Identifying Lurking Alligators: An Essay on the Ethical Dimensions of Faculty Development

The literature on ethics in higher education tends to focus primarily on the professor/student relationship. While that relationship is central to academia, there are important ethical dimensions to consider in the work of faculty development. Principles used to gloss the ethics of the professor/student relationship are applicable to the ethics of faculty development as well.     

The differential antecedents of self-efficacy beliefs of novice and experienced teachers

Among the sources of teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs, mastery experiences are postulated to be the most potent. Thus it seems likely that other sources of self-efficacy would play a larger role early in learning when fewer mastery experiences are available. Among the 255 novice and careers teachers who participated in this study, contextual factors such as the teaching resources and interpersonal support available were found to be much more salient in the self-efficacy beliefs of novice teachers. Among experienced teachers, for whom an abundance of mastery experiences were available, contextual factors played far less important a role in their self-efficacy beliefs.     

Studies on the management of root-knot nematode, Meloidogyne incognita-wilt fungus, Fusarium oxysporum disease complex of green gram, Vigna radiata cv ML-1108

INTRODUCTION Green gram (Vigna radiata) is an important short duration pulse crop. Due to its high nutritive value, it is grown throughout the tropical countries of South and Southeast Asia, particularly in India (Vavilov, 1951). Among various pests and diseases, nematodes-fungus disease complex particularly of Meloidogyne incognita and Fusarium oxysporum poses a great problem to the cultivation of pulse crops by inflicting severe yield losses (Perveen et al., 1999; De et al., 2000; …     

Maintaining the status quo—A response to Fred Wilson and John Wilson

This article concludes theInterchange debate on the author's own “A Possible ‘Orality’ for Science?” (Interchange, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 227–244). The author contrasts two movements in science education: Science for Scientists and Science for All. The author maintains that we need to review the language of science to the end of producing a more palatable school science curriculum for all of our pupils.     

Cream skimming and elitism in state/municipality-regulated enrolment: A case study of two elementary schools in Ljubljana, Slovenia

Cream skimming and elitism in public elementary education is closely related to the question of selection criteria used by the schools in their selection procedure. Although equity in access seems to be important part of any education policy, individual school's practices are often selective. In the Slovenian context, state and municipalities seemingly regulate admission and selection criteria by catchment areas, yet the case study of two Ljubljana schools reveals different practice for undersubscribed schools. The paper, therefore, describes, discusses and analyses how schools in the state regulated system and defined catchment areas choose students and, thus, operate on a quasi-market.     

The illusory dichotomy of plagiarism

Plagiarism has been characterised as a ‘major problem’ for universities. While tensions between students and universities are inevitable, the problem with the existing system of plagiarism management and prevention is that it operates to problematise the relationship between the university and the student, rather than address the core academic issues. As a result, a dichotomy is created where the student interest is constructed as adverse to that of the institution. This article argues that de-dichotomisation of the current polarity of plagiarism will open space for alternative thoughtful considerations in dealing with plagiarism positively in an institutional context.     

Effectual Reasoning and Innovation among Entrepreneurial Science Teacher Leaders: a Correlational Study

This is one of the first studies to examine the educational entrepreneur in K-12 public schools and the first to present an instrument designed to measure entrepreneurial thinking among teachers using a type of reasoning, effectual reasoning, which has been proposed in the business literature on entrepreneurs. This study situates entrepreneurial thinking within the K-12 education arena and examines the relationship between high school and middle school teachers’ use of effectual reasoning and their corresponding implementation of high, medium, or low levels of innovation in STEM areas within their classrooms, districts, or across districts. Our findings correlated higher use of effectual reasoning, a component of entrepreneurial thinking, with higher levels of implementation of innovations among teachers within an NSF grant, Entrepreneurial Leadership in STEM Teaching and learning, which centered on deeper content, reform-oriented pedagogies, and entrepreneurial thinking. We found that high innovators viewed uncertainty’ differently than low innovators by associating it with more positive cognitive structures and that innovators at different levels hold distinct notions of what constitutes high and low risk innovations. Contrary to the common notion that entrepreneurs are high-risk takers, results reveal that the types of innovations perceived by high innovators as low risk are viewed as high risk by low innovators. Furthermore, the results are consistent with the idea that entrepreneurs do certain types of things to lower/manage the risk of innovations before and, if necessary, during the implementation of an innovation. NSF: Award 0831820