Culturally Relevant STEM Out-of-School Time: A Rationale to Support Gifted Girls of Color

Gifted girls of color represent a potentially untapped resource for increasing and sustaining a diverse science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce. Girls of color possess unique mathematics and science gifts and talents that can remain unrealized if not addressed before middle school. Culturally responsive STEM out-of-school-time (OST) activities can be an effective means to develop STEM capacity in gifted girls of color. The researchers present three considerations to support the implementation of STEM OST. First, they offer a rationale for culturally relevant STEM enrichment activities for gifted girls of color. Next, the researchers consider how culturally relevant STEM OST activities can help to close the achievement gap. Finally, they explain how professional mentorship opportunities within OST activities can help gifted girls of color navigate the STEM pipeline.     

A Model of the Effects of Perceived Parent and Peer Support on Adolescent False Self Behavior

A model linking 3 perceived support variables, namely, level of support, quality of support (unconditional or conditional), and hope about future support, to false self behavior (acting in ways that are not the "real me") was hypothesized. Both parent and peer support were examined. The best fitting model for the parent and peer data revealed that perceived quality and level of parent support predict hope about future parent support, which in turn predicts false self behavior. Adolescents' motives for engaging in false self behavior were also examined. Those whose reported motives were hypothesized to be the most clinically debilitating (devaluation of the self) reported the most negative outcomes (depressed affect, low self-worth, hopelessness, and less knowledge of the true self). In contrast, adolescents citing the developmentally normative motive of role experimentation reported the most positive affect, highest self-worth, greatest hopefulness, and most knowledge of true self. Those reporting that they engaged in false self behavior to please, impress, or win the approval of parents and peers had intermediate scores on the depression, self-worth, hope, and knowledge of true self measures. Discussion focused on the potential causes and consequences of false self behavior.     

Making it Happen: a personal account of a teacher education aid project in the Solomon Islands

Secondary teacher education in the Solomon Islands has been non‐existent since an early attempt was abandoned a decade ago. An international aid project now has attempted to implement a carefully wrought plan. This article outlines the plan, describes what actually happened when the plan was implemented, and proposes some principles which might be useful in guiding the efforts of future project managers charged with the responsibility of making things happen in a culture other than their own.     

Pre-service teachers’ perceptions of self as inclusive educators

Teacher education institutions play a key role in preparing pre-service teachers to graduate as competent and confident inclusive educators. Seeking to understand pre-service teachers’ current perceptions of diversity and inclusion, and how they perceived themselves as future inclusive educators, this qualitative study employed inductive analysis to explore pre-service teachers’ self-perceptions as inclusive teachers, utilising the theory of possible selves. Forty-six (n?=?46) of 292 pre-service teachers enrolled in an inclusive education subject in a graduate entry teacher education programme in eastern Australia participated in this study. Findings revealed that pre-service teachers had developed good theoretical understanding of inclusive education through their coursework. However, their development of possible selves as inclusive educators was less well-defined in that they had difficulty extending their understandings of who they might be as inclusive teachers beyond their coursework samples. This difficulty in identifying their cultural selves beyond a stereotypical norm of who a ‘classroom teacher’ is indicates a need for more and extensive time for pre-service teachers to develop their professional identities as inclusive educators.     

What makes for effective feedback: staff and student perspectives

Since the early 2010s the literature has shifted to view feedback as a process that students do where they make sense of information about work they have done, and use it to improve the quality of their subsequent work. In this view, effective feedback needs to demonstrate effects. However, it is unclear if educators and students share this understanding of feedback. This paper reports a qualitative investigation of what educators and students think the purpose of feedback is, and what they think makes feedback effective. We administered a survey on feedback that was completed by 406 staff and 4514 students from two Australian universities. Inductive thematic analysis was conducted on data from a sample of 323 staff with assessment responsibilities and 400 students. Staff and students largely thought the purpose of feedback was improvement. With respect to what makes feedback effective, staff mostly discussed feedback design matters like timing, modalities and connected tasks. In contrast, students mostly wrote that high-quality feedback comments make feedback effective – especially comments that are usable, detailed, considerate of affect and personalised to the student’s own work. This study may assist researchers, educators and academic developers in refocusing their efforts in improving feedback.     

Conditions that enable effective feedback

ABSTRACT

Despite an increasing focus on assessment feedback, educators continue to find that simply replicating an effective feedback practice from one context does not guarantee success in the next. There is a growing recognition that the contextual factors surrounding successful practices need to be considered. This article reports on a large-scale mixed methods project and proposes 12 conditions that enable successful feedback in higher education. The conditions were distilled from seven rich case studies through multiple stages of thematic analysis, case comparison and reliability checking. The conditions were also evaluated by surveying senior leaders of Australian universities. These conditions highlight the importance of carefully designing feedback processes, along with the need for addressing capacity and culture for feedback. This helps to explain why there are such variances in effective feedback across contexts, and offers insight into how it may be achieved.     

Group Size and Storybook Reading: Two-Year-Old Children's Verbal and Nonverbal Participation With Books

Storybook reading in child care classrooms typically occurs in one large group, a context that does not provide opportunities for each child to talk about the book. Two-year-old children, in particular, need individual support to facilitate their language participation, and they want to touch the book and be close to the teacher. The purpose of the present study was to determine if reducing group size would increase 2-year-old children's engagement and verbal participation during storybook reading, and to describe their nonverbal participation. Fifteen 2-yearold children and six teachers in two classrooms participated. A multiple baseline across settings time-series experimental design was used. Videotapes were transcribed and coded for children's engagement, comments and questions, and nonverbal participation. Observations of book use were conducted during freeplay. The average number of comments and questions per child approximately doubled when reading occurred in small groups. Children participated nonverbally by actions such as pointing, handling books, moving close to the teacher, interacting with peers, and pretending. The results indicate that reducing group size can be an effective method for increasing the verbal participation of 2-year-old children during storybook reading in child care classrooms. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of ecological context, and ways of including small group storybook reading in the daily schedule are suggested.