The Integration of English Language Development and Science Instruction in Elementary Classrooms

This paper explores one district’s attempt to implement a blended science and English Language Development (ELD) elementary program, designed to provide English language learners opportunities to develop proficiency in English through participation in inquiry-based science. This process resulted in blended program that utilized a combined science/ELD lesson plan format to structure and guide teachers’ efforts to use science as the context for language development. Data, collected throughout the first 2 years of the program, include teacher-generated lesson plans, observation notes, and interviews with teachers and principals. The process by which the blended program was developed, the initial implementation of the program, the resulting science/ELD lesson plan format, and teachers’ perceptions about the program and its impact on their students are described.     

Coach career development: Who is responsible?

Career development is crucial to the success of individuals, organizations and industries. As such, in many professions there are prescribed career development processes underpinned by legal and institutional policies that drive managerial practice. Although there has been sustained interest in understanding career development for athletes and building managerial strategies to assist in the process, there is little empirical knowledge about career development of coaches, and how management may assist in the process. The aim of this study is to explore the way in which sport policy discourse and agendas have impacted coach career development. This study demonstrates that coaches’ careers are not part of the policy discourse despite their important role in athlete performance, career development and sport organization development and success. Coaches are the key performance managers in sport and yet they are ignored by sport policy makers and managers when considering the development of the Australian sport workforce.     

Towards a Conceptual Profile: Rethinking Conceptual Mediation in the Light of Recent Cognitive and Neuroscientific Findings

One important focus for science education researchers over many years has been the attempts to replace students' commonsense and non-scientific explanations of various phenomena by scientific explanations. The approach we adopted almost three decades ago was conceptual mediation, and this was shown to have a considerable level of success with both conceptual and attitudinal change. However, since that time, advances have been made in the application of both cognitive science and neuroscience to science learning. In particular, evidence has accumulated that, rather than the replacement of the commonsense view, the reality is that learners develop a conceptual profile which includes both the commonsense and the scientific. If this is the case, instead of focussing on conceptual replacement, science educators need to aim more actively at strengthening the learner's executive processes which select contextually appropriate responses and inhibit inappropriate ones. In this paper, the initial development, theoretical basis and the practical applications of conceptual mediation are introduced, following which, these are re-examined in the light of more recent findings. Within this discussion, several potential links to recent cognitive and neuroscientific research are drawn, and these raise issues for further research into the most appropriate teaching approaches for tackling existing non-scientific conceptions.     

Development of a virtual tool for learning basic organisation and planning in rural engineering projects

This paper presents a virtual lab for the contents of an Engineering project, for designing an agro-industrial building, which is also useful for a range of different transversal courses in Engineering sciences. The aims of this tool are to analyse the most important contents of a project-document (calculation, regulations, drawings and budgets), as well as their relationship with the activities which make up the work and the schedule. The design criteria we considered were: its online applications and their compatibility with Moodle; the inclusion of different learning approaches, such as exploratory learning and inquiry-based learning; its interactivity, and the use of multimedia elements for visualisation and direct analysis on material common to Engineering subjects. The students’ perceptions of the improvements brought by the virtual lab were analysed statistically through a series of questions over two academic years. The results of the questionnaires suggested that most of those who had used the e-learning tool valued positively its overall suitability for reaching the objectives in their subject as well as the way it improved the working methodology. The practical knowledge acquired by the students was also highly valued. In addition, the lack of constraints commonly related to field trips (expenses, time and complexity) illustrates the utility of self-access learning tools in key transversal disciplines such as Engineering projects.     

Whose feedback? A multilevel analysis of student completion of end-of-term teaching evaluations

Student evaluation of teaching (SET) is now common practice across higher education, with the results used for both course improvement and quality assurance purposes. While much research has examined the validity of SETs for measuring teaching quality, few studies have investigated the factors that influence student participation in the SET process. This study aimed to address this deficit through the analysis of an SET respondent pool at a large Canadian research-intensive university. The findings were largely consistent with available research (showing influence of student gender, age, specialisation area and final grade on SET completion). However, the study also identified additional influential course-specific factors such as term of study, course year level and course type as statistically significant. Collectively, such findings point to substantively significant patterns of bias in the characteristics of the respondent pool. Further research is needed to specify and quantify the impact (if any) on SET scores. We conclude, however, by recommending that such bias does not invalidate SET implementation, but instead should be embraced and reported within standard institutional practice, allowing better understanding of feedback received, and driving future efforts at recruiting student respondents.     

Can the subaltern ‘speak’ science? An intersectional analysis of performances of ‘talking science through muscular intellect’ by ‘subaltern’ students in UK urban secondary science classrooms

Cultural Studies of Science Education - This paper draws on Judith Butler’s concepts of intelligibility and identity as performance to make sense of enactments of ‘subaltern’...     

Observational extinction: Observation of nonreinforced responding reduces resistance to extinction in rats

Rats trained to push a joystick to the left or right for food reward were given two successive tests in which neither response was reinforced. Prior to Test 1, subjects were either confined in the apparatus with a passive conspecific (Group None), or allowed to observe a conspecific demonstrator making 50 nonreinforced responses in the direction that had beeirrewarded during observer training (Group Same) or in the opposite direction (Group Different). In Test 1, Group Same made fewer previously reinforced responses than did Group Different, which made fewer than Group None, and Groups Same and Different each made fewer previously nonreinforced responses than did Group None. In Test 2, Group Same made fewer previously reinforced responses than did Group None. These results indicate that observation of nonreinforced responding can reduce resistance to extinction (Test 1) and spontaneous recovery (Test 2) in rats.     

The counsellor and changing Canadian sexual mores

To date, the counsellor in North America has been inadequately trained, and consequently ineffective in dealing with client problems involving human sexuality. The purpose of this paper is to help the counsellor increase his awareness and understanding of the sexual attitudes and behaviour of the clients with whom he interacts in the therapeutic setting. This task is undertaken by examining the empirical findings from some current Canadian sex research to determine some of the dominant changes in attitudes that have occurred within the past decade. The findings from this research have indicated that there has been a major change in the personal outlook of Canadian youth, as well as the viewpoint of the public at large, leading to a more general acceptance of a permissive sexual ethic. There are also signs that public attitudes toward prevalent social codes of sexual behaviour are being reappraised and redefined. The implications of these changes in Canadian sexual mores as a significant factor in the counselling process are discussed.     

An Interview Protocol and Scoring Rubric for Evaluating Teacher Performance

This paper introduces an interview protocol, administration procedures, and scoring rubric for evaluating teacher performance. Procedures used to develop and adminis ter the protocol and scoring rubric and subsequent validity and reliability studies are reported. All evidence suggests that the protocol and scoring rubric are aligned with professional standards and focus on a teacher's assessment of and ability to modify instruction to improve student learning. These findings support the viability of the interview protocol as an effective method of evaluating teacher performance.