case‐based learning implementation; however, as time passed, this learning style no longer influenced their learning at all. Thus, learning styles may not be considered important or may be considered only during the early stages of instructional implementation in order to facilitate the students' transition to the new case‐based learning environment. It is more efficient to encourage students to adapt to different learning environments than to design adaptive systems in order to embrace diverse learning styles.     

Do tuition fees affect enrollment behavior? Evidence from a ‘natural experiment’ in Germany

This paper uses the introduction of tuition fees in seven of the sixteen German states in 2007 as a natural experiment to identify the effects of tuition prices on enrollment probabilities. Based on information on enrollment decisions of the entire population of high-school graduates between 2002 and 2008, I find a negative effect of tuition fees on enrollment behavior. The effect is larger than in existing studies for European countries, but of a similar magnitude as effects identified with U.S. data. A potential spill-over effect of the policy intervention to the comparison group is accounted for by using the estimation results to calibrate a structural model of the enrollment decision.     

Does the Arrangement of Embedded Text Versus Linked Text in Homework Systems Make a Difference in Students Impressions,Attitudes, and Perceived Learning?

Students in a first-semester general chemistry course at a large southwestern university completed a 3-week homework assignment using MindTap, a Cengage Learning product. MindTap is the first major electronic system that has homework questions embedded in the text, such that students read a short section of the textbook and then answer a question set. Prior to MindTap, electronic homework systems were stand-alone or contained questions with links to the textbook. Next, students completed two 2-week homework assignments in Online Web Learning (OWL) version 1 also from Cengage Learning. The OWL system shows homework questions with a link to the textbook in a separate window. Both the MindTap and OWL systems contain the same or similar questions. After the students used both homework systems, a survey was given that included Likert-scaled and open-response questions that dealt with students’ perceived level of understanding using the different systems, how easy the systems were to use, and the advantages/disadvantages of each system. A delayed survey was given at the end of the second semester of general chemistry, during which students had used OWL for the complete semester. This paper investigates the effects of the arrangement (embedded vs. linked) on student preferences and perceived learning in this pilot study with a 300-person class. Based on the results of the study, it was found that students perceived that they learn more with MindTap and prefer the embedded text in MindTap over the linked text in OWL.     

Grading as a Reform Effort: Do Standards‐Based Grades Converge With Test Scores?

Standards‐based progress reports (SBPRs) require teachers to grade students using the performance levels reported by state tests and are an increasingly popular report card format. They may help to increase teacher familiarity with state standards, encourage teachers to exclude nonacademic factors from grades, and/or improve communication with parents. The current study examines the SBPR grade–state test score correspondence observed across 2 years in 125 third and fifth grade classrooms located in one school district to examine the degree of consistency between grades and state test results. It also examines the grading practices of a subset of 37 teachers to determine whether there is an association between teacher appraisal style and convergence rates. A moderate degree of grade–test score convergence was observed using three agreement estimates (coefficient kappa, tau‐b correlations, and classroom‐level mean differences between grades and test scores). In addition, only small amounts of grade–test score convergence were observed between teachers; a much greater proportion of variance lay within classrooms and subjects. Appraisal style correlated weakly with convergence rates, but was most strongly related to assigning students to the same performance level as the test. Therefore using recommended grading practices may improve the quality of SBPR grades to some extent.     

'Neath the Moth‐Eaten Rag: Do Artefacts Play a Special Role for Historical Knowledge?

Normally, school students learn academic subjects in classrooms, but it is best practice to, now‐and‐again, take them on trips. Often, it is then that they come face‐to‐face with ‘the real thing’, an historical artefact. This paper seeks the knowledge acquired in seeing such an artefact. If knowledge means propositional knowledge, we land on the horns of a dilemma, in which the artefact seems to be both crucial and yet incidental. On the one hand, it seems to be the labels, the resources in the exhibition, the guides, not the artefact, that give students knowledge. Yet, the learning experience is valued because of the artefact, not these things. This poses the question: can students gain knowledge from artefacts? I argue, drawing on R.G. Collingwood's characterisation of historical knowledge as mediated, inferential and requiring imagination, and on Heidegger's understanding of ‘things’, that the debate can be moved beyond bald propositional knowledge of the kind that motivates the original dilemma. Students gain historical knowledge from artefacts because students can reflectively think, and work to re‐enact in their minds the world of the artefact. As Aldridge suggests, the student is transformed by this: she does not simply learn the facts, but starts to become an historian.     

‘What's a fixed‐term exclusion,Miss?’ Students' perspectives on a disciplinary inclusion room in England

Marginalised students in education are often formally excluded and further disadvantaged by school disciplinary approaches. This leads to school behaviour codes not being followed by students. This result is often linked to individualised student disciplinary responses. Further, formal student exclusion from schools remains a controversial international practice driven by eclectic government policy. Yet there is limited research on student perspectives within debates on the value of interventions designed to reduce fixed‐term exclusion and promote children's participation in education. This study, by Gwen Gilmore of the College of Education at Victoria University, Melbourne, presents the perspectives of five Year 8 and 9 students who participated in a disciplinary inclusion room designed to reduce fixed‐term exclusion in a secondary school located in England. The research methodology is framed by a cultural historical activity theory approach, and mixed methods reported include document analysis and student interviews. Students stated that the disciplinary inclusion room enabled them to continue their learning and that this discipline model complemented the processes of education. These students' perspectives challenge recent narratives on disciplinary provision and provide possibilities for schools to consider how discipline can be organised towards practices that are more inclusionary and potentially educative.     

Development of Scientific Reasoning in College Biology: Do Two Levels of General Hypothesis‐Testing Skills Exist?

The primary purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that two general developmentally based levels of hypothesis‐testing skills exist. The first hypothesized level presumably involves skills associated with testing hypotheses about observable causal agents; the second presumably involves skills associated with testing hypotheses involving unobservable entities. To test this hypothesis, a hypothesis‐testing skills test was developed and administered to a large sample of college students both at the start and at the end of a biology course in which several hypotheses at each level were generated and tested. The predicted positive relationship between level of hypothesis‐testing skill and performance on a transfer problem involving the test of a hypothesis involving unobservable entities was found. The predicted positive relationship between level of hypothesis‐testing skill and course performance was also found. Both theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 81–101, 2000     

Latino Adolescents’ Ethnic Identity: Is There a Developmental Progression and Does Growth in Ethnic Identity Predict Growth in Self‐Esteem?

The current longitudinal study of 323 Latino adolescents (50.5% male; M age = 15.31 years) examined whether ethnic identity exploration, resolution, and affirmation demonstrated significant growth over a 4-year period and whether growth in ethnic identity predicted growth in self-esteem. Findings from multiple-group latent growth curve models revealed that exploration, resolution, and affirmation all increased significantly from middle to late adolescence for Latina girls. For Latino boys, only affirmation increased significantly. Furthermore, only growth in exploration predicted growth in boys' and girls' self-esteem. This research indicates that patterns of growth in ethnic identity vary by adolescent sex. Furthermore, findings underscore the need to examine the unique contributions of each ethnic identity component, rather than using a composite ethnic identity score.     

‘Do you want me to translate this in English or in a better Mandinka language?’: Unequal literacy regimes and grassroots spelling practices in peri-urban Gambia

This paper presents a comparative ethnographic analysis of two versions of a grassroots text in Mandinka language, one written by a non-formally educated man, the other a respelling by a formally educated urbanite. The analysis points at a crucial difference in spelling practices and inequality in literacy regimes, i.e., between established orthographic English literacy and the more creative, heterographic and emergent local language literacy. It is shown how English orthography affects local ideologies of literacy as well as Mandinka spelling practices itself, in greater or lesser extent, depending on the educational history of the speller.