The Laser Academy: An After-School Program to Promote Interest in Technology Careers

We present a review of an after-school program that has been running at Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York for the past 5 years. The program is unique among after-school activities for high school students in several ways. First, it deliberately focuses on students who do not excel in science and math courses and students who are unsure about a college career. Second, it targets typically underrepresented minorities in the technology fields, namely blacks, Hispanics, and women. Third, it introduces these students to high-tech career options which do not require 4 years of college. The goal of the program is to make the students aware of technician-level careers and to give them a chance to learn the skills needed for such careers in order to help them make an informed decision about their future.     

Podcasts on Mobile Devices as a Read-Aloud Testing Accommodation in Middle School Science Assessment

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a digitized podcast to deliver read-aloud testing accommodations on mobile devices to students with disabilities and reading difficulties. The total sample for this study included 47 middle school students with reading difficulties. Of the 47 students, 16 were identified as students with disabilities who received special education services. Participants were randomly assigned to three experimental testing conditions, standard administration, teacher-controlled read-aloud in traditional group delivery format, and student-controlled read-aloud delivered as a podcast and accessed on a mobile device, and given sample end-of-year science assessments. Based on a factorial analysis of variances, with test conditions and student status as the fixed factors, both student groups demonstrated statistically significant gains based on their testing conditions. Results support the use of podcast delivery as a viable alternative to the traditional teacher-delivered read-aloud test accommodation. Conclusions are discussed in the context of universal design for learning testing accommodations for future research and practice.     

A Role for Historical Experiments: Capturing the Spirit of the Itinerant Lecturers of the 18th Century

Gerald Rutherford (1964), one of the original authors of the Harvard Project Physics course which emphasized the history of science, expressed a view of inquiry which advocated the historical re-constructions of significant experiments. To implement this view we examine two modes of historical re-constructions; Heering’s (Paper presented at the Itinerant Physicists of the 17th century Conference, Pognana, Italy, June 1–6, 2003) replication method for historical experiments and our development of historical representations. Heering describes the replication method in three phases: the construction of the apparatus, the recreation of the experimental procedure, and the contextualisation of the experience. In our adaption of this process for the science classroom we recognize teachers have limited access to methods and resources in historiography. Consequently, the historical re-construction is guided by a historical narrative. As it relates to a historical experiment the narrative has four parts; Introduction, Experimental design, Experimental results, and Analysis.     

Examining the Exam: A Critical Look at The California Critical Thinking Skills Test

This paper examines the content of The California Critical Thinking Skills Test (1990). This report is not a statistical review. Instead it brings under scrutiny the content of the exam. This content will be of interest to the general reader, because the issues range from logic to ethics to pedagogy, and to questions of evidential and epistemological support. Anyone interested in clear thought and expression will find these issues of significance. Although the exam has a number of strengths and has the clearest instructions of all the presently available Critical Thinking exams, the content of 9 of the exams 34 questions is defective, namely the content of questions 6, 7, 8, 19, 21, 23, 24, 29, and 33. These questions make errors in critical thinking. Hence, no statistical results pertaining to the administration of these questions to students can be acceptable. The remaining questions are acceptable as to content. But until the problems are corrected, those who may use the exam should remove the defective questions from test administration or from data collection and reporting.The scope of the exam also is quite limited, but this may be unavoidable for any instrument designed to be completed in about an hour. Further, the scores resulting from any such testing can be understood only as a measure of minimal competency (below which remediation likely is needed) for the skills tested, but not as an adequate measure of critical thinking.Disclosure: Three of the authors are engaged in producing and marketing a critical thinking test. Though this paper was written before any of us considered developing such a test, the reader should be informed. Each of the writers has exercised considerable care to avoid any bias, and we thank our independent reviewers for helping us in this regard as well.     

Active social policy meets the discipline of the Australian marketplace: the outcomes of mobile policies

Many advanced market democracies pursue social justice by bundling together a range of programmes represented as active social policy. Northern European exemplars sanction employment as an economic and social citizen’s civic obligation, promote lifelong learning and place welfare payments as a last resort. In the United States, market-based post-school education financed by guaranteed student loans was developed as a policy alternative. Australian politicians have embraced elements of both, resulting in a massive reduction in public delivery of vocational education and training in favour of multimillion dollar, stock exchange-listed private providers. The resultant amalgam of active labour market policy and free market principles positions standard setting as a regulatory mechanism and in support of cross-jurisdictional market operations. This paper explores the interaction between active policy and demands of the market while speaking to wider issues that arise when a government first creates and then intervenes in markets.