Identifying Prepared and Competent Teachers with Professional Knowledge Tests

Paper–pencil teacher tests of professional knowledge typically are organized around the conventional dimensions that define state teaching standards, such as classroom management and assessment. We examined if such tests could be partitioned into three other dimensions (general knowledge, academic or textbook knowledge, and functional teaching knowledge), and if these dimensions (1) identified between those who did and did not receive teacher preparation, and (2) predicted teaching competence. A teacher test was given to advanced and beginning education majors, and non-majors. We found that advanced education majors and non-majors differed mostly on academic knowledge, but that functional knowledge predicted competence to the greatest extent. A variety of useful information can be gleaned from teacher tests if subscores of these dimensions are generated.     

Changing Minds With the Story of Adaptation: Strategies for Teaching Young Children About Natural Selection

Research Findings: Educational guidelines recommend a delayed, piecemeal approach to instruction on adaptation by natural selection. This approach is questionable given suggestions that older students’ pervasive misunderstandings about adaptation are rooted in cognitive biases that develop early. In response to this, Kelemen et al. (2014) recently showed that young children can learn a basic yet comprehensive explanation of adaptation by natural selection from a picture storybook intervention. However, this research was conducted in a laboratory-based setting with children from middle and higher socioeconomic backgrounds. To further explore the intervention’s efficacy, this investigation examined whether Kelemen et al.’s (2014, Experiment 2) findings extend to a more diverse sample of children tested in a more naturalistic setting, namely, after-school programs. After a 10-min picture storybook reading that described adaptation within a fictitious but realistic mammal species, 5- to 6- and 7- to 8-year-old children’s learning of adaptation was examined. Results revealed that younger and older children benefitted from the intervention; however, older children displayed pronounced learning and generalization. Practice or Policy: Findings confirm that children are capable of learning complex biological ideas and that comprehensive storybook interventions are simple but powerful teaching tools. Implications for instruction on natural selection are discussed.     

Interactions between principals and teacher leaders in the context of Chinese curriculum reform: a micropolitical perspective

This paper draws from a larger exploratory qualitative study that investigated the perceptions of principals and teacher leaders regarding their interactions in Chinese urban primary schools during contemporary curriculum reform. Insights from micropolitics, notably two core constructs of cooperation and conflict, were utilised to examine the interactions of participants. The research found that principals and teacher leaders employed exchange and facilitation as two strategies during cooperative processes; and they adopted enforcement and compromise in conflictive processes. Eight new sub-dimensions under the four strategies emerged from the interview accounts. Findings indicate that most principals were exercising their power ‘through’ their teacher leaders who in turn were working in alignment with their principals to achieve the desired outcomes in schools. Principals in some circumstances used power ‘over’ as a traditional approach, while power ‘with’ was not apparent in participants’ comments. The paper contends that traditional Chinese cultural attitudes towards education, as shaped through Confucianism, were also discernible in framing the nature of some of the interactions between principals and teacher leaders.     

Evidence for the role of higher order reasoning processes in cue competition and other learning phenomena

When people judge the contingency between a target cue and an outcome, they also take into account the contingency between the outcome and other cues with which the target cue co-occurred. Several authors have argued that such cue competition effects are due to higher order reasoning processes. We review the evidence that supports this hypothesis and discuss whether higher order reasoning might also play a role in other learning phenomena.     

善变的矜奇之作——析黄遵宪的新派诗

在近代诗坛上 ,黄遵宪的“新派诗”逐渐突破诗言志、比兴、温柔敦厚的传统诗教 ,在诗歌的主题内容、审美意蕴、表现方法、语言形式等方面出现了新的特点。这些新变虽然不够彻底 ,带有过渡性质 ,但已是解构旧诗的有效尝试。     

Investigating the Modality and Redundancy Effects for Learners with Persistent Pain

Two experiments were conducted to investigate how individuals with persistent pain would respond to instructional materials designed to promote the modality and redundancy effects. It was predicted that persistent pain would reduce the positive impact of narrated text due to reduced working memory capacity. One hundred thirty-seven full-time teachers from six schools in Australia participated in the study. Pain and pain-free participants were identified and matched through a demographics questionnaire before being randomly assigned to selected instructional formats. In both experiments, participants viewed system-paced multimedia presentations depicting how lightning works. In Experiment 1, it was found that for pain-free participants, illustrations plus narrated text led to significantly higher learning outcomes than illustrations plus written text (a modality effect). However, for pain participants, no advantage was found for the illustrations plus narrated text format. In Experiment 2, it was found that for pain-free participants, illustrations plus narrated text led to significantly higher learning outcomes than illustrations plus narrated text plus identical written text (a redundancy effect). For pain participants, a reverse effect was found, suggesting that the replicated written text format was not redundant but beneficial for these individuals. Furthermore, despite low scores on standardized pain measures, individuals with persistent pain achieved significantly lower learning outcomes than pain-free participants in both experiments. It was concluded that clinically low levels of pain could significantly interfere with information retention and transference. For individuals with persistent pain, the use of narrated explanatory text could be a disadvantage due to its transitory nature.     

Values Embodied in Children’s Literature used in Early Childhood Education in Israeli State Schools

Societies can examine themselves and their values through examining their literature and the way they use literature in values education. This research investigated the values embodied in children’s literature used by early childhood teachers in Israeli state schools. On the basis of questionnaires completed by 14 early childhood educators, and analysis of the official list of recommended children’s books published by the Israeli Ministry of Education, the value “mutual respect and friendship” was found to be most prominent. Structural aspects of children’s books were seen to emphasize the values the books convey.     

Timing in retroactive interference

Retroactive interference is conventionally viewed as attenuated retrieval of a target association due to the training of a second association between training and testing of the target association. In three experiments in which water-deprived rats were used as subjects, we manipulated the durations of the time between cue termination and outcome onset (Experiment 1), the durations of the target and the interfering cues (Experiment 2), and the durations of the outcome used during target and interfering training (Experiment 3). Greater interference was consistently observed between associations bearing a high degree of similarity in their temporal structure, which suggests that interference occurs between complex representations that encode not only the physical attributes of the stimuli, but also their temporal characteristics.