Students’ perceptions of parental and teacher academic involvement: Consequences on achievement goals

The present study examined whether students’ perceptions of two major facets of parental and teacher academic involvement (i.e., academic support and academic monitoring), contribute to the process of students’ achievement goals adoption. French junior high-school students completed two questionnaires assessing first their perceptions of parental and teacher academic involvement, and then their achievement goals three months later. Factorial analyses showed that students differentiated parental academic monitoring from parental academic support, while predominantly perceiving their teacher academic involvement as reflecting monitoring. Multilevel modeling analyses indicated that, as expected, students’ perceptions of parental academic support were positively related to mastery goals while unrelated to performance goals. Also as expected, perceived academic monitoring was associated with performance goals, although the findings revealed an equal contribution of perceived parental and teacher involvement. This new insight about the antecedents of students’ achievement goals emphasizes how important is the role of parental and teacher academic socialization.     

The Collateral Consequences of “Criminalized” School Punishment on Disadvantaged Parents and Families

The “criminalization” of school discipline has contributed to a number of negative outcomes for students and scholars have noted important racial, ethnic, and class disparities in school punishment. Yet, prior work provides little information in which to understand how the effects of criminalized school punishment may move beyond the student and impact parents and families—especially parents and families most likely to experience school discipline. By drawing upon what we know about the collateral consequences of criminal justice punishment—such as arrest and incarceration—on families more generally, the goal of this research project is to explore how school punishment affects disadvantaged parents and families. Interviews with primarily poor, single, Black mothers, reveal that as a result of school discipline, parents reported important collateral consequences including negative financial outcomes such as losing their job, negative emotional consequences including depression and emotional turmoil, and a decrease in future expectations for their child. Respondents highlighted that these consequences were largely attributable to social disadvantage and a lack of social capital.     

Getting from Here to There: The Role of Geography in Community College Students’ Transfer Decisions

Community colleges have received renewed attention from policymakers seeking to increase college attendance and completion rates because they provide open access to postsecondary education for historically marginalized students. Yet, transfer rates from community colleges to 4-year institutions are low. Inequities in opportunity that are shaped by geography and compounded throughout childhood may restrict higher education opportunities for low-income, first-generation college students. Most studies examining how geography constrains college choice focus on high school students’ initial decisions about higher education, not community college students. We analyze the spatial distribution of community college students’ “choice sets,” the 4-year institutions that they are considering transferring to. Using qualitative interviews and geospatial analysis, we examine how these spatial patterns compare between two community-college systems in Central Texas. We find that students’ choice sets are geographically constrained, but that for many students, these zones are geographically large, suggesting that interventions and targeted outreach from universities could help students identify and select from greater range of options. Our findings have important implications for college access and completion among first-generation college students, and for policies that seek to interrupt patterns of inequity tied to location.     

The ABCs of Students

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“Frayed All Over:” The Causes and Consequences of Activist Burnout Among Social Justice Education Activists

Despite the growing body of scholarship on burnout among social justice activists who are working on a variety of issues, from labor rights to queer justice, little attention has been paid to burnout among those whose activism focuses on issues of educational justice. To begin to address this omission and understand what supports might help social justice education activists mitigate burnout and sustain their activism, we analyzed interview data from 14 activists focused on activist burnout and its implications on movements for educational justice.. This analysis identified 3 major symptom categories of activist burnout and we gained insights into the culture of martyrdom in social justice education movements. These symptoms and the culture of martyrdom, by negatively impacting the health and sustainability of activists, threaten the efficiency and effectiveness of educational justice movements.     

The Motion Picture in Science Education: “One Hundred Percent Efficiency”

This study provides a historical overview of the development of the motion picture as a tool within the context of science education. The technology was traced from its beginning as a silent motion picture through its current manifestation in videotapes and videodiscs. The use of the technology as a teaching tool is examined in terms of the concept of scientific literacy and the means by which the motion picture helped to accomplish the goals of scientific literacy.     

Models of “The Heavens and the Earth”: An Investigation of German and Taiwanese Students’ Alternative Conceptions of the Universe

The paper reports a cross-cultural investigation conducted in 2001–2002 that seeks to reveal students’ alternative ideas in two countries, Taiwan and Germany. It was carried out by means of semi-structured interviews in a story form. The targeted students were arbitrarily selected from grades 3 to 6 in both countries and amounted to 64. The questions in the interview were centered around “the heavens” (space, heavenly bodies, and familiar astronomical events) and “the earth” (the appearance, shape, movement, and, in some cases, gravity). The results indicated that, first, the students presented their ideas in a consistent manner, regardless of their cultural backgrounds, if we take into account the scope of questions and phenomena which were in their concern or of their interest. The comments from the student can be patterned into a structure-like whole, which we term “model” in the study. Second, the alternative models of “the heavens and the earth” elicited in the interviews appear to have various strengths of explaining familiar astronomical events. Interestingly, the more advanced a model is (in regard with the present-day cosmological model), the higher explanatory power it contains. As for the difference between the sample of two countries, the German students show more intention (or are more aware of the need) to explain astronomical phenomena than their Taiwanese counterparts, and thereby presented more precise models with stronger explanatory power. On the other hand, the Taiwanese students appeared to have more imagination and conceptual flexibility that should also be valued.     

Education Reform in Hong Kong: The “Through-Road” Model and its Societal Consequences

Although Hong Kong’s education system has long been criticized as lacking in creativity and over-emphasising rote learning, on the whole it has served Hong Kong well in the past years, breeding outstanding business, academic and political leaders who continue to maintain Hong Kong’s competitive edge. The traditional elite schools have played a crucial role in the process. The education reform, which is still on-going, aims to overhaul the entire system by introducing the “through-road” model. To accomplish this, some mechanisms need to be changed. J.P. Farrell’s concepts of equality and equity, C.W. Mills’ concept of elitism, and P. Bourdieu and J. Coleman’s concepts of cultural and social capital will be applied to analyse the consequences of the reform. The paper argues that the education reform may be well-intentioned in eliminating some elements of inequality and inequity in education, but that this comes at the expense of Hong Kong’s cultural and social capital and leads to the development of new forms of inequality.     

Education Reform in Hong Kong: The “Through-Road” Model and its Societal Consequences

Although Hong Kong’s education system has long been criticized as lacking in creativity and over-emphasising rote learning, on the whole it has served Hong Kong well in the past years, breeding outstanding business, academic and political leaders who continue to maintain Hong Kong’s competitive edge. The traditional elite schools have played a crucial role in the process. The education reform, which is still on-going, aims to overhaul the entire system by introducing the “through-road” model. To accomplish this, some mechanisms need to be changed. J.P. Farrell’s concepts of equality and equity, C.W. Mills’ concept of elitism, and P. Bourdieu and J. Coleman’s concepts of cultural and social capital will be applied to analyse the consequences of the reform. The paper argues that the education reform may be well-intentioned in eliminating some elements of inequality and inequity in education, but that this comes at the expense of Hong Kong’s cultural and social capital and leads to the development of new forms of inequality.     

The Law of Unintended Consequences: The ‘Real’ Cost of Top-Down Reform

In most jurisdictions around the world,governments, in the name of economiccompetitiveness, have imposed comprehensive andquite dramatic changes on state schools. Mostchanges require a more centralized and rigorouscurriculum for pupils, a plethora ofaccountability measures and mandatoryin-service for teachers, and carefully definedand more onerous responsibilities for schoolleaders. The province of Ontario is nodifferent. Since 1995, its educational systemhas experienced quite revolutionary changes– all instituted with break-neck speed. At thesame time most schools in Ontario are employinginternal change strategies to address theseoutside pressures. These change forces havecoalesced to redefine the work and lives ofteachers and school leaders in many intendedand unintended ways. There is a substantialliterature on both external and internal changeforces, but very little has been written aboutthe conjunction of these change forces with thepersonal side of change for teachers andleaders. Based on two studies undertaken by theInternational Centre for Educational Change atthe Ontario Institute for Studies inEducation/University of Toronto, this paperexamines the unintended consequences of thesechange forces on the teachers and principals ofone secondary school in Ontario, Canada. Theteachers and leaders of Lord Byron High Schoolare not averse to change and are generallyquite content to do whatever is in the bestinterests of their students. The school has along history of innovation and change and areputation for attending to a wide diversity ofstudent needs.Through the use of multiple conceptual lenses,this paper addresses the unintendedconsequences of systemic change to the schooland its teachers and principals. At a time whenteacher shortages and teacher morale aregrowing problems for many educationaljurisdictions, this investigation will point toan urgent need to build better bridges ofunderstanding between policy makers and policyimplementers, and for researchers to provideresearch that is more sensitive to the work andlives of real people in real schools.     

Students’ Knowledge of Nuclear Science and Its Connection with Civic Scientific Literacy in Two European Contexts: The Case of Newspaper Articles

Nuclear science has uses and applications that are relevant and crucial for world peace and sustainable development, so knowledge of its basic concepts and topics should constitute an integral part of civic scientific literacy. We have used two newspaper articles that deal with uses of nuclear science that are directly relevant to life, society, economy, and international politics. One article discusses a new thermonuclear reactor, and the second one is about depleted uranium and its danger for health. 189 first-year undergraduate physics and primary education Greek students were given one of the two articles each, and asked to answer a number of accompanying questions dealing with knowledge that is part of the Greek high school curriculum. The study was repeated with 272 first-year undergraduate physics, physics education, science education, and primary education Turkish students. Acceptable or partially acceptable answers were provided on average by around 20 % of Greek and 11 % of Turkish students, while a large proportion (on the average, around 50 % of Greek and 27 % of Turkish students) abstained from answering the questions. These findings are disappointing, but should be seen in the light of the limited or no coverage of the relevant learning material in the Greek and the Turkish high-school programs. Student conceptual difficulties, misconceptions and implications for research and high school curricula are discussed.     

Metacognitive Performances of Hearing Students and of Students who are Deaf and Hard‐of‐Hearing on Two Types of Measures: Visual–voiced and visual–visual stimuli

A small sample of 20 hearing students and 20 students who are deaf and hard‐of‐hearing participated in this study, which compared their performances on two measures of metacognition. The first measure required participants to visually analyse real‐life pictures and then to choose a response from four options (voiced or signed) indicating which was the best explanation of what was depicted. The second measure required participants to look at five pictures and then to point to the picture that was different. Results identified no significant differences between the performances of the two groups of students on either measure. Males in both groups performed at comparable levels on the two measures, whereas females who were hearing and those who were deaf or hard‐of‐hearing performed significantly better on the visual–voiced measure than on the visual–visual measure. Limitations of this study and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Students’ experiences of studying physics concepts: The effects of disintegrated perceptions and approaches

Recent research on student learning has revealed that a number of students in any learning context are unable to distinguish between contrasting contextualised approaches to learning. In other words, the relationship between their perceptions of the learning context and their approaches to learning disintegrates and becomes incoherent. These students are observed to be among the lower academic achievers in their group. This paper reports on the results of a study which shows that physics students’ prior understandings of key concepts are systematically related to the way they approach their studies, their perceptions of the learning context and the quality of the outcomes of their studies. As with previous studies, one group reported disintegrated learning experiences. As a group they were found to have the poorest pre-conceptual knowledge, to have the poorest postconceptual knowledge, and to be the lowest achievers. These results are consistent with the earlier studies, but extend them by showing that disintegrated perceptions and approaches are related to students’ understanding before and after the subject as determined using qualitative indicators of understanding as well as assessment results.     

The Feet of Two Ducks

火车里很挤,在过境前的最后一站,上来一个挺着大肚皮的瘦小男人,手提一个大纸袋,纸袋包得很仔细,但仍可看到两只鸭子的脚露在外面。男子找到了一只空位子,把纸袋放在地板中央,拿出一张报纸看了起来。其它旅客都知道,食物是不允许携过境     

The Characteristics and Value of Received pronunciation for EFL Students

Every natural language has intrinsic pronunciation variabilIties and differences are likely to appear regionally. In the united Kingdom, for example, English is Spoken in London as well as in Scotland, but with quite different pronunciations. It is also be noted that there exists a close and obvious connection between