The vacillating mathematician

The problem of a mathematician who walks from her home to her office and changes her mind repeatedly during this walk is discussed. Stochastic generalizations of this problem can be used to model many real-life situations.     

Gender differences in the junior secondary (grade 7) mathematics curriculum in Hong Kong

This article seeks to examine gender differences across the mathematics curriculum in the various topic areas and mathematical abilities. It is suggested that a profile of these differences, when compared with students at different grade levels or across curricula, would be more fruitful for classroom teachers and curriculum developers. Breakdown and discriminant function statistics reveal that boys performed better than girls in Geometry and excelled in comprehension, and solving routine and non-routine problems. Girls were better at mathematical manipulation problems.     

Effects of maze geometry and experience on exploratory behavior in the rat

Rats were exposed twice in a rotated sequence to a series of six mazes, consisting of hexagonal alleys, balanced for different alley length and structural complexity. Locomotor activity increased with alley length and decreased with structural complexity of the mazes. Locomotion became less stereotyped with increased experience, showing an increasing number of turns, less constant velocity, loss of the initial preference for outward leading alleys and weakening of the forward tendency at reentry from side alleys into hexagonal alleys. In contrast to these qualitative changes of locomotion, the amount of activity remained almost unchanged throughout the experiment. The results suggest that these increases in locomotion complexity depend upon complex interactions between experience and stimulus content of the mazes.     

Genetic and environmental influences on rapid naming and reading ability: A twin study

The present study assesses the genetic and environmental etiologies of reading, rapid naming (RN), and their covariation by fitting multivariate structural equation models to data from 587 twin pairs in which at least one member of the pair exhibited reading difficulties (low-range) and from 360 control (normal-range) twin pairs who were tested in the Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center. Results from a bivariate phenotypic analysis with two hypothesized latent factors, READ and RN, indicated that the correlation between reading and rapid naming performance for the low-range sample was significantly higher than that of the normal-range sample. When this model was partitioned to include estimates of genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental influences, resulting heritability estimates did not differ significantly for the low-range and normal-range samples for either READ or RN. However, similar to the phenotypic correlation, the genetic correlation between the READ and RN latent factors could not be equated for the two groups. Thus, the etiology of the relationship between reading performance and rapid naming may differ for children with reading difficulties and normally-achieving readers. Moreover, these results support previous findings that the best predictors of reading skills may differ for samples of children with normal reading levels and those with reading difficulties.     

The relationship between school belonging,sibling aggression and bullying involvement: implications for students with and without disabilities

Bullying is grounded in the interactions between an individual and complex social–ecological systems. Therefore, bullying involvement is not just confined to the classroom or school. Recent research suggests that sibling aggression may be a predictor for peer-level aggression. These findings may be more relevant for students with disabilities because studies suggest that students with disabilities are disproportionately involved in the bullying dynamic. Therefore, this study explored the intersection between sibling aggression and school belonging on bullying, victimisation and fighting for 14,508 students, including 1183 students with disabilities and 13,325 students without disabilities in grades 6 through 12. As hypothesised, students with disabilities reported higher levels of victimisation, bullying and fighting. Additionally, high levels of school belonging partially buffered fighting and bullying behaviours for students with and without disabilities. These findings demonstrate the importance of establishing an inclusive and safe environment for school-aged youth.     

A SPECIAL‐PURPOSE STUDIO

The paper describes the design and use of a studio system which arose out of the need to give demonstrations of experimental procedures to practical classes of up to 150 students. Since the requirements could be specified in some detail it was possible to use novel methods of working which turned out to be very efficient and economical.     

Students with special educational needs within PISA

Abstract

Since 2003, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has included students with special educational needs (SEN), identified as those with functional disabilities, those with cognitive/behavioural/emotional disabilities and those with limited test language proficiency. While the number of countries and included students has increased with each test administration, the percentage of students with SEN remains extremely low. The inclusion of these students is not an intentional PISA design parameter but rather a response to the interaction between the need to maintain strict sampling criteria and country-level educational mandates to include SEN students in standardised testing. Based on the analysis of student participation and performance across four cycles of PISA (2003–2012), this paper examines the challenges that exist in current PISA procedures related to: student sampling, eligibility and identification; assessment methodology; and reporting results. PISA practices, their limitations for scientific inferences and recommendations for design improvements are given.     

Influence of improved teaching practices on student satisfaction ratings for two undergraduate units at an Australian university

To track the quality of instruction delivered at the University of Western Australia, the university surveys all units using its Students’ Unit Reflective Feedback (SURF) metrics, and faculties use these metrics to benchmark student satisfaction. Consequently, teaching staff are actively encouraged to adopt teaching practices that will increase the average levels of these metrics. Using a ‘before-after’ approach, we compared these metrics before and after the implementation of improved teaching practices that addressed specific weaknesses identified through student responses for two undergraduate units. Despite the implementation of improved teaching practices, SURF scores did not increase significantly for the two units assessed, due possibly to the components of the academic programme covered by the SURF questions, the field-based nature of the units, and the difficulty in measuring an increase in the SURF scores of units which already score highly. This poor sensitivity of the SURF metrics to the implementation of improved teaching practices could have implications for their use for performance assessment by the university.