Interpersonal Behavior,Laboratory Learning Environments,and Student Outcomes in Senior Biology Classes

The purpose of this study was to investigate associations between students' perceptions of their biology teachers' interpersonal behavior and their laboratory learning environments and their attitudinal, achievement, and performance outcomes. A sample of 489 students from 28 senior biology classes in eight schools in Tasmania, Australia completed the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) and the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI). Responses to two attitude questionnaires, achievement on an external written examination, and performance in laboratory practical tests were used as student outcome measures. Statistical analyses supported the reliability and validity of the QTI and the SLEI when used with senior secondary biology students. We investigated associations between students' perceptions of teacher behavior and their laboratory learning environment with student outcomes, including the unique and common contributions of the QTI and SLEI to variance in student outcomes. Associations with students' perceptions of the learning environment were stronger for the attitudinal outcomes than for the cognitive or practical skills outcomes. Some commonality between the QTI and SLEI scales was found in their contributions to the variance in attitudinal outcomes, but not in their contributions to variance in cognitive and practical skill outcomes. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 26–43, 2000     

Explaining long-term exercise adherence in women who complete a structured exercise program

The purpose of this study was to qualitatively examine factors related to physical activity adherence to understand why women continue to participate in long-term exercise after completing a structured exercise program. Data were collected from focus groups, interviews, and e-mails, and analysis used grounded theory. The central category related to physical activity adherence was self-worth. Motivation, activity enjoyment, priorities, body image, ability to access support, and self-regulation skills had an impact on the self-worth of nonadherers and adherers. Women must value themselves enough to continue to participate in physical activity once they start. Exercise and fitness professionals are encouraged to use strategies to increase self-worth and long-term adherence to physical activity. Some recommended strategies include (a) increasing motivation and enjoyment relative to activity, (b) making activity a high priority in a woman's life, (c) improving or deemphasizing body image, (d) increasing a woman's ability to access support, and (e) facilitating the use of self-regulation strategies. This study is the first to examine qualitative perspectives of exercise adherence among women who completed a structured exercise program. Several concepts related to adherence presented in the quantitative literature are confirmed and enhanced in this study.     

Criterion-related validity of the WRAT-R and K-TEA with teacher estimates of actual classroom academic performance

The validity of most psychological and educational tests is established using correlational procedures examining the linear relationship between performance on the two instruments. Concurrent validity developed in this manner is commonly viewed as verification of the acceptability of a test. Few studies exist examining the degree to which test performance covaries with real-life performance appraisals. This study examined the concurrent validity of the WRAT-R and the K-TEA with teacher estimates of actual classroom levels of performance in reading and mathematics. Participants were 134 third and fourth graders enrolled in a regular education setting. In addition, this study compared the test performance of average students on two widely used standardized educational achievement tests in order to determine whether the tests yielded significantly different performance estimates relative to grade level functioning.     

Early childhood intervention: possibilities and prospects for professionals, families and children

In March 2005, Barry Carpenter, OBE, Chief Executive and Director of Research at Sunfield, an education and residential care centre for children with severe and complex learning needs, gave his inaugural professional lecture at University College Worcester. This article is based on that lecture. In it, Barry Carpenter reviews international trends in early childhood intervention and relates these to changing patterns of childhood disability, family needs, practitioner-led service development and Government policy initiatives. He describes a political climate in the UK which is ripe for the development of a nationally cohesive programme of early childhood intervention and proposes a number of key factors hat are crucial to the consolidation of the plethora of initiatives that have taken place in the UK in recent years. These include: early interventions that are delivered from the point of diagnosis; practice that is transdisciplinary; and high quality training for professionals. At the heart of this process, however, must be the voice of the family - guiding, informing, sharing, engaging. The key to successful early childhood intervention, Barry Carpenter argues, is responsivity - to society, to its families, but most of all to its children.     

Measuring and Monitoring Educational Achievement

Societies continue to have high expectations of education. There may be disappointment with the current achievements of education systems but commitments to change and reform bear testimony to an underlying faith that education has much to offer - to individuals and to societies as a whole.     

Recognition,inclusion and democracy: learning from action research with young people

ABSTRACT

This paper draws upon learning from three action research projects conducted as part of a Europe-wide project exploring young people’s social and political participation. Challenging dominant discourses about what ‘counts’ as participation and what does not, the paper explores how, through the action research projects, young people engaged in knowledge democracy in ‘new democratic arenas’. Building upon experiential knowing and creating knowledge and learning through practice, the young people explored their own democratic knowledge production, communication and engagement within a context of shifting discourses of participation, democratic engagement and active citizenship. The increasing preference of young people for more informal forms of participation as lived practice reflects a shift to young people constructing their own modes of participation and ‘remaking democracy’ in their own vision and according to their own needs. By working outside of the confines of normative assumptions of democratic practice and participation, young people exercised their own ‘political’ agency in response to their own priorities, interests and concerns and, in doing so, illustrated that new forms, understandings and practices of knowledge democracy can emerge that reflect the promise of inclusive democratic societies more meaningfully.