Wooden dolls and disarray: rethinking United States’ teacher education to the side of quantification

ABSTRACT

According to the 2013 report by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), most teacher education programs are failing in the United States. These programs, NCTQ insists, are not preparing new teachers with sufficiently ‘scientific’ methods and are, in the process, failing to properly train prospective teachers how to ‘lead the classroom’ (p. 2). In the deficit discourses employed by NCTQ, teacher education programs have become a cesspool of ‘mediocrity’ (p. 1) where the overall findings ‘paint a grim picture of teacher preparation in the United States’ (p. 17). We actually agree that things are grim, but for very different reasons and in very different spaces. Using NCTQ’s ‘Teacher Prep Review: A Review of the Nation’s Teacher Preparation Program’ as an entryway, the authors argue that the report typifies not only an alarmist approach usually found in conservative attempts at social policy and reform, but also further reifies quasi-empirically based research as the best (indeed the only) method by which to measure effective teacher education programs. The authors deconstruct the taken-for-granted assumptions within the NCTQ text, challenging quantification as a research/policy paradigm while arguing for the value of newly imagining educational possibility through risk and creation.     

Benefits for coteachers of students with disabilities: Do contextual factors matter?

Drawing on Bandura’s social learning and social cognitive theory, we empirically investigate contextual factors that may influence perceived benefits of coteaching for teachers. Special and general education coteachers have reported that necessary contextual factors for them to be effective include: sufficient coplanning time, relationship quality, and parity. In this study, 147 special and general education coteachers from suburban and rural schools across the United States responded to the Co‐teacher Questionnaire to determine what contributes to their perceived benefits of coteaching students with disabilities. Hierarchical linear regression analyses indicated that coplanning ( β = 0.22; p ≤ 0.01) and relationship quality ( β = 0.30; p ≤ 0.01) positively influenced the coteachers’ perceived benefits of coteaching (Cohen’s f ² = 0.47), whereas parity was not corroborated to have a significant impact. These not previously empirically studied relationships inform the field by clarifying the importance of the contextual factors for coteachers. Implications for the practitioners and researchers are offered.     

Understandings and misunderstandings of eighth graders of five chemistry concepts found in textbooks

The research reported in this study was designed to answer three questions: (a) What misconceptions do eighth grade students have concerning the chemistry concepts from their textbooks. (b) How is reasoning ability related to misconceptions concerning chemistry concepts. (c) How effective are textbooks in teaching an understanding of chemistry concepts? Five chemistry concepts were used in the study: chemical change, dissolution, conservation of atoms, periodicity, and phase change. Problems concerning the five concepts were given to 247 eighth-grade students in order to assess the students' degree of understanding of chemistry concepts and to identify specific misconceptions. Two pencil-and-paper Piaget-type tasks were used to assess intellectual level. A comparison of intellectual level and scores on the chemistry concepts showed moderate correlations. However, the small number of formal operational students in the sample makes these results inconclusive. A study of the level of understanding of the five chemistry concepts and the nature of the misconceptions held by students indicate a general failure of textbooks to teach a reasonable understanding of chemistry concepts.     

Learning to listen: from historical sources to classroom practice

Listening to students in productive ways seems to be at the core of teaching practices aligned with the basic tenets of the constructivist world view. We present a definition for productive ways of listening, discuss the challenges involved in implementing it, and propose a way to support the “decentering” needed to learning to listen for teacher education programs. The proposal is based on reading and understanding historical texts as a way to exercising the adoption of the ‘other’s perspective.’ We describe the materials developed for teacher workshops, their implementation and what participants, and we, learned from the experience.     

Student suspension: A critical reappraisal

This paper analyzes national level data, gathered for the Safe School Study, to directly address the question, “Why are students suspended from school?” Data are available on students in both junior and senior high schools from a representative sample of the nation's schools. Using a range of analytical techniques, the paper attempts to tease out the relationships between (1) student misbehavior at varying types of schools and suspension rates, (2) the effects of teacher judgments and attitudes, (3) the effect of administrative structures, (4) the effect of perceived academic potential, and (5) the effect of racial bias. It is concluded that suspension rates cannot be regarded as a simple reflection of student misbehavior in school, but rather as the result of a complex of factors grounded in the ways schools operate. Suspension rates are best predicted by (1) knowing the kind of school a student went to, and (2) knowing how that school was run.     

Polymerase chain reaction: It’s diagnostic application

The development of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) has been a major technical milestone in molecular genetics with the greatest impact on research, in rapid medical diagnosis and in studying the pathogenesis of disease. This study highlights the practical applications of polymerase chain reaction in diagnosis and includes a recent application of PCR in differentiating polio from other nonpolio enteroviruses.     

Leucine125Valine (Leu125Val) Gene Polymorphism of Platelet Endothelial Cell Adhesion Molecule-1 (PECAM-1) and Myocardial Infarction in Indian Population

Platelet-endothelial cell adhesion molecule-1 (PECAM-1) has role in atherosclerotic plaque development as well as in thrombosis leading to myocardial infarction (MI). Present study was aimed to analyse the association of PECAM-1 Leu125Val gene polymorphism with MI in Indian population. Subjects included healthy individuals as control (N = 116) and MI patients (N = 100) divided into two groups; MI patients at presentation of the acute event (MI-Group-1, N = 46) and patients with recent event of MI stabilized with treatment 4.5 days from their symptoms (MI-Group-2, N = 54). The difference in the distribution of Leu125Val genotype frequencies of controls and patients did not reach statistical significance. However Leu allele frequency (0.57) was more associated with MI patients as compared to control (0.504). sPECAM-1 levels were significantly elevated in patients at acute event of MI (MI-Group-1) by 44.1% (P = 0.009) as compared to controls and by 95.2% (P = 0.001) as compared to stabilized MI patients (MI-Group-2).