Judging Teachers: the social and political contexts of teacher evaluation

This paper argues that the assessment and evaluation of teachers in slate provided schooling in Britain has never been simply a matter of technical competence. Judging teachers has always involved social, ideological and political considerations which have varied in different historical periods.

An analysis is made of attempts to apply principles and procedures of assessment especially to teachers in urban working class schools. It is shown that these attempts have historically moved from a ‘visible’ strategy of direct imposition and surveillance to an ‘invisible’ strategy through the ethic of legitimated professionalism. Current developments in British schooling suggest, however, a possible return to more direct and visible procedures as ‘teacher incompetence’ is placed at the centre of the education problem.     

Nineteenth-Century Telegraphy: Wiring the Emerging Urban Corporate Economy

Nineteenth-century telegraphy had a vital integrative role in the intersecting and mutually constituted developments of American industrialization, urbanization, and mediatization. Previous work by Tarr, Finholt, and Goodman¹1. Tarr, Finholt, and Goodman, The City and the Telegraph.View all notes focused on the internal activities of business, fire, and police institutions in American cities. Here, I move beyond their approach in relating telegraphy to broader infrastructural developments of national-level urban industry and modern mass media in the late nineteenth century and the rise of dominant, networked urban commercial, industrial, financial, and media centers. By radically accelerating the mobility of information and capital, telegraphy significantly reduced barriers of distance to industry, commerce, news and advertising, and state and military interventions. Owing to its commercial ownership in the USA, telegraphy privileged business over public use in comparison to Western Europe. Its enduring effects were its integrative functions in the development of a large-scale, urban-centered, largely private system of mass production, mass media, mass culture, and mass consumption.     

Managing Bibliographic Data Quality in a Consortial Academic Library: A Case Study

This article presents a case study of quality management for print and electronic resource metadata, summarizing problems and solutions encountered by the Cataloging and Discovery Services Department in the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida. The authors discuss national, state, and local standards for cataloging, automated and manual record enhancements for data, user feedback, and statewide consortial factors. Findings show that adherence to standards, proactive cleanup of data via manual processes and automated tools, collaboration with vendors and stakeholders, and continual assessment of workflows are key to the management of biblio-graphic data quality in consortial academic libraries.     

Skilling for the Workforce: A tertiary education response to enrich professional development

Tertiary Education and Management - Tertiary educators are being directed by government policy: to develop a learning environment where participants become more than passive receivers of knowledge...     

The Effect of Team‐Based Learning on Student Attitudes and Satisfaction

We examined student attitudes toward a team‐based learning method known as the readiness assurance process encompassing team exams to model how student satisfaction is initially shaped and subsequently changed over time as a function of scholastic performance and perceived development of professional skills (PS). We found that students were generally positively disposed toward the learning method and recognized its benefits in terms of developing teamwork skills. A regression analysis of student responses to an instrument distributed directly after each of four quizzes given over the course of a semester leads to the inferences that satisfaction with the method depends minimally upon the immediate feedback provided by student performance on a quiz and more critically upon student perceptions of how it has enhanced their PS. There is also shown to be a strong carryover effect in satisfaction with the method in successive uses. The results suggest that student attitudes are shaped by multiple, high‐level goals, and not just scholastic performance. The study also evidences the need to study learning interventions over multiple uses rather than through a one‐shot design.     

Teaching peer-tutoring behaviors in first- and third-grade classrooms

Peer tutoring programs represent an innovative approach for optimally utilizing resources existing within classrooms. While most tutoring programs have been aimed at helping tutees or tutors with academic difficulties, the present study involved all children in two classrooms in a peer tutoring project. A multiple baseline design indicated that prompting was effective in establishing tutoring behaviors among the children. By program end, all children were using corrective feedback, re-presenting questions, and employing contingent praise. Positive findings also were shown in academic, behavioral, and consumer satisfaction indices. In addition, 50% of children reported using peer-tutoring skills outside of the formal program.     

Perceptions of personal and familial adjustment by children from intact,single-parent,and reconstituted families

The present study investigated children's (N=566) personal and familial adjustment, and sought to determine if this varied as a function of familial configuration and gender. More specifically, these children were surveyed across a broad range of adjustment measures, including self-concept, perception of school adjustment, home adjustment, peer relationships, state and trait anxiety, as well as their evaluations of mother, father, and family. The results from these measures revealed: (a) less positive adjustment among children from divorced families (whether the remaining parent remarried or not) as opposed to children from intact families; (b) mixed findings regarding comparisons of psychosocial adjustment between single-parent and remarried groups; and (c) a pattern of effects related to significant interactions of family type and gender in which males appeared to be favorably affected within the single-parent configuration, while females were more favorably adjusted within the reconstituted family.     

Post-exercise ingestion of a unique, high molecular weight glucose polymer solution improves performance during a subsequent bout of cycling exercise

The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of post-exercise ingestion of a unique, high molecular weight glucose polymer solution, known to augment gastric emptying and post-exercise muscle glycogen re-synthesis, on performance during a subsequent bout of intense exercise. On three randomized visits, eight healthy men cycled to exhaustion at 73.0% (s = 1.3) maximal oxygen uptake (90 min, s = 15). Immediately after this, participants consumed a one-litre solution containing sugar-free flavoured water (control), 100 g of a low molecular weight glucose polymer or 100 g of a very high molecular weight glucose polymer, and rested on a bed for 2 h. After recovery, a 15-min time-trial was performed on a cycle ergometer, during which work output was determined. Post-exercise ingestion of the very high molecular weight glucose polymer solution resulted in faster and greater increases in blood glucose (P < 0.001) and serum insulin (P < 0.01) concentrations than the low molecular weight glucose polymer solution, and greater work output during the 15-min time-trial (164.1 kJ, s = 21.1) than both the sugar-free flavoured water (137.5 kJ, s = 24.2; P < 0.05) and the low molecular weight glucose polymer (149.4 kJ, s = 21.8; P < 0.05) solutions. These findings could be of practical importance for athletes wishing to optimize performance by facilitating rapid re-synthesis of the muscle glycogen store during recovery following prolonged sub-maximal exercise.