Exploring the nature of the relation between interest and comprehension

This paper examines the complex relation between interest and comprehension recorded by postgraduate students in a language teacher education programme at various stages of two-hour lectures. The quantitative analysis suggests that its relationship with comprehension changes as the lecture continues. The analysis is also triangulated with the qualitative responses reported by students at different stages of the lecture. The type of comprehension that co-occurs with increasing interest differs from the type of comprehension that co-occurs with maintaining interest. Although the effect of comprehension on interest is low at the beginning of the lecture, its effect is more frequently noted as important at the later stages of the lecture. Postdictability (i.e., the ability to determine after the fact that unpredictability and difficulty that have been raised in the earlier parts of the lecture hang together and make sense) seems important in increasing interest, especially at the later stages of the lecture.     

The locker room : Eroticism and exoticism in a polyphonic text

Critical race theory now encompasses a polyphonic telling of story in which multiple, shifting identities are seen in relation to each other and situated within historical contexts. Locating the fictive voice of an administrator forced to deal with change at a small private university, the article begins with a flashback to confrontations demanding that he reexamine his positions in relation to both work and social life. The second part of the article is an analytic discussion of the voices of narrator and other actors and concludes with a critical reconceptualization of polyphony. Much in the same way that critical race theorists have injected story-telling into legal scholarship in order to deconstruct and then reconstruct knowledge, the authors urge education researchers to move away from methodologies and systems of analysis that derive from white liberal discourse and ironically serve to maintain the status quo by leaving in place conservative structures and reward mechanisms.     

Racial Inequality in Critical Thinking Skills: The Role of Academic and Diversity Experiences

While racial inequalities in college entry and completion are well documented, much less is known about racial disparities in the development of general collegiate skills, such as critical thinking. Using data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, we find substantial inequality in the development of critical thinking skills over four years of college between African American and White students. The results indicate that these inequities are not related to students’ academic experiences in college but are substantially related to their experiences with diversity. These findings have important implications for understanding racial inequality in higher education and considering strategies for addressing observed disparities.     

The roles of teacher efficacy in instructional innovation: its predictive relations to constructivist and didactic instruction

Constructivist instruction has been implemented in the current instructional innovation in Singapore. Large scale survey study was conducted to examine the roles of teacher efficacy in implementing the innovative constructivist instruction. The results showed that the positive correlation between teacher efficacy and constructivist instruction was stronger than the correlation between teacher efficacy and didactic instruction. The study suggests that policy makers and school leaders should try to improve teacher’s efficacy beliefs so that innovative instruction could be effectively implemented by school teachers.     

Laboratory materials: Affordances or constraints?

Laboratory instruction is critical to the understanding of biology and is a central piece of biological sciences instruction. Although much investigation has focused on the content of biology laboratory exercises, we contend that understanding the extent to which the laboratory materials can aid or limit experimental investigation is of equal importance. In this study, therefore, we investigate the role of timing and availability of laboratory equipment in the context of two different laboratory exercises. We use both case study and an experimental approach to investigate how laboratory materials guide the planning, context, creativity, and timing of ideas shared among students. Our data support the notion that providing students with laboratory equipment before students plan and consider different experimental approaches can constrain students' ideas and encourage tool‐focused solutions to experimental design tasks. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 1010–1025, 2011     

Factors related to university presidents' pay: An examination of private colleges and universities

In this research, we used institutionalcharacteristics and market-related factors to predictuniversity president's pay, benefits, and totalcompensation at 190 private colleges and universities. Results showed that university CEOs' pay was relatedto the expenditures, type of institution, theexistence of professional schools, and academicreputation ranking, while their benefits package wasrelated to the expenditure, type of institution,reputation ranking, and undergraduate student'stuition. CEOs' total compensation (pay and benefitscombined) was related to the expenditures, type ofinstitution, reputation ranking, and tuition. Resultsof this study support the notion that agency theorycan be used to provide a theoretical framework topredict university CEOs' pay, benefits, and totalcompensation.     

Preparing Preservice Teachers to Meet the Needs of Hmong Refugee Students

This article presents an alternative approach to using service-learning courses to help students develop cultural competence. Service learning often comes from a deficit model that views the providers of a service as advantaged and the recipients as disadvantaged. The Conceptual Model for Cultural Engagement (CMCE) recognizes that those many deem as the disadvantaged have assets to share. The CMCE develops long-term, asset-based, reciprocal relationships between faculty members, community partners, and higher education students. During this relationship, all of the individuals actively participate in culturally engaged learning. The goal is to develop culturally effective members of our society who are educated to interact effectively with individuals from diverse backgrounds.     

Using the Text Structures of Information Books to Teach Writing in the Primary Grades

Teaching children in the primary grades the text structures and features used by authors of information text has been shown to improve comprehension of information texts and provide the scaffolding and support these children need in order to write their own information texts. As teachers implement the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards (CCSS), they will need support and training on how to meet these increased curricular demands. In this article, we describe how children’s information books can be used as exemplars of well-structured text models to teach young students how to write selected discourse patterns required in the CCSS. As children in the primary grades learn to recognize and use well-structured example information texts as models for their own writing, they will be better prepared to deal with less well-structured, more complex text examples in their reading and writing in the years to come.