Investigation of guided school tours,student learning,and science reform recommendations at a museum of natural history

A study of docent‐led guided school tours at a museum of natural history was investigated. Researchers engaged in naturalistic inquiry to describe how natural history content was conveyed to students and what students gained from this model of touring. They also investigated how the content and pedagogy within the guided tour complemented recommendations from formal science standards documents and informal learning literature. About 30 visiting school groups in Grades 2–8 were observed. Teachers (n = 30) and select students (n = 85) were interviewed. Researchers found that tours were organized in a didactic way that conflicted with science education reform documents and research related to learning within informal contexts. Students' responses to interview questions indicated high satisfaction with the tours but low levels of science learning. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 200–218, 2003     

Contemporary Models of Communicative Practice: Shaky Foundations in the Foundation Stage?

This article outlines a four‐year‐old child's multi‐modal encounters with texts and analyses one of those encounters in the light of a framework for the analysis of such events. It is argued that this analysis leads to the conclusion that the experiences with texts that permeate young children's lives are complex in nature and that this complexity is not sufficiently addressed in relevant curriculum frameworks. Further, it is suggested that young children's encounters with televisual texts need to be identified as emergent techno‐literacy practices which should be supported and extended in ways which correlate to the strategies used with regard to print‐based texts.     

Purposes for literacy in children's use of the online virtual world Club Penguin

This paper reports on a study of the purposes for literacy discernible in young children's use of the virtual world, Club Penguin. Twenty‐six children aged between 5 and 11 took part in semi‐structured interviews in which their use of virtual worlds was explored. Further, three 11‐year‐old children were filmed using Club Penguin four times each over the period of 1 month in their own homes and they and their parents took part in interviews regarding their use of this virtual world. Findings indicate that the purposes for literacy in virtual worlds such as these are varied and have much in common with purposes for literacy in the off ine world. The virtual world Club Penguin provided a motivating and enjoyable context for reading and writing and enabled the construction and maintenance of online social networks. The implications for research, policy and practice are discussed.     

Building the mentoring relationship: humanism and the importance of storytelling between mentor and mentee

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we describe a mentoring program designed to help prepare high school seniors at Arizona State University Preparatory Academy for postsecondary education. Specifically, we address the usefulness of ‘humanistic mentoring,’ a form of mentoring that stresses the importance of reciprocity, mutuality, and empathy in the mentor/mentee relationship. We further describe how sharing stories was useful in developing such humanistic relationships. Based on etic-thematic coding of interviews from 13 of the mentees, a humanistic lens for mentoring and sharing personal stories is productive for both developing relationships and passing on knowledge.     

Telecommunications and Cable

Ken Marsh's Independent Video (San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1974—$7.95, paper)

Richard H. Davis and Allen E. Edwards' Television: A Therapeutic Tool for the Aged (Publication and Media Projects, Andrus Gerontology Center, University Park, Los Angeles, Calif. 90007—$2.25, paper)

Irving W. Larson (ed.) EIA Electronics Multimedia Handbook (Indianapolis: Howard W. Sams, 1975—price not known, paper)

Kendall Webster Sessions' 2nd Class FCC Encyclopedia (Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: TAB Books, 1975—$10.95/7.95)

Mary Louise Hollowell (ed.) Cable Handbook: 1975-1976—A Guide to Cable and New Communications Technologies (Communications Press, 1346 Connecticutt Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036—$7.35, including postage, paper)

Gilbert Gillespie's Public Access Cable Television in the United States and Canada (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1975—price not given, but likely around $12.00 or so)     

Music and Music People

Jay Caress Hank Willimns: Country Musics Tragic King (Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.; Stein & Day, 1979—S10.95)

Dave Marsh Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen. Story (Garden City r. N.Y.: Doubleday/Dolphin Books, l979—$7.75,paper.)

The Music Makera (New York: Harry N. Abrams, l979-$35.00)

Yehudi Menuhin and Curtis W. Davis. The Music of Man (Toronto and New York: Methuen, 1979 —$24,95)

Gregory Allen Munford Munford's Simple Guide to Classical Music (Chicago: Chicago Review Press (215 Ohio St., 60610), . 1979– - $4.95, paper)

John Storm Roberts The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin America Music on the United States (New York: Oxford University Press,.1979–$12.95)     

Unionization and Perceived Control Among Community College Faculty

The research reported in this paper examined what role working in a union or nonunion college has in influencing faculty perceptions of control over their work. Using data from the 1993, 1999, and 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, this study explored the relative importance of variables in influencing perceived control among full-time teaching faculty in unionized and nonunionized community colleges. Union status was not found to be predictive of perceived control.     

Structural Equation Models of Latent Interactions: Clarification of Orthogonalizing and Double-Mean-Centering Strategies

The purpose of this investigation is to compare a new (double-mean-centering) strategy to estimating latent interactions in structural equation models with the (single) mean-centering strategy (Marsh, Wen, & Hau, 2004 Marsh, H. W., Wen, Z. and Hau, K. T. 2004. Structural equation models of latent interactions: Evaluation of alternative estimation strategies and indicator construction.. Psychological Methods, 9: 275–300. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2006 Marsh, H. W., Wen, Z. and Hau, K. T. 2006. “Structural equation models of latent interaction and quadratic effects”. In A second course in structural equation modeling Edited by: Hancock, G. and Mueller, R. 225–265. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.  [Google Scholar]) and the orthogonalizing strategy (Little, Bovaird, & Widaman, 2006 Little, T. D., Bovaird, J. A. and Widaman, K. F. 2006. On the merits of orthogonalizing powered and product term: Implications for modeling interactions among latent variables.. Structural Equation Modeling, 13: 497–519. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Marsh et al., 2007 Marsh, H. W., Wen, Z., Hau, K. T., Little, T. D., Bovaird, J. A. and Widaman, K. F. 2007. Unconstrained structural equation models of latent interactions: Contrasting residual- and mean-centered approaches.. Structural Equation Modeling, 14: 570–580. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). A key benefit of the orthogonalizing strategy is that it eliminated the need to estimate a mean structure as required by the mean-centering strategy, but required a potentially cumbersome 2-step estimation procedure. In contrast, the double-mean-centering strategy eliminates both the need for the mean structure and the cumbersome 2-stage estimation procedure. Furthermore, although the orthogonalizing and double-mean-centering strategies are equivalent when all indicators are normally distributed, the double-mean-centering strategy is superior when this normality assumption is violated. In summary, we recommend that applied researchers wanting to estimate latent interaction effects use the double-mean-centering strategy instead of either the single-mean-centering or orthogonalizing strategies, thus allowing them to ignore the cumbersome mean structure.