Australian core Catholic youth,Catholic schools and religious education

This paper reports on research on the attitudes of a differentiated sample of students to Catholic schools in general and religious education in particular. Core Catholic youth are described, following Fulton et al. (2000 Fulton, J., Abela, A., Borowik, I., Dowling, T., Marler, P. and Tomasi, L. 2000. Young Catholics at the New Millennium; the Religion and Morality of Young Adults in Western Countries, Dublin: University College Press.  [Google Scholar]: Young Catholics at the New Millennium, Dublin, University College Press), as individuals who have an existing connection with the parish community. Some results that emerge from 58 in‐depth interviews with 14‐ and 15‐year‐old core Catholics are that they value their time in Catholic schools, feel that they are in a safe environment and are not well networked with others of a similar background. Attitudes to religious education by core Catholic youth are described as weak positive. Religious education is not unpopular but is not seen as a discipline that helps resolve some of the difficulties that they experience as young Catholics. These difficulties relate to trying to reconcile what they see as the conflict between the scientific and religious view of creation and many supernatural religious claims.     

为肯尼亚青年谋求STEM教育的平等机会

肯尼亚人口中18岁以下的青少年占50％,他们是肯尼亚社会中一股重要而活跃的力量,大力发展青少年教育是促进发展的有效方式。肯尼亚科学中心是一所筹建中的STEM教育机构,旨在为所有青少年提供平等的教育机会,并接受STEM教育方面的启迪。本文介绍了建设和发展肯尼亚科学中心的各种工作方式,期望能够借鉴国际上其他科学中心的经验,以达成独具特色的发展目标。     

Collaborative feedback and reflection for professional growth: preparing first-year pre-service teachers for participation in the community of practice

Teaching has been described as an emerging community of practice. Within such professional communities, the processes of reflection and collaborative dialogue, or critical transformative dialogue, are central to the maintenance and improvement of professional practice for individuals, and the field. This paper reports on the challenges experienced by a group of first-year pre-service teachers engaging in a process of reflection and critique with peers, as they participated in a program focused on the development of core practices of teaching. These pre-service teachers' responses indicated their growing understanding of the importance of engaging in ongoing critical dialogue, as part of the “unnatural” aspects of teaching. The paper concludes with a reflection on the value of feedback from the earliest stages of professional learning.     

Teacher job satisfaction: lessons from the TSW Pathfinder Project

Government policy assumes that modernization and remodelling will be effective as external intervention mechanisms to improve job satisfaction. Based on data collected as part of the evaluation of the ‘Transforming the School Workforce Pathfinder Project’, an argument is presented here which suggests that internal management models may be more effective in improving teacher job satisfaction. By comparing the responses of teachers within primary and special schools with those from secondary schools, internal factors are identified which may be more relevant than externally imposed measures.     

The effects of response cost and species-typical behaviors on a daily time–place learning task

Two theories that have been hypothesized to mediate acquisition in daily time–place learning (TPL) tasks were investigated in a free operant daily TPL task: the response cost hypothesis and the species-typical behavior hypothesis. One lever at the end of one of the choice arms of a T-maze provided food in the morning, and 6 h later, a lever in the other choice arm provided food. Four groups were used to assess the effect of two possible sources of response cost: physical effort of the task and costs associated with foraging ecology. One group was used to assess the effect of explicitly allowing for species-typical behaviors. If only first arm choice data were considered, there was little evidence of learning. However, both first press and percentage of presses on the correct lever prior to the first reinforcement revealed evidence of TPL in most rats tested. Unexpectedly, the high response cost groups for both of the proposed sources did not perform better than the low response cost groups. The groups that allowed animals to display species-typical behaviors performed the worst. Skip session probe trials confirmed that the majority of the rats that acquired the task were using a circadian timing strategy. The results from the present study suggest that learning in free operant daily TPL tasks might not be dependent on response cost.     

Student‐teachers' perspectives on positive and negative social processes in school

In recent years, the Standards for Qualified Teacher Status in England have placed new emphasis on student‐teachers' ability to become integrated into the ‘corporate life of the school’ and to work with other professionals. Little research, however, has been carried out into how student‐teachers perceive the social processes and interactions that are central to such integration during their initial teacher education school placements. This study aims to shed light on these perceptions. The data, gathered from 23 student‐teachers through interviews and reflective writing, illustrate the extent to which the participants perceived such social processes as supporting or obstructing their development as teachers. Signals of inclusion, the degree of match or mismatch in students' and school colleagues' role expectations, and the social awareness of both school and student‐teacher emerged as crucial factors in this respect. The student‐teachers' accounts show their social interactions with school staff to be meaningful in developing their ‘teacher self’ and to be profoundly emotionally charged. The implications for mentor and student‐teacher role preparation are discussed in this article.     

PERSISTENCE AND THE RELATIONSHIP TO ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE MEASURES: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY

The persistence rates of community college transfer students were contrasted to those of native university students over a six year period. A general trend was observed which suggested community college transfer students were less likely to persist when returning to school for their second or third semesters of coursework. However, those transfer students remaining for the third semester of coursework were just as likely to persist as the native students for the next semester. Questions were raised about the validity of the notion of “transfer shock”, which may actually be a reflection of the change in the student population being observed.     

What We Know,What We Still Need to Know: Teaching Adolescents to Write

The purpose of this study was to uncover any differences in the early reading and spelling processes of children learning to read in a first language (L1) and children learning to read in a second language (L2). The reading and spelling development of native Dutch-speaking children and minority children in the first two grades of elementary school were compared. The children were given a number of tasks to test their vocabulary knowledge and the efficiency of their word decoding (including grapheme knowledge and word blending), word spelling (including cipher knowledge and phonemic segmentation), and reading comprehension processes. Analyses of variance were used to test for differences between the L1 and L2 learners. LISREL analyses were used to explore the components underlying the reading and spelling processes in the 2 groups of children. The results showed that the minority children kept up with the native Dutch-speaking children on word blending and word decoding tasks. On word spelling and reading comprehension, however, the minority children were found to be less efficient than their monolingual Dutch peers. The structural models for word decoding and word spelling were highly comparable for the 2 groups. For reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge was found to have more of an impact on the L2 learners than on the L1 learners. This finding suggests that children learning to read in an L2 should be helped to build their lexical knowledge and that reading instruction should be matched to this knowledge.     

领导力

Your success as a manager can be determined by how you interact with people.The role of a manager as a leader is an important part of these interactions.Leadership involves influencing colleagues so that they follow a given direction or goal.