Student performance and attitudes under formative evaluation by teacher,self and peer evaluators

This study investigated the effects of teacher, self and peer evaluation on preservice teachers’ performance, knowledge and attitudes. Earlier research by the same authors revealed that students made significant improvements in their lesson plans under all three of these conditions, but the teacher-evaluation improved significantly more than the two student-evaluation groups. Therefore, relevant training and practice in the evaluation process were added in this study. All three groups made significant improvements from draft to final version of their plans, and the differences between the teacher-evaluation group and the two student-evaluation groups were non-significant. The authors attribute the stronger performance of the student-evaluation groups to their training on the evaluation task. Students’ overall attitudes were significantly more positive toward teacher evaluation than toward peer evaluation, but did not differ significantly between these two groups and the self-evaluators. Several suggestions are discussed for further improvements in the training of self and peer evaluators.

Education reform, indigenous politics, and decolonisation in the Bolivia of Evo Morales

The paper explores the relationship between education reform and Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) for Bolivia's majority indigenous peoples, as this has evolved since the 1990s into the era of Evo Morales, Latin America's first indigenous president, elected in 2005. In order to bring out the significance of the new Education Bill awaiting approval in parliament since 2006, the paper examines in detail the recent historical relationship between education reform and IBE, the role of the country's indigenous social organisations in evolving this relationship, and the ideological underpinnings of the new education reform legislation.     

The development of habituation in the rat

In each of two studies, rats of different ages were given one prolonged open-field trial. Animals of 21 days and older displayed within-session activity decrements, while 15-day-olds failed to habituate. The abrupt transition from a pattern of nonhabituation to one of habituation to a novel environment parallels the development of forebrain cholinergic mechanisms during the third and fourth postnatal weeks. These experiments conform to the suggestion that the 2-week-old rat is behaviorally similar to the hippocampectomized adult.     

School-based mutual support groups for low-income parents

School-based mutual support groups (MSGs) are proposed to enhance the school involvement of parents from lower socioeconomic and ethnic minority backgrounds. We present a school-based MSG format, findings from a survey regarding parent interest, and discussion of a pilot demonstration implemented in three urban elementary schools.     

Make Your Own Engineers

Can ability and exceptional experience be accepted as substitutes for formal education in engineering? This article tells how one company developed a program of qualifications and examinations through which its more talented technicians can achieve full engineer status. The program gives the aspiring technician a continuing incentive for work towards an advanced status that is accepted without reservation by every degree engineer in the company.