From the Editor

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability -     

Breaking in: Gaining entry to prisons and other hard-to-access criminal justice organizations

There exists a large body of literature on doing research with hard-to-access populations such as the mentally ill, gang members, prison inmates, correctional officers, and wardens. There is little discussion, however, on getting access to criminal justice organizations in the first place. This article offers several practical suggestions for “breaking in” to prisons and other criminal justice organizations. This article emphasizes getting access to agency-collected data.     

Outside the Comfort Zone of the Classroom

What comes to mind when the word learning is mentioned? Is it a classroom full of students and a teacher dictating notes as the students struggle emphatically to write down every word that is said? Is it a picture of a student in the library with a stack of books piled on a desk, trying to read them all? These examples of learning may fit the traditional definition but this paper expands learning to include service. This paper describes a non‐traditional style of learning that takes the student “out of the comfort zone of the classroom” into the community and explains how this experience has an impact on the students’ education as well as their lives. The authors of this paper hope to influence its readers to re‐think the definition of learning by understanding the importance of service.     

The effectiveness of private tutoring: students’ perceptions in comparison with mainstream schooling in Hong Kong

This paper examines Hong Kong students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of private supplementary tutoring relative to mainstream schooling. Drawing on survey and interview data, it shows that large proportions of secondary school students receive private tutoring. Students generally perceive private tutoring and private tutors to be more effective in the provision of examination support compared with mainstream schooling and teachers. However, perceptions vary according to students’ self-reported academic levels and motives for taking private tutoring. The operations of the parallel sector of private tutoring have significant implications for the nature of schooling and therefore need to be considered by teachers and school administrators. The Hong Kong data contribute to the international analysis of private tutoring and add a significant component to the wider conceptual literature.     

Assessment matters: Making the familiar strange: How a culture audit can boost your advising impact

Chad Ahren, Helen-Grace Ryan, and Amanda Suniti Niskodé-Dossett introduce an assessment tool to help advisors better understand their student organizations.     

Metamemory Development: Understanding the Role of Similarity in False Memories

Research on the development of metamemory has focused primarily on children's understanding of the variables that influence how likely a person is to remember something. But metamemory also involves an understanding of why people occasionally misremember things. In this study, 5- and 6-year-olds ( N  =   38) were asked to decide whether another child's mistakes in a memory game were due to false memories or guesses. Some of the fictitious child's mistakes were similar to material he had seen earlier and some were not. Six-year-olds, but not 5-year-olds, consistently attributed more similar than dissimilar mistakes to false memories. Understanding the link between similarity and false memories improves significantly between 5 and 6 years of age.     

Teacher Implementation and the Impact of Game-Based Science Curriculum Materials

Research-based digital games hold great potential to be effective tools in supporting next-generation science learning. However, as with all instructional materials, teachers significantly influence their implementation and contribute to their effectiveness. To more fully understand the contributions and challenges of teacher implementation of digital games, we studied the replacement of existing high school biology genetics lessons over a 3- to 6-week period with Geniverse, an immersive, game-like learning environment designed to be used in classrooms. The Geniverse materials infuse virtual experimentation in genetics with a narrative of a quest to heal a genetic disease; incorporate the topics of meiosis and protein synthesis with inheritance; and include the science practices of explanation and argumentation. The research design involved a quasi-experiment with 48 high school teachers and about 2000 students, student science content knowledge and argumentation outcome measures, and analysis using hierarchical linear modeling. Results indicate that when Geniverse was implemented as the designers intended, student learning of genetics content was significantly greater than in the comparison, business-as-usual group. However, a wide range of levels of Geniverse implementation resulted in no significant difference between the groups as a whole. Students’ abilities to engage in scientific explanation and argumentation were greater in the Geniverse group, but these differences were not statistically significant. Observation, survey, and interview data indicate a range of barriers to implementation and teacher instructional decisions that may have influenced student outcomes. Implications for the role of the teacher in the implementation of game-based instructional materials are discussed.     

Tweeting Fast Matters,But Only if I Think About It: Information Updates on Social Media

Social media have emerged as increasingly important sources through which the public seeks information concerning crises or risks. Despite this increased dependence, little is known about the psychological processes associated with perceptions of source credibility or the desire to seek additional information related to the risk. The current study investigates the role of speed of updates in credibility perceptions and information seeking using Twitter. The results do not provide evidence of a direct relationship between update speed and the outcomes under consideration. They do, however, consistently support a mediation model in which cognitive elaboration mediates the relationship between update speed and perceptions of sender competence, goodwill, trustworthiness, and reader (follower/audience/rater/target) desire for additional information. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications and applied use.