Math Anxiety: Past Research,Promising Interventions,and a New Interpretation Framework

Mathematics anxiety is a pervasive issue in education that requires attention from both educators and researchers to help students reach their full academic potential. This review provides an overview of past research that has investigated the association between math anxiety and math achievement, factors that can cause math anxiety, characteristics of students that can increase their susceptibility to math anxiety, and efforts that educators can take to remedy math anxiety. We also derive a new Interpretation Account of math anxiety, which we use to argue the importance of understanding appraisal processes in the development and treatment of math anxiety. In conclusion, gaps in the literature are reviewed in addition to suggestions for future research that can help improve the field's understanding of this important issue.     

Undergraduate Laboratory Exercises Specific to Food Spoilage Microbiology

Food spoilage has an enormous economic impact, and microbial food spoilage plays a significant role in food waste and loss; subsequently, an equally significant portion of undergraduate food microbiology instruction should be dedicated to spoilage microbiology. Here, we describe a set of undergraduate microbiology laboratory exercises that focus specifically on food spoilage which were taught in 2 lab periods as part of the undergraduate food microbiology lab curriculum at Cornell University. The lab was broken down into 3 exercises. Two exercises lead students to determine the likely source of contamination in a canned salsa through (exercise 1a) plating and observation of colony morphology and (exercise 1b) determination of the thermal resistance for those isolates. The final exercise (2) involved detection of the spoilage bacterium Alicyclobacillus in apple juice. Spoiled juice demonstrations were also prepared in this exercise for students to observe sensorial changes resulting from spoilage, emphasizing that spoilage is not always visually detectable. Students were able to successfully determine the source of contamination based on the results of their laboratory findings, which they used to make recommendations for production to reduce microbial food spoilage in the canned salsa product. Based on student answers to discussion questions provided following lab exercises, participants were able to (a) identify the significance of microbial spoilage and how spoilage is principally different from food safety, (b) describe varying sensorial changes associated with microbial spoilage, and (c) employ methods and analysis to evaluate sources and type of contamination. Downloadable handouts and stepwise instructions are available as supporting information.     

Principals’ Instructional Leadership Within a Teacher Performance Appraisal System: Enhancing Students’ Academic Success

The purpose of this study was to identify principals’ instructional leadership actions within a comprehensive teacher evaluation system in successful schools rated as recognized or exemplary by the accountability measures in place. The study followed a multiple case study approach. Participants included six school administrators within the same school district. From these three were principals and three assistant principals, representing all three schools levels—elementary school, middle school, and high school. The main data sources consisted of interviews, observations and journaling. Data were analyzed inductively to discern emerging themes. Findings of the study revealed that principals’ instructional leadership actions at all three levels included setting clear expectations, monitoring instruction through walk-through observations, and providing professional development opportunities according teachers’ needs. Furthermore, the cross site analysis revealed that principals tend to rely on instructional leadership actions that are pertinent to each grade level’s needs. Findings also suggest that principals, indeed, apply the teacher performance appraisal system as a basis to enhance instruction and improve student achievement.     

Effects of Collective Efficacy,Teamwork Attitudes,and Experience on Group Project Performance: Comparisons Between 2 Food Science Courses

The relationship between past teamwork and task‐related experiences, attitude toward teamwork, collective efficacy, and task performance among undergraduates (N = 298) assigned to group projects (N = 48) in 2 different Food Science courses was examined. The results of survey data collected at the beginning and end of the projects showed that past teamwork and task‐related experience predicted individual student efficacy at the end of the project, and that starting efficacy, but not attitudes toward teamwork, mediated that relationship. Convergence over time among team members’ efficacy, and diversity of past task‐related experiences was positively related to project grade, whereas diversity in past teamwork experiences was negatively related to project grade. The relationship between past experiences, attitude toward teamwork, efficacy, and grades did not differ between the 2 courses. Implications for practices of implementing group class projects are discussed.     

Research as a vital action in the DIPEC territory

The authors present the Didáctica de las Prácticas Escolares Cotidianas – The Didactics of Everyday School Practice (DIPEC). From their point of view, it owes its specificity to certain special characteristics, one of which is the inevitable presence of concrete, immediate teaching action, which presents particular problems and therefore particular ways of dealing with them. This article includes an example of a problematic situation, the way it was handled using Paulo Freire's methodology and the action subsequently developed.     

Correction to: Kindergarten and First-Grade Students’ Understandings and Representations of Arithmetic Properties

Early Childhood Education Journal - The original version of this article unfortunately contained a typo in co-author name.     

Innovation and network multiplexity: R&D and the concurrent effects of two collaboration networks in an emerging economy

This study focuses on the multiplexity of firm R&D networks, and it investigates two types of boundary-spanning networks: the bipartite network between firms and government-sponsored institutions (GSIs), and the traditional firm–firm network. We apply a social network perspective to examine the effects that these kinds of networks have on firm innovativeness, in relation to the effects of the firm’s internal R&D efforts. We define the firm-GSI network as bipartite, and we investigate how the structural characteristics of this network (cohesion and centrality) affect innovativeness. We then decompose the innovational effects of firm–firm networks into two categories (intra- and inter-sector) to distinguish the effects of these collaboration networks. Furthermore, we investigate how these various external collaborative networks interact with a firm’s internal R&D efforts for driving innovativeness. Our empirical study of 420 manufacturing firms in Mexico evaluates evidence from surveys and secondary data. The findings indicate that the structural properties of both firm–GSI and firm–firm networks have positive effects on innovativeness, but firm–GSI network cohesion has a stronger negative interaction with R&D in influencing firm innovativeness. Moreover, intra-sector centrality in a firm–firm network has a stronger negative interaction with R&D than inter-sector centrality does in driving firm innovativeness. We contribute to the literature by integrating insights from the perspectives of network multiplexity, social embeddedness, and resource complementarity in regard to inter-organizational behavior. Our study also provides meaningful guidelines for both managers and policy makers. The study’s findings are robust to concerns of common method bias and alternative model specifications.