Navigating Community College Transfer in Science,Technical, Engineering,and Mathematics Fields

Given financial barriers facing community college students today, and workforce projections in science, technical, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, the costs of unnecessary delays while navigating transfer pathways are high. In this phenomenological study, we analyzed the delay experiences of 172 students (65% female) navigating community college transfer pathways in STEM fields in Massachusetts. When focusing on institutional delays, three central elements emerged: (a) informational setbacks from dissatisfactory advising, (b) imperfect program alignment with four-year institutions, and (c) college resource limitations. Students took unnecessary courses or could not get into courses in a timely manner, resulting in lost time, money, and credit. An accumulation of delays is particularly detrimental to STEM women and men, given the sequential nature of their programming. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

Evaluation Findings from High School Reform Efforts in Baltimore

The Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) is one of the first urban districts in the country to undertake large-scale high school reform, phasing in small learning communities by opening new high schools and transforming large, comprehensive high schools into small high schools. With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a dozen local foundations, and school reform developers and technical assistance providers, BCPSS opened 18 small high schools between 2002 and 2006. Using data from surveys, administrative records, and site visits, we examine the implementation and outcomes of these reform efforts. Although BCPSS high schools met many obstacles while implementing the reform, including continual leadership turnover and limited resources, students and staff in the small learning communities reported more positive social and academic environments than their counterparts in the district's comprehensive high schools. In addition, students in small, newly created high schools demonstrated positive academic outcomes (e.g., higher test scores, engagement) relative to students in the other schools in the district.     

Gender,toys and learning

In spite of continuing patterning of curriculum subject preference and choice by gender, there has been little recent attention to the argument developed in the 1970s that children play with different toys according to their gender, and that these provide girls and boys with (different) curriculum‐related skills. The article describes a small‐scale empirical study that asked parents of 3–5 year old children to identify their child’s favourite toys and viewing material, and analysed responses according to children’s gender. The most frequently identified toys and viewing materials were subjected to content and discourse analysis, with the intention of identifying both educative aspects of content, and the gender discourses reflected. The article explores conceptual issues around categorisations of ‘education’ within toys and entertainment resources, positing the notion of ‘didactic information’ to delineate between overtly educational content and other social discourses. Analysis reveals toy preferences to be highly gendered, with boys’ toys and resources concentrated on technology and action, and girls’ on care and stereotypically feminine interests. Didactic information, and aspects developing construction and literacy skills, were identified in the selected toys and resources for boys, and were lacking in those for girls. All the toys and resources could be read as implicated in ‘gendering’: the various gender discourses, and other discourses around aspects of social identity reflected in the toys and resources are identified and analysed. The analysis presented suggests the value of reinvigorated attention to children’s toys and entertainment resources in terms both of the education they afford, and their role in the production of social identities.     

Designing Blended Inquiry Learning in a Laboratory Context: A Study of Incorporating Hands-On and Virtual Laboratories

This article reports on the development of a methodology that integrates virtual and hands-on inquiry in a freshman introductory biology course. Using a two time × two order-condition design, an effective combination (blend) of the two environments was evaluated with 39 freshman biology participants. The quantitative results documented no significant effect of presentation order but demonstrated a significant effect of the combined learning experience. The qualitative results showed a strong preference by students for the virtual work preceding the hands-on laboratory. The study provides practitioners an effective alternative to traditional instructional practices by combining virtual and hands-on inquiry learning.

Lads,Lasses and (New) Labour: 14-16-year-old students' responses to the 'laddish behaviour and boys' underachievement' debate

The responses of secondary-school students to the claims of ex-Education Minister Stephen Byers concerning 'laddish behaviour' on the part of boys are examined. The data is drawn from an ESRC-funded study of 14-16-year-old students' constructions of gender, learning, and future educational and occupational pathways. The extent to which boys' classroom behaviour was constructed as 'laddish' by students is discussed, and the discourses pervading these constructions are analysed. It is reported that the majority of students supported Byers' argument that boys' 'laddish' behaviour is impeding their learning, and that girls and boys drew on different gender discourses to support their arguments.     

Why is it difficult for schools to establish equitable practices in allocating students to attainment ‘sets’?

Research has consistently shown ‘ability’ grouping (tracking) to be prey to poor practice, and to perpetuate inequity. A feature of these problems is inequitable and inaccurate practice in allocation to groups or ‘tracks’. Yet little research has examined whether such practices might be improved. Here, we examine survey and interview findings from a large-scale intervention study of grouping practices in 126 English secondary schools. We find that when schools are encouraged to allocate students and move them between groups according to equitable principles by participation in a ‘best practice’ intervention, there is some increased equity of practice (i.e. a reduction in non-attainment factors used in allocation). However, the majority of schools continue to use subjective and potentially biased information to group students. Furthermore, some schools that claim to be using attainment setting appear to be using the inequitable practice of streaming. Our findings show that improvements in equity are constrained by operational and strategic factors, including timetabling, finance, and teachers’ values and beliefs relating to student ability and progression. We suggest strategies for encouraging schools to change their grouping practices, drawing on approaches for working with complex organisations.     

Gender, ‘bias’, assessment and feedback: analyzing the written assessment of undergraduate history essays

This paper reports on findings relating to a project on gender and essay assessment in HE. It focuses on one aspect of the study: the assessment of and feedback given to two sample essays by 50 historians based at universities in England and Wales. We found considerable variation both as to the classification awarded to the essays and to positive and negative comments made about their quality, supporting the argument that the ‘quality’ of a piece of writing for assessment is ultimately constructed by the reader of the essay and cannot be objectively ascertained. Gender issues emerging from the data are explored in the paper, relating to lecturers’ perceptions of the essays’ qualities; views concerning the way feedback should be presented; and the content and style of feedback given by lecturers on the sample essays. We found that gender constructions were manifested more in presentation than practice. These findings on the situated practice of assessment have implications for the conception of the ‘reliability’ of essay assessment in HE.     

Femininity,science, and the denigration of the girly girl

Hyper-femininity and the construction of the ‘girly girl’ label have been documented widely, but there has been less attention to their content (or any distinctions between these constructs). Indeed, it can be argued that the content of femininity remains a controversial and somewhat under-researched topic in feminist scholarship. This is also the case in relation to science, which has been widely characterised as a masculine terrain, but there has been less attention to why femininity is excluded from/by science. This article attempts to unpick some of these issues, with a particular focus on the construct of the ‘girly girl’, in relation to access to science. Drawing on qualitative data from the Economic and Social Research Council-funded ASPIRES 2 project, we analyse the discourses used by young people and parents in discussion of ‘girly girls’ and physics. We show the misogynist and excluding discourses projected onto the ‘girly girl’, and indeed that are used to interpolate femininity more broadly. We found that in discussions of science and (hyper-)femininity, even potentially positive feminine attributes were denigrated. Hyper-femininity was produced as ‘more than lack’: vacuous, but also a risible presence. In reflecting on our findings we consider whether femininity may be more derided in some discursive contexts (e.g. science discourse) than others, and whether femininity can or should be conceived as more than lack.     

Problem solving in the rat: Stay vs. shift solutions on the three-table task

Two experiments were conducted to determine the conditions under which a shift problem vs. a stay problem would be easier for animals tested on Maier’s three-table task. When animals were given a prior exploratory experience and a partial feeding during the feeding experience, the stay problem was easier. With a prior exploratory experience and a complete feeding experience, the shift solution was easier. In the absence of prior exploration, rats cannot solve either the stay or shift problem, regardless of the amount of feeding during the feeding experience.