Who teaches mathematics content courses for prospective elementary teachers in the United States? Results of a national survey

This article reports on a national survey of higher education institutions in the United States to answer the question, “Who teaches mathematics content courses for prospective elementary teachers, and what are these instructors’ academic and teaching backgrounds?” We surveyed 1,926 institutions, and a faculty member from each of 825 institutions (42.8?%) participated in the survey. The survey results demonstrate that the majority of institutions are not meeting the recommendations of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences (The mathematical education of teachers. American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 2001), the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (Professional standards for teaching mathematics. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Reston, VA, 2005), and the National Council on Teacher Quality (Greenberg and Walsh 2008) for prospective elementary teachers to take at least nine credits of mathematics content designed specifically for them. Additionally, most instructors for these courses do not have elementary teaching experience and have likely not had opportunities to think deeply about the important ideas in elementary mathematics, and most institutions do not provide training and/or support for these instructors.     

The social competence of highly gifted math and science adolescents

Involving 740 highly gifted math and science students from two different countries, Korea and the United States, this study examined how these gifted adolescents perceived their interpersonal ability and peer relationships and whether there were differences between these two groups by demographic variables. Based on the survey data, results showed that our gifted students perceived their interpersonal ability and peer relationships at levels comparable to or higher than those of their non-gifted counterparts. They were satisfied and confident with their peer relationships and did not identify negative effects of being gifted when forming and maintaining friendships. Differences were found between Korean and American students by gender in their profiles of interpersonal ability and peer relationships. Positive self-portrayal of social competence found for our sample disputed previous studies suggesting that highly gifted students tend to struggle with social relationships. Given that each group of students had different educational, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds, the results should also be interpreted with caution.     

The Relationship of Discipline Background to Upper Secondary Students’ Argumentation on Socioscientific Issues

In the present STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)-driven society, socioscientific issues (SSI) have become a focus globally and SSI research has grown into an important area of study in science education. Since students attending the social and science programs have a different focus in their studies and research has shown that students attending a science program are less familiar with argumentation practice, we make a comparison of the supporting reasons social science and science majors use in arguing different SSI with the goal to provide important information for pedagogical decisions about curriculum and instruction. As an analytical framework, a model termed SEE-SEP covering three aspects (of knowledge, value, and experiences) and six subject areas (of sociology/culture, economy, environment/ecology, science, ethics/morality, and policy) was adopted to analyze students’ justifications. A total of 208 upper secondary students (105 social science majors and 103 science majors) from Sweden were invited to justify and expound their arguments on four SSI including global warming, genetically modified organisms (GMO), nuclear power, and consumer consumption. The results showed that the social science majors generated more justifications than the science majors, the aspect of value was used most in students’ argumentation regardless of students’ discipline background, and justifications from the subject area of science were most often presented in nuclear power and GMO issues. We conclude by arguing that engaging teachers from different subjects to cooperate when teaching argumentation on SSI could be of great value and provide students from both social science and science programs the best possible conditions in which to develop argumentation skills.     

SAQ,SSI and STSE education: defending and extending “science-in-context”

Cultural Studies of Science Education - Many scholars suggest that recent major science education initiatives apparently tied to intense economic competitiveness and growth have prioritized...     

Using a Card-Sorting Task to Elicit and Clarify Science-Teaching Orientations

Journal of Science Teacher Education -     

Understanding and Nourishing Christian Vocation to Higher Education in a Postcommunist Society

ABSTRACT

To understand the concept of Christian vocation within the context of higher education in a postcommunist society, reflection on its communist and postcommunist history is necessary. Thus, the authors first present an analysis of Eastern Europe's Marxist past, specifically focusing on the external and internal impact of that past on attitudes toward higher education of people living in a postcommunist society. Marxist statism, or the total dominance of the state over an individual, remains an external influence more than a quarter of a century since Eastern Europe's 1989 democratic revolution that reshaped much of the continent. In considering the topic of vocation within the context of Eastern Europe, the ethos that works inwardly on members of postcommunist societies must be noted: suspicion leading to self-doubt, passivity kept alive by bureaucratization, and strict compartmentalization of knowledge into science versus religion. In the second part of the article, the authors describe the concept of Christian vocation in a postcommunist society, as understood by contemporary younger and older generations based on data from two recent qualitative investigations. These studies allowed for comparison between the generational views and documented important attitudinal changes. The third section concludes by providing examples of good practices for nurturing an understanding of Christian vocation in higher education in a postcommunist context. Although the effectiveness of some of these practices has been documented over time, most are still in their infancy. Despite the new democratic political system, Christians need to reconsider the former dichotomies (i.e., state–church, public–private, scientific–religious) and become more actively involved in previously inaccessible and challenging areas of influential work such as teaching and managerial positions in higher education institutions. It should be noted that the term vocation, as used in languages of postcommunist European countries has several meanings such as invitation, calling, occupation, or profession; accordingly, the authors use the terms vocation and calling interchangeably in this article.     

Ethical dilemmas of youth participatory action research in a democratic setting

ABSTRACT

This article discusses ethical issues involved in facilitating the research of young people on controversial issues. This article considers the potential ethical dilemmas of teachers facilitating a particular form of activism – youth participatory action research (YPAR). We consider how teachers foster school-wide conversations on difficult issues and support students who wish to take a critical stand on issues of race, class and gender. The article also discusses how to scaffold the exploration of topics that require emotional maturity and might lead to shifts in beliefs that run counter to the values of one’s family.     

Creating relevant science through urban planning and gardening

The purpose of this article is to describe a community‐based science project that was coproduced with urban teenagers and to elaborate on my understanding of what it means to create a practicing culture of science learning. This understanding will be positioned in relation to various educationally relevant discourses and research on urban science education, concluding with an exploration of these questions: In what ways did an urban planning and community gardening project help to create a learning environment in which science was relevant? To whom was science relevant and toward what ends? It is argued that in a practicing culture of science learning, science was relevant because (a) it was created from participants' concerns, interests, and experiences inside and outside science, (b) it was an ongoing process of researching and then enacting ideas, and (c) it was situated within the broader community. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 860–877, 2001     

Stress among UK academics: identifying who copes best

This article examined levels of stress and associated coping strategies among UK academics. Adopting a positive psychology approach, the influence of the character strengths of hope, optimism, gratitude and self-efficacy on stress, subjective well-being (SWB), and mental health was examined in 216 academics in a UK university. The study explored the relationship between coping styles and the work-coping variables of sense of coherence and work locus of control and stress. No significant differences on the stress, well-being and mental health measures were found for participants’ gender, whether in full-time or part-time employment and level of seniority within the university. Participants using problem-focused coping experienced lower levels of stress while dysfunctional coping was a positive predictor of stress. Hope agency, hope pathway, gratitude, optimism and self-efficacy were the strongest positive predictors of satisfaction with life (SWL), while levels of perceived stress negatively predicted SWL. Gratitude, hope agency and self-efficacy positively predicted positive affect, while stress was a negative predictor. Gratitude, hope agency, self-efficacy and optimism were negative significant predictors of negative affect while stress was a positive predictor. Gratitude positively predicted mental health, while stress was a negative predictor and optimism was a significant moderator of the relationship between stress and mental health. Academics with higher levels of gratitude, self-efficacy, hope and optimism report lower levels of stress at work and higher levels of well-being as measured by higher life satisfaction, higher positive affect and lower negative affect. New approaches to stress management training are suggested based on these findings.