Inservice Teachers Mentoring Aspiring Teachers

This qualitative study examined the impact of mentoring relationships upon preservice and inservice teachers' literacy instruction. Twenty-two undergraduate students seeking teacher certification were assigned in pairs to tutor primary school students in a university reading clinic. Eleven classroom teachers seeking reading specialist certification conducted ten mentoring sessions with each pair of preservice teachers. Purposeful sampling was used to select three of the mentoring teams for data analysis. In two out of three teams, results indicated that preservice teachers expanded their instructional strategies as a result of three components of the mentoring relationship: selection of strategies, organization, and non-judgmental support. All inservice teachers reported increased reflection on and adaptation to their instructional strategies. Findings support the conclusion that early mentoring experiences foster growth for both preservice and inservice teachers.     

Situated Self-Regulation: Modeling the Interrelationships Among Instruction,Assessment, Learning Strategies and Academic Performance

To succeed academically, college students must actively construct course information, synthesize this information with information from texts and other resources, understand this information so that they can succeed on various forms of assessments and ultimately retain this information for the long term. While the complexity of these demands has been modeled somewhat metaphorically, there has been little ecologically valid research into learning in authentic classroom contexts. The present study examines the interrelationships among student perceptions of the learning context, test complexity, study strategies, and academic performance. Results of a path analysis demonstrated that perceptions of the teaching format and test complexity were positively related to the study strategies reported, and these study strategies were further related to the reported course performance.     

Managing change in the primary school: What we have learnt about the role of external support

Criteria for placement of pupils into bands and the subsequent effect of banding on educational and post‐educational careers were investigated in a longitudinal study of two cohorts of comprehensive school pupils. The abiding influence of social class and measured ability in early assignment of pupils to bands was observed, and a disjunction demonstrated between a banding system with the potential for flexibility and the reality of the situation where it was marked by ossification and early tracking of pupils to differential educational destinations. The notion of the school as an enduring conservative force is investigated, the banding system being both an outcome and a determinant of this conservatism. The data is used to raise methodological questions involved in investigating complex issues, and implications are drawn for teacher behaviour in banded comprehensive schools.     

Estimating the Effect on Grades of Using Multiple-Choice Versus Constructive-Response Questions: Data From the Classroom

This study investigates the degree to which grades based solely on constructed-response (CR) questions differ from grades based solely on multiple-choice (MC) questions. If CR questions are to justify their higher costs, they should produce different grade outcomes than MC questions. We use a data set composed of thousands of observations on individual students in introductory economics classes at a large public university. We note that the instructors of these classes made conscientious efforts to write CR questions that assessed higher levels of learning (Bloom, 1956 Bloom, B. S. 1956. Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals, handbook 1: Cognitive domain. New York: McKay..  [Google Scholar]). Despite this, we find relatively little difference in grade outcomes. Our analysis suggests that switching from an all-CR assessment to an all-MC assessment would produce grade variations that are similar to the differences that are observed for students across different tests. Although other studies have focused on test scores, frequently AP test scores, our study is the first to focus attention on university grades. We hope that our inability to identify substantial benefits to CR questions in terms of grades will stimulate further research to identify substantive benefits from using the more costly CR questions.     

Success by Degrees: Addressing Teacher Shortages through a School-Community College-University Partnership

Using a teacher recruitment and preparation model, a unique partnership between PK–12 schools, a community college, and a university is examined. The focus is on the training and credentialing of future educators, particularly from underrepresented backgrounds, in an efficient and quality manner to assist in meeting the current PK–12 teacher shortage. Data indicate that the partnership is progressing towards, or has met, its targets in addressing said shortage.     

Assistive Technology and Universal Instructional Design: A Postsecondary Perspective

This article discusses the application of Universal Instructional Design principles to the field of assistive technology in higher education. The author makes suggestions for the use of assistive technology with attention to particular student learning styles. Ideas for ways to upgrade computer laboratory facilities are provided for administrators and faculty at institutions of higher learning.     

ASSESSMENT OF ENTERING STUDENT WRITING SKILL IN THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

This article describes an assessment of writing skills (writing sample, objective test, and self‐assessment) made by one community college. Information was gathered to design an entry‐level assessment procedure for placement in English composition and developmental writing courses. Comparing the three approaches, each of which measured different aspects of writing ability, showed that the best predictor of grade in an English composition course was the objective test. However, the statistical results of the study form only one component of an entry‐level assessment program. It may be that a writing sample is needed as part of entry‐level assessment because it points out the value of writing skill in attempting college‐credit courses.     

Post-9/11 Arab and Muslim American Community College Students: Ethno-religious Enclaves and Perceived Discrimination

Apart from the widescale media attention that Arabs and Muslims have received in the United States and abroad since 9/11, these two target populations have been largely unexamined at both the two-year and four-year college levels. This study represents a pioneering effort in investigating whether the post-9/11 backlash against Arabs and Muslims has penetrated community college campuses, focusing upon the inter-relationships among the level of perceived discrimination, the degree of diversity of Arab and Muslim students' campus friendships, and their sense of belonging to the college. Two conflict theories are advanced to explain why perceived discrimination might promote ethnic and religious clustering among Arab and Muslim community college students.

The study employs a mixed methods design consisting of a 92-item survey and three focus groups. The survey sample consists of 753 Arab Christian, Arab Muslim, and non-Arab Muslim students from 21 community colleges in Southern California and Southeast Michigan. The primary finding was that there was a modest but positive relationship between the level of perceived discrimination and the percentage of campus friends who are of the same ethnicity but different religion. Student focus groups furnished insight into some students' reluctance to report discrimination in surveys. The implications of the study are to develop sensitive measures of the campus climate that draw out more subtle forms of discrimination. Also desirable would be to expand upon the existing research on the denial or minimization of personal discrimination.     

Confidence Intervals for a Semiparametric Approach to Modeling Nonlinear Relations among Latent Variables

Compared to parametric models, nonparametric and semiparametric approaches to modeling nonlinearity between latent variables have the advantage of recovering global relationships of unknown functional form. Bauer (2005) Bauer, D. J. 2005. A semiparametric approach to modeling nonlinear relations among latent variables. Structural Equation Modeling, 12: 513–535. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] proposed an indirect application of finite mixtures of structural equation models where latent components are estimated in the service of more flexibly recovering characteristics of the latent aggregate regression function. This article develops and evaluates delta method and parametric bootstrap approaches for obtaining approximate confidence intervals for Bauer's semiparametric approach to modeling latent nonlinear functions. Coverage rates of these approximate point-wise confidence intervals or nonsimultaneous confidence bands are evaluated by Monte Carlo and recommendations for their use are suggested.