Using Academic Journals to Help Students Learn Subject Matter Content, Develop and Practice Critical Reasoning Skills, and Reflect on Personal Values in Food Science and Human Nutrition Classes

ABSTRACT:  It has been reported that students learn best when they use a wide variety of techniques to understand the information of the discipline, be it visual, auditory, discussion with others, metacognition, hands-on activities, or writing about the subject. We report in this article the use of academic journals not only as an aid for students to learn about content knowledge needed in an Experimental Foods course, but also as a way to have students think about and reflect on their own personal values. The topics of these journal entries cover several of the core competencies in the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Undergraduate Education Standards for Degrees in Food Science. These are basic principles of food science, as well as address several "Success Skills" (written communication, critical thinking, professionalism, life-long learning, interaction skills, and organizational skills). While there are no quantitative "measurements" of gains in learning, comments from the students indicate that learning took place, critical reasoning occurred, and personal values were analyzed. A guideline for writing and grading academic journals and a simple rubric for scoring the quality of the writing are included.     

Conceptions of literacy in primary and secondary school teachers

Recently, teachers have been described as lacking an organised and consistent understanding of how children acquire literacy. Arguments about falling standards have been aired in the media, and links drawn between methods currently in favour in UK schools, and an apparent failure of children to acquire ‘basic skills'. Proposals have now been made by the Department for Education which give greater prominence to more structured, skill-based primary teaching which, it is claimed, will raise standards and better prepare children to meet the demands they face as they move into secondary school. This study analyses teachers’ conceptual maps of literacy teaching as the preliminary phase of a research programme aimed at describing and enhancing pupils’ functional use of literacy across the curriculum. The analysis is based on a four-quadrant model of adult-child proximation. Using a questionnaire format, important similarities and contrasts were found between the views of primary and secondary teachers. However, the study does reveal that teachers have complex models of literacy which underpin their work and do not adhere to simplistic, uni-dimensional methods.     

We can Achieve if We Receive: Examining the Effects of Out-of-School Time Activities on Black Student Achievement in Mathematics

Using policy discourse analysis, the author analyzed 21 diversity action plans issued at 20 U.S. land-grant universities over a five-year period to identify images of diversity and the problems and solutions represented in diversity action plans. Discourses of marketplace, excellence, managerialism, and democracy emerged and served to construct images of the diverse individual as a commodity, entrepreneur, and change agent. These findings suggest that the dominance of the marketplace discourse may situate the diverse individual as a resource to be exploited and inspire entrepreneurial endeavors rather than change-making activism. Diversity action plans in their current form may unintentionally undermine the achievement of their equity goals.     

Improving homework accuracy: Interdependent group contingencies and randomized components

Homework is an often employed teaching strategy that has strong positive effects on academic achievement across grade levels, content areas, and student ability levels. To maximize academic learning, accuracy of homework should be addressed. The present investigation employed a multiple‐baseline design across academic behaviors to examine the efficacy of randomization of the interdependent group contingency on the homework accuracy of six fourth‐grade students enrolled in a general education class. Results demonstrated that the interdependent group contingency coupled with randomly selected components improved accuracy of homework performance. Specifically, participants demonstrated gains in all three subject areas. Limitations and future research are also addressed. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

An Initial Evaluation of the Comprehensive Quality of Life Scale‐‐Intellectual Disability

This paper introduces a new scale to measure the life quality of people with an intellectual disability. The Comprehensive Quality of Life Scale‐‐Intellectual Disability incorporates features that reflect contemporary understanding of the quality of life construct and exists in a parallel form for the general population. Psychometric data are presented and comparisons are made between data collected from 59 people with an intellectual disability, the vicarious responses of each respondent's primary caregiver, and 69 university students. It is concluded that the scale represents a useful instrument to measure comparative life quality.     

Effects of variations in task design on mathematics teachers’ learning experiences: a case of a sorting task

The goal of the study presented in this article was to examine how variations in task design may affect mathematics teachers’ learning experiences. The study focuses on sorting tasks, i.e., learning tasks that require grouping a given set of mathematical items, in as many ways as possible, according to different criteria suggested by the learners. We present an example of a sorting task for which the items to be grouped are related to basic concepts of analytical geometry that are connected to the notion of loci of points. Based on a design experiment of three iterations with practicing secondary school mathematics teachers, we report on intended and enacted objects of learning inherent in three versions of the task. Empirically based suggestions are drawn about design of sorting tasks that potentially evoke desirable learning experiences.