Differential effects of three professional development models on teacher knowledge and student achievement in elementary science

To identify links among professional development, teacher knowledge, practice, and student achievement, researchers have called for study designs that allow causal inferences and that examine relationships among features of interventions and multiple outcomes. In a randomized experiment implemented in six states with over 270 elementary teachers and 7,000 students, this project compared three related but systematically varied teacher interventions—Teaching Cases, Looking at Student Work, and Metacognitive Analysis—along with no‐treatment controls. The three courses contained identical science content components, but differed in the ways they incorporated analysis of learner thinking and of teaching, making it possible to measure effects of these features on teacher and student outcomes. Interventions were delivered by staff developers trained to lead the teacher courses in their regions. Each course improved teachers' and students' scores on selected‐response science tests well beyond those of controls, and effects were maintained a year later. Student achievement also improved significantly for English language learners in both the study year and follow‐up, and treatment effects did not differ based on sex or race/ethnicity. However, only Teaching Cases and Looking at Student Work courses improved the accuracy and completeness of students' written justifications of test answers in the follow‐up, and only Teaching Cases had sustained effects on teachers' written justifications. Thus, the content component in common across the three courses had powerful effects on teachers' and students' ability to choose correct test answers, but their ability to explain why answers were correct only improved when the professional development incorporated analysis of student conceptual understandings and implications for instruction; metacognitive analysis of teachers' own learning did not improve student justifications either year. Findings suggest investing in professional development that integrates content learning with analysis of student learning and teaching rather than advanced content or teacher metacognition alone. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 333–362, 2012     

Developing Children's Early Competencies to Engage With Science

Science educators have long been concerned with how formal schooling contributes to learners’ capacities to engage with science after school. This article frames productive engagement as fundamentally about the coordination of claims with evidence, but such coordination requires a number of reasoning capabilities to evaluate the strength of evidence, critique methods, and other factors upon which evidence evaluation rests, evaluating sources and potential biases, and so on. Although the general discourse on education commonly suggests students are bad at such things, we review cognitive development research that demonstrates children display a variety of capabilities, even at early ages, that can be productively built upon by formal science instruction. We use this research to suggest some possibilities for formal schooling to develop children's capacities for evaluating claims within the pursuit of personally meaningful goals. We conclude with observations of useful directions our analysis opens to research.     

Relationships matter: some benefits,challenges and tensions associated with forming a collaborative educational researcher group

Growing recognition of the complexity of children’s lives has led to strong advocacy in education research literature for greater collaboration between researchers from different paradigms to address the ‘wicked’ problems that face contemporary children and families. There is little literature, however, exploring how collaboration works in practice. This paper, drawing on researcher reflective narrative, and using Cultural Historical Activity Theory as a heuristic framework, describes and critiques the formative stages of an educational research collaborative group of five early and one mid-career early childhood education researchers (the authors), from two universities, and with quite different epistemological and ontological understandings. It outlines, from an insider perspective, some of the outcomes, challenges and tensions associated with participating in the research group, and concludes by providing some implications for policy and considerations for those contemplating forming a collaborative group.     

Longitudinal correlates of reading comprehension difficulties in Chinese children

The present study explored the early predictors of reading comprehension difficulties in Chinese children. We originally recruited 290 Beijing and 154 Hong Kong children and further selected from each sample those (30 from Beijing and 22 from Hong Kong sample) in the lowest 25 % on reading comprehension tests across the last two consecutive testing years (Beijing: ages 9 and 10; Hong Kong: ages 8 and 9) as poor comprehenders. These groups were matched to a group of children from the same sample whose reading comprehension was above 30 % across the two final years and matched on mothers’ education levels, age, nonverbal reasoning at age 4, and Chinese word reading across the same final two consecutive years. We then examined early linguistic/cognitive skills at ages 5–9 that could distinguish the poor and typically developing groups in each city separately. Compared to the control group, poor comprehenders from both samples performed significantly and consistently worse on word reading at early ages, and generally worse on morphological compounding awareness, phonological awareness, and vocabulary knowledge from ages 6 and onwards. In addition, lexical tone sensitivity across ages and grammatical sensitivity (administered at age 5 only) failed to distinguish the two groups for the Beijing sample but did for Hong Kong children.     

Involving History Students

Abstract

This article discusses the use of text messaging as an effective way for faculty to communicate with students in between class meetings or within an online course. The benefits of text messaging will be discussed, as well as the tools one faculty member has used when texting students or groups of students. Text messaging can be used to give student “nudges” to increase the likelihood students will act in accordance with what the faculty member expects (i.e., read textbook prior to class, attend tutoring sessions, submit homework on time). It can also be used to streamline group work.     

European Mass Media

John Sandford's The Mass Media of the German-Speaking Countries (London: Oswald Wolff; and Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1976---price not given, paper)

Publizistik. Vierteljahreshefte fur Kommunikationsforschung (= subtitle, meaning Quarterly for Communication Research)

Rundfunk und Fernsehen (Broadcasting and Television)

Femselsen und Bildung (Television and Education)

Communicatio Socialis

Broadcast Receiving Fees in France, by Eugene Pons (EBU Monograph No. 7, 194 pp., 1969, 20 Swiss francs or about $5.00, paper)

German Radio and Television: Organization and Economic Basis, by Hans Brack (EBU Monograph No. 6, 68 pp., 1968, 8 Sw. Fr. or about $2.00, paper)

Broadcasting in the Space Age, by Olaf Rydbeck and Edward W. Ploman (EBU Monograph No. 5, 53 pp., 8 Sw. Fr. or about $2.00, paper)

Advertising on Radio and Television (EBU Monograph No. 4, 37 pp., 1966, 5 Sw. Fr. or about $1.00)

Financial Aspects of Broadcasting, by Bruno Vasari (EBU Monograph No. 3, 45 pp., 1965, 4 Sw. Fr. or a bit less than $1.00, paper)

Television for Children and Young People, by J.D. Halloran and P.R.C. Elliott (134 pp., 1970, 10 Sw. Fr. or about $2.50, paper)

Annual Seminar for Producers and Directors of Adult Education by Television (12th Seminar, 1974, 79 pp., 5 Sw. Fr. or about $1.00)

Annual Seminar for Producers and Directors of School Television (11th Seminar, 1973, 79 pp., 5 Sw. Fr. or about $1.00, paper)

Workshops for Producers and Directors of Television Programs for Children (4th Workshop, 1974, 48 pp., 8 Sw. Fr. or about $2.00, paper)

International Forum of Light Music in Radio (1971, 1973, and 1975 editions available, 5 Sw. Fr. each or about $1.00 each, paper)

The Evolution of the EBU through its Statutes from 1950 to 1976 (EBU Monograph No. 11, 1977, 25 Sw. Fr. or something over $5.00, paper)

International Conference of States on the Protection of Phonograms (Paris: Unesco; and New York: Unipub, 1975---$34.75, paper)     

Sergius Yakobson in Europe and America

This article is devoted to the career of Sergius Yakobson, a librarian, historian, and educator. Its first part focuses on his role in the development of the Slavic collections of the Library of Congress in the 1940s to 1950s after his emigration to the United States. In the second part, the author compares ways in which Slavica, Rossica, and Sovetica developed in America and France during and after World War II, using materials from Yakobson's survey of Paris Slavic collections made in 1953. The final part briefly discusses his work as a Sovietologist.