Storylines in public news media about mathematics education and minoritized students

Educational Studies in Mathematics - Public media both reflects and shapes societal perceptions and attitudes. Teachers and others around students in mathematics classrooms have expectations for...     

Science Cafés: Exploring Adults’ Motivation to Learn Science in a Community Space

Research in Science Education - Science Cafés create open, public forums to promote the exchange of ideas between science experts and the public. This study explored Science Café...     

Students' self-efficacy for science in different school systems

The important role of self-efficacy (SE) in students' motivation, engagement, persistence, and academic achievements has been reconfirmed by ample research, both in general and for STEM disciplines. As most studies focused on traditional school systems, additional research is needed on how science SE develops in different educational environments, which was the goal of this study. Data were collected from 1979 students in Grades 5–9 from 19 traditional, Waldorf, and democratic schools in Israel. Students completed a questionnaire that assessed their science self-efficacy (SSE), general and academic self-efficacy (GASE), and the sources of their SSE: teachers', parents', and peers' social persuasions, vicarious experiences and mastery experiences. Results revealed that SSE and GASE differed in their levels and in the way they changed with grade. These differences, and variations in the roles of the various sources of SSE, appeared to be influenced by the schools' cultures and curricula. Quantitative results are accompanied by verbal illustrative examples from interviews with students and teachers.     

Effectiveness of Spanish intervention for first-grade English language learners at risk for reading difficulties

The effectiveness of an explicit, systematic reading intervention for first-grade students whose home language was Spanish and who were at risk for reading difficulties was examined. Participants were 69 students in 20 classrooms in 7 schools from 3 districts who initially did not pass the screening in Spanish and were randomly assigned within schools to a treatment or comparison group; after 7 months, 64 students remained in the study. The intervention matched the language of instruction of their core reading program (Spanish). Treatment groups of 3 to 5 students met daily for 50 min and were provided systematic and explicit instruction in oral language and reading by trained bilingual intervention teachers. Comparison students received the school's standard intervention for struggling readers. Observations during core reading instruction provided information about the reading instruction and language use of the teachers. There were no differences between the treatment and comparison groups in either Spanish or English on any measures at pretest, but there were significant posttest differences in favor of the treatment group for the following outcomes in Spanish: Letter-Sound Identification (d = 0.72), Phonological Awareness composite (d = 0.73), Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Revised Oral Language composite (d = 0.35), Word Attack (d = 0.85), Passage Comprehension (d = 0.55), and two measures of reading fluency (d = 0.58-0.75).     

Rosalind Franklin and the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

Science & Education - Issues associated with nature of science (NOS) have long been recognized as an essential component of scientific literacy. While consensus exists regarding the importance...     

Showing and telling: The Difference that makes a Difference

In this article I attempt to clarify an essential difference between the ways in which pictures and words convey meaning. Despite the fact that the distinction between showing and telling is widely understood and clearly marked in ordinary language, it is often ignored when writers and researchers provide accounts of how children’s picturebooks work. As a result, such accounts are often unrealistic, providing distorted images of picturebook text. I briefly examine one such attempt to differentiate and characterise various types of picturebook and then conclude by showing how Anthony Browne exploits the distinction between showing and telling to create the atmosphere of uncertainty and mystery in his classic book Gorilla.