Motivation to Become a Teacher: a Norwegian Validation of the Factors Influencing Teaching Choice Scale

The act of newly qualified teachers leaving the profession is a growing challenge, both in Norway and internationally. To address recruitment difficulties, there is a need for further knowledge of prospective teachers’ career motivations. The current study validated a Norwegian translation of the Factors Influencing Teaching Choice (FIT-Choice) Scale. Using a sample of 635 preservice teachers, confirmatory factor analyses were conducted. The results indicated that the translated scale offers a valid measure of Norwegian students’ motivation to become teachers. Self-perception of teaching-related abilities was one of the main motivational sources, together with the desire to shape the future of children and adolescents and an interest in teaching. Findings are discussed in relation to previous studies based on the FIT-Choice Scale in other countries.     

Testing social learning in a wild mountain parrot,the kea (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Nestor notabilis</Emphasis>)

Huber, Taborsky, and Rechberger (2001) reported an experiment in which the efficiency with which captive keas opened a complex food container was increased by observation of a skilled conspecific. However, only testing social learning in free-ranging animals can demonstrate social learning in natural conditions. For that purpose, a tube-lifting paradigm was developed and tested on keas both in captivity and in Mount Cook National Park, New Zealand. The task was to remove a tube from an upright pole in order to gain access to a reward inside the tube. The top of the pole was higher than a standing kea, so that, to remove the tube, an individual had to simultaneously climb onto the pole and manipulate the tube up the pole with its bill. Because only 1 naive bird managed to remove a tube twice in 25 halfhour sessions and disappeared after success, another bird was trained to solve the task and to provide demonstrations for others. Even under such conditions, only 2 of at least 15 birds learned to remove the tube in 28 sessions. There was no indication that observer birds’ use of bill and feet when exploring the tube changed as the number of observations of tube removal increased in a way that would, in principle, increase the likelihood of tube removal. The results suggest a dissociation of social learning potential as assessed in laboratory animals, and social transmission of foraging techniques in natural populations.     

Designing science laboratories: learning environments,school architecture and teaching and learning models

This article on secondary schools science laboratories in Portugal focuses on how school space functions as a pedagogical and political instrument by contributing to shape the conditions for teaching and learning dynamics. The article places the impact of changes to school layouts within the larger context of a public school renovation programme, discussing how school space functions as a pedagogical and political instrument. The focus is on science laboratories as a particular learning environment for science education. The study, conducted between 2010 and 2011 in 13 renovated schools within the framework of the Portuguese Secondary School Modernisation Programme, drew on document analysis, interviews, pupil and teacher surveys and site-specific focus groups. One of the main findings is that teachers found that science laboratories were the most controversial and debated of all the renovated learning spaces. Considering that the science laboratory layout was intended to be universal across all schools, there was little intervention by the architects responsible for the renovation of the schools. Focusing on the analysis of the decision to change the science laboratory design within the aims of the education policy, this article discusses how teachers’ criticisms were a response to some of the educational policy goals underlying the renovation of school buildings and the potential impact on science education, namely, the relationship between flexibility of space organisation and pedagogical approaches.     

What does ‘natural capital’ do? The role of metaphor in economic understanding of the environment

At the time of its introduction at the end of the 1980s, the concept of natural capital represented new, more ecologically aware thinking in economics. As a symbol of novel thinking, the metaphor of natural capital stimulated a debate between different disciplinary traditions on the definitions of the concept and research priorities and methods. The concept became a means to control the discourse of sustainable development. In this paper, I focus on the power/knowledge implications of the use of the concept, and I follow the career of the concept of natural capital in ecological economic publications between the years 1988 and 2000. The main interests are: (1) in the use of the concept to affect the rules according to which claims concerning sustainable development can be made and (2) in the constitution of objects of environmental knowledge.     

Food for Education in Honduras: Psychosocial correlates of childhood literacy

School feeding programs in low- and middle-income countries tend to focus on school attendance and literacy. Some evidence suggests that bolstering schools as a nexus of community plays an important psychosocial function for children and families. This study examines the extent to which childhood literacy rates are associated with parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of community violence and cohesion, following participation in a large-scale school feeding program in the Department of Intibucá, Honduras. Primary school children (n = 3,147) from 176 schools completed standardized literacy tests. Scores were linked to parents’ (n = 328) and teachers’ (n = 537) responses about community cohesion and violence. Social bonding among parents was positively associated with children’s literacy. Community violence reported by teachers exerted a negative influence. The authors discuss these results in light of how vertically focused interventions such as school feeding can be integrated to account for the specific contextual factors that affect, and are affected by, the program itself.     

Correspondence Schools in Alaska: Enrollment and Cohort Graduation Rates, 2010-17

ABSTRACT

The State of Alaska, by some measures the United States’ most rural state, has long supported correspondence schools, a popular school choice option available to all students statewide and used primarily by homeschooled students. This paper first explores Alaska correspondence schools in historical context, and then quantifies capture rate, enrollment by race/ethnicity, grade distributions, and cohort graduation rates for the years 2010–17. Findings include a steady increase in the proportion of Alaskan students enrolled in correspondence schools between 2010 and 2017; disproportionate enrollment of Alaskan students identified as White in correspondence schools between 2010 and 2017; enrollment peaks in late high school during 2014–17; and significantly lower 4- and 5-year cohort graduation rates among students enrolled in correspondence schools compared to those enrolled in traditional public schools.     

Enumeration of briefly presented items by the chimpanzee (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pan troglodytes</Emphasis>) and humans (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Homo sapiens</Emphasis>)

In this study, we compared the performances on an enumeration task (numerical labeling task) of 1 chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and 4 humans. In this task, two types of trials, with different exposure durations of the sample that was to be enumerated, were used. In the unlimited-exposure trials, the sample remained on until the subject made a choice. In the brief-exposure trials, the sample was presented for 100 msec and then was masked. The results show clear differences between the different species. The main differences had to do with accuracy during the unlimited trials and response times during the brief trials. Detailed analyses of the pattern of response times for the chimpanzee and of looking-back behavior during the task suggests that the enumeration process underlying the subject’s performance was not counting but estimation.     

Fall and rise of a D<Subscript>2</Subscript>O ice cube in liquid H<Subscript>2</Subscript>O

In this section of Resonance, we invite readers to pose questions likely to be raised in a classroom situation. We may suggest strategies for dealing with them, or invite responses, or both. “Classroom” is equally a forum for raising broader issues and sharing personal experiences and viewpoints on matters related to teaching and learning science.The demonstration described in this article is to show that while H₂O ice floats in water, D₂O ice sinks in water, proving the higher density of ‘heavy water’. This experiment can be done in a classroom or in an auditoriam.