Beyond Lip-service: An Operational Definition of “Learning-centered College”

Faculty, staff, and student perceptions of high-quality learning experiences were explored using focus groups attempting to define a “learning-centered” college. Common themes emerged suggesting that a successful learning community requires faculty-student collaboration, effective communication, critical thinking skills, reciprocal respect, faculty passion for learning, high expectations of both students and faculty, a variety of teaching and assessment strategies, and student engagement in and responsibility for learning. All groups stressed the need for learning opportunities outside the classroom in both intellectual and social situations. These themes provide a conceptual framework for future campus initiatives, which has broad relevance for other institutions. William C. Bosch is Retired Director of the Center for Learning and Teaching. He received his M.S. in Computer Science from Syracuse University, and his interests include teaching and learning in higher education and educational technology. Jessica L. Hester is an Assistant Professor in Theatre and received her Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests are American theatre history and dramaturgy. Virginia M. MacEntee is Assistant Professor in Curriculum & Instruction. She received her Ed.D. in Early Childhood Education from Nova Southeastern Florida University; and her interests include special education, authentic learning, and classroom technology. James A. MacKenzie is Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences. He received his Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine from Wake Forest University School of Medicine; and his interests include molecular and cellular biology, physiology, and human health and disease. T. Mark Morey is Professor of Psychology and received his Ph.D. at Depaul University. Research interests include stress, trauma, and coping. James T. Nichols is Instruction/Reference Librarian and Distance Learning Librarian. He received his M.A. in Library and Information Management from the University of Denver; his interests include information literacy. Patricia A. Pacitti is Coordinator of Math and Science Services for the Office of Learning Services. She received M.A.s in Mathematics and Statistics from Pennsylvania State University; and her interests include developmental education, curriculum design, and classroom technology. Barbara A. Shaffer is Coordinator of Reference Services and an Instruction Librarian at Penfield Library. She received her M.L.S. from Syracuse University, and her interests include information literacy and online learning. Paul B. Tomascak is an Assistant Professor of Geology and Geochemistry. He received his Ph.D. in geology from the University of Maryland; his research interests include applications of elemental and isotopic systematics to understanding solid Earth and Earth surface processes. Suzanne P. Weber is Associate Dean of the School of Education and Professor of Science Education. She received her Ph.D. in Population Ecology from Syracuse University; her current interests include assessment of student performance and program effectiveness in higher education. Rosalie R. Young is Associate Professor in Public Justice. She received her Ph.D.in political science from Syracuse University, and her interests include family mediation and the ability of the poor to access the legal system. All authors are currently members of the Committee on Learning and Teaching at State University of New York at Oswego.     

Determining Virtual Environment “Fit”: The Relationship Between Navigation Style in a Virtual Field Trip, Student Self-Reported Desire to Visit the Field Trip Site in the Real World, and the Purposes of Science Education

In this study, a follow-up analysis of the data reported in Lin et al. (Learn Media Technol. doi: 10.1080/17439884.2011.629660, 2011), we investigated the relationship between student use of a virtual field trip (VFT) system and the probability of students reporting wanting to visit the national park site upon which the VFT was modeled, controlling for content knowledge and prior visits to the park. Students who were able to navigate the VFT in teams were more likely than their peers who had the system demonstrated by a teacher to want to visit the national park. In addition, students with higher pre-intervention content knowledge were more likely to want to visit the national park than their peers with lower pre-test scores, in both the teacher demonstration and student co-navigation conditions.     

Re-telling the “Story So Far”: Reconsidering Sport and Spirituality in Light of the New Age

ABSTRACT

Sport and spirituality is a burgeoning academic area of study (Jirasek, 2015). To date, the field has been dominated by Christian scholarship (Watson & Parker, 2011). Incidentally, the history of the field is often narrated from a Christocentric viewpoint. Such narratives downplay, denigrate, or ignore the impact of other religious ideas. This article highlights New Age thinking as a primary driver of sport and spirituality, and problematizes exclusively Christianized historiographies of the field. Exposing connections to New Age figures and ideas, this article demonstrates the necessity of a more nuanced narrative of the field of sport and spirituality. It concludes by suggesting that scholars of sport should critically attend to the historiographical, theoretical, and methodological developments of a field, as these are inherently political practices.     

Fit(ness) to teach?: disability and initial Teacher education in the republic of Ireland

The lack of diversity in the teaching profession is recognised internationally [Schleicher, A. 2014. Equity, Excellence and Inclusiveness in Education: Policy Lessons from around the World. Paris: OECD]. Research shows consistently that teachers from majority socio-economic and ethnic groupings dominate, often in contrast to school populations. While studies in the USA and the UK have shown that teachers with disabilities are significantly under-represented compared to the general population, there has been a dearth of research in this area in Ireland, including in relation to initial teacher education (ITE). Following a review of the literature and an overview of the study’s methodology, we present findings exploring 2014 ITE applicants and entrants with respect to their dis/ability status and intersections with other socio-demographic variables based on data gathered in the Diversity in Initial Teacher Education in Ireland national research project, establishing the first national dataset about disability in Irish state-funded ITE. While we identified increases in the proportion of disabled students entering ITE, especially at postgraduate level, applicants with disabilities were significantly less likely to be accepted into undergraduate primary ITE than were those without, and there was considerable variation in the proportions from different categories entering ITE. We end by discussing the significance and implications of our findings in terms of practice, policy, and further research.     

The Right “Fit”: Exploring Science Teacher Candidates’ Approaches to Natural Selection Within a Clinical Simulation

Teachers and students struggle with the complexities surrounding the evolution of species and the process of natural selection. This article examines how science teacher candidates (STCs) engage in a clinical simulation that foregrounds two common challenges associated with natural selection—students’ understanding of “survival of the fittest” and the variation of species over time. We outline the medical education pedagogy of clinical simulations and its recent diffusion to teacher education. Then, we outline the study that situates each STC in a one-to-one interaction with a standardized student who is struggling to accurately interpret natural selection concepts. In simulation with the standardized student, each STC is challenged to recognize content misconceptions and respond with appropriate instructional strategies and accurate explanations. Findings and implications center on the STCs’ instructional practices in the simulation and the use of clinical learning environments to foster science teacher learning.     

“Bring the Newbie Into the Fold”: Politeness Strategies of Newcomers and Existing Group Members Within Workplace Meetings

This study investigates politeness strategies within meetings of designers who met face-to-face and technical communicators who met via teleconference and, more specifically, politeness strategies of existing members toward group newcomers and vice versa. Based on the results of this study, I suggest that issues of power and social distance affect politeness strategies by both groups during their initial interactions and suggest that technical communication educators should better prepare students by teaching benefits, detriments, and realities of particular linguistic politeness choices.     

A Comparison of Different Conceptual Change Pedagogies Employed Within the Topic of “Sound Propagation”

The purpose of this study was to compare different conceptual change methods within a topic on ‘sound propagation’. The study was conducted with 80 grade 5 students (aged 11–12 year old) drawn from four cohort classes in an elementary school on the north coast of Black Sea Region in Turkey. While one class was assigned as a control group, the others formed experimental groups (one with a conceptual change text, one with analogies presented as computer animations and one with a combination of conceptual change text, analogies and computer animations). A questionnaire with 10 two-tier questions was administered as a pretest a week before the teaching intervention, and the same test was re-administered immediately after the intervention as a post-test. The questionnaire was also employed as a delayed post-test 3 weeks after the teaching intervention. The experimental groups performed significantly better in the post-test that the control group (p < 0.05). Within the experimental groups, the group exposed to a combination of the conceptual change text, analogies and computer animations performed best on the post-test and the delayed post-test (p < 0.05). Overall the study indicated that the intervention that employed the entire suite of conceptual change pedagogies produced the best learning outcomes.     

六年级(上)Unit 2 “Where Is the Science Museum?”

一、课前预习作业设计:1."画一画":在作业本上画一画老鼠和盒子,并分别以介词in,over,on,under,near,behind,in front of来表示它们之间的位置关系。如:     

Moving Science Off the “Back Burner”: Meaning Making Within an Action Research Community of Practice

In this study, the participants conceptualized and implemented an action research project that focused on the infusion of inquiry principles into a neglected science curriculum. Specific objectives were to find (a) What factors challenge and support the evolution of an action research community of practice? (b) How are teachers’ beliefs about science teaching and learning transformed? and (c) How does teachers’ knowledge of curriculum, instruction, assessment, and student learning change as a result of learning within a community of practice? In this instrumental case study (Stake 2000, In N. K. Denzin, &; Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 435–454). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage), a range of data collection sources and methods were adopted. Outcomes focus on how the design principles for cultivating a community of practice emerged in the action research group, as well as the types of teacher learning that occurred by engaging in action research.     

“Communicate Through the Roof”: A Case Study Analysis of the Communicative Rules and Resources of an Effective Global Virtual Team

Challenges to effective collaboration are magnified when work teams are composed of geographically distributed members. Team members separated by time, distance, and culture often struggle with issues of trust, conflict, and potentially divisive subgroups. With global virtual teams becoming increasingly common in organizations, it is important to understand how to minimize such interactional difficulties. This study examines rules and resources that members of a corporate global team draw on to structure their interactions. In this case study, team members draw on highly ritualized actions prescribed by their software development process and their enacted values to mitigate their communication challenges.     

From Within the Belly of the Beast: Rethinking the Concept of the ‘Educational Marketplace’ in the Popular Discourse of Education Reform

The task of this article is to carry out a synthetic analysis of the concept of the educational marketplace as it is used in the popular discourse of education reform so as to unpack what has become a commonsensical idea in American politics. It is a conceptual framework that has opened an ever-expanding sovereign space in the American state for the colonization of a public institution by the private sphere by means of public policy. The results of this analysis suggest that the reform policies associated with the concept of the educational marketplace are ineffective in raising average student achievement, have a high probability for generating significant social costs, and are a manifestation of an articulation of power now in ascendancy in the United States.     

Reconfiguring the optics of the critical gaze in science education (after the critique of critique): (re)thinking “what counts” through Foucaultian prismatics

The purpose of this article is to explore what Michel Foucault refers to as “the” critical attitude and its relationship to science education, drawing from Foucault’s (The politics of truth. Semiotext(e), New York, 1997) insight that the critical attitude is but a critical attitude. This article is a rejoinder to Anna Danielsonn, Maria Berge, and Malena Lidar’s paper, “Knowledge and power in the technology classroom: a framework for studying teachers and students in action”. Where Danielsonn and colleagues think with Foucaultian power/knowledge to examine and (re)consider teacher-student didactic relations in science and technology education, this article critically examines the power/knowledge relationship between science educators and science education to critically explore the modes of criticality produced and produceable. Particularly, I explore possibilities for and of critique that stem from and respond to what Bruno Latour (Politics of nature: How to bring the sciences into democracy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1993) refers to as the crisis and critique of critique.     

Validating Automated Essay Scoring: A (Modest) Refinement of the “Gold Standard”

By far, the most frequently used method of validating (the interpretation and use of) automated essay scores has been to compare them with scores awarded by human raters. Although this practice is questionable, human-machine agreement is still often regarded as the “gold standard.” Our objective was to refine this model and apply it to data from a major testing program and one system of automated essay scoring. The refinement capitalizes on the fact that essay raters differ in numerous ways (e.g., training and experience), any of which may affect the quality of ratings. We found that automated scores exhibited different correlations with scores awarded by experienced raters (a more compelling criterion) than with those awarded by untrained raters (a less compelling criterion). The results suggest potential for a refined machine-human agreement model that differentiates raters with respect to experience, expertise, and possibly even more salient characteristics.     

Where is the discourse of desire? Deconstructing the Irish Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) resource materials

Inspired by poststructuralist insights and the critical literature on the topic of school-based sexuality education, this paper is derived from a close examination of the Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) resource materials devised for teachers involved in delivering the programme in Irish schools. It seeks critically to uncover how students are expected to come to know themselves socially and sexually. It is argued that the liberal individualist discourse, which is very pronounced in the RSE discursive framework, promotes a narrow kind of sexual subjectivity, which obscures sexual pleasure and desire. Some suggestions are made as to how a discursive space might be created in the classroom in the interests of facilitating students’ exploration into how they can be sexual, safe and ethical in their relations and activities.     

A Prelude to the Rise of Sport: Ante-bellum America, 1850–1860

This paper analyzes the Olympic dilemma from the perspective of social psychology. Specifically, the contact theory is applied to the interaction of organizers, athletes, and spectators at the Olympic Games. The literature investigating the relationship between interaction and the development of positive feelings among participants is reviewed and, where possible, hypotheses based upon the contact theory are developed. Finally, changes are suggested in the Olympic format which would increase the opportunities for positive outcomes from interaction.