Surviving the Doctoral Dissertation: A Solution‐Focused Approach

The authors discuss the application of solution‐focused counseling in support groups designed to help graduate students cope with the demands of writing a doctoral dissertation.     

现行美国教育体制

美国现行的教育体制构建在两个理想的前提上,一是必须保证所有的人接受基础教育,但由于各州经济状况的不同而导致基础教育发展不平衡;一是必须保证所有人都有接受高等教育的权利和机会。美国教育体制下存在公助和私助两种办学模武,他们更强调教会学生创新和独立思考,一些学校正进行改革试验,并取得了一定成效。     

Measuring elementary teacher stress and coping in the classroom: Validity evidence for the Classroom Appraisal of Resources and Demands

The Classroom Appraisal of Resources and Demands (CARD, elementary version) was used to investigate teacher stress among a sample of elementary teachers (n = 521). The CARD measures teacher stress by examining the subjective experience of both classroom demands and resources provided by the school, and thereby attempts to capture the situationally specific nature of teacher stress. This study attempted to examine whether the CARD can provide reliable and valid information that addresses the call by experts in the field of teacher stress research for measures that consider each teacher's specific occupational circumstances. Specifically, the factor structure of the CARD was supported empirically. Further evidence was offered for the construct and concurrent validity by correlations between CARD scales scores and other measures theoretically relevant to teacher well‐being: general health, teacher efficacy, self‐critical attitudes, and burnout symptoms. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Relationships between student characteristics and self‐, peer and tutor evaluations of oral presentations

There are many influences on how assessors grade themselves and others. Oral presentations are useful for exploring such factors in peer, self‐ and tutor marked assessments, being rapidly completed and assessed, commonly used in HE and very difficult to anonymize. This opportunistic study examined the effects of gender and level of attainment on the triangulation of marks awarded to student presenters. Grades generated by peer assessment were associated more strongly with tutor‐awarded marks than those from self‐assessment. For self‐assessment there was a strong effect of gender (female students undervalued their performance compared with tutor grades). Peer assessment produced higher marks than from tutors, perhaps because of the close‐knit community developed during residential courses. For tutor marks, the greatest variability was at the lower end of the scale, whereas peer assessors were most variable when marking students who self‐evaluated or peer assessed highly. Students awarded a narrower range of marks to peers compared with tutors, but when self‐assessing used a larger range. Presentations by students who admitted to little sleep the night before received lower grades from both peers and tutors, but this was not reflected by self‐assessments, suggesting they were unaware of their poorer performances. Sessions with fewer talks (four rather than seven) reduced the ‘dip’ in marks previously observed in the middle of sessions. Findings are discussed in the context of bias in this mode of assessment.     

Relative shank to thigh length is associated with different mechanisms of power production during elite male ergometer rowing

The effect of anthropometric differences in shank to thigh length ratio upon timing and magnitude of joint power production during the drive phase of the rowing stroke was investigated in 14 elite male rowers. Rowers were tested on the RowPerfect ergometer which was instrumented at the handle and foot stretcher to measure force generation, and a nine segment inverse dynamics model used to calculate the rower's joint and overall power production. Rowers were divided into two groups according to relative shank thigh ratio. Time to half lumbar power generation was significantly earlier in shorter shank rowers (p = 0.028) compared to longer shank rowers, who showed no lumbar power generation during the same period of the drive phase. Rowers with a relatively shorter shank demonstrated earlier lumbar power generation during the drive phase resulting from restricted rotation of the pelvic segment requiring increased lumbar extension in these rowers. Earlier lumbar power generation and extension did not appear to directly affect performance measures of the short shank group, and so can be attributed to a technical adaptation developed to maximise rowing performance.     

Dynamic Transition Patterns in Acculturation Among Hispanic Adolescents

Acculturation consists of multiple domains (i.e., cultural practices, identifications, and values). However, less is known about how acculturation processes influence each other across multiple domains of acculturation. This study was designed to investigate transition patterns of acculturative processes within and across domains in a sample of 302 recent-immigrant Hispanic adolescents, M_age (SD) = 14.51 years (0.88) at baseline; male = 53%). Adolescents were assessed six times over a 3-year period. Latent profile analyses identified two profiles (high [or increasing] vs. low) for each domain at each timepoint. We found largely stable transition patterns in each domain over six timepoints. Importantly, sequential associations among profiles in acculturation domains were also detected. Implication for acculturation theory and research are discussed.     

Distributed leadership for personalized learning

Abstract

Personalized learning refers to a collection of practices designed to place student interests and needs at the heart of schooling. Schools that implement personalized learning need leaders that support educators and students in redesigning the core practices of teaching and learning in K-12 schools. To answer the question of how leaders support this redesign, we use distributed leadership theory to focus on the macrotasks and microtasks that leaders enact to create the conditions for personalized learning practices. Drawing on a five-year, qualitative study of 11 personalized learning programs in the Midwest, we identify three macrotasks supporting personalized learning: reorganizing learning environments to support student voice and choice, assembling idiosyncratic technology ecosystems to distribute teaching and learning tasks, and redesigning instructional time to prioritize student’s interests, agency, and learning relationships. After we describe a number of microtasks associated with each macrotask, we discuss how a consideration of these kinds of leadership tasks can open the contemporary discussion of personalized learning from a narrow focus on learning technologies to an expansive vision of student-centered school reform.     

Procedures for Evaluating the Impact of Complex Educational Interventions

The application of information and computer technology (ICT) to education, particularly when ICT is a component of a major school reform, raises difficult issues for program evaluation. In many cases even defining the program goal is difficult because so many different changes are often instituted at the same time: installation of a local area network, development of technical support, staff development for integrating ICT into the curriculum and for new teaching methods, and so on. To assist program developers and evaluators in gaining control of such complex interventions in education, two basic procedures are described: the history of the future and program logic mapping. The former is a goals and methods clarification scheme, built around a press release that describes at the projected end of the project what was achieved and how. The latter procedure draws on the goals defined in the history of the future, along with the project strategy, to make explicit all of the major links between project inputs and project outputs. This map then serves as a guide for planning an evaluation that would verify causal linkages as well as outcomes. For each type of node in such a diagram, appropriate evaluation techniques are defined.     

Evidence for confounding in computer-based instruction studies: Analyzing the meta-analyses

A thirty percent sample of the computer-based instruction (CBI) studies meta-analyzed by Kulik et al was examined for evidence of confounding. The purpose of the analysis was to explore the validity of competing claims about the contribution of the computer to measured achievement gains found in CBI studies. Some of these claims propose that CBI effects are overestimated and others argue that CBI effects are underestimated. The result of the analysis strongly suggests that achievement gains found in these CBI studies are overestimated and are actually due to the uncontrolled but robust instructional methods embedded in CBI treatments. It is argued that these methods may be delivered by other media with achievement gains comparable to those reported for computers. Construct validity cautions are offered for those who wish to use meta-analytic results as evidence for implementing CBI in schools and for the design of future CBI research.