New Directions,New Relationships: The Smithsonian's Twenty‐first Century Learning in Natural History Settings Conference and the Natural History Museum,London

The Twenty‐first Century Learning in Natural History Settings Conference at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (2012) has been more influential than similar conferences, resulting in new work streams and international collaborations for the Learning Research and Evaluation team at the Natural History Museum, London (NHM). The conference offered a rare opportunity to discuss issues relevant to our unique workplace and to be surrounded by an instant peer group. Although the event itself brought personal and professional satisfaction, it is the impact of the conference on our institution that has been most fulfilling. The conference has enabled us to think bigger—to think about the sector as a whole and the role the NHM can play as a large national museum.     

Culturally responsive teaching in special education for ethnically diverse students: Setting the stage

Two major premises are developed in this discussion. One is that many students of color are disproportionately assigned to special education because educators lack knowledge about or appreciation for their cultural values and socialization, and how these affect learning behaviors. The other premise is that the educational quality of students of color in both special and regular education can be improved significantly by using instructional programs and practices that reflect their cultural heritages, experiences, and perspectives. Several components of this ''culturally responsive teaching'' are explained, along with some research findings about its effects on student achievement. These include critical cultural consciousness of teachers; culturally pluralistic classroom climates; diverse communities of learners; and multicultural curriculum and instruction. The author concludes that without culturally responsive teaching education can never be the best it should be for students who are not part of the majority and mainstream of schools and society.     

Part II: A Computationally Based Modeling System for Class Elements Using Formal Observer-Based Experimental Connections

This article extends and refines the modeling system presented previously (Stewart, 1997). The initial system was sufficient for the optimization of delivery of education at a departmental level. This system is greatly more powerful, precise, and scientific, and fulfills the role of a modeling system for the research and development of educational practices. The model is applied to two widely diverse educational processes, Student Actions and Do Homework Problem, establishing the formalism and demonstrating its usefulness. The use of a rigorous computational syntax imposes completeness criteria on the modeling itself and uniformity. Experimental definition of the formation process of the patterns allows anyone to introduce new features of a model. This and the uniformity allows the models to become the property of the education community, not merely a single researcher, in the same way that mathematical models allow scientists to utilize and build upon previous research.     

Beliefs and Attitudes about Science and Mathematics in Pre-Service Elementary Teachers,STEM, and Non-STEM Majors in Undergraduate Physics Courses

Elementary teachers often hold inaccurate beliefs about the Nature of Science (NoS) and have negative attitudes toward science and mathematics. Using a pre-post design, the current study examined beliefs about the NoS, attitudes toward science and mathematics, and beliefs about the teaching of mathematics and science in a large sample study (N = 343) of pre-service teachers receiving a curriculum-wide intervention to improve these factors in comparison with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and non-STEM majors in other physics courses (N = 6697) who did not receive the intervention, over a 10-year period. Pre-service teachers evidenced initially more negative attitudes about mathematics and science than STEM majors and slightly more positive attitudes than non-STEM majors. Their attitudes toward mathematics and science and beliefs about the NoS were more similar to non-STEM than STEM majors. Pre-service teachers initially evidenced more positive beliefs about the teaching of mathematics and science, and their beliefs even increased slightly over the course of the semester, while these beliefs in other groups remained the same. Beliefs about the NoS and the teaching of mathematics and science were significantly negatively correlated for STEM and non-STEM majors, but were not significantly correlated for pre-service teachers. Beliefs about the NoS and attitudes toward mathematics and science were significantly positively correlated for both pre-service teachers and STEM students pursing the most mathematically demanding STEM majors. Attitudes toward science and mathematics were significantly positively correlated with accurate beliefs about the teaching of mathematics and science for all student groups.     

Classroom management: A model for the identification,development, and assessment of competencies

This article looks across effective collaborations involving schools and colleges of education and other organizations to identify most commonly voiced reasons for collaboration and factors perceived as being most important to collaboration. Partnerships are often founded as means for a school or college of education to better fulfill its own mission through working with other departments on campus, community organizations, and schools. Those involved with effective collaboration report that willingness to listen, mutual respect, long-term commitment, frequent communication, flexibility, and careful selection of partners were key factors in the success of their collaboratives.     

Identifying Content and Cognitive Skills that Produce Gender Differences in Mathematics: A Demonstration of the Multidimensionality-Based DIF Analysis Paradigm

Progress has been made in developing statistical methods for identifying DIF items, but procedures to aid with the substantive interpretations of these items have lagged behind. To overcome this problem, Roussos and Stout (1996) proposed a multidimensionality-based DIF analysis paradigm. We illustrate and evaluate an application of this framework as it applied to the study of gender differences in mathematics. Four characteristics distinguish this study from previous research: the substantive analysis was guided by past research on the content and cognitive-related sources of gender differences in mathematics achievement, as presented in the taxonomy by Gallagher, De Lisi, Holst, McGillicuddy-De Lisi, Morely, and Cahalan (2000); the substantive analysis was conducted by reviewers who were highly knowledgeable about the cognitive strategies students use to solve math problems; three statistical methods were used to test hypotheses about gender differences, including SIBTEST, DIMTEST, and multiple linear regression; and the data were from a curriculum-based achievement test developed with the goal of minimizing obvious, content-related gender differences. We show that the framework can lead to clearly interpretable results and we highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of applying the Roussos and Stout framework to the study of group differences.     

Optimally Engineering Traditional Introductory Physics Classes

This paper presents a measurement of the time and resources committed to traditional student actions such as reading and working homework. The perception of the educational value of each basic action for both students and faculty is captured. From this information, basic educational efficiencies are computed for a traditional mechanics course and a non-traditional hands-on Electricity and Magnetism course. The calculations show an allocation of resources in the traditional course which uses the most student time in the least educationally valuable activity. The computed efficiencies also show overseen student note-taking as potentially a very valuable general tool. The techniques presented allow any institution to carry out quantitative educational engineering of their course offerings at the highest level.     

Curriculum crisis: The challenge of the '80s

Developmental remediation programs designed to raise achievement levels of underprepared students have proliferated in the past decade. Despite the fact that these programs employ a variety of teaching strategies, a substantial subgroup of developmental students are unsuccessful in current remediation programs. They need a different curricular approach. As the number of applicants declines and the demand for generating credit hours continues, the question is shifting from “Should less capable students be allowed to attend college?” to “What curriculum should be provided for these students?” The challenge for the '80s is to expand developmental education to include vocational education and post-secondary specialized education.     

Evidence that Teacher Interactions with Pedagogical Contexts Facilitate Chemistry-Content Learning in K-8 Professional Development

In many innovative science content professional development (PD) courses for teachers, science concepts are situated within pedagogical contexts, or in other words, science content is incorporated within contexts relevant to teaching and student learning. Pedagogical contexts are often used because they are believed to be engaging for teachers and to support content transfer to the classroom. However, few studies have investigated how pedagogical contexts serve to impact teacher engagement and science content learning. This qualitative case study examined K-8 in-service teachers?? interactions with pedagogical contexts in a chemistry PD course. Findings indicate that teachers??: (1) contribution of teaching experiences helped create a collegial learning environment, (2) sharing of concerns from classroom teaching directed content discussion and learning objectives, and (3) reflection on teacher and learner roles in the PD classroom led to persistence in chemistry-content learning. Implications for PD instructor use of pedagogical contexts in science content based PD are discussed.