A correspondence of academic interest

Editor's Note: The following is a continuation of the dialogue “A Correspondence of Academic Interest” in the Spring 1994 issue ofAcademic Questions. That exchange concerned the program, recently announced by the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), to promote diversity on the governing boards of the public corporations in which it invests.     

A content analysis of research published in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching from 1985 through 1989

To determine if actual practice was consistent with commonly recommended research methods and procedures, this study examined 130 studies reported over a 5-year period in three volumes of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching (JRST). The results were consistent with similar previous analyses (Shaver & Norton, 1980a, 1980b; Wallen & Fraenkel, 1988a) and indicate that appropriate generalizations beyond the confines of the reported studies may be impossible for most (64%) of the JRST studies surveyed. The findings also show that replication studies, which could be employed to offset deficiencies in generalizability, were not commonly encountered (3%) in these 130 reports. In addition, the study results indicate that many researchers (48%) do not properly restrict their conclusions based on the limits imposed by the accessible populations and samples used; nor do they typically provide possible alternative explanations for the outcomes obtained (76%). These findings prompt the following recommendations: 1. A greater awareness and use of replication as a check on generalizability should be encouraged by the science education community. 2. Clearly defined populations (target and accessible) and fully described samples warrant increased attention as report components from authors, reviewers, and editorial board members of JRST. 3. In light of the difficulties inherent in effecting random selection in educational settings, a greater emphasis should be placed on recognizing the limits that the underlying assumptions of inferential statistics place on research conclusions. The results of this study indicate that the methodological quality of published science education research should remain a concern for both practitioners and readers.     

Differential effectiveness of alternative middle-school science sequences for students of different ethnicities

Learning Environments Research - For a sample of 367 middle-school students in the USA, learning environment criteria were used to evaluate two alternative science curriculum sequences...     

Maintenance of keypecking in pigeons by a food avoidance but not by a shock avoidance contingency

Response key illuminations were followed by food delivery or shock, and keypecks were programmed to prevent the occurrence of whichever stimulus was scheduled. At high shock intensity, pigeons did not peck: at low shock intensity, pigeons pecked in about half of the trials. When different key colors signaled food and shock trials, pigeons pecked on food trials, thus preventing food delivery, but not on shock trials, thus failing to avoid shock delivery. That pecks occurred despite the fact that they avoided food but did not occur when they avoided shock is taken as evidence that the keypeck is frequently governed by biological predispositions, and not by its consequences.     

Children's Responses to Contrasting `Realistic' Mathematics Problems: Just how realistic are children ready to be?

In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis within the world of mathematics education on realistic problem solving. At the same time research has shown that children typically remain apparently unwilling or unable to introduce realistic considerations when solving supposedly realistic word problems, though research has also shown that children's behaviour in this domain does vary as a function of the nature of the item, its context and the child's social background. This paper analyses 11–12 year-old English children's responses to two realistic problems. The first is taken from English national tests; the second is a revised version of this item which has been rewritten to encourage a more realistic pattern of responses. Through a comparison of responses to the two items it is suggested that, given suitable realistic problems, many children may be more willing and able to introduce realistic responses in a testing context than earlier research might lead us to expect.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

School reading volunteers: results of a postal survey of primary school head teachers in England

This article reports the results of a postal survey of primary school head teachers in England carried out in order to take a broad ‘sounding’ of mainstream practice with respect to volunteer help with reading within schools. The objective was to build up a general picture of the scale of the practice in schools and of its significance to teachers. From an initial random sample of 500 schools, an overall response rate of 76 per cent was achieved. Issues raised by the results include: (i) the special status of reading in the relationship between home and school; (ii) the issues of professionalism raised by head teachers with respect to the use of volunteer reading helpers; (iii) the question of whether parents' help with school reading can in all cases legitimately be called ‘parental’; and (iv) the relationship between volunteer help with reading and teachers' working conditions in a contracting education service.     

Breaking the cycle of office referrals and suspensions: defensive management

This paper focuses on a strategy—Defensive Management—designed to assist teachers to better manage non‐compliance and defiance in the classroom, with the ultimate goal of reducing disciplinary referrals and flow‐on suspensions and exclusions from school. Non‐compliance and defiance are behaviours that teachers find particularly challenging and, traditionally, teachers have responded provocatively and often unsuccessfully when faced with instances of such behaviour. Drawing on an analogy with Defensive Driving, two groups of teachers (pre‐service and primary) were introduced to a strategy developed to help them avoid unproductive conflict (collisions) with students and the harm that such encounters typically result in. The findings of an exploratory study on the use of Defensive Management are reported.