Science and Mathematics Mentees and Mentors: Who Benefits the Most?

The purpose of our study was to determine the extent to which differences in a mentor model for science and mathematics teachers accounted for variances in mentoring effectiveness and persistence rates of teachers. School district designee, mentor, and teacher perceptions of mentoring support were collected through the use of interviews and surveys and analyzed using the grounded theory approach and open coding. Findings revealed that teachers and mentors recommended that future mentor models provide strong support and more face-to-face meetings. The most common change mentors made was that they incorporated new strategies into their teaching. Findings offer insight for structuring mentor models to increase effectiveness and persistence of teachers and build the capacity of mentors.     

Measuring Teaching Effectiveness: Correspondence Between Students’ Evaluations of Teaching and Different Measures of Student Learning

Relating students?? evaluations of teaching (SETs) to student learning as an approach to validate SETs has produced inconsistent results. The present study tested the hypothesis that the strength of association of SETs and student learning varies with the criteria used to indicate student learning. A multisection validity approach was employed to investigate the association of SETs and two different criteria of student learning, a multiple-choice test and a practical examination. Participants were N?=?883 medical students, enrolled in k?=?32 sections of the same course. As expected, results showed a strong positive association between SETs and the practical examination but no significant correlation between SETs and multiple-choice test scores. Furthermore, students?? subjective perception of learning significantly correlated with the practical examination score whereas no relation was found for subjective learning and the multiple choice test. It is discussed whether these results might be due to different measures of student learning varying in the degree to which they reflect teaching effectiveness.     

The Adult Student and Course Satisfaction: What Matters Most?

Student satisfaction with a course is important because it can contribute to student retention, and it can also be used as one way to assess faculty effectiveness. This investigative work suggests that course satisfaction among non-traditional, adult students seeking business degrees is positively influenced by giving attention to four specific service-based factors. Based on feedback from 1,725 such students and 214 instructors at five institutions of higher education, a service-based model of course satisfaction is proposed. This model focuses on four manageable variables that are observed as influencing adult students’ satisfaction with a business course: relevancy of subject-matter, faculty subject-matter competency, faculty classroom management, and student workload.     

‘Chocolate-covered Broccoli’? Games and the Teaching of Literature

Studies of the way games and gaming align themselves with the pedagogy of the humanities have left behind a key discipline: that of literary studies, as opposed to literacy studies, a far more common concern among scholars who have examined the impact of games on university and secondary teaching. This paper considers the reasons for such a lacuna of the literary and enters into a philosophical critique of the grounds on which games have been advanced as a tool for pedagogy in recent work. Interrogating recent scholars’ use of epistemological and sociological paradigms, the paper advances a more liberal and sophisticated concept of the game that better answers the needs of students and teachers in the literature classroom. It concludes with two examples of worked games that have significant potential to enhance learning.     

“How Do We Know It's Working?”: The Teaching Artist's Role in Program Evaluations and Assessing Student Work

This article provides a framework to assist evaluators, teaching artists, and program managers in working together.     

Exploratory Talk and Task-based Learning: A Case Study of a Student’s Learning Journey on an MA (Education) English Language Teaching Course

This article records and evaluates a student’s learning journey in two modules on an MA (Education) English Language Teaching (ELT) programme: an Oracy and ELT Pedagogy module and an Educational Technologies module. The notions of ‘exploratory talk’ and ‘task-based learning’ are explored using a single case study with material drawn from the student’s autobiography and diary, the spoken and written assignments, and the student and lecturers’ reflections on completion of the modules. We show, through the use of autobiography and critical reflection, what the student brings to the course and how this reflection allows him to use and transfer knowledge from one module to another. We analyse the ways in which the modules complement each other and how this influences the student’s learning and teaching practice. We then identify the key features of his learning in relation to ELT pedagogy.     

Who Benefits Most from a University Degree?: A Cross-National Comparison of Selection and Wage Returns in the US,UK, and Germany

Recent research on economic returns to higher education in the United States suggests that those with the highest wage returns to a college degree are least likely to obtain one. We extend the study of heterogeneous returns to tertiary education across multiple institutional contexts, investigating how the relationship between wage returns and the propensity to complete a degree varies by the level of expansion, differentiation, and cost of higher education. Drawing on panel data and matching techniques, we compare findings from the US with selection into degree completion in Germany and the UK. Contrary to previous studies, we find little evidence for population level heterogeneity in economic returns to higher education.     

The Influence of an Extensive Inquiry-Based Field Experience on Pre-Service Elementary Student Teachers’ Science Teaching Beliefs

This study examined the effects of an extensive inquiry-based field experience on pre service elementary teachers’ personal agency beliefs, a composite measure of context beliefs and capability beliefs related to teaching science. The research combined quantitative and qualitative approaches and included an experimental group that utilized the inquiry method and a control group that used traditional teaching methods. Pre- and post-test scores for the experimental and control groups were compared. The context beliefs of both groups showed no significant change as a result of the experience. However, the control group’s capability belief scores, lower than those of the experimental group to start with, declined significantly; the experimental group’s scores remained unchanged. Thus, the inquiry-based field experience led to an increase in personal agency beliefs. The qualitative data suggested a new hypothesis that there is a spiral relationship among teachers’ ability to establish communicative relationships with students, desire for personal growth and improvement, ability to implement multiple instructional strategies, and possession of substantive content knowledge. The study concludes that inquiry-based student teaching should be encouraged in the training of elementary school science teachers. However, the meaning and practice of the inquiry method should be clearly delineated to ensure its correct implementation in the classroom.

Are Student Evaluations of Teaching Effectiveness Valid for Measuring Student Learning Outcomes in Business Related Classes? A Neural Network and Bayesian Analyses

In this study we investigate the underlying relational structure between student evaluations of teaching effectiveness (SETEs) and achievement of student learning outcomes in 116 business related courses. Utilizing traditional statistical techniques, a neural network analysis and a Bayesian data reduction and classification algorithm, we find little or no support for the validity of SETEs as a general indicator of teaching effectiveness or student learning. In fact, the underlying structure appears to be non-linear and possibly negatively bimodal where the most effective instructors are within the middle percentiles of student course ratings, while instructors receiving ratings in the top quintile or the bottom quintile are associated with significantly lower levels of student achievement.     

How Do Children Who Can't Hear Learn to Read an Alphabetic Script? A Review of the Literature on Reading and Deafness

I review the literature on reading and deafness, focusing on the role of three broad factors in acquisition and skilled reading: the method of encoding print; language-specific knowledge (i.e., English); and general language knowledge. I explore the contribution of three communication systems to reading: spoken language, English-based sign, and American Sign Language. Their potential contribution to literacy is mediated by four parameters on which they differ: codability, structural isomorphism, accessibility, and processibility. Finally, I discuss the implications for additional research as well as for education.     

Gender Bias in Student Evaluations of Teaching: ‘Punish[ing] Those Who Fail To Do Their Gender Right’

Higher Education - A significant body of work problematises the assumption that student evaluations of teaching (SET) actually measure teaching quality. This is concerning, given that SET are...     

Student Agency: an Analysis of Students’ Networked Relations Across the Informal and Formal Learning Domains

Agency is a construct facilitating our examination of when and how young people extend their own learning across contexts. However, little is known about the role played by adolescent learners’ sense of agency. This paper reports two cases of students’ agentively employing and developing science literacy practices—one in Singapore and the other in the USA. The paper illustrates how these two adolescent learners in different ways creatively accessed, navigated and integrated in-school and out-of-school discourses to support and nurture their learning of physics. Data were gleaned from students’ work and interviews with students participating in a physics curricular programme in which they made linkages between their chosen out-of-school texts and several physics concepts learnt in school. The students’ agentive moves were identified by means of situational mapping, which involved a relational analysis of the students’ chosen artefacts and discourses across time and space. This relational analysis enabled us to address questions of student agency—how it can be effected, realised, construed and examined. It highlights possible ways to intervene in these networked relations to facilitate adolescents’ agentive moves in their learning endeavours.     

Comments from the Editor: The End of Teacher Evaluation?

Commentary

Comments from the Editor: The End of Teacher Evaluation?     

The Nature of the Gift: Accountability and the Professor‐Student Relationship

In this paper I introduce the theory of gift giving as a possible means to reconcile the contradictions inherent in accountability measures of ‘faculty productivity’ in the American university. In this paper I sketch the theory of gift economies to show how, given the historical ideals that characterize the faculty‐student relationship, a theory of gift giving could help us better judge the labor of the faculty. I suggest that it is the relational character of teaching that frustrates accountability measures and that perhaps if viewed as a gift economy—and in particular an economy with ‘reproductive’ ends—we could better grasp the effectiveness of these relationships.     

An Integrated Analysis of School Students’ Aspirations for STEM Careers: Which Student and School Factors Are Most Predictive?

Declining enrolments in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines and a lack of interest in STEM careers are concerning at a time when society is becoming more reliant on complex technologies. We examine student aspirations for STEM careers by drawing on surveys conducted annually from 2012 to 2015. School students in years 3 to 12 (n?=?6492) were asked to indicate their occupational choices. A logistic regression analysis showed that being in the older cohorts, possessing high cultural capital, being male, having a parent in a STEM occupation and high prior achievement in reading and numeracy, were significant. This analysis provides a strong empirical basis for school-based initiatives to improve STEM participation. In particular, strategies should target the following: the persistent lack of interest by females in some careers, improving student academic achievement in both literacy and numeracy and expanding knowledge of STEM careers, especially for students without familial STEM connections.     

The Politics of “Giving Student Victims a Voice”: A Feminist Analysis of State Trafficking Policy Implementation

Little research explores factors shaping those policies and actors involved in state-level sex and labor trafficking prevention. This study examined the organizational, political, and normative dynamics that influenced implementation of Texas House Bill 1272 (HB 1272, 2013), which included educators in trafficking prevention. Part of a larger study that used feminist critical policy analysis and multifocal theory as overarching guideposts, findings highlight important factors bound up with policy actor enactment and normative roadblocks to successful long-term curriculum and training implementation. This study fills a gap in the educational research literature both in its unpacking of the normative politics involved in eliminating youth commercial and sexual violence experienced and thick qualitative research findings, neither of which would be possible through one theoretical or methodological device. Implications of and recommendations for educational research and practice are offered.     

The Causal Effect of Survey Mode on Students’ Evaluations of Teaching: Empirical Evidence from Three Field Experiments

In recent years many universities switched from paper- to online-based student evaluation of teaching (SET) without knowing the consequences for data quality. Based on a series of three consecutive field experiments—a split-half design, twin courses, and pre–post-measurements—this paper examines the effects of survey mode on SET. First, all three studies reveal marked differences in non-response between online- and paper-based SET and systematic, but small differences in the overall course ratings. On average, online SET reveal a slightly less optimistic picture of teaching quality in students’ perception. Similarly, a web survey mode does not impair the reliability of student ratings. Second, we highlight the importance of taking selection and class absenteeism into account when studying survey mode effects and also show that it is necessary and informative to survey the subgroup of no-shows when evaluating teaching. Third, we empirically demonstrate the need to account for contextual setting of the survey (in class vs. after class) and the specific type of the online survey mode (TAN vs. email). Previous research either confounded contextual setting with variation in survey mode or generalized results for a specific online mode to web surveys in general. Our findings suggest that higher response rates in email surveys can be achieved if students are given the opportunity and time to evaluate directly in class.     

The Capricious Nature of Theory of Mind: Does Mental State Understanding Depend on the Characteristics of the Target?

Using a between-groups design and random assignment, this study examined 214 Turkish children's (M = 11.66 years) mindreading and general reasoning about in-group members (Turks), similar out-group members (Syrians within Turkey) and dissimilar out-group members (Northern Europeans). Children heard four mindreading and four general reasoning stories with in-group or out-group members as targets. Whereas children's general reasoning about three groups was equivalent, accuracy of mental state inferences differed by target with more accurate mindreading of in-group targets compared to both sets of out-group targets. In this Turkish sample, mindreading of Syrian targets was the least accurate. Prejudice and perceived realistic threat predicted lower mindreading. These findings have important implications for understanding how similarity and intergroup processes play a role in children's mindreading.