Examining the influence of teacher behavior and curriculum-based movement breaks

Little research has explored the impact of teacher behavior in the relationship between classroom movement breaks and student outcomes. The authors' primary purpose was to explore teacher behavior during classroom movement breaks to determine if teacher behavior served as a moderating variable in the relationship between physical activity and student achievement. The second major aim was to examine these relationships across two different types of movement breaks: (a) academic-content movement breaks and (b) aerobic-based movement breaks. Children (n = 466) in Grades 3–5 from four elementary schools served as participants in the study. Results found that teachers who encouraged students to move and teachers who moved themselves did not necessary have students with higher activity levels during the movement breaks. However, significant differences across the type of movement break provided were found. Implications and limitations are discussed.     

Quantitative skills as a graduate learning outcome: exploring students’ evaluative expertise

In the biosciences, quantitative skills are an essential graduate learning outcome. Efforts to evidence student attainment at the whole of degree programme level are rare and making sense of such data is complex. We draw on assessment theories from Sadler (evaluative expertise) and Boud (sustainable assessment) to interpret final-year bioscience students’ responses to an assessment task comprised of quantitative reasoning questions across 10 mathematical and statistical topics. The question guiding the study was: do final year science students graduate knowing the quantitative skills that they have, and knowing the quantitative skills that they do not have? Confidence indicators for the 10 topics gathered students’ perceptions of their quantitative skills. Students were assigned to one of four categories: high performance-high confidence; low performance-low confidence; high performance-low confidence; or low performance-high confidence – with those in the first two categories demonstrating evaluative expertise. Results showed the majority of students effectively evaluated their quantitative skills as low performance-low confidence. We argue that the application of evaluative expertise to make sense of this graduate learning outcome can further the debate on how assuring graduate learning outcomes can enhance student learning.     

Deleuze and Guattari’s language for new empirical inquiry

Abstract

This paper reviews Deleuze’s theory of language in Logic of Sense, and Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of language in A Thousand Plateaus. In the ontology informed by the Stoics described in those books, human being and language do not exist separately but in a mixture of words and things. The author argues that this flattened ontology of surfaces is incommensurable with the ontology of depth used in conventional humanist qualitative methodology and recommends beginning new empirical inquiry with a concept instead of with method and methodology.     

Designing a Deeply Digital Science Curriculum: Supporting Teacher Learning and Implementation with Organizing Technologies

This paper examines the impacts of technology (e.g., Chromebooks, Google Drive) on teacher learning and student activity in the development and implementation of a deeply digital high school biology unit. Using design-based implementation research, teachers co-designed with researchers and curriculum specialists a student-centered unit aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) that utilizes classroom technology. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected to understand the barriers that inhibit the implementation of a digital curriculum as well as the extent that teachers engage in the design process and begin to make shifts in their practice. We found that through the co-design process teachers began to shift their knowledge of NGSS, technology implementation, and adapted to tensions and barriers inherent in the process.     

Introducing the Creative Learning Principles: Instructional Tasks Used to Promote Rhizomatic Learning Through Creativity

ABSTRACT

Proving a child has been adequately educated is manifest through assessments evaluating the recall of facts or the deciphering of codes. How this information is taught and learned is the issue. Webb's depth of knowledge (DOK) and Bloom's taxonomy are cognitive models that drive instruction in today's classrooms. According to these models, creativity is a higher-order learning process. Although creativity has gained a renewed prominence in theoretic academic arenas, on the battleground of the typical classroom, creativity takes a back seat to instructional strategies with the goal of successful standardization of knowledge. Creativity, however, is the cornerstone of arts instruction. Creative learning principles (CLPs) is a system of instructional tasks developed in the arts and used to facilitate the metacognitive act of learning through creativity to solve problems. This article discusses how the CLPs create rhizomatic learning by facilitating connections between art and other disciplines and how they are used in planning.     

Using Photovoice to Promote Body Image Resilience in College Women

Photovoice methodology was used to examine and promote body image resilience. Fourteen female college students participated in a 2‐part group series. Photovoice projects and other artifacts were analyzed. Three themes related to body image resilience emerged from the data analysis: connection, social gender norms, and self. This study contributes to the growing body of literature by examining photovoice as a creative approach for critically discussing body image resilience. Implications for college counselors are provided.     

School-based assessment in the 1986 NSW higher school certificate

The paper reports an evaluation of the introduction of a school-based assessment component into the 1986 NSW Higher School Certificate. A research team from Macquarie University and the University of Sydney monitored the processes of assessment policy development in eight Sydney schools during 1985 and 1986. These case studies of process and product were supplemented in 1986 by studies in ten NSW country high schools. A survey of teachers and students in a random sample of 58 high schools in NSW was completed towards the end of 1986. The results of the case studies and the survey are discussed within the following framework: Information Flow from the Board of Senior School Studies to the Schools; Policy Development in Schools; Features of Assessment Policies and their Implementation; and the Impact of Assessment on Classroom Practices and Relationships in the Classroom.     

Trends in Performance and Growth by Students With and Without Disabilities on Five State Summative Assessments

Indicators of student academic growth are desired in state accountability systems in order to approximate student learning over time and attribute observed growth to schooling inputs. Through an extant analysis of five states’ assessment data, this study offers evidence about whether longitudinal match rates and measures of growth differ at the state level for students with disabilities, relative to students without disabilities. There were three main findings: 1) In states in which a modified assessment was offered, students with disabilities were more likely to have missing prior year scores, and consequently missing growth scores; 2) Low scoring students, many of whom had a disability, were more likely to have missing prior scores on the state general assessment, and consequently missing growth scores; 3) Students with and without disabilities showed similar growth using transition and gain score definitions of growth, but students with disabilities had lower growth when estimated via a regression-based model. Measurement and policy considerations are discussed.     

Some contributions to sex differences in scholastic aptitude scores

In this study no significant direct effect of sex on performance on ASAT was found. Further, sex differences in performance were found to be the result of females having a higher verbal ability as measured by English assessments, males studying more mathematics, and males having a greater confidence in success on ASAT. For this sample it was found that the female students achieved about 0.40 score points on ASAT more than males, after regressing out father's occupation, English assessment, hours spent studying mathematics, and confidence in success. The adjustment to ASAT scores in 1983 would certainly account for the positive effect of sex; i.e. being a female increased a student's score by 0.40 score points. After allowing for this adjustment of approximately 1.0 score points, being a male increased a students ASAT score by 0.60 score points.ASAT was found to favour students who scored well in English and those students who studied more hours of mathematics. English, in part, tests verbal aptitude and consequently it might be expected that there would be a significant positive effect related to English assessment. The number of hours of mathematics studied is not itself a direct measure of aptitude and consequently it may be considered that the number of hours of mathematics studied provides an advantage for performance on ASAT. However, it is not unreasonable to expect that it is those students of greater quantitative aptitude who would study more mathematics. The significant mathematics hours effect may be a result of this, since there is no control for quantitative aptitude within the model. It was, however, the very large effect which the score on the confidence in success attitude scale had on ASAT performance that was the most suprising. For some undetermined, perhaps social, reason, females had a significantly lower confidence than males.The relationship between Confidence in Success and performance might be expected since, in part, the Confidence in Success variable measures how well students thought they did on ASAT. It is still clear however, that after confidence in success is taken into account, sex has no significant effect on ASAT score. The predictors of success are English ability, hours spent in the study of mathematics, and confidence.     

A current landscape of specific learning disability identification: Training,practices, and implications

Specific learning disability (SLD) identification procedures vary across states (Maki et al., 2015, School Psychol Quart, 30, 457–469); however, the extent to which SLD identification methods are implemented at the district level is not well understood. Moreover, the high‐stakes nature of SLD identification necessitates extensive training, but research regarding graduate and postgraduate training in SLD is limited. This study examined school psychologists’ SLD training and practices through survey methodology. Results showed that a growing number of school psychologists use, prefer, and receive training in response to intervention and pattern of strengths and weaknesses to identify students with SLD while the use of and preference for ability–achievement discrepancy may be decreasing. However, nearly one‐third of school psychologists still reported the use of ability–achievement discrepancy. In addition, over half of school psychologists reported using state department of education guidance documents to inform their SLD identification practices. Implications for training and practice are discussed.