Fostering Second Graders' Scientific Explanations: A Beginning Elementary Teacher's Knowledge,Beliefs, and Practice

Teaching science as explanation is fundamental to reform efforts but is challenging for teachers—especially new elementary teachers, for whom the complexities of teaching are compounded by high demands and little classroom experience. Despite these challenges, few studies have characterized the knowledge, beliefs, and instructional practices that support or hinder teachers from engaging their students in building explanations. To address this gap, this study describes the understandings, purposes, goals, practices, and struggles of one third-year elementary teacher with regard to fostering students' explanation construction. Analyses showed that the teacher had multiple understandings of scientific explanations, believed that fostering students' explanations was important for both teachers and students, and enacted instructional practices that provided opportunities for students to develop explanations. However, she did not consistently take up explanation as a goal in her practice, in part because she did not see explanation construction as a strategy for facilitating the development of students' content knowledge or as an educational goal in its own right. These findings inform the field's understanding of teacher knowledge and practice with regard to one crucial scientific practice and have implications for research on teachers and inquiry-oriented science teaching, science teacher education, and curriculum materials development.     

‘I'm going to bring my sense of identity to this’: the role and contribution of bilingual teaching assistants

In recent years there has been a considerable growth in the number of teaching assistants (teacher aides in the USA) in UK schools and in the diversity and range of their roles and responsibilities. Although these roles vary in different parts of the UK, an increasing number of assistants now work alongside teachers to support children's learning. Some teaching assistants and instructors are bilingual in the languages spoken by children in their schools and draw on their knowledge of other languages in providing support for children's cognitive and language development. Many bilingual teaching assistants carry out similar roles to their monolingual colleagues but, in addition, are involved in facilitating communication and mediating interaction between home, school and local communities. However, their roles and contribution to children's learning are often not clearly defined and are certainly under‐researched.     

Locating quality physical education in early years pedagogy

Government Ministers, health care professionals and sporting organisations throughout the UK are presently engaged in the promotion of extending the length of time each school child spends participating in quality physical education. Agendas may differ from a crackdown on obesity and sedentary lifestyles to basking in reflected glory of British champions on the podium at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. However, a definition of what in fact constitutes good quality physical education is hard to find as it appears to be a much disputed territory. The growing tendency to equate ‘sport’ with ‘physical education’ has been prevalent in secondary schools for some time but it is beginning to cascade into primary schools where many young children may find themselves trailing in the wake of only a few who have the ability, talent and drive to be successful; competition is not an inclusive concept. Early-years pedagogy, on the other hand, is inclusive. This paper examines the apparent mis-match between the needs of children in their early years of compulsory schooling and the present philosophy of sports based physical education. The search for good quality physical education for our youngest school children leads to consideration of physical literacy, developmental movement and movement play with the emphasis on enjoyment, participation and building self esteem. In order for children in their early years to receive good quality physical education, there is a need to develop a new model which is inclusive, holistic and aligned with early-years pedagogy. Presently, the basis for physical education policy in the UK is largely uniformed rhetoric. Whilst this is the case and other conceptualisations of physical education remain on the sidelines, then “the possibilities of realising quality physical education remain slim” (Kirk, 2004, Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 9(2), p. 194).     

Finding the Balance in Online Library Instruction: Sustainable and Personal

ABSTRACT

The UCF Libraries are continually developing new forms of library instruction to meet the needs of a growing student body with the same number of librarians. These efforts attempt to find the balance between impersonal online tutorials and time-intensive embedded librarianship. The pros and cons of each model employed at our growing university are discussed, along with strategies to identify and implement sustainable library instruction in an academic library.     

Situational specificity makes the difference in assessment of youth behavior disorders

In this article we examine the ability of contextual information to enhance assessment of behavior problems in schools. Capitalizing on the multisituational structure of the Adjustment Scales for Children and Adolescents, exploratory and confirmatory analyses with a representative national sample (N = 1,400, ages 5–17 years) revealed three unique and reliable behavioral situtypes (problems in Peer Contexts, Academic Contexts, and Teacher Contexts). The situtypes were found internally consistent and structurally generalizable across age, sex, and ethnicity. Multiple logistic and discriminant analyses confirmed the ability of the situtypes to identify accurately those youth independently diagnosed as emotionally disturbed, as well as distinguish those diagnosed as learning disabled. Information gleaned from the situtypes was substantially better able than conventional psychopathology syndromes (attention‐deficit hyperactivity, oppositional defiance, etc.) to forecast later academic achievement. Implications for informing motivation and intervention are discussed. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 42: 121–136, 2005.     

Power/knowledge, gender and curriculum change

This paper considers the relationship betweenpower, gender and curriculum change. Writingfrom a Foucaultian standpoint, the authorconsiders how teachers react to and resist bothimposed and voluntary educationalinnovations. She looks at how subject status,personal identity and career history affect howa teacher is likely to react to a particularproposed change, and how this is affected bygendered power/knowledge relations withinschools. The author concludes that genderedpower/knowledge relations are central to theintroduction and implementation of change, andthat those proposing educational innovationsneed to have a greater understanding of thosewho will be subject to them. This is animportant area in which basic educationalresearch can be of practical utility.     

Teaching efficacy: exploring relationships between mathematics and science self-efficacy beliefs,PCK and domain knowledge among preservice teachers from the United States

This mixed-methods study investigated the relationships among preservice teachers’ efficacy beliefs, pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and their domain knowledge (DK) as related to mathematics and science teaching. Quantitative results revealed that participants’ PCK was significantly correlated with their mathematics and science efficacy beliefs. Additionally, participants’ mathematics and science DK did not predict their mathematics and science personal efficacy beliefs, however, their PCK score predicted participants’ outcome expectancies. Interview analysis revealed five inter-related key themes, labeled as: Previous academic experiences, Mathematics and science PCK beliefs, Personal efficacy, Outcome expectancies and Emotions. These common themes describe participants’ views of their quality teacher training and thinking about planned instruction. Educational implications are discussed in relationship with study findings.