Explicitly Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in a History Course

Critical thinking skills are often assessed via student beliefs in non-scientific ways of thinking, (e.g, pseudoscience). Courses aimed at reducing such beliefs have been studied in the STEM fields with the most successful focusing on skeptical thinking. However, critical thinking is not unique to the sciences; it is crucial in the humanities and to historical thinking and analysis. We investigated the effects of a history course on epistemically unwarranted beliefs in two class sections. Beliefs were measured pre- and post-semester. Beliefs declined for history students compared to a control class and the effect was strongest for the honors section. This study provides evidence that a humanities education engenders critical thinking. Further, there may be individual differences in ability or preparedness in developing such skills, suggesting different foci for critical thinking coursework.     

Behavior problems in elementary school among low-income boys: The role of teacher–child relationships

The authors identified trajectories of teacher–child relationship conflict and closeness from Grades 1 to 6, and associations between these trajectories and externalizing and internalizing behaviors at 11 years old among low-income, urban boys (N = 262). There were three main findings. Nagin cluster analyses indicated five trajectories for conflict with all children evidencing increases in conflict, and four trajectories for closeness with all children demonstrating decreases in closeness. Trajectories with higher levels of conflict and lower levels of closeness were associated with higher levels of externalizing and internalizing behavior problems at 11 years old. Moreover, conflictual teacher–child relationships exacerbated the effects of externalizing and internalizing behavior problems in early childhood; children with conflictual teacher–child relationships had higher levels of behavior problems in middle childhood relative to children with low conflictual teacher–child relationships. Implications of targeting teacher–child relationships as interventions to help prevent behavior problems are discussed.     

Views of effective college faculty: a mixed analysis

A mixed analysis of the perceived characteristics of effective college faculty members was conducted through surveying 615 students, predominantly Hispanic, enrolled in courses at two southwest Hispanic‐serving universities. Beliefs were identified that led to 29 prevailing themes: Knowledgeable; Understanding; Communication; Teaches Well; Caring; Organised; Flexibility; Positive Attitude; Patience; Experience in the Classroom; Fair; Helping; Respectful; Open‐minded; Builds Relationships; Passion for the Job; Service; Makes Learning Interesting; Uses Different Modalities; Fun; Motivating; Intelligent; Involving Students; Being Available; Friendly; Connects with the Real World; Listening; Creativity; and Challenges Student. Of these themes, knowledgeable, Understanding, Communication and Teaches Well received the highest endorsements and are congruent with student evaluations that are components of promotion and tenure decisions.     

Exploring preservice teachers’ metaphor plotlines

This study explores how entering female preservice teachers position themselves-the plotlines, obligations, responsibilities and duties they are prepared to enact, the expectations they hold for students, and the implications these have for teacher education. Using positioning theory, the authors analyze application letters of 20 elementary preservice teachers to uncover metaphor plotlines for teaching. Preservice teachers’ application letters contained 12 metaphor plotlines presented here in terms of the definition, the role of teacher and the role of student. The paper explores implications for the content of teacher education, development as a teacher, and the ability to engage students.     

They came with a purpose: educational journeys of nineteenth-century Irish Dominican Sister Teachers

Irish Catholic teaching sisters were major actors in the development of education systems in New World countries such as the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Immigrants themselves, they faced a number of key challenges as they sought to adapt Old World cultural and educational ideas to the education of the immigrant Irish in a new cultural, religious and educational context. A close examination of the wide range of sources available in private archives and elsewhere offers unique insights into the challenges facing 10 Irish Dominican Sister Teachers as they journeyed from Ireland to Dunedin to found primary and secondary schools in the young colony of New Zealand. This article examines their responses to their early experiences and the part they played in the development of a viable Catholic education system in nineteenth-century New Zealand.     

Learning by Mapping Across Situations

Many types of learning require the mapping of information across situations. The proposed organizational framework extends the cognitive study of mappings across problems to include mappings across representations, solutions, and sociocultural contexts. I apply one-to-one, one-to-many, and partial mappings to analyze representative cases that include ones studied within alternative frameworks that have extended the cognitive approach. My objective is to support readers in reflecting on how mappings influence learning through asking new questions and providing an approach for answering those questions.     

A Comparison of Lecture-Based and Challenge-Based Learning in a Workplace Setting: Course Designs,Patterns of Interactivity,and Learning Outcomes

We describe findings from a research partnership involving a global airline manufacturing company (The Boeing Company), and learning scientists and aeronautical engineers from the University of Washington. Our starting point for the partnership focused on an 8-hour introductory composites course that was designed for company employees. In phase one, learning scientists observed the company's course development activities and the course as taught by company experts. In phase two, we collaboratively designed and implemented a quasi-experimental study comparing two approaches to teaching. One involved lectures with PowerPoint slides. The second, a “challenge-based” learning approach, combined a set of composites-relevant challenges with individual, small-group, and large-group collaborative inquiry. Comparisons between these methods showed greater interaction among participants in the challenge-based group. In addition, the challenge-based group performed significantly better on posttest items requiring integration and synthesis of concepts. Increased interactivity in the challenge course provided opportunities for participants to articulate connections among concepts and may have contributed to the challenge participants' better synthesis of learned concepts. This work highlighted the benefits for learning scientists of collaborating with industry partners to explore learning in workplace settings, as these settings provide illuminating contrasts to the structures of teaching, learning, and assessment found in schools.     

PROFESSORS OF COMMUNITY COLLEGE EDUCATION: CHANGES IN THEORETICAL AND PROFESSIONAL ORIENTATIONS

More than 80% of professors associated with the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges responded to a survey by the authors in 1980. The questionnaire was based on and the findings were compared with a 1972 study by Campbell and Newell. Trends in demographic data, career patterns, and professional orientations are documented and analyzed. University professors of community college education were 7.7 years older as a group in 1980 than they were in 1972; many other changes appear related to this trend. Fewer than 3% of faculty in this field remain at the level of assistant professor, while 61% have already achieved the rank of professor. As a whole, the group is more productive and somewhat more conservative. Some gains have been made in the representation of women (from 0 to 14%) and minorities (from 3 to 6%). With the maturing of this professional group has come related developments in professional orientations. Time invested in research and writing nearly doubled, and professors would like to do still more. Although they still wish to be remembered for having trained outstanding administrators, their desire to be remembered for writing a significant book has increased significantly. As the academic field of community education matures, its professorial members have turned increasingly to scholarly values.     

Beyond Compliance: Using Organizational Theory to Unleash the Potential of Assessment

This article illustrates how organizational theory can be used to support the development of authentic assessment practice among community college faculty, as well as guide research on implementation of assessment efforts. While many factors make implementing assessment difficult, the link between accreditation and assessment is a key element in distancing the practice from faculty. This dynamic arises not from the actions of accreditation agencies per se, but from the accountability narrative that has come to dominate both assessment and accreditation, the corresponding perception that assessment is “done to” faculty rather than by them, and a reliance among institutional leaders to echo this message in an effort to get assessment started. The result is implementation of assessment for compliance rather than meaningful program improvement. Understanding assessment as an innovation, and using organizational theory to guide implementation, may help community college leaders transcend this challenge and develop assessment practice that is more faculty-owned and meaningful. However, the current literature says little about how to use organizational theory to implement such assessment efforts. This article integrates Bolman and Deal’s (2008) framework on leadership and organizational change with actual examples of practice to illustrate how their model might be used to recapture the potential of assessment as well as guide research on effective implementation.