Using videotapes to study the construction of mathematical knowledge by individual children working in groups

Videotaping small groups of students in a regular classroom environment makes it possible to study individual student cognitive growth in a social setting. The present report deals with student development of some new mathematical ideas over an extended period of time.     

IPv6将迎来应用的雪崩浪潮

在日本，所有的人都认为IPv4已经面临困境。日本的许多互联网服务供应商都在担心，如果他们还是紧抓住IPv4不放的话，其未来将何去何从。再过一年，他们就会把日本所有IPv4的地址分派完了。所以对他们来讲，时机真的已经到来了。 ——Kazuhiro Gomi     

Transitions into Higher Education: Gendered implications for academic self-concept

This paper examines the degree and nature of universities’ interaction with their communities from the perspectives of individual academics. It considers whether academic values and practice tend toward a ‘detached’ or ‘universalist’ perspective in which location is largely redundant and any perceived ‘community’ has a global character, or whether values and practice in fact indicate a significant perhaps substantial degree of community engagement at a local, regional or national level. We explore interaction with the community which takes a broadly ‘civic’ form, and that which is of more specifically economic relevance. This issue is of great importance at a time when higher education has become a more obvious object of political scrutiny, both in terms of its use of public funds and its more general social and economic purpose. Our findings are based on a postal questionnaire administered to a sample of academics, and a series of follow‐up interviews with a smaller sub‐sample of respondents. We conclude that academics exhibit a strong commitment to engagement and interaction with their communities both in principle and practice; that such interaction often takes place at a variety of geographical levels; and that it is often accomplished under less than propitious circumstances.     

The Effect of a State Department of Education Teacher Mentor Initiative on Science Achievement

This study investigated the effectiveness of a southern state??s department of education program to improve science achievement through embedded professional development of science teachers in the lowest performing schools. The Science Mentor Program provided content and inquiry-based coaching by teacher leaders to science teachers in their own classrooms. The study analyzed the mean scale scores for the science portion of the state??s high school graduation test for the years 2004 through 2007 to determine whether schools receiving the intervention scored significantly higher than comparison schools receiving no intervention. The results showed that all schools achieved significant improvement of scale scores between 2004 and 2007, but there were no significant performance differences between intervention and comparison schools, nor were there any significant differences between various subgroups in intervention and comparison schools. However, one subgroup, economically disadvantaged (ED) students, from high-level intervention schools closed the achievement gap with ED students from no-intervention schools across the period of the study. The study provides important information to guide future research on and design of large-scale professional development programs to foster inquiry-based science.     

Women's path into science and engineering majors: a structural equation model

The intent of this study was to investigate the adequacy of Weidman's (1985 Weidman, J. C. 1985. “Undergraduate socialization: A conceptual approach”. In Higher education: Handbook of theory and research, Edited by: Smart, J. C. Vol. V, 298–322. New York: Agathon Press.  [Google Scholar], 1989 Weidman, J. C. 1989. “The world of higher education: A socialization-theoretical perspective”. In The social world of adolescents: International perspectives, Edited by: Hurrelmann, K. and Engel, U. 87–105. New York: W. de Gruyter.  [Google Scholar]) theoretical undergraduate socialization model as an empirical-based causal model pertaining to women's career path choice into a science or engineering (SE) major via structural equation modeling. Data were obtained from the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (1996–2001) from the U.S. Department of Education. Results indicate that Weidman's model was somewhat supported. Results from the evaluation of the causal model suggest that women's path into an SE major was influenced by both collegiate and non-collegiate factors, with 1st-year college grades and high school math grades being the dominant indirect influences.