Daily Life: A Pre‐Service Art Teacher Educator and Her Work

This paper reports on a case study of the daily life of an art teacher educator. It examines the intellectual, moral, emotional, and physical undercurrents of this work and how these qualities are reflected within the daily context of the pre‐service university — or college‐level classroom environment. To date, few research studies have examined the daily practices of university or college‐level faculty members who prepare art teachers and how these faculty members go about their jobs. The author spent an academic term as a participant observer and researcher in the art teacher educator's secondary art education methods course. Examples and narratives from this study are forwarded, as well as a discussion on the importance of this form of inquiry for art teacher education today.     

The Relationship Between Teachers' Perceptions of Student Motivation and Engagement and Teachers' Enjoyment of and Confidence in Teaching

This paper examines teachers' perceptions of their students' motivation and engagement and their enjoyment of and confidence in teaching. Drawing on Martin's Student Motivation and Engagement Scale, 10 facets of motivation and engagement were explored amongst a sample of 1,019 teachers. These facets comprised three adaptive cognitive dimensions of motivation (self‐efficacy, valuing of school, mastery orientation), three adaptive behavioural dimensions (planning, study management, persistence), two impeding dimensions (anxiety, failure avoidance), and two maladaptive dimensions (uncertain control, self‐handicapping). Male teachers tended to report significantly higher student motivation and engagement than female teachers (though effect sizes were small) and primary school teachers reported significantly higher student motivation and engagement than high school teachers (effect sizes were moderate). Adaptive dimensions were more strongly associated with enjoyment and confidence in teaching than impeding and maladaptive dimensions. Of the adaptive dimensions, students' mastery orientation was the strongest correlate of teachers' enjoyment of teaching and students' persistence and students' planning were the strongest correlates of teachers' confidence in teaching. These associations were more marked for male teachers and relatively independent of years spent teaching. Implications for teacher education and professional development are discussed.     

Raising Pupils' Self‐Esteem through Leadership Activities in Art

This article is about the ways in which young people who have disengaged from learning in school can find a way back through leadership activities in art. It is based on a project which was funded by a small grant from the Wallenberg Foundation. The project explored the potential of an approach to developing positive leadership qualities in pupils who were not consistently committed to the school's learning purposes. This account describes and comments upon two pupils' guided attempts at peer teaching in art and its subsequent effect upon their selfesteem and attitude towards school. It was found that pupils who taught art to other pupils had an increased sense of self‐worth and were more positively affected towards learning. However, broader issues, such as the negative nature of some school systems and their role in de‐motivating pupils were highlighted.     

Life events,self‐concept,and adolescents' positive subjective well‐being

This study investigated the interrelationships among global self‐concept, life events, and positive subjective well‐being (positive affect [PA], negative affect [NA], and life satisfaction [LS]) in a sample of 92 high school students. The results demonstrated that life events contributed significant variance to predictions of PA, NA, and LS, over and above that of global self‐concept. Also, daily events contributed variance over and above that of major life events. Looking at the specific event types that related uniquely to the positive well‐being measures, only negative daily events related significantly to PA and NA, and only positive daily events related significantly to LS. The results also indicated that the positive well‐being constructs each contained unique variance and had different correlates, thus providing strong support for the multidimensionality of adolescent positive well‐being reports. Implications for further research and intervention programs are discussed. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Classroom Conditions for Motivation and Engagement in Reading

This paper charts our thinking about engagement in reading. It begins where we began, which is inside a single classroom. The paper ends where we have arrived now, with a model of context for engaged reading. During this pursuit, we asked three major questions. Those questions serve as a framework for this paper, and are the following: (1) How can we increase long-term reading engagement in the classroom? (2) Is our approach for increasing reading engagement and motivation more effective than traditional reading instruction? (3) What are the critically important features of a classroom context that fosters long-term reading engagement?     

Academic Engagement and Perceptions of Quality in Distance Education

The development of e-education has enabled distance education to overcome the lack of interactivity inherent in earlier forms of distance education based on correspondence and mass media, but it looks as if it is also pushing up the costs of distance education. In the 1960s and 1970s, the cost structure of distance education, and its ability to lower educational costs, was seen as a distinct advantage in the face of the need to expand educational provision. With the world population forecast to grow by over three billions in the next 50 years, the need for cheap ways of educating people must be paramount. This article asks just how relevant it is to global educational needs to develop more expensive forms of distance education that, in the absence of public funding, place increased financial burdens on the students.     

Relationship Between Children's Social Competence,Learning Motivation and School Achievement

The influences of the social environment and affective factors on academic achievement were identified as early as the 1970s. This line of research continued in the following decades, but the relationship between social competence and academic achievement remained a neglected issue. The aim of the empirical research presented in this paper was to define those components of social competence that influence learning motivation and academic achievement. The following components of social competence were selected for analysis: dynamism, dominance, cooperativeness, politeness, scrupulousness, perseverance, emotional control, impulse control, openness, external-internal control attitude and attachments. Four questionnaires were administered to a sample of 6th and 10th grade students (altogether 438 subjects). The results show that the assessed social factors are not affected considerably by age. The correlation analyses reveal the importance of intrinsic motivation within learning motivation, manifested in its strong relationship to the variables representing the social factors of personality except for emotional stability. The results of the regression analysis indicate that friendliness and openness have the largest impact on each other among social factors extraversion. The results show that conscientiousness, openness and academic self-concept explains most of the variance in intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation seems to exert considerable effect on these three variables.     

Improving Student Engagement in Commercial Art and Design Programmes

The continued viability of art and design programmes depends on our ability to produce graduates able to contribute successfully and confidently to the future of the creative industries. This in turn depends on our ability to lead students to develop both the ability and the motivation to learn. A significant proportion of our students however, are not adequately prepared or inclined to engage with the learning environment. Based on a review of the literature on student engagement, this article attempts to identify the origins and examine the impact of the perceptions and attitudes (the ‘mental pictures’) that currently limit our students' ability and inclination to engage as well as those factors (including the features of our programmes) through which these ‘mental pictures’ may be inadvertently reinforced. It then proposes a number of practical suggestions to make more effective use of the learning outcomes of art and design programmes in order to mitigate their influence and thereby improve both our graduates' capacity and inclination to become more competent professionals, as well as self‐directed learners.     

英语教学的连接：第二课堂活动及其策略

遵循英语教学原则,对第二课堂活动准确定位,开展多样化的第二课堂活动,为学生学习英语提供了广阔的交流空间和实践的机会,形成了英语教学的连接,提高了学习效率,锻炼了自主学习能力,也促进了大学英语教学,增强了学生英语语言的综合应用能力。     

A Snapshot of Industry and Academic Professional Activities,Compensation, and Engagement in Educational Measurement

This paper provides a snapshot of educational measurement professionals—their educational, professional and demographic backgrounds, as well as their workplace settings, job tasks, professional involvement, and compensation practices. Two previous studies have surveyed employers, but this is the first attempt to conduct a comprehensive survey of measurement professionals. Five hundred and forty-two (31.5% response rate) measurement professionals, the vast majority who held a doctorate degree, responded to the survey from January to April 2007. Overall, these individuals were primarily employed in academic settings, research and testing organizations, and educational or governmental agencies. Results were reported across and within work setting, degree, and other demographic and background factors that may influence work, behavior, and compensation in educational measurement and assessment.     

Older People Learning through Contemporary Visual Art – Engagement and Barriers

This article addresses how older people understand and engage with contemporary art in the gallery context – whether there is something unique to the art, the format of the visits, the pedagogical approaches used by gallery educators, the social contact, or a combination of all these factors. It also addresses the psychosocial barriers to engagement. It draws from ‘Contemporary visual art and identity construction – wellbeing amongst older people’, a two‐year research project funded by the cross‐research council New Dynamic of Ageing Programme. Over 21 months, 43 participants aged 60–92 made three visits to contemporary art galleries in north‐east England. The potential for art galleries to develop lifelong learning opportunities for post‐retirement people has implications for the cultural, health and voluntary sector.     

Self‐Initiated Art Work and School Art

This article deals with the forms and contents of self‐initiated art works: the kind of learning that takes place in the production of self‐initiated art works as well as the relationships with school art. We interviewed 52 Dutch students (aged between 10 and 14) from different schools of primary and secondary education, and their art teachers. The students showed examples of their home art as well as their school art. Based on interviews and the works presented, four main categories of self‐initiated art works can be distinguished: applied art, popular culture, personal experience and traditional art. Learning outside school is partly incidental and informal (learning by doing, copying), but involves intentional learning as well. Students are aware of the differences in style, materials and themes between their spontaneous, self‐initiated art work and the work they are required to make in school. Moving the domain of self‐initiated art into schools may jeopardise it, but art teachers should neither ignore nor dismiss it. They should be aware of children's self‐initiated visual culture and relate to it in their lessons.     

音体美专业学生英语学习动机调查

以问卷调查和访谈的方式,对音体美专业280名学生的英语学习动机的影响因素进行分析研究。调查发现,音体美专业学生的内在兴趣、英语基础及学习情境直接影响着音体美专业学生学习英语的态度、方式及行为,从而对音体美专业大学英语教学得出了以下启示：培养音体美专业学生的英语学习的内在兴趣,选择适合音体美专业学生的大学英语教材,注重音体美专业学生自主学习能力的培养,帮助音体美专业学生形成积极的英语学习态度,树立自信。     

Non‐at‐risk adolescents' attitudes towards reading in a Singapore secondary school

In this paper, we examine the various nuanced dimensions of adolescents' dispositions towards reading in one secondary school in Singapore, where a high‐stakes examination culture often threatens to colonise the practices of leisure reading. Our focus is on the better and more avid readers as they were the ones that developed the more negative attitudes towards reading at the end of their first year in secondary school. Our analysis found that there were no significant differences between boys and girls in their declining attitudes, and that for both ‘intrinsic motivation’ saw the greatest decline. However, attitudes related to learning orientation remained stable, suggesting both the impact of constraints in an exam‐oriented educational structure as well as possibilities for developing reading pedagogy and adolescent reading programmes. We argue that the more educators are aware of the multidimensionality and complexity of the attitudes and values that students bring to their reading, the more effectively they will be able to design and implement programmes and pedagogy to foster positive attitudes and promote a lifelong love for reading.     

Engagement and Skill Development in Biology Students through Analysis of Art

An activity involving analysis of art in biology courses was designed with the goals of piquing undergraduates’ curiosity, broadening the ways in which college students meaningfully engage with course content and concepts, and developing aspects of students’ higher-level thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. To meet these learning outcomes, the activity had three key components: preparatory readings, firsthand visual analysis of art during a visit to an art museum, and communication of the analysis. Following a presentation on the methodology of visual analysis, students worked in small groups to examine through the disciplinary lens of biology a selection of approximately 12 original artworks related in some manner to love. The groups then developed and presented for class members a mini-exhibition of several pieces addressing one of two questions: 1) whether portrayals of love in art align with the growing understanding of the biology of love or 2) whether the bodily experience of love is universal or, alternatively, is culturally influenced, as is the experience of depression. Evaluation of quantitative and qualitative assessment data revealed that the assignment engaged students, supported development of higher-level thinking skills, and prompted meaningful engagement with course material.     

The role of word decoding,vocabulary knowledge and meta‐cognitive knowledge in monolingual and bilingual low‐achieving adolescents' reading comprehension

In this study, we analysed the relationships between word decoding, vocabulary knowledge, meta‐cognitive knowledge and reading comprehension in low‐achieving adolescents and examined whether the strength of these relationships differed between Grade 7 and 9 students and between monolingual and bilingual students. Tests were administered to 328 students in Dutch prevocational education. Multilevel analyses showed positive effects of vocabulary and meta‐cognitive knowledge on reading comprehension that were consistent across grades and across monolinguals and bilinguals. Additionally, we found a positive effect of word decoding for seventh graders, but no effect for ninth graders. There was also a positive effect of bilingualism on reading comprehension when vocabulary differences were controlled. This finding suggests that for bilingual students, reading comprehension is hampered by limited second‐language vocabulary knowledge and that these students will profit more from an increase in vocabulary knowledge than their monolingual peers. The results underline the importance of vocabulary and meta‐cognitive instruction for low‐achieving adolescents.     

Pre‐schoolers,print and storybooks: an observational study using eye movement analysis

This study used eye‐gaze analysis to determine the extent to which pre‐school children visually attended to print when looking at two storybooks, to contrast visual attention to print for a print‐salient versus a picture‐salient storybook, and to study individual differences in pre‐schoolers' visual preferences. Results indicated that pre‐school children infrequently attended to print: in a traditional picture‐salient storybook, 2.7% of their fixations focused on print and 2.5% of their time was spent looking in regions of print. The children fixated more frequently on print and spent more time looking in print regions when reading a print‐salient storybook, within which 7% of fixations focused on print and 6% of time was spent in print zones. Effect size estimates showed this difference to be consistent with a very large effect. Little variation in visual attention to print was observed across the ten children, and children's alphabet knowledge was not associated with the variance in children's visual attention to print. Educational implications are discussed.     

Charging to the End: Course Activities for Semester‐Long Student Engagement in an Undergraduate Product Development Capstone Course

Setting instructional goals to drive student engagement in the classroom is essential, as research has shown that improved student engagement in a course will affect student success, as well as the development of key personal and professional skills. Student engagement is a multifaceted concept with multiple perspectives. In focusing on the behavioral perspective of student engagement, various effective teaching practices can be implemented to encourage engagement in a diverse study body. Utilizing validated tools, such as the Natl. Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) Engagement Themes and Indicators, can ease the development of classroom approaches to student engagement with convenience and flexibility. Semester‐long student engagement in a food science undergraduate product development capstone course was encouraged through instructional approaches styled around the NSSE Engagement Themes and Indicators. The variety of instructional approaches utilized in the capstone food science course are described in detail and discussed in relation to the NSSE Engagement Themes and Indicators with which they align.     

An Examination of College Students' Problem‐Solving Self‐Efficacy,Academic Self‐Efficacy,Motivation, Test Performance,and Expected Grade in Introductory‐Level Economics Courses

This study investigated whether self‐efficacy influenced students’ educational outcomes in introductory‐level economics courses. First, this study investigated the correlations between problem‐solving self‐efficacy, academic self‐efficacy, and motivation. Second, this study investigated whether problem‐solving and academic self‐efficacy served as predictors of students’ motivation, test performance, and expected grade. Correlational analyses suggest that problem‐solving and academic self‐efficacy are correlated with student motivation. Results show that problem‐solving self‐efficacy was a predictor of student motivation and test performance. Academic self‐efficacy and problem‐solving self‐efficacy were also predictors of their expected grade. Implications and future directions for economics education are also discussed.