Book reviews

International Review of Education -     

Caliphal Imperialism and Ḥijāzī elites in the second/eighth Century

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the debate over the effectiveness with which late Umayyad and early ?Abbāsid caliphs negotiated their respective rights and duties with provincial elites during the second/eighth century. The focus is on the relationships that evolved between the caliphs and those elite families residing in the ?ijāz whose ancestors had helped to establish the Muslim community and the early caliphal empire in the mid-first/seventh century. The article's analysis centres on a series of four revolts in the ?ijāz over the second/eighth century and examines developments in the enthusiasm with which local elites either supported or opposed those revolts. This discussion demonstrates that, aside from a brief period during the first decades of ?Abbāsid rule, Umayyad and ?Abbāsid caliphs during the second/eighth century were actually quite successful at inspiring loyalty among the local elites of the ?ijāz.     

Diversity of Students' Views about Evidence,Theory, and the Interface between Science and Religion in an Astronomy Course

Arguments for teaching about the nature of science have been made for several decades. The most recent science education policy documents continue to assert the need for students to understand the nature of science. However, little research actually explores how students develop these understandings in the context of a specific course. We examine the growth in students' understanding about the nature of astronomy in a one‐semester college course. In addition to student work collected for 340 students in the course, we also interviewed focus students three times during the course. In this article we briefly describe class data and discuss in detail how five students developed their ideas throughout the course. In particular, we show the ways in which students respond to instruction with respect to the extent to which they (a) demand and examine evidence used for justifying claims, (b) integrate scientific and religious views, and (c) distinguish between scientific and nonscientific theories. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 340–362, 2000.     

An intensive study of the reliability of Rhode Island Pupil Identification Scale

A recent study of the factorial structure of the Rhode Island Pupil Identification Scale (RIPIS), a pupil behavior-observation scale for use by classroom teachers for detecting young children with learning problems, has led to profile scoring. This study describes the procedures and the results of an intensive and comprehensive investigation of the homogeneity of the subscales and their reliabilities as well as those of the two profiles yielded by the scale. All subscales, profiles, and composites were found to be highly internally consistent and stable over a time interval of five months. The authors also wish to show why complex psychometric scales require that more than cursory attention be paid to reliability issues.