Adaptive learning in university students’ opinions: Cross-border research

Education and Information Technologies - Contemporary education is often based on using e-learning courses, which have become a popular means of delivering didactic material to students. Among the...     

Direct and indirect effects of education on job satisfaction: A structural equation model for the Spanish case

Empirical literature has traditionally analyzed the effect of education on job satisfaction with single-equation models that ignore interrelationships between theoretical explanatory variables. Their results are somewhat inconclusive. We propose estimating a structural equation model to obtain both the direct effects and the set of indirect effects. Analysis of these effects allows us to explain the apparent contradictions that have existed to date, and to improve knowledge of the economic value of education. The proposed model shows that people with higher levels of formal education are more satisfied with their jobs, because they are more likely to access jobs with characteristics that provide greater satisfaction.     

What Matters to Whom: Predictors of Teacher Satisfaction in a Career Development Plan

This article examines several workplace predictors of career satisfaction for teachers involved in a career development plan. Furthermore, it examines whether different aspects of the work environment, including intrinsic job characteristics and positive personnel evaluation, are predictors of career satisfaction for teachers in different groups. The predictors of career satisfaction vary according to divergent work roles and career phases. Among the independent variables emerging as important are informational resources and hierarchy of authority for entry-level teachers, rationality of promotion for career-level teachers, and positive evaluation by the principal for experienced teachers who are not participating in the career development plan.     

The Psychological Uses of Ruthlessness in a Children's Fantasy Tale: Beatrix Potter and The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) is one of the top best-selling children's books of all time. In an attempt to account for its staggering success, this paper examines the dynamic processes through which meaning shapes itself out of fictional constructs. A study of Potter's tale presents insights into the psychic logic of the author's intentions and her uses of narrative to give order through form to desire. Drawing on the work of Freud, Brooks and Winnicott, concepts such as transference, masterplot and wish fulfilment are considered as ways of illuminating the symptomatic uses of Peter for Potter. Arguably, the little hero's enactments of ruthlessness, 'mouth love' and defiance function as symbolic containing devices through which the author expresses her capacity for self-knowledge. The story's symbolization of greed serves not only as a displacement of the psychic reality of hunger felt by a gifted, rigidly controlled Victorian female author, but equally important, as a transitional space for child readers through time to imagine the capacity to go to extreme limits in terms of satisfying psychic spaces left empty and angry by want.     

Design and Reflection Help Students Develop Scientific Abilities: Learning in Introductory Physics Laboratories

Design activities, when embedded in an inquiry cycle and appropriately scaffolded and supplemented with reflection, can promote the development of the habits of mind (scientific abilities) that are an important part of scientific practice. Through the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE), students construct physics knowledge by engaging in inquiry cycles that replicate the approach used by physicists to construct knowledge. A significant portion of student learning occurs in ISLE instructional labs where students design their own experiments. The labs provide an environment for cognitive apprenticeship enhanced by formative assessment. As a result, students develop interpretive knowing that helps them approach new problems as scientists. This article describes a classroom study in which the students in the ISLE design lab performed equally well on traditional exams as ISLE students who did not engage in design activities. However, the design group significantly outperformed the non-design group while working on novel experimental tasks (in physics and biology), demonstrating the application of scientific abilities to an inquiry task in a novel content domain. This research shows that a learning environment that integrates cognitive apprenticeship and formative assessment in a series of conceptual design tasks provides a rich context for helping students build scientific habits of mind.     

Two decades of charter schools: Expectations,reality, and the future

The first charter school law was passed in Minnesota in 1991 and with it, a new school reform movement began. After two decades, 41 states and Washington D.C. have adopted charter legislation. This special issue provides an opportunity for scholars to reflect upon the promises and limitations of charter schools and to offer policy advice for those in a position to influence future reforms. Together, the papers within this special issue examine the achievement effects of charter schools, their cost effectiveness, the competitive pressure created by charter schools, the degree to which charter schools are innovative and how some of the operational and policy features of charter schools may affect outcomes.     

Teacher retention in Appalachian schools: Evidence from Kentucky

In this paper we analyze teacher attrition from Appalachian school districts over nearly twenty years of data. We employ a unique panel of public K-12 teachers active in Kentucky between 1986 and 2005, and discern several patterns of interest to scholars and policymakers. Inter-district mobility is rare in Kentucky, and rarer still among Appalachian teachers. Few teachers transfer between regions, but teachers are considerably more likely to leave Appalachia than to transfer to it. Our results also indicate that Appalachian teachers are more likely to exit the profession. One implication of this evidence is that improvements to teacher quality in such isolated areas would require a focus on the home labor pool.     

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in Higher Education: A Collaborative Self-Study

In this article we discuss findings from a collaborative self-study of how seven teacher educators define, enact, and navigate their roles as culturally responsive educators across various programs within a higher education institution. All participants conducted an individual interview with another team member and engaged in prolonged team meetings in order to understand and conceptualize culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP). Findings include the participants' difficulty with defining CRP in higher education; the importance of modeling and building relationships with students when enacting CRP; tensions related to students and institutions; and professional and personal opportunities to continuously evolve. The findings begin to fill in a void for an articulated framework of CRP beyond P-12 classrooms and illustrate the type of support and professional development higher education institutions need to provide for teacher educators to actualize this work.     

Epistemological Issues Concerning Computer Simulations in Science and Their Implications for Science Education

Computers and simulations represent an undeniable aspect of daily scientific life, the use of simulations being comparable to the introduction of the microscope and the telescope, in the development of knowledge. In science education, simulations have been proposed for over three decades as useful tools to improve the conceptual understanding of students and the development of scientific capabilities. However, various epistemological aspects that relate to simulations have received little attention. Although the absence of this discussion is due to various factors, among which the relatively recent interest in the analysis of longstanding epistemological questions concerning the use of simulations, the inclusion of this discussion on the research agenda in science education appears relevant, if we wish to educate scientifically literate students in a vision of the nature of science closer to the work conducted by researchers today. In this paper we review some contemporary thoughts emerging from philosophy of science about simulations in science and set out questions that we consider of relevance for discussion in science education, in particular related with model-based learning and experimental work.