Autonomy and religious education: lessons from a six-year evaluation of an educational reform in an Israeli school network

This study investigated the tension that exists between promoting an educational agenda and practising an educational approach which emphasises autonomy within the framework of religious education. Our main thesis is that every educational deed contains a dialectical tension between endorsing an educational agenda and the promotion of autonomy. Moreover, this tension is not restricted to religious education. The intensity of such a conflict varies in accordance with the flexibility (or inflexibility) of the dogma, the conceptual cohesion of the educational agenda and the perceived importance of granting autonomy to students. The more cohesive and inflexible the educational agenda is, the greater the danger that autonomy will be discarded. The present research examined an educational reform implemented in the National-Religious School Network in Israel, which included the promotion of autonomy among principals, teachers and students. Conducted over a six-year period (2006–2012), the research employed both qualitative and quantitative methodologies and involved various stakeholders in the school network. The multifaceted picture that emerged of the relationship between educational autonomy and religious agenda is presented.     

数独世界冠军专栏

正三届数独世界冠军托马斯·辛德(Thomas Snyder)为《大学生》读者们专门设计数独题。辛德曾三次获得数独世界冠军,五次夺得美国数独冠军,他的专业是化学,本科毕业于加州理工学院,在哈佛大学取得博士学位,现是斯坦福大学生物工程学助理研究员。     

Situated Simulation-Based Learning Environment to Improve Proportional Reasoning in Nursing Students

Proportional reasoning is the basis for most medication calculation processes and is fundamental for high-quality care and patient safety. We designed a simulated Medication Mathematics (siMMath) environment to support proportional reasoning in transitioning via concreteness fading between two mediators. The first mediator is simulated nursing tools of medication preparation. The second is a ratio-table setup which is used as a goal representation, which enables one to spatially hold in place different quantities in their relative proportion. We conducted a two-part study with nursing students. Part 1 was a quasi-experimental pretest–intervention–posttest design assessing the effectiveness of learning, by evaluating four categories of medical calculation questionnaire items (solid medications, unit conversion, concentrations, infusion rates). We used the Noelting proportional reasoning test to evaluate the generalizability and abstraction of proportional reasoning. Part 1 included an experimental group (n = 96) learning with siMMath, and a comparison group (n = 73) learning with an equation-based lecture approach. Part 2 employed a case study design to characterize the learning process. The experimental group’s learning gains were significantly higher than the comparison group’s for the two most challenging categories of the medication calculation problems questionnaire, namely concentrations and infusion rates. Furthermore, the experimental group’s learning gains were significantly higher than the comparison group’s for formal operational reasoning on the Noelting test. Students who used a ratio-table setup scored significantly higher on the Noelting posttest questionnaire. Nursing students who learned with the siMMath environment overcame difficulties in proportional reasoning to the highest levels and extended this understanding to other contexts.     

Opportunities for Professional Learning in Mathematics Teacher Workgroup Conversations: Relationships to Instructional Expertise

Increasingly, instructional improvement efforts include teacher communities as part of their overall strategy, yet the relationship between teachers’ talk and professional learning remains underspecified. Using a discourse perspective on learning, this article compares opportunities to learn (OTLs) in the collaborative conversations of 3 mathematics teacher workgroups. We examined the differences in OTLs in 17 hr of videotaped meetings from 3 groups at different levels of instructional accomplishment in secondary mathematics. Using mixed methods, we uncovered differences in the groups’ interactions and found that OTLs were not equally distributed. Instead, teacher groups whose active participants demonstrated the greatest facility with ambitious instruction also had the richest conversational OTLs. We interpret this as an accumulated advantage developmental story: Because collaborative work in teaching involves problem posing and the articulation of practice, teachers’ conceptions get built into the framing and discussion of pedagogical problems. Accomplished teachers are thus positioned to learn more from talking with colleagues. This analysis contributes to understanding of how OTLs are constituted in teacher workgroups, with implications for making better use of teacher collaboration for professional learning.     

Observed peer victimization during early elementary school: continuity, growth, and relation to risk for child antisocial and depressive behavior

The rate at which 266 boys and girls ages 5 to 7 years old were victimized by peers was observed on multiple occasions in kindergarten and first grade. Individual differences in victimization were observed at kindergarten entry and in growth over the subsequent 2 years. Victimization increased for some children but decreased for others. Growth in victimization was reciprocally related to growth in teacher-reported antisocial and depressive behavior for boys. For girls, kindergarten victimization was related to growth in parent-reported antisocial behavior, teacher-reported depressive behavior to growth in victimization, and growth in victimization to parent-reported depression. At a short-term group level, antisocial behavior had a lagged suppressive effect on victimization for boys but a facilitating effect for girls.     

Implementing a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS): Collaboration Between School Psychologists and Administrators to Promote Systems-Level Change

Current educational reform mandates the implementation of school-based models for early identification and intervention, progress monitoring, and data-based assessment of student progress. This article provides an overview of interdisciplinary collaboration for systems-level consultation within a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) framework. The roles of school psychologists and school-based administrators are presented in relation to the implementation of MTSS practices within an implementation science model. The training and expertise of each discipline are highlighted related to respective aspects of implementation drivers (i.e., competency, organization, leadership). Functions of principals and school psychologists during team-based, problem-solving MTSS practices are described based on a problem-solving framework consistent with school-based consultation. Future directions for graduate training of school psychologists and principals and directions for consultation research are provided.