Get Your Head into the Clouds: Using Word Clouds for Analyzing Qualitative Assessment Data

Word clouds (or tag clouds) are popular, fun ways to display text data in graphical form; however, we contend that they can also be useful tools in assessment. Using word clouds, instructors can quickly and easily produce graphical depictions of text representing student knowledge. By investigating the patterns of words or phrases, or lack thereof, in textual student responses, instructors can evaluate if students, as a whole, have grasped or missed key concepts or have made common mistakes. Word clouds can be used to provide formative assessment feedback to students, and to identify common themes in student reflection papers. They can also be useful as a starting point or screening tool for large amounts of text data, whether related to assessment or not.     

The Effect of the “No Pass,No Play” Provision on Girls' Volleyball and Basketball Eligibility

Abstract

We examined relationships between skinfold (SKF) and optical density (ΔOD) measurements across age and levels of body fatness (%BF) for 151 women, 20 to 72 years. There were significant (p < .05) relationships between ΔODs and SKFs at all sites, except the thigh. The interaction (SKF × Age) was significant (p < .05) for pectoral and biceps ΔODs. Slope comparisons indicated the relationships for younger (29 years) and older (59 years) women differed significantly from zero and each other (p < .05). Analysis of SKF × %BF interactions revealed that relationships between SKFs and ΔODs at the pectoral and biceps sites for leaner (22% BF) women differed significantly from zero (p < .05) and were larger than those for obese (39% BF) women (p ≤ .05). Thus, the relationship between SKFs and ΔODs is stronger for younger and leaner women compared to older and fatter women. These findings may reflect differences in fat layering due to age or body fatness and provide insight as to why the manufacturer's near-infrared (NIR) equation significantly underestimates the %BF of obese women.     

Summer Scientific Research for Teachers: The Experience and its Effect

Journal of Science Teacher Education -     

A Model of Technology Incidental Learning Effects

Educational Psychology Review - Increases in technology use, among youth and adults, are concerning given the volume of information produced and disseminated in the modern world. Conceptual models...     

Exploring the Connections Between Action Research and Teacher Leadership: A Reflection on Teacher-Leader Research for Confronting New Challenges

ABSTRACT

This reflective article examines the relationship between teachers’ engagement in action research and their ability to lead within their schools. As part of The New Educator’s special issue, “Developing an Inquiry Stance toward Instructional Improvement: Teacher-Leader Action Research,” this article demonstrates the development of an inquiry stance. It shares the story of two practicing teacher leaders within the new and challenging circumstance of adjusting to, and studying, the professional development they provided to help teachers deal with a challenging transition to a radically different school space. This article examines the ways practitioner inquiry supported these teachers to be leaders in the new architectural space designed to promote innovative instruction for twenty-first-century teaching and learning. We posit that coupling teacher leadership and teacher research enables teachers (a) to lead with literature, (b) to lead from data, (c) to lead through sharing, and (d) to lead by example.     

Perceived Expectations Related to Promotion and Tenure: A National Survey of CACREP Program Liaisons

The purpose of the present study was to determine the perceptions of expectations and practices that contribute to decisions regarding promotion and tenure for counselor educators. Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs liaisons for 74 counselor education programs responded to an Internet‐based survey about perceptions of promotion and tenure practices in their programs and institutions. The responses indicate that relatively equal emphasis is placed on teaching, scholarship, and service. Implications for defining promotion and tenure criteria are discussed, and recommendations for further research are provided.     

Drive for Thinness and Fear of Fat Among College Women: Implications for Practice and Assessment

College women are at particular risk for developing eating disorders and related eating and body image concerns. The purpose of this article is to explore how both drive for thinness and fear of fat may be addressed in counseling with college women. Characteristics of drive for thinness and fear of fat as they relate to the development of eating disorders are addressed, and implications for college counseling and assessment of these constructs are presented.     

Good intentions are not enough: a critical examination of diversity and educational leadership scholarship

An emergent strand within mainstream educational leadership scholarship is an engagement with notions of diversity. This is part of a belated recognition that in an increasingly globalising world the largely masculinist, white norms from which most accounts of leadership derive, lack sufficient explanatory power for educational systems. Utilising critical, black and Indigenous feminist work on the recognition of difference, as well as recent feminist scholarship deconstructing diversity discourses in educational leadership, this article outlines the origins of the key diversity discourses from which the educational leadership field draws. It then analyses recent articles on diversity and educational administration, noting how the various diversity discourses have been taken up and the subsequent implications for educational leadership theorising and practices. It concludes by arguing that critical feminist research about the politics of difference, amongst others, provides an important body of scholarship from which to develop self‐reflexive and nuanced engagements with notions of diversity and leadership.     

Communicating Across Differences: Toward a Multicultural Approach to Institutional Transformation

In the two decades since Audre Lorde (1984) pointed out that we have no patterns for relating across our differences as equals (p. 115), struggles to transform higher education have come to focus on communication about and across differences. Despite these efforts, conversations in higher education about group difference and equity too often exacerbate feelings of cynicism and disenfranchisement. In this article we discuss research into the actual discourses at work in communication about the cultural politics of institutional practices. We report on an analysis of qualitative data, using this data to help clarify the challenges of relating across differences as equals.Patrick Bruch is Assistant Professor of Writing Studies in the General College at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He received a B.A. in English from Western Michigan University and a Ph.D. in English from Wayne State University. His teaching and research focus on struggles for equality within and through higher education. He thanks Mark Pedelty for helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this article. Rashné Jehangir received her B.A. in Psychology from Lawrence University and her M.A. in Counseling and Student Personnel Psychology from the University of Minnesota. She currently serves as an Associate Counselor Advocate for first-generation, low-income students in the TRIO Student Support Services program in the General College, University of Minnesota. Her current publications focus on cooperative learning, learning communities, and social justice and access policy to higher education. Dana Britt Lundell is Director of the Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy (CRDEUL) in the General College at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She received her M.A. in English and Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Minnesota. She is Co-Editor of the CRDEUL monograph and 2004 President of the Minnesota Association for Developmental Education (MNADE). Jeanne L. Higbee received her B.S. in Sociology from Iowa State University and earned both her M.S. in Counseling and Guidance and Ph.D. in Educational Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She currently serves as Professor and Senior Advisor to the Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy, General College, University of Minnesota. Her research interests are related to student development and the access and retention of student populations that traditionally have been underserved in postsecondary educational institutions. Karen L. Miksch is an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota, General College. She received her J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Affirmative action programs designed to recruit, admit, and retain a diverse student body, as well as access to college preparatory programs, are two ongoing areas of her research. All correspondence should be addressed to Patrick L. Bruch, General College, University of Minnesota, 128 Pleasant St. SE, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455     

Revisiting a year in the sand: An HPT‐style after‐action review

This is a retrospective analysis of the performance of a large training program in a combat environment looked at through the lens of human performance technology. Van Tiem, Moseley, and Dessinger's performance improvement/HPT model and strategic, operational, and tactical levels are used to describe effective and ineffective applications of human performance technology in a complex, multinational operation. While some interventions or projects at the training center showed marked improvements in targeted areas, there were numerous opportunities to do even better work, and the ultimate analysis of the effectiveness of the training center remains to be determined.