The transfer of content knowledge in a cascade model of professional development

A cascade model of professional development presents a particular risk that ‘knowledge’ promoted in a programme will be diluted or distorted as it passes from originators of the programme to local trainers and then to the target teachers. Careful monitoring of trainers’ and teachers’ knowledge as it is transferred through the system is therefore imperative. This paper focuses on the transfer of content knowledge through an in-service teacher professional development programme and offers an innovative methodology for investigating knowledge transfer, i.e. through insights gained during a mentoring process. The findings suggest that this methodology facilitated assessment of knowledge transfer because it involved the identification of knowledge in practice. The focus on knowledge in practice appeared to avoid a deficit model of trainers’/teachers’ knowledge and revealed that content knowledge was generally being successfully transferred throughout the system. A detailed analysis of different aspects of content knowledge transfer suggested various foci for additional training.     

Phonemic awareness and learning to read

European Journal of Psychology of Education -     

Family Context and Gender Role Socialization in Middle Childhood: Comparing Girls to Boys and Sisters to Brothers

We studied the extent of sex-typing across different areas of child functioning (personality, interests, activities) in middle childhood as a function of the traditionality of parents' gender role attitudes and the sex composition of the sibling dyad. Participants included 200 firstborn children ( mean = 10.4 years old), their secondborn siblings ( mean = 7.7 years old) and their mothers and fathers. Family members were interviewed in their homes about their attitudes and personal characteristics and completed a series of seven evening telephone interviews about their daily activities. We measured children's attitudes, personality characteristics, and interests in sex-typed leisure activities (e.g., sports, handicrafts) as well as time spent in sex-typed leisure activities and household tasks (e.g., washing dishes, home repairs) and with same and opposite sex companions (i.e., parents, peers). Analyses revealed that sex-typing was most evident in children's interests and activities. Further, comparisons of girls versus boys and sisters versus brothers revealed that differences in children's sex-typing as a function of fathers' attitudes and sibling sex constellation were most apparent for children's activities. A notable exception was sex-typed peer involvement; time spent with same versus opposite sex peers was impervious to context effects. Analyses focused on children's sex-typing as a function of mothers' attitudes generally were nonsignificant.     

Perceptions of optimal conditions for teaching and learning: a case study from Flinders University

Effective teaching and learning in higher education is an important focal point of literature around the globe. Various models are presented as desirable and fostering optimal conditions for teaching and learning. However, each model must be examined within the context of its institutional culture, mission and strategic plan to ascertain if it meets the envisaged goals. The Reinventing Teaching Project survey conducted at Flinders University in 2009 provided a unique opportunity for academic staff and students across all faculties to respond to a survey that explored their perceptions of optimal learning conditions and assessed if the campus environment was conducive to effective teaching and learning practices. The exploratory study was designed to gather qualitative and quantitative data on the motivation of teachers and learners to engage with learning and learners (or not). The results of the survey present valuable insights into what teachers and learners consider to be important attributes of optimal teaching and learning and indicate a number of similarities and differences among teacher-student perceptions. This paper identifies and discusses some of the pertinent outcomes of the study to provide a framework for other similar studies.     

The Mediating Effects of Student Engagement on the Relationships Between Academic Disciplines and Learning Outcomes: An Extension of Holland’s Theory

This research examined the relationships among students?? academic majors, levels of engagement, and learning outcomes within the context of Holland??s person?Cenvironment theory of vocational and educational behavior. The study focused on the role of student engagement as a mediating agent in the relationships between academic majors and student learning. Drawing on data from a stratified random sample of 20,000 seniors who participated in the 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement, results revealed that students?? academic majors were significantly related to levels of engagement and learning outcomes. Student engagement was also significantly related to learning outcomes. Students?? academic majors generally were not indirectly related to learning outcomes through levels of engagement. An important exception to this result was found for students in Enterprising environments where indirect relationships among Enterprising disciplines and Enterprising learning outcomes were positive, statistically significant, and substantially larger than the direct relationship.     

Lexical Elaboration in Children's Locative Action Expressions

The spatial locative words used in multiword locative action expressions were tracked longitudinally for 4 children. Children ranged in age from 1–5 to 3–0. Although certain words emerged before others, as previous research has shown, the children were selective about which lexical categories were used to talk about movement events, and their selections changed systematically with age. Source and path words were used most frequently at the earliest ages, and goal words predominated at the oldest ages. The children also increased the specificity with which they talked about locative movement events by combining goal words with source and path words as they got older. The observed developmental shifts in lexical use suggest that lexical acquisition is influenced not only by the meaning of the individual locative words but also by the verb relational roles that such words play when embedded in semantic/syntactic contexts.     

Supervisor Flexibility

The author makes some very specific and rather bold suggestions to supervisors of instruction. His suggestions should also be helpful to other people with supervisory responsibilities, such as administrators, department heads, and supervising teachers.     

Mental rotation performance in fourth graders: No effects of gender beliefs (yet?)

The influence of gender beliefs on cognitive task performance has been demonstrated repeatedly for adults. For children, there is evidence that gender beliefs can substantially impede or boost math performance — a task where gender differences in favour of boys declined over past decades. Therefore, we examined this phenomenon using the Mental Rotations Test (MRT), a task where gender differences still occur reliably favouring males — for adults as well as for children. A sample of 252 fourth graders, whose beliefs about spatial ability were manipulated experimentally (instructions given: boys are better, girls are better or independent of gender) had to complete the MRT. In contrast to adult's literature, children's performance did not decrease or increase as a function of instruction: boys always outperformed girls; girls not even outperformed their same-sex counterparts given the “girls better” instruction. The transfer of the conceptual approach failed — possible reasons are discussed.