Using the Joint Standards to Design Postsecondary Assessments With Evidence of Validity and Reliability: An Approach to CAEP Accreditation

Validity and reliability are a major focus in teacher education accreditation by the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). CAEP requires the use of “accepted research standards,” but many faculty and administrators are unsure how to meet this requirement. The Standards of Educational and Psychological Testing abbreviated Joint Standards, are the implied accepted research standards. The purpose of this study was to test empirically the extent to which the Joint Standards could serve this purpose. The primary outcome of this study is a pragmatic set of implementation strategies organized into assessment specifications connecting CAEP requirements to the Joint Standards. An example set of assessment specifications is provided. Use of this process can improve assessments in any academic discipline for any accreditation agency, become a faculty professional development tool, raise assessment literacy, and potentially impact instruction of future educators.     

Slut-shaming and victim-blaming: a qualitative investigation of undergraduate students’ perceptions of sexual violence

Sexual violence is a significant public health issue on US college campuses. This qualitative study aimed to better understand college student perceptions of sexual violence and bystander intervention. Gendered group and individual interviews were conducted with male (n = 3) and female (n = 12) undergraduates. Eight major themes emerged which included slut shaming; victim blaming; the preventive power of social networks; the importance of family influence and early education; ambiguous definitions of sexual behaviour and assault; perpetrator typology; and gendered actions. Sexual behaviour is simultaneously a topic of confusion and importance to college students. Future prevention efforts may be more relevant and efficacious by addressing the university experience and campus climate as perceived by the students.     

Sexual and reproductive health information sources preferred by out-of-school adolescents in rural southwest Uganda

This paper defines how out-of-school adolescents from Masaka District in rural southwest Uganda currently receive sexual and reproductive health information and how they would prefer to receive that information. Information adolescents feel they lack falls into three broad categories: sexual and reproductive health issues, the negotiation of sex and sexual relationships, and making the transition to adulthood. The preferred source for information depends on the type of information to be delivered, the overriding principle being that the source must be authoritative in that type of information. Current information sources including family, peers and media are perceived as either flawed or insufficient. Preferable sources fall into three categories based on the type of information provided: accurate sexual and reproductive health information should come from trained community and media-based rather than clinic-based health educators; information about negotiation of good relationships and the negotiation of sex and condom use within relationships should come from an up-skilled traditional source, ssenga (paternal aunt), particularly for young women; and social information about becoming a good adult should come from parents, grandparents, church and community leaders. All information should be positively framed and non-judgemental. Centrally coordinated community health promotions delivered by trained community-based health educators, ssenga and parents, guided and supported by existing radio and print media, are required.     

Literacy learning as cruelly optimistic: recovering possible lost futures through transmedial storytelling

In this article, we “think with” theories of affect and transmedial storytelling to explore the cruel optimism that standardised reading pedagogies (e.g. read alouds; leveled readers/independent reading) can produce for readers. We draw on particular moments in a first grade classroom to argue that such pedagogies transmit “normalizing” affects that promise upward mobility, college and career readiness/success, classroom community, and happiness but instead produce literate identities, which cruelly reinforce the racialised, gendered and classist myth of meritocracy. According to Blackman (2019), cruel optimism is harmful because it normalises particular fictions and fantasies that are presented as scientific truths without acknowledging that these dominant stories are but one narrative, thereby closing off other ways of knowing, being and doing. This work offers pedagogical possibilities for bodies that are often read as unsuccessful (e.g. disengaged and struggling) and/or successful (e.g. happy and engaged) and explains how the guise of optimism can fail to acknowledge the larger social, political and economic forces at play. These forces shape the unfolding of academic realities that are simultaneously connected to the past, present and future.     

What’s the Technology For? Teacher Attention and Pedagogical Goals in a Modeling-Focused Professional Development Workshop

This paper explores the role that technology can play in engaging pre-service teachers with the iterative, “messy” nature of model-based inquiry. Over the course of 5 weeks, 11 pre-service teachers worked in groups to construct models of diffusion using a computational animation and simulation toolkit, and designed lesson plans for the toolkit. Content analyses of group discussions and lesson plans document attention to content, representation, revision, and evaluation as interwoven aspects of modeling over the course of the workshop. When animating, only content and representation were heavily represented in group discussions. When simulating, all four aspects were represented to different extents across groups. Those differences corresponded with different planned uses for the technology during lessons: to teach modeling, to engage learners with one another’s ideas, or to reveal student ideas. We identify specific ways in which technology served an important role in eliciting teachers’ knowledge and goals related to scientific modeling in the classroom.     

Intelligence and Achievement: A Behavioral Genetic Perspective

Understanding the etiology and relationship between standardized intelligence and academic achievement tests is essential, given their ever-increasing role in American education. Behavioral genetic studies have examined the genetic and environmental etiology of intelligence, academic achievement, and their relationship. Results suggest that genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental influences have an impact on intelligence and academic achievement. Behavioral genetic studies also suggest that the importance of genes may vary as a function of age. Other studies suggest that genes drive the correlation and that the nonshared environment drives the discrepancy between measures of intelligence and achievement. Implications for the identification of intellectually and academically relevant environmental influences are discussed.