Secondary science teachers’ implementation of CCSS and NGSS literacy practices: a survey study

Most middle and high school students struggle with reading and writing in science. This may be because science teachers are reluctant to teach literacy in science class. New standards now require a shift in the way science teachers develop students’ literacy in science. This survey study examined the extent to which science teachers report implementing science literacy practices from the Common Core Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects and the Next Generation Science Standards with their students. A survey detailing these practices was emailed to all secondary science teachers (N = 2519) in one northeastern state and 14% of them (n = 343) responded. Practices that aligned more closely with disciplinary literacy skills and strategies were implemented more often when compared to the practices aligned with intermediate literacy skills and strategies. Since the development and intermediate skills are important to support students’ literacy progression from foundational to disciplinary, secondary science teachers may not be providing enough support for their students to be competently literate in science, in a fundamental literacy sense. This, in turn, impacts students’ ability to use fundamental literacy skills toward knowledge-building in science, achieving a derived sense of science literacy.     

A collegial quality development process for identifying and addressing barriers to improving teaching

ABSTRACT

Challenges to ensuring teaching quality in higher education give ongoing impetus to invest in teaching quality improvement. While a significant body of literature has recognised challenges faced by academics seeking to improve teaching practices, processes for developing constructive responses to identified barriers have attracted less attention. A synthesis of literature on barriers to improvement of teaching is presented and used as a framework to assist an identification of barriers. This article reports on a national Australian trial of a collegial quality development process aimed at supporting academics to both identify and surmount barriers to improving teaching quality. Evidence of the nature and extent of barriers to improving teaching was collated from data provided by 28 academics across five Australian universities. Adopting a thematic analysis approach, a broad range of perceived barriers were identified, largely consistent with barrier categories defined in the extant literature internationally. Findings reveal that, with the support of peers, participants were able to implement effective solutions to their identified barriers to improving teaching quality. This article provides a synthesis of current barriers to improve teaching and offers a collegial quality development process as a strategy to overcome these barriers.     

Remediation and Dismissal Policies in Counselor Education: Lessons Learned from a Challenge in Federal Court

Counselor educators today are faced with a difficult dilemma. They are mandated to dismiss students they judged to be unfit and irremediable, yet they risk legal action whenever executing a student dismissal decision. Their duty to protect the public must be weighed against the liabilities of costly litigation to institutions, programs, and themselves. This article describes 1 counselor education program's decision to dismiss a student and endure a lengthy, although unsuccessful, lawsuit and jury trial in federal court. The strengths and weaknesses of the program's remediation and dismissal protocol are examined as they emerged under court scrutiny.     

Campus Strategic Action in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Fisher</Emphasis> Case: Organizational Stakeholder Advocacy Across the Field of Higher Education

Using a census sampling, this analysis evaluates the campus structures and practices that are predictive of a campus being affiliated with stakeholder legal advocacy regarding the Fisher Supreme Court affirmative action case of 2013. Findings reveal that a campus utilizing selective admissions operated as a sufficient, but not a necessary, requirement to prompt stakeholders to take a legal position in the case. Also, campuses that enrolled and graduated the largest percentages of nonwhite students were inclined to have stakeholders submit amicus briefs advocating support for UT-Austin and the use of race in selective college admissions.     

Sneaking Out After Dark: Resistance, Agency, and the Postmodern Child in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter Series

JK Rowling’s Harry Potter novels situate their child protagonists in a fantastical world side by side with present day British society. Through the characters’ choices and realizations, young readers are introduced to the complexities and ambiguities of the contemporary world. Harry and his friends embrace these qualities of postmodern childhood and question injustices established by and through the adult wizarding world. The characters’ resistance occurs in relation to control of their minds and bodies, the hegemony of wizarding bloodlines, and efforts to frame children as in need of protection. Rowling’s novels imagine a culture in which such child agency is possible, where young people become builders of context, awakening to the network of relationships and institutions that frame their lives.     

Neither Fish nor Fowl: A Role Theory Approach to Librarians Teaching

The teaching of IL primarily to undergraduate students in course-integrated, credit-bearing, or other hybrid settings has afforded academic librarians the opportunity to redefine their role within higher education, moving from a jurisdiction of access to one of expertise. While some academic librarians have viewed these shifting roles as a further strain upon an already heterogeneous profession, others have viewed teaching as an opportunity for academic librarians to be more engaged in teaching and learning, and more closely aligned with their classroom faculty counterparts. This article seeks to utilize Role Theory as a means to examine the dynamics of librarians as instructors, and information literacy as an academic discipline.     

An overview of content accessibility issues experienced by educational publishers

Key points

• Educational accessibility needs to accommodate not only text but also supplemental, multimedia, and interactive elements.
• Accessibility considerations need to address user needs for timeliness, quality, cost, and security.
• Schools often default to remediation instead of embracing EPUB 3 for practical reasons and to respond to student preferences.
• PDF is often preferred over EPUB for creating alternate formats because of familiarity and expediency.
• Schools require accessibility to deal with increased legal pressure from both government agencies and disability advocates.

     

Getting Over the Hump: Examining Curvilinear Relationships between Adolescent Self-Esteem and Facebook Use

Literature examining self-esteem and social networking site use has generally considered linear relationships between these variables. Mixed results in this extant literature and Self-Affirmation Theory indicate that a curvilinear relationship is possible. Data from a survey of 337 Dutch adolescents (ages 12–18) suggest a curvilinear relationship between self-esteem and Facebook use. Relative to higher and lower levels of self-esteem, moderate levels of self-esteem correspond to the highest levels of both Facebook use and specific activities, such as text- and visual-based social contributions. Results clarify our understanding of the relationships between the well-being variable, self-esteem, and social networking site use.