Perceived Instructor Credibility and Teaching Philosophy

The purpose of this study was to examine whether perceived instructor credibility (i.e., competence, character, caring) differs based on instructor teaching philosophy. Participants were 244 students who read a short vignette describing an instructor with either a transmissive or a progressive teaching philosophy and completed the Measure of Source Credibility in reference to the vignette. Results indicate instructors with a transmissive teaching philosophy or a progressive teaching philosophy did not differ in their perceived competence, but instructors with a progressive teaching philosophy were rated higher in both perceived character and caring than instructors with a transmissive teaching philosophy. Future research should examine whether student philosophies toward education impact perceived instructor credibility.     

Group and individual accuracy in deception detection

Previous research examining the accuracy of deception detection judgments by individuals has concluded that the ability to detect deception is only slightly better than chance. Research has also found that individuals tend to be over‐confident, truth‐biased, and reliant on nonverbal behavior when making veracity judgments. This study (N = 129) tested if differences in deception detection accuracy, truth‐bias, judgmental confidences, and self‐reported cue reliance exist between individual judges and groups of individuals working in collaboration. No significant differences between groups and individuals emerged for accuracy, truth‐bias, or self‐reported cue reliance. Individuals within groups, however, were significantly more confident in their decisions than individuals working alone.     

Five Years after Implementation: The Role of the District in Maintaining an Ongoing School Improvement Process

The longitudinal study reported here provides insight into the role of the school district in implementing and maintaining the essential elements of a nine‐year statewide improvement project called SPUR five years after the termination of state funding and external support. Key to the conceptualization of SPUR were findings from the comprehensive Rand Study (McLaughlin & Marsh, 1978) on successful change efforts emphasizing the importance of implementing an ongoing improvement process. On‐site visits to six districts and a follow‐up survey of all 66 participating school districts were used to determine maintenance of the process, factors facilitating/impeding maintenance, and long‐term benefits. Results suggest that SPUR represents a viable improvement process that can be implemented and maintained in districts and schools with positive outcomes. Individual and organizational efficacy as well as an increased capacity for change and innovation were found to be directly related to the level of district maintenance and support.     

The space between: building liberatory capital in a school–community partnership

Even before withstanding one of the most devastating economic crises in American history, families living in poverty have battled a dominant discourse that labels them as lacking personal responsibility, initiative, and the ability to make “good” choices. This discourse is reflected in the parent-involvement mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act, where parents living in poverty are expected to sign contracts promising to take a more active role in the education of their children. This study describes what it looked like when a grassroots, Community Based Organization (CBO) dedicated to speaking back to this dominant discourse partnered with an urban public school system to simultaneously help families leave poverty and improve the academic success of their children. This paper illustrates what it looks like when families living in poverty speak back to the dominant discourse, seek validation for their non-dominant discourses, and enter a potentially liberating Third Space between.     

Being an Elbow: A Phenomenological Autoethnography of Faculty-Student Collaboration for Accommodations

Hybrid and online courses and advances in assistive technologies make accommodating students with disabilities ever-changing, requiring innovation. This reality, coupled with students’ reluctance to disclose disabilities, points toward a need for replacing accommodations directed at those with disabilities with universal design whereby they become accessible to all—virtually eliminating the need for accommodations. In this paper, a master's of social work student (Chad) and his instructor (Regina) document their collaborations to revise a social work research course to meet his request for accommodations to make options more universally accessible. These revisions are done through reflections from both Chad and Regina from a phenomenological autoethnographic perspective—depicting their lived experiences.     

Observing Inscriptions at Work: Visualization and Text Production in Experimental Physics Research

This article presents a case study that examined how practices of visualization and text production converge in an experimental physics research setting. Findings suggest that visuals communicate meaning and become persuasive through their ability to index in different ways the technical dimensions of laboratory work. The author argues that examining the coproduction of visuals and texts in the scientific workplace contributes insights into the technical objectives and rhetorical motives they are designed to serve.     

A Critical Analysis of Assessment Quality in Genomics and Bioinformatics Education Research

The growing importance of genomics and bioinformatics methods and paradigms in biology has been accompanied by an explosion of new curricula and pedagogies. An important question to ask about these educational innovations is whether they are having a meaningful impact on students’ knowledge, attitudes, or skills. Although assessments are necessary tools for answering this question, their outputs are dependent on their quality. Our study 1) reviews the central importance of reliability and construct validity evidence in the development and evaluation of science assessments and 2) examines the extent to which published assessments in genomics and bioinformatics education (GBE) have been developed using such evidence. We identified 95 GBE articles (out of 226) that contained claims of knowledge increases, affective changes, or skill acquisition. We found that 1) the purpose of most of these studies was to assess summative learning gains associated with curricular change at the undergraduate level, and 2) a minority (<10%) of studies provided any reliability or validity evidence, and only one study out of the 95 sampled mentioned both validity and reliability. Our findings raise concerns about the quality of evidence derived from these instruments. We end with recommendations for improving assessment quality in GBE.     

District Accountability Without a State Assessment: A Proposed Model

Most states have adopted assessment and accountability systems that involve common measures of student performance. A state assessment system that allows school districts to choose the specific strategies they use to measure student performance on state-adopted content standards presents a unique state accountability challenge. The authors propose an accountability model that addresses this challenge using a combination of student performance, technical quality, and noncognitive indicators of performance. They also describe a study that evaluated the proposed model using data from all school districts in a southern state.