Teachers’ Lives in Context: A Framework for Understanding Barriers to High-Quality Teaching Within Resource Deprived Settings

There is a profound for more effective schools, especially within resource-poor communities in low- and middle-income countries. A wide range of literature identifies teachers as the most critical component of schools in regards to student learning. Despite this, there is a dearth of literature on how teachers' experiences influence their ability to attend school, remain in the teaching profession, and provide high quality teaching within the classroom. This study presents a theoretical framework for understanding the role of teachers' lives in context (skills, knowledge, and attitudes; poverty and health; contextual supports/barriers to teaching) in influencing teacher effectiveness. This framework builds upon Tseng and Seidman's (2007) systems framework for understanding youth social settings in order to incorporate teachers' lives into a larger model of educational effectiveness. This synthesis reveals significant gaps in our understanding of teachers' experiences and how they affect teaching. At the teacher attendance, attrition, and pedagogical quality and a key moderator of educational interventions. Implications for research, practice, and policy are discussed.     

A theory of instruction for introductory programming skills

ABSTRACT

Background and Context: Current introductory instruction fails to identify, structure, and sequence the many skills involved in programming.

Objective: We proposed a theory which identifies four distinct skills that novices learn incrementally. These skills are tracing, writing syntax, comprehending templates (reusable abstractions of programming knowledge), and writing code with templates. We theorized that explicit instruction of these skills decreases cognitive demand.

Method: We conducted an exploratory mixed-methods study and compared students’ exercise completion rates, error rates, ability to explain code, and engagement when learning to program. We compared material that reflects this theory to more traditional material that does not distinguish between skills.

Findings: Teaching skills incrementally resulted in improved completion rate on practice exercises, and decreased error rate and improved understanding of the post-test.

Implications: By structuring programming skills such that they can be taught explicitly and incrementally, we can inform instructional design and improve future research on understanding how novice programmers develop understanding.     

Weighing Fog: Modeling on Day 1 of Differential Equations

Abstract

The first day of many mathematics classes is filled with the formalities of the syllabus and a lecture introduction to the course content. Here, an alternative is presented where modeling is placed as the centerpiece to orient students to the work of differential equations; namely, to capture as beautifully and compactly as possible through the process of inquiry, conjecture, and experimentation, the deep and interesting aspects of modeling the physical world. A demonstration of the sublimation of dry ice in water serves as the nucleus of the lesson.     

Literacies across sponsorscapes: mobilising notions of literacy sponsorship

Building from the concept ‘sponsors of literacy', the authors revisit three empirical studies to argue for mobilising notions of sponsorship beyond fixed conceptions of individual sponsors and literacy to lifewide perspectives that take into account sponsoring relations across the broader learning lives of youth. The authors take up the theoretical heuristic ‘sponsorscapes' as a lens for attending to the dynamically networked, reciprocal and human‐material dimensions of literacy practices. With cases drawn from across settings and research foci, including middle school students in a classroom setting, high school‐aged youth across contexts and a participant‐researcher's interactions with a college student, the authors argue that attending to sponsorscapes can contribute critical insight into the emergent, diverse and valued literacies and sponsorship thriving across lifewide learning pathways, while recognising learners' agentive roles in investing, resisting and sponsoring literacies.     

Restructuring: Imperatives and Opportunities for Academic Leaders

In an era when market imperatives have reached an unprecedented level of legitimacy within academic management, the spotlight is on campus leaders to respond strategically. For research universities, particularly public research universities, there are critical institutional legacies to consider in the process of weighing alternative academic futures. Campus leaders need support to reaffirm their broader institutional mandates so that vital educational and social justice values are not jeopardized in the service of short-term economic functions.of which she is a 1987 Ph.D. graduate. She serves concurrently as the director of the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research and as executive director and principal investigator of the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement     

Contents Volume 7 2001

Volume Contents

Contents Volume 7 2001     

Treatment practices for childhood posttraumatic stress disorder

OBJECTIVE: This study surveyed practices in treating childhood PTSD among child psychiatrists and non-M.D. therapists with self-identified interest in treating traumatized children. METHOD: An anonymous survey was mailed to 207 child psychiatrists ("medical") and 460 nonphysician ("non-medical") therapists inquiring about current interventions used to treat children with PTSD. RESULTS: Two hundred and forty-seven responses were received: of 77 medical and 82 nonmedical respondents who currently treat children with PTSD, a wide variety of modalities are used. Most preferred modalities among medical responders were pharmacotherapy, psychodynamic, and cognitive-behavioral therapy. Most preferred modalities among nonmedical respondents were cognitive-behavioral, family, and nondirective play therapy. Ninety-five percent of medical respondents used pharmacotherapy for this disorder; most preferred medications to treat childhood PTSD were selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and alpha-adrenergic agonists. Several significant differences between medical and nonmedical practices were identified. CONCLUSIONS: There is little clinical consensus regarding the effectiveness of the many modalities used to treat traumatized children who have PTSD symptoms; empirical research is particularly needed to evaluate the efficacy of pharmacotherapy and EMDR.     

The vicissitudes of measurement: a confirmatory factor analysis of the Emotional Autonomy Scale

This study examined the factor structure of the Emotional Autonomy Scale (EAS) as proposed by Steinberg and Silverberg. Participants were from three independent samples of adolescents in grades 6 (n = 1,842), 8 (n = 1,769), and 10 (n = 1,232), with each sample consisting of three ethnic groups: African American, European American, and Mexican American. None of the confirmatory factor analyses for these samples supported the factor structure proposed by Steinberg and Silverberg. From the three models tested, the EAS is best described by the four originally proposed factors, combined with two method factors, one consisting of the positively worded scale items and one consisting of the negatively worded scale items. Results show that the EAS exhibits poor construct validity and behaves quite differently for the different grade and ethnic groups. The strong impact of method variance on the factor structure is discussed. Although various alternative solutions to the psychometric problems in the EAS are proposed, the most credible solution may be to reexamine the conceptual foundations of emotional autonomy and develop better measures of those concepts for adolescents.