Defining STEM within a school district: a co-constructed and evolving process

Cultural Studies of Science Education - Taking a sociocultural approach, the goal of this qualitative study was to examine the process of implementing a science, technology, engineering, and math...     

MAKING THE PROCESS AND CRITERIA OF TERTIARY SCIENCE PROJECT ASSESSMENT MORE EXPLICIT

This paper describes the development of an Assessment Guide for Honours projects in a wide range of sciences. The guide was intended to aid assessment of the projects, assist the Honours Board in classifying students, and make the criteria for assessment more public and explicit. A relatively simple analysis of the use of the guide by Supervisors and Assessors suggests that these aims are being realised.     

Listening to Children: A study of child and family services

This paper reports on child data generated in a pilot project of the ACCESS Study of Child and Family Services , an investigation of the degree to which child and family services meet user needs within local communities. Based on theoretical perspectives drawn from social capital theories, the pilot study was undertaken by a partnership of local early childhood services within the precinct of Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane (Australia) and included two childcare centres, two kindergartens/ preschools, one playgroup and one primary school. Seventy-six children aged 3-8 years were asked, in informal conversations with their caregivers, to comment on their experiences in the service and to consider possible advice they might give to children coming into the service. Theoretical perspectives from the sociology of childhood are used to examine children's accounts of their lived experience in early childhood services.     

Contextual Factors Influencing Access to Teaching Computational Thinking

This study attempts to determine whether teachers' access to computational thinking (CT) and CT technologies varies by rurality (rural versus urban) of the school county and grade level taught (primary versus secondary). A total of 81 teachers from West Virginia, Georgia, and Oklahoma participated in this survey study. Overall, teachers found CT and CT tools useful and relevant to their teaching and had access to an essential level of technology in schools supporting computational thinking. However, teachers' CT skills and their teaching of CT were limited and varied depending on rurality and grade level. For instance, primary school teachers in rural settings reported significantly lower levels of CT skills than those in urban settings. Findings and implications are discussed.     

Helping Kindergarten Writers Move Toward Independence

Two kindergarten teachers examine the strategies they use to help their students become more accomplished and independent writers.     

STEMulate Engineering Academy: Engaging Students and Teachers in Engineering Practices

Informal science opportunities provide authentic experiences to stimulate students’ interests in science and engineering and foster their curiosity through problem-based investigations. STEMulate Engineering Academy was designed to provide children (Grades 3–5) engineering opportunities and offer teachers a unique professional development experience. The program serves as a practicum experience for teachers seeking a gifted and talented add-on license and the camp also offers free professional development to area teachers. Using a co-teaching approach, students gained firsthand experiences from an engineer in the field, and teachers collaborated with engineers to make the content more relevant. Despite a limited number of contact hours, students and teachers demonstrated growth on pre and post engineering assessments. Informal learning opportunities provided by programs such as STEMulate Engineering Academy could possibly spark student interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)––leading them to a promising career in a STEM field.     

Private Girls and Public Worlds: Producing femininities in the primary school

This article draws upon data gathered from a research project entitled 'Children's Relationship Cultures in Years 5 and 6'. The project aims to explore the ways in which primary school age children understand emotional, caring and family relationships. This paper will focus upon the role of friendship in the cultures of girls, aged 9-10, in a primary school classroom. An ethnographic approach is adopted to illustrate the variety of interactions in which friendship is spoken, displayed and enacted within pupil cultures. Analysis of these exchanges suggests that notions of friendship and patterns of friendship are constitutive of sexual-gender identities. The paper argues that being friends/breaking friends is a technique utilised for the regulation and negotiation of femininities and the production of differentiated sex-gender hierarchies. The paper will focus upon the activities of the 'diary group'--a self-styled network of eight girls who met in the school playground to discuss issues that interested and excited them. Recurrent themes in diary group discussions are identified as: puberty/periods; erotic attachments; and imagined futures. The paper suggests that the diary group can be seen as a site for identity production and asks the question: what kind of identities are being produced when these girls meet and talk? Finally, the paper seeks to explore the ways in which members of the diary group create a 'private' space within the public domain of the school and, through talk, produce themselves as feminine subjects.     

The urban–rural gap: project-based learning with Web 2.0 among West Virginian teachers

To overcome the digital divide in West Virginia, schools are urged to integrate emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as Web 2.0 and alternative pedagogies to develop students’ twenty-first-century skills. Yet, the potential effects of the digital divide on technology integration have not necessarily been part of planning for professional development programmes. As a first step to identify the potential digital divide between rural and urban school settings, this study examined West Virginian teachers’ Web 2.0 access levels – namely, motivation, physical, skills and usage accesses. Analysis of the survey responses from 161 teachers suggested that the divide persisted at physical and usage access levels, signifying teachers’ unique needs and conditions for the use of emerging technologies. While teachers’ usage access was observed to be a significant factor for their Web 2.0-associated project-based learning, attending professional development programmes seemed to minimally benefit such practices.     

Psychological states and working conditions buffer beginning teachers’ intention to leave the job

The high turnover rates of beginning teachers are an issue of continuing concern in education. However, little is known about the motivational process that encourages beginning teachers to stay in the teaching profession. This study investigated how working conditions (job insecurity, teacher autonomy, collective responsibility, reflective dialogue, and deprivatised practice) and psychological states (teacher self-efficacy and affective commitment) influence turnover intentions. A sample of 272 beginning teachers from 72 Flemish (Belgian) primary schools was recruited for this questionnaire-based study. Path analysis revealed that teacher self-efficacy and affective commitment directly reduced the intention to leave the job. Furthermore, teacher self-efficacy and affective commitment fully mediated the relationships between teacher autonomy and the intention to leave the job and collective responsibility and the intention to leave the job. These findings provide insight into the underlying psychological processes of beginning teachers to leave education.