Using Computing Power to Replace Lawyers: Advances in Licensing and Access

Faculty, librarians, students, and administrators are all faced with questions concerning permitted uses of licensed content. Rather than wrangle with the complexities of copyright, many would prefer a simple automated solution. The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics created such a tool through a research project that evolved into SIPX, a commercial copyright service. The Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) created a product concept but faced challenges in converting it into an academic product.     

Personal and Professional Growth Realized: A Self-Study of Curriculum Design and Implementation in a Secondary Science Classroom

This study focuses on the experience of designing and implementing an action research-based curriculum in a secondary science classroom. By systematically examining ourselves and our practices, we brought to light beliefs and values that were realized through this process, came to a deeper understanding of our own learning, and developed new awareness as teachers and researchers. Here, we provide our perspective on how the process of curriculum design and implementation facilitated our personal and professional growth, and we share this as an example of how teacher educators and kindergarten through grade 12 teachers can position one another as generators and disseminators of knowledge through collaborative self-study to inform their own and others' teaching practices.     

The Impact of a Pedagogy of Teacher Education Seminar on Educator and Future Teacher Educator Identities

Educators require support as they move from classroom to higher education settings. This collaborative self-study provides insight into one such support space, a doctoral seminar titled Pedagogy of Teacher Education, and how our identities as educators and future teacher educators developed through participation in the course. Several important themes emerged as we negotiated and adopted new identities as educators, and future teacher educators and researchers. These themes include our development of a collaborative mindset, a teacher educator-researcher perspective, and a critical self-awareness. The findings draw on our professional and personal histories to explore the prominent features that influenced and shaped our identities as educators and future teacher educator-researchers. In sharing our development as educators and future teacher educators, this article provides insights into the ways in which doctoral students in education begin to develop their identities and pedagogies through guided support from more experienced teacher educators.     

Young children and e-reading: research to date and questions for the future

The practice of reading is rapidly moving from print to screen. Young children are not immune from this trend; indeed, many children's principal literacy experiences occur using iPads and other handheld digital devices. This transition raises important questions about how the emergence and development of literacy might change in these new environments. This paper reviews research to date on e-reading, both in the pre-tablet and tablet era, within the context of what we know more generally about literacy development. We then propose topics for future research and discuss methodological issues related to the investigation of these topics. Our goal is to spark further discussion about how to study young children's literacy development in the emerging e-reading era.     

The Progress and Promise of the Reading for Understanding Research Initiative

Decades of reading research have improved our understanding of the ways that young children learn how to read and of the component skills that support the ongoing development of reading and reading comprehension. However, while these investments have transformed reading instruction and reading outcomes for many learners, too many children are not reading at the basic level nor are they reading with understanding. The Institute of Education Sciences created the Reading for Understanding Research Initiative in 2010 to fund a set of connected projects that would enrich the theoretical frameworks that undergird efforts to improve deep comprehension and to design and test new interventions and assessments to improve reading for understanding across all grades in US schools. This article describes the central themes that guided the design of the Reading for Understanding Initiative and the work underway by the six research teams funded under this program.     

Assessing Scientific Practices Using Machine-Learning Methods: How Closely Do They Match Clinical Interview Performance?

The landscape of science education is being transformed by the new Framework for Science Education (National Research Council, A framework for K-12 science education: practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2012), which emphasizes the centrality of scientific practices—such as explanation, argumentation, and communication—in science teaching, learning, and assessment. A major challenge facing the field of science education is developing assessment tools that are capable of validly and efficiently evaluating these practices. Our study examined the efficacy of a free, open-source machine-learning tool for evaluating the quality of students’ written explanations of the causes of evolutionary change relative to three other approaches: (1) human-scored written explanations, (2) a multiple-choice test, and (3) clinical oral interviews. A large sample of undergraduates (n = 104) exposed to varying amounts of evolution content completed all three assessments: a clinical oral interview, a written open-response assessment, and a multiple-choice test. Rasch analysis was used to compute linear person measures and linear item measures on a single logit scale. We found that the multiple-choice test displayed poor person and item fit (mean square outfit >1.3), while both oral interview measures and computer-generated written response measures exhibited acceptable fit (average mean square outfit for interview: person 0.97, item 0.97; computer: person 1.03, item 1.06). Multiple-choice test measures were more weakly associated with interview measures (r = 0.35) than the computer-scored explanation measures (r = 0.63). Overall, Rasch analysis indicated that computer-scored written explanation measures (1) have the strongest correspondence to oral interview measures; (2) are capable of capturing students’ normative scientific and naive ideas as accurately as human-scored explanations, and (3) more validly detect understanding than the multiple-choice assessment. These findings demonstrate the great potential of machine-learning tools for assessing key scientific practices highlighted in the new Framework for Science Education.     

Instructional models for the acquisition of English as bridges into school science: effects on the science achievement of U.S. Hispanic English language learners

Science educators have suggested that, for minority and low-income students, gaps between home and school science cultures necessitate ‘border crossing’ for successful learning in science. Our analysis used National Assessment of Educational Progress 2000 and 2005 data to assess the impact of U.S. state-level policy regarding instructional models for language acquisition for the learning of science. Specifically, we assessed whether policy favouring structured English immersion led to better student outcomes than bilingual education among Hispanic English language learners in 4th and 8th grades in the U.S. We found significantly higher science achievement among 4th grade Hispanic ELLs in states with stronger bilingual emphasis in their policy, suggesting that policy support for bilingual education could provide a better bridge to span the cultural gap between home and school science, at least for younger students.     

Adaptation Guidance for Evidence-Based Teen Pregnancy and STI/HIV Prevention Curricula: From Development to Practice

Evidence-based interventions (EBIs) are effective in preventing adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections; however, prevention practitioners are challenged when selecting and adapting the most appropriate programs. While there are existing adaptation frameworks, there is little practical guidance in applying research in the field. To address this need, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of Reproductive Health initiated the Adaptation Guidance Project. The project included the development of a comprehensive adaptation guidance framework and adaptation kits for select evidence-based teen pregnancy and HIV prevention programs. In addition, three innovative concepts emerged that have application to other adaptation program and evaluation efforts, including moving research into practice. First, the authors defined the core components of an EBI in three distinct ways: core content, core pedagogy, and core implementation. Second, they piloted a practitioner-friendly adaptation guidance-messaging schema—Green, Yellow, and Red Light Adaptations, and last they included fidelity/adaptation monitoring logs. This article will describe the process used to develop the adaptation guidance kits, including the main features and tools.