Learning to Teach Mathematics: Questioning, Listening, and Responding

This paper reports a study designed to explore prospective teachers' learning to teach mathematics in the complex context of a university-based curriculum and instruction course. The course, taught with a focus on inquiry, used prospective teachers' weekly interactions with students as springboards for investigations of mathematics, teaching, and learning. A framework of questioning, listening, and responding is used to analyze prospective teachers' understandings and the tensions they experienced. The difficulties and tensions prospective teachers face in turn pose challenges and tensions for teacher educators. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Reviews classroom materials for the gifted

Easy ears. A Scholastic Audio/Visual Program 50 W. 44th St. New York, New York 10036

Grimm's tales for young and old translated by Ralph Manheim, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1977

The uses of enchantment. Bruno Bettelhelm, New York: Random House, 1977 400 Hahn Rd. Westminster, MO 21157.

Capitalization and punctuation by Jennifer Price published by Curriculum Associates, 1977 6 Henshaw St. Woburn, Mass. 01801

Things that are red. Bowmar Artworlds Bowmar/Noble Publishers, Inc. 4563 Colorado Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90039     

Is this what we want them to say? Examining the tensions in what U.S. preservice teachers say about risk and academic achievement

Questions abound in the U.S. based teacher education literature about the kind of knowledge teachers should possess about learning and academic achievement that will enable them to provide all students with an equitable, effective schooling experience. This article examines how a group of preservice teachers—enrolled in a teacher education program that challenges deficit thinking—understand and talk about academic achievement, paying particular attention to the extent to which the candidates account for academic achievement and recognize potential academic risk. Based on the paradoxical stability and tentativeness of teacher candidates' talk about risk, academic achievement and the deployment of the “at-risk” category, I suggest the need to illuminate the complex body of knowledge that informs teacher candidates' understanding, particularly the knowledge deployed in teacher education curriculum.     

Rural Libraries Services for Older Adults: A Nationwide Survey

The author examined the survey results from 721 rural libraries throughout the United States and Canada to learn more about how they are serving older adults (defined here as anyone 65 years and older). The following areas of library service in particular were studied: funding sources, collections, strategic planning, staffing, technology use, partnerships, outreach efforts, and building design and accessibility. Results of this study were compared to those found in recent studies of services provided to older adults in suburban and capital city public libraries.     

Patent basics: History, background, and searching fundamentals

The U.S. patent system and the body of issued patents are key elements in meeting information needs related to technology and innovation. Most librarians, however, have little understanding of the value of patents as sources of technological information—and less knowledge about how to help users tap what has been called, “the largest and most comprehensive body of technological literature in the world.” This article attempts to provide a sufficient background on patent fundamentals to allow librarians to assist or refer users who would benefit by the use of patents. Detailed patent searching instructions are provided for staff in Government Printing Office depository libraries to use materials available through the depository program. The value of utilizing one of the 58 Patent depository libraries to enhance and expedite the search process is highlighted, and online searching options are introduced.     

Swings and roundabouts: Centralisation and devolution in a multi-campus university in South Africa

Over the course of its ninety-yearhistory a great deal of time and energy has beendevoted at the University of Natal to trying tounderstand the best way to administer and manage aunitary University whose two main campuses are fiftymiles apart. In the early 1990s, after decades ofgradual separation of the campuses, the massivechanges taking place in South Africa, as experiencedin Higher Education, prompted a major review of themanagement, administrative and committee structureswithin the University. This review, whoserecommendations were accepted and implemented,advocated a formal process of administrative andbudgetary devolution to the two campuses in Durban andPietermaritzburg. Five years later, in the face offurther external pressures, a new review recommendedthat the devolution be reversed and a stronglycentralised structure be put in place. Thisrecommendation, in turn, was approved and implemented. This article outlines the reasoning behind both setsof recommendations and explores the pros and cons fora multi-campus university of both centralisation anddevolution in the light of the experience of auniversity which has gained first-hand knowledge ofboth alternatives in less than a decade.