The Search for Effective Schools

In the light of external reform pressures, many schools have found it difficult to implement medium‐to‐long‐term plans. Development planning was supposed to be a means of refining both the planning and the implementation of strategic priorities. Some recent writers are now casting doubts on planning and development planning and they are using chaos theory to justify this sceptical stance. This article is, in turn, sceptical about the application of chaos theory to school planning and instead suggests that control theory clarifies important differences between short‐term and long‐term planning and provides positive and practical insights into how development planning can be used by self‐managing schools as part of school improvement.     

PERCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES OF CULTURALLY RELEVANT SCIENCE TEACHING IN AMERICAN INDIAN CLASSROOMS

This study explores the perceptions of culturally relevant science teaching of 35 teachers of American Indian students. These teachers participated in professional development designed to help them better understand climate change science content and teaching climate change using both Western science and traditional and cultural knowledge. Teacher perceptions of practices using culturally relevant instruction were evaluated. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results from the survey analysis show that the teachers’ existing practices of culturally relevant science teaching were limited in choosing topics relevant to American Indian culture. We found three common themes from the teachers’ perceptions of culturally relevant science teaching, meaning of culturally relevant science teaching, teaching strategies, and purpose of culturally relevant science teaching from the qualitative data. We also found that teachers with higher survey scores perceive culturally relevant science teaching differently than teachers with lower survey scores, specifically for the purposes and teaching strategies of culturally relevant science teaching. The results show that teachers with higher survey scores tended to perceive culturally relevant science teaching as a two-way learning process between teachers and students where the teachers can learn traditional science knowledge from the students. They also tend to perceive using concrete traditional science examples as effective teaching strategy for culturally relevant science teaching and building strong relationships with American Indian students as the most important purpose of culturally relevant science teaching. We also discuss common challenges faced by science teachers when trying to implement culturally relevant science teaching with American Indian students.     

The Greek Publishing Industry and Professional Development

In the Greek publishing industry, tradition and the desire for innovation go hand in hand. The industry is influenced by European developments in publishing and bookselling in terms of book promotion methods, the role of chain bookstores and the impact of information technology. Greece shares the features of other small book markets in Europe, whilst retaining the individuality defined by the Greek language and the country’s cultural and social conditions. This article provides an overview of the publishing industry in Greece through a review of the relevant literature and the available statistics. This work also focuses on the need to develop publishing skills through publishing education and continuous professional development.     

Creating a flexible fund structure to meet the needs and goals of the library and its users

This paper describes the Texas A&M University (TAMU) Libraries' new and innovative approach to monograph collection development using a re-engineered internal funding structure and a process that reflects the needs and goals of the library and its users. The paper discusses the goals of the new fund structure, the experience of implementing it, and the results after one year in use.     

The Civil Rights Commission Must Persist

Columnist George Will and others have questioned the continuing need for a federal civil rights commission, because civil rights protections have been on the books since 1964. The chairman of the Commission, Gerald Reynolds, here responds that practitioners of critical legal theory, advocates of the Akaka-Secession bill, some proponents of diversity, and others like them may make the continued existence of his commission a necessity.     

Families’ perceptions of early childhood educators’ fostering conversations and connections by sharing children's learning through pedagogical documentation

ABSTRACT

Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia emphasises that families have an important role in their children's learning and it recognises that their earliest development is influenced through these relationships and adds that partnerships can be fostered with families by early childhood educators sharing the children's documented experiences. The research discussed employed an in-depth structured questionnaire. It involved 37 families with children aged from three to five years who attended an early learning centre in Northern Tasmania, Australia. The aim of this research was to determine these families’ perceptions, beliefs and experiences of educators sharing children's learning through pedagogical documentation. The documentation included hard copy and digital formats of the children's learning, capturing their voices and explorations. The findings show that families consider the sharing of documentation fosters family conversations about the children's learning experiences and helps to create stronger connections between the centre, home and extended family. Another recurring theme from the families’ responses was that children gain pride and a positive sense of identity when their documented work is shared with families.     

Mediated Effects of Preschool Intervention

Consistent evidence that the effect of preschool intervention on cognitive achievement fades with the passage of time has resulted in a search for mediators of preschool. This study investigated factors that play a role in mediating the effects of a government funded Child-Parent Center preschool program. The school adjustment of 266 low-income, mostly Black preschool children and of 125 comparison group children were matched on neighborhood characteristics and were traced from kindergarten through the third year of school (1986-1989). Data were collected from children, parents, and teachers on entering kindergarten cognitive readiness, teacher ratings of socioemotional maturity, parental involvement at home and in school, grade retention, assignment to special education, school mobility and cognitive achievement in reading and mathematics. Results of a latent-factor structural model indicated that preschool influenced later achievement and retention indirectly rather than directly. Four major pathways through which preschool exerted its effect included (1) cognitive readiness, (2) cognitive readiness and teacher ratings of socioemotional maturity, (3) teacher ratings of socioemotional maturity, and (4) parent involvement and school mobility. Cognitive readiness, teacher ratings, and parent involvement also transmitted effects to grade retention. That preschool's influence on later outcomes is largely indirect indicates its dependency on intervening factors in exerting effects. These intervening factors appear to be critical in promoting school success of children at risk.     

Concerns of our Students: A Cross‐institutional Study

This study investigated the concerns experienced by students from two Australian tertiary institutions. Randomly‐selected samples of 342 Ballarat College of Advanced Education students and 208 Gold Coast College of Advanced Education students reported the extent to which each of 42 factors had caused them concern since being at college. Consistent with the research findings of Sarros and Densten (1989) and others, respondents were more concerned over academic and course‐related matters than over a range of personal, interpersonal and practical factors. Levels and‐patterns of concern were found to vary between sub‐groups of the student samples. Follow‐up surveys of the academic staff in each of the two institutions suggested that academics are biased in their perceptions of student concerns. Discussion focuses upon the generalizability and practical significance of the findings.     

Strength vs. temporal-order information in delayed-matching-to-sample performance by monkeys

The usual procedure in delayed-matching-to-sample (DMTS) experiments is that the most recently presented sample stimulus is correct on choice tests. The present paper reports two experments in which the first of two samples was always correct. Theories based on trace strength, such as the Roberts and Grant trace strength competition model, predict that such a procedure will yield below chance performance, because on the average the more recently presented stimulus will have the greater trace strength. In contrast, D’Amato and others have proposed that DMTS performance is mediated by a temporal discrimination process and, since either stimulus may act as S+ in a discrimination problem, monkeys should be capable of learning to choose either the secondor the first of two sample stimuli. Performance did not exceed chance in either experiment. The generality of these results is tentatively explored.