The Structure and Substance of Teachers’ Opportunities to Learn about Teacher Evaluation Reform: Promise or Pitfall for Equity?

Despite growing momentum to overhaul teacher evaluation policies and practices, scant research examines how educators at the street level of such reform—principals and teachers—make sense of them, and almost no research examines the implications of current evaluation reforms for equity. This article provides findings based on a study of 14 districts implementing a new teacher evaluation policy in Connecticut. It focuses on how principals shaped teachers’ opportunities to learn about the new policy. We find that the majority of teachers’ opportunities to learn were formal and in whole group or one-on-one formats. We find important differences in the quantity and quality of learning opportunities at the district level, with districts serving greater shares of low-income students, students of color, and English language learners generally offering teachers fewer and lower quality opportunities to learn about the new reform than their counterparts. As such, this article builds on prior research illustrating the potential of new evaluation systems to exacerbate inequities and raises important cautions regarding the extent to which the unprecedented teacher evaluation reforms (currently underway) may exacerbate inequities among school districts.     

解决分布式需求的内在冲突

2006年8月,GEN(I网络创新的全球化环境)项目组公布其项目的设计原则。来自普林斯顿大学、麻省理工大学、华盛顿大学等学校的十二位专家编写了这份报告。该报告阐述了GENI的研究范围、用户的需求、需求的内在压力,以及工程设计的原则。报告指出了GENI的价值主张,广泛的部署、多样化可扩展的网络技术集合、对真实用户流量的支持仍是GENI关注的原则和方向。上期已经介绍第一部分——“分布式需求定义GENI的重心”,本期刊出第二部分——“解决分布式需求的内在冲突”。     

Discontinuity of Reference Hinders Children's Learning of New Words

When referring to objects, adults package words, sentences, and gestures in ways that shape children's learning. Here, to understand how continuity of reference shapes word learning, an adult taught new words to 4-year-old children (N = 120) using either clusters of references to the same object or no sequential references to each object. In three experiments, the adult used a combination of labels and other object references, which provided informative discourse (e.g., This is small and green), neutral discourse (e.g., This is really great), or no verbal discourse. Switching verbal references from one object to another interfered with learning relative to providing clustered references to a particular object, revealing that discontinuity in discourse hinders children's encoding of new words.     

This car seems to be alive – perspectives on the documentary, Plan F

Ed Marko redefines what it means to be not only an auto mechanic but also a person who is blind. At the age of 20 years, he lost his sight from a degenerative disease called infantile glaucoma. However, he has surpassed what we traditionally think of as the capabilities of blind people. Now in his late 60s, he was once a rehabilitation counsellor, but he also enjoyed working on cars. Then he decided to open his own shop, Community Car Care, in Columbus, Ohio. Plan F , a 27-minute documentary awarded the 2007 Oxford International Film Festival Award in cinematography and nominated for best short documentary at the Southern Winds Film Festival, takes us through a day in Ed's life as we watch him work on cars and interact with his partner Brad and his cat. Ed teaches us that one does not need to see to work on cars as he uses his fingers and tongue to manipulate bolts, nuts and bearings. The ways Ed navigates the auto shop demonstrate how he approaches life. If Plan A does not work, he moves on to Plan B. Flexibility and a sense of humour allow him to switch to a new plan when the first one does not work out. In this review of Plan F , we begin with summaries of the nine major scenes of the documentary, followed by reviews by a blind and a sighted person. The piece concludes with comments from the director.     

Sport studies

The sport-for-development movement has grown exponentially in the last decade generating increasing academic attention. However, existing research has rarely sought the views of young people despite them being both the main target audience of initiatives and frequently the deliverers. This paper seeks to address young people's absence within research and advocate the importance of engaging them in sport-for-development debates to enhance understanding of current delivery and to improve policy and practice in the future. The paper examines Zambian young people's views of HIV/AIDS peer-led education delivered through sport considering particularly whether young people believe such interventions can encourage empowerment and subsequent behaviour change. The paper outlines the importance of improving understanding of how young people can begin to translate knowledge into agency. The paper concludes with the suggestion that change is more likely if peer-led education through sport programmes are combined with multi-layered interventions directed at all levels of communities.     

‘The right path of equality’: supporting high school students with autism who type to communicate

The inclusion of students who type to communicate has been researched and strategies to accommodate such students have been recommended, but little information has been gathered about the students’ perspectives and daily school lives. This study utilises classroom observations and qualitative interviewing to explore the experiences of three high school students who type to communicate and the systems in place to support them. The study privileges and focuses on the ways that their school personnel honour the voices of those students as contributors to the construction of the spaces they enter and ways in which their active participation is supported.     

Reprints

Lasswell, Casey, and Smith's Propaganda and Promotional. Activities (the original was the University of Minan eesdoittion of 1935; this new edition sells for $10).

Lawrence Lessing's Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong, just re-issued with some up-dating (Bantam Books, $1.00).     

Automatically Batch Loading Metadata from MARC into a Work-Based Metadata Model for Music

This article describes work done at Indiana University to “batch load” data from MARC bibliographic and authority records into the Work-based and FRBR-like Variations system. A series of experiments to iteratively refine our batch loading algorithm is described, along with details of how the algorithm identifies Works, creates relationships between entities, and maps a large amount of data from MARC into Variations records. The article closes with a discussion of the potential impact of this work on Variations project workflow and community FRBRization activities.     

A U‐Shaped Relation Between Sitting Ability and Upright Face Processing in Infants

A growing body of research indicates connections exist between action, perception, and cognition in infants. In this study, associated changes between sitting ability and upright face processing were tested in 111 infants. Using the visual habituation “switch” task (C. H. Cashon & L. B. Cohen, 2004; L. B. Cohen & C. H. Cashon, 2001), holistic processing of faces was assessed in same‐aged non‐ and near sitters (22–25 weeks) and same‐aged new and expert sitters (27–32 weeks). U‐shaped relation was found between sitting stage and holistic face processing such that only nonsitters and expert sitters processed faces holistically. It is posited that the results are due to a reorganization of the upright face‐processing system resulting from infants' learning to sit independently and trying to incorporate the meaning of upright faces.     

Mentors’ contributions to gifted adolescents’ affective,social, and vocational development

Research on mentorships for gifted adolescents primarily has focused on the role mentors play in students’ academic success. Mentors’ contribution to gifted adolescents’ affective, social, and vocational development rarely has been addressed. This article identifies special needs and characteristics of gifted adolescents in these latter areas, and suggests how mentors can play a significant role in each, including the particular value of mentoring relationships for gifted adolescent females. Finally, educational implications are explored, as well as the need for empirical studies which examine the benefits derived by gifted and nongifted mentees from mentoring relationships.