Learning contexts,black Cultural Ethos,and the science achievement of African American students in an urban middle school

As other countries vigorously promote rapid advancement in science, optimizing the participation of all students in the United States in science is imperative. This study focused on African American students and examined their science achievement in relation to Black Cultural Ethos (BCE), a construct rooted in psychology. Via qualitative and quantitative data obtained from a non‐random control group design, the study addressed three questions: (1) With respect to BCE, what characterizes the natural instructional contexts of two middle school science teachers? (2) What characterizes the achievement of African American students in contexts that incorporate BCE and contexts that do not? (3) What achievement patterns, if any, exist in BCE and non‐BCE instructional contexts? With regard to the natural contexts, the teachers did not incorporate BCE even when the opportunities were available to do so. Within these non‐BCE contexts, the group's mean scores on the study‐specific test that aligned with instruction decreased from pretest to posttest with approximately one‐third of the students' scores improving. When a context was altered with a moderate effect size of 0.47 to include BCE, the group's mean scores on the aforementioned test increased from pretest to posttest with two‐thirds of the students' scores improving. An illustration of the interplay between BCE and context and a consideration of the interplay as a mediating factor in research involving African American students encapsulate the significance and implications of the study's findings. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 665–683, 2008     

Productivity in educational psychology journals from 2003 to 2008

Productivity of individuals and institutions in educational psychology journals has been previously examined in three separate studies (Hsieh et al. [Hsieh, P., Acee, T., Chung, W., Hsieh, Y., Kim, H., Thomas, G. D., et al. (2004). An alternate look at educational psychologist’s productivity from 1991 to 2002. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 29, 333–343]; Smith et al. [Smith, M. C., Locke, S. G., Boisse, S. J., Gallagher, P. A., Krengel, L. E., & Kuczek, J. E., et al. (1998). Productivity of educational psychologists in educational psychology journals, 1991–1996. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 23, 173–181]; [Smith, M. C., Plant, M., Carney, R. N., Arnold, C. S., Jackson, A., Johnson, L. S., et al. (2003). Further productivity of educational psychologists in educational psychology journals, 1997–2001. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 28, 422–430.]) spanning the years 1991–2002. The present study updates this literature by examining the same five journals: Cognition and Instruction, Contemporary Educational Psychology, the Educational Psychologist, Educational Psychology Review, and the Journal of Educational Psychology from 2003 to 2008. Individual productivity was calculated by the number of (a) articles published and (b) points based on a formula that considers author position in relation to the number of authors. The University of Maryland and Richard E. Mayer maintained their positions as the top research institution and author, respectively. There was also growth in collaboration as well as international involvement as measured by number of authors.     

Beyond relevance and recall: testing new user‐centred measures of database performance

Background: Measures of the effectiveness of databases have traditionally focused on recall, precision, with some debate on how relevance can be assessed, and by whom. New measures of database performance are required when users are familiar with search engines, and expect full text availability. Objectives: This research ascertained which of four bibliographic databases (bni, cinahl, medline and embase ) could be considered most useful to nursing and midwifery students searching for information for an undergraduate dissertation. Methods: Searches on title were performed for dissertation topics supplied by nursing students (n = 9), who made the relevance judgements. Measures of recall and precision were combined with additional factors to provide measures of effectiveness, while efficiency combined measures of novelty and originality and accessibility combined measures for availability and retrievability, based on obtainability. Results: There were significant differences among the databases in precision, originality and availability, but other differences were not significant (Friedman test). Odds ratio tests indicated that bni , followed by cinahl were the most effective, cinahl the most efficient, and bni the most accessible. Conclusions: The methodology could help library services in purchase decisions as the measure for accessibility, and odds ratio testing helped to differentiate database performance.