Effects of subject-area degree and classroom experience on new chemistry teachers’ subject matter knowledge

Science teachers need to understand the subject matter they teach. While subject matter knowledge (SMK) can improve with classroom teaching experience, it is problematic that many secondary science teachers leave the profession before garnering extensive classroom experience. Furthermore, many new science teachers are assigned to teach science subjects for which they do not hold a degree. This study investigates the SMK of new secondary science teachers assigned to teach chemistry in their first three years of teaching. These new teachers do not have the advantage of years of experience to develop their SMK and half hold a degree in biology rather than chemistry. This qualitative study explores the effects of holding a degree in the subject area one teaches as well as classroom teaching experience on teachers’ SMK for two chemistry topics, conservation of mass and chemical equilibrium. Qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews indicated that the SMK of teachers who had a chemistry degree and more extensive classroom experience was more coherent, chemistry-focused, and sophisticated than that of teachers who lacked this preparation and experience. This study provides evidence that new science teachers’ SMK is influenced by both holding a degree in the subject area and having classroom experience.     

An Analysis of the Presentation of Art in the British Primary School Curriculum and its Implications for Teaching

This article presents an analysis of the way art is conceptualised in the British primary school curriculum and provides an historical framework that maps an evolution of ideas that have shaped the way art is presented in the modern day primary curriculum. In order to achieve this a Foucauldian style genealogical analysis is utilised to trace the discourses (systems of meaning) surrounding the nature of children's artistic development and how these discourses are used in the present day British primary curriculum to construe art in different ways. The analysis in this article is threefold. It explores the presentation of art in the curriculum as (1) an expressive subject, (2) a skills based subject, (3) a subject which focuses on art history and art appreciation. Second, the teaching positions associated with each approach are identified as follows (a) the facilitator, (b) the expert and (c) the philosopher; as well as the issues teachers face when adopting these positions. Third, attention is given to how these theoretical principles might be linked to practice. In so doing this article contributes to the debate surrounding the value of art in the primary curriculum and the way in which the curriculum serves to shape teaching practice.     

Part-time Employment and Performance at A-level

How many sixth-formers have part-time paid employment, and does this affect their performance at A-level? This article describes how one teaching institution set up a project to collect and analyse data in an attempt to find answers to these questions.     

Group psychotherapy for adult women mistreated as children by pathological mothers

In this paper, group psychotherapy for adult women having similar backgrounds of abusive, pathological mothers is described. The goals of the group included: providing a support system to help the members cope with their destructive mothers, helping them to recognize how the conflictual relationship with their mothers generalized to other conflictual relationships particularly with abusive men, and helping the members to increase their behavioral repertoire for coping with their mothers' illogical and unreasonable demands. Unlike most treatment groups which take considerable time to develop trusting relationships, intimacy and cohesiveness among group members, the women in this group developed almost instant solidarity. This appeared due to their having a common bond based on sharing equally traumatic backgrounds and on their attraction to men as abusive to them as their mothers. Prior to the group, they felt that no one (including the individual therapist) could understand what their lives had been like. The solidarity in this group grew more intense with time which permitted deeper investigation of topics such as fear of unworthiness, closeness, and abandonment. Findings from a self-report questionnaire suggested that three of the five group members had achieved significant improvements in coping with their troublesome relationships with pathological mothers and abusive men. These three members attributed their gains to their new coping behaviors learned in group, the group's supportive environment, and the group's permission to examine fully the range of feelings they harbored toward their mothers and themselves.     

The Mathematical Quality of Instruction (MQI) in Kindergarten: An Evaluation of the Stability of the MQI Using Generalizability Theory

Research Findings: We evaluated the score stability of the Mathematical Quality of Instruction (MQI), an observational measure of mathematics instruction. Three raters each scored, independently, 100 video-recorded lessons taught by 20 kindergarten teachers in the spring. Using generalizability theory analyses, we decomposed the MQI’s score stability into potential sources of variation (teachers, lessons, raters, and their interactions). The 13-item (3-domain) Ambitious Mathematics Instruction scale and the Whole Lesson scale each explained about one third of the variance attributed to differences in the main construct of interest (teachers’ instructional strategies). The MQI’s Errors and Imprecision scale was not relevant at the kindergarten level; there were virtually no errors and/or ambiguities observed across the 100 mathematics lessons. In a series of decision studies, we examined improvements in reliability with combinations of up to 6 raters and 8 lessons. Only the Richness of Mathematics domain scores and the Whole Lesson scores achieved acceptable reliabilities. Practice or Policy: The findings have important implications for the use of observation measures to document teachers’ mathematics practices in the early years of school.     

Who Influences Policy in Early Childhood Services?

This edition of the journal explores some of the ideas about policy‐making in early childhood services. In this introductory article I review ideas about policy‐making processes and policy agendas and what processes shape them, with particular reference to the relationship between research and policies on early childhood services. I write as a researcher working within a child development framework, and as someone who has been a participant in such policy making processes at a European and at a UK level. In this introduction I also set a context for the other articles which follow.     

Impact of North Carolina's Early Childhood Programs and Policies on Educational Outcomes in Elementary School

North Carolina's Smart Start and More at Four (MAF) early childhood programs were evaluated through the end of elementary school (age 11) by estimating the impact of state funding allocations to programs in each of 100 counties across 13 consecutive years on outcomes for all children in each county‐year group (n = 1,004,571; 49% female; 61% non‐Latinx White, 30% African American, 4% Latinx, 5% other). Student‐level regression models with county and year fixed effects indicated significant positive impacts of each program on reading and math test scores and reductions in special education and grade retention in each grade. Effect sizes grew or held steady across years. Positive effects held for both high‐ and low‐poverty families, suggesting spillover of effects to nonparticipating peers.     

Visual-temporal processing in reading-disabled and normal twins

Percent contrast thresholds for the detection of 1 or 8 cycle/degree sinusoidalgratings flickering in counter-phase at 1 or 10Hz were evaluated in 356 8–19 year old twinsand their school-age siblings. 107 of the twinshad a school history of reading disability.Subjects adjusted contrast levels to thresholdfrom above and below in a total of 32 trialsover about 12 minutes. Internal reliability foreach of the 4 stimulus conditions was 0.8, andeach stimulus condition was similarlycorrelated at 0.2–0.3 with several measuresof reading and phonological processing,suggesting modest relations with readingdeficits for both parvocellular (sustained) andmagnocellular (transient) visual processes. Thevariance in the word-reading measure that wasrelated to visual contrast thresholds waslargely shared with full-scale IQ, although IQand reading each also accounted for small(1%) but statistically significant amounts ofadditional independent variance in contrastthresholds. Word reading and nonword readingalso accounted for largely overlapping variancein contrast thresholds, but with a small (1%)amount of independent variance for nonwordreading. A behavioral-genetic analysis of themonozygotic and dizygotic twin correlationsindicated no significant genetic influence onindividual differences in contrast-thresholdlevels.     

Definitions of bullying: a comparison of terms used,and age and gender differences,in a fourteen-country international comparison

The study of school bullying has recently assumed an international dimension, but is faced with difficulties in finding terms in different languages to correspond to the English word bullying. To investigate the meanings given to various terms, a set of 25 stick-figure cartoons was devised, covering a range of social situations between peers. These cartoons were shown to samples of 8- and 14-year-old pupils (N = 1,245; n = 604 at 8 years, n = 641 at 14 years) in schools in 14 different countries, who judged whether various native terms cognate to bullying, applied to them. Terms from 10 Indo-European languages and three Asian languages were sampled. Multidimensional scaling showed that 8-year-olds primarily discriminated nonaggressive and aggressive cartoon situations; however, 14-year-olds discriminated fighting from physical bullying, and also discriminated verbal bullying and social exclusion. Gender differences were less appreciable than age differences. Based on the 14-year-old data, profiles of 67 words were then constructed across the five major cartoon clusters. The main types of terms used fell into six groups: bullying (of all kinds), verbal plus physical bullying, solely verbal bullying, social exclusion, solely physical aggression, and mainly physical aggression. The findings are discussed in relation to developmental trends in how children understand bullying, the inferences that can be made from cross-national studies, and the design of such studies.