The outcomes of doctoral education: An institutional study

This study sought to establish baseline data on the outcomes of doctoral education at a private, urban university. Through the use of a survey instrument developed by the researchers, Ph.D. and Ed.D. recipients from 16 departments who had graduated between 1963 and 1984 were contacted. Three primary areas were examined: (1) the impact of doctoral education on career development, (2) the perceived influence of the institutional values on graduates, and (3) the frequency and type of research/scholarly activities engaged in during and after graduate school. Data provided by 707 respondents to the 168 item survey were analyzed by department, by degree, and by four general academic fields, and a number of indices were developed. The main thrust of this paper is the development of the instrument and indices, and the preliminary comparison of four fields with the indices.     

Multiple audience rating form strategies for student evaluation of college teaching

Michael Scriven has suggested that student rating forms, for the purpose of evaluating college teaching, be designed for multiple audiences (instructor, administrator, student), and with a single global item for summative functions (determination of merit, retention, or promotion). This study reviewed approaches to rating form construction, e.g., factor analytic strategies of Marsh, and recommended the multiple audience design of Scriven. An empirical test of the representativeness of the single global item was reported from an analysis of 1,378 forms collected in a university department of education. The global item correlated most satisfactorily with other items, a computed total of items, items that represented underlying factors, and various triplets of items selected to represent all possible combinations of items. It was concluded that a multiple audience rating form showed distinct advantages in design and that the single global item most fairly and highly represented the overall teaching performance, as judged by students, for decisions about retention, promotion, and merit made by administrators.     

Skills‐Based Training and Counseling Self‐Efficacy

The authors studied the effectiveness of the skilled counselor training model (SCTM). Counseling students who completed the SCTM demonstrated greater gains in skills acquisition and counseling self‐efficacy than counseling students who did not receive the training. At pretest, the counseling students in both groups, doing self‐appraisals, rated their performance of counseling skills significantly higher than trained raters assessed the students' performance of counseling skills. At posttest, members of the control group continued to overestimate their skills levels when compared with the ratings given by the trained raters, whereas, in comparison, students who received SCTM training underestimated their performance.     

Digital storytelling as a disciplinary literacy enhancement tool for EFL students

Educational technology research and development - This research compared the process of disciplinary literacy acquisition of students who experienced two different pedagogical approaches to...     

Barriers to teachers using digital texts in literacy classrooms

In many accounts of school literacy teaching and learning, there are claims that young people's familiarity with digital texts (ICTs) could provide teachers with opportunities to plan exciting and innovative activities. It would seem, however, that despite intensive research and exemplary practices over the last 20 years, the infiltration of ICTs into literacy classrooms is not widespread. This paper reports on one study where teachers discussed, argued and thought about their uses of digital texts in their classrooms. It provides some insight into the reasons why literacy teachers do not engage with digital texts as part of their everyday literacy activities. It also shows teachers using institutional and societal discourses about the value of students' home experiences to their schooling, the production of digital texts for presentation of print‐based work and the importance of technical knowledge about computers and new technologies, to describe and in part to overcome the barriers to using new technologies in their literacy classrooms.     

Reflections on urban science teacher-student self-efficacy dynamics

This forum article consists of commentaries—authored by Sumi Hagiwara, Maria S. Rivera Maulucci and Lizette Ramos—on the feature article by Virginia Jennings Bolshakova, Carla C. Johnson, and Charlene M. Czerniak. We reflect on a series of questions that take retrospective, introspective, and prospective views of self-efficacy in science education. We review selected studies that explore some of the historical developments and methodological approaches in the literature and examine a teacher-student self-efficacy system model that shows the ways in which teachers’ and students’ self-efficacy judgments are based upon multiple individual and shared components, such as identity and social interaction within the classroom and school. We close with a call for the design of measures of teacher-student self-efficacy systems, so that we can begin to tailor professional development experiences to the goals and motivations of individual and collective groups of teachers and students in ways that accommodate the unique cultural features of their classrooms and foster student self-efficacy.     

Unpacking the CRT in Negotiating White Science

In this forum, we summarize CRT’s origins, tenets common to most CRT writings, and CRT’s evolution. We discuss Yerrick’s article Negotiating White Science with respect to certain CRT premises. Specifically, we use the CRT tenet of racism as emphasized in first- and second-generation CRT and CRT elements liberal racial ideology and voices of color to critically examine Yerrick’s propositions.     

Language experience narratives and the role of autobiographical reasoning in becoming an urban science teacher

One of the central challenges globalization and immigration present to education is how to construct school language policies, procedures, and curricula to support academic success of immigrant youth. This case-study compares and contrasts language experience narratives along Elena’s developmental trajectory of becoming an urban science teacher. Elena reflects upon her early language experiences and her more recent experiences as a preservice science teacher in elementary dual language classrooms. The findings from Elena’s early schooling experiences provide an analysis of the linkages between Elena’s developing English proficiency, her Spanish proficiency, and her autobiographical reasoning. Elena’s experiences as a preservice teacher in two elementary dual language classrooms indicates ways in which those experiences helped to reframe her views about the intersections between language learning and science learning. I propose the language experience narrative, as a subset of the life story, as a way to understand how preservice teachers reconstruct past language experiences, connect to the present, and anticipate future language practices.