Principal Leadership for Technology-enhanced Learning in Science

Reforms such as technology-enhanced instruction require principal leadership. Yet, many principals report that they need help to guide implementation of science and technology reforms. We identify strategies for helping principals provide this leadership. A two-phase design is employed. In the first phase we elicit principals’ varied ideas about the Technology-enhanced Learning in Science (TELS) curriculum materials being implemented by teachers in their schools, and in the second phase we engage principals in a leadership workshop designed based on the ideas they generated. Analysis uses an emergent coding scheme to categorize principals’ ideas, and a knowledge integration framework to capture the development of these ideas. The analysis suggests that principals frame their thinking about the implementation of TELS in terms of: principal leadership, curriculum, educational policy, teacher learning, student outcomes and financial resources. They seek to improve their own knowledge to support this reform. The principals organize their ideas around individual school goals and current political issues. Principals prefer professional development activities that engage them in reviewing curricula and student work with other principals. Based on the analysis, this study offers guidelines for creating learning opportunities that enhance principals’ leadership abilities in technology and science reform.     

Can Transfer Guides Improve the Uptake of Major Prerequisites? Evidence from Ohio’s Transfer and Articulation Policy Reform

Research in Higher Education - This study investigates the use of transfer guides to help students identify transferrable prerequisite credits for academic majors. Employing administrative data of...     

Explaining home education: Parents' accounts of their decisions to teach their own children

This paper analyzes the reasons that parents choose to teach their children at home. From data collected over 18 months of qualitative research in a state in the southeast, three broad explanations for choosing home schooling emerged. First, the parents believe that home education will strengthen their families. Second, many home-schooling parents (particularly those who are fundamentalist Christians) believe that schools teach values and beliefs that directly contradict those they want their children to learn. Third, many of the parents believe that only they, as parents, understand their children's unique educational needs well enough to effectively teach them. The failure of educational policy makers to consider the extraeducational issues raised by home-schooling parents is then discussed.     

Some grammatical rules are more difficult than others: The case of the generic interpretation of the masculine

In this paper we argue that the generic use of the masculine represents a grammatical rule that might be easy to learn but difficult to apply when understanding texts. This argument is substantiated by reviewing the relevant literature as well as the recent work conducted by the GREL Group (Gender Representation in Language) on the interaction between stereotypical and grammatical information in the construction of a representation of gender when reading role names. The studies presented in this paper show that the masculine form used as a generic to refer to persons of both sexes, or to persons of indefinite sex or whose sex is irrelevant, in gender marked languages is likely to be associated with its specific meaning (i.e., masculine refers only to men). This is true even though the generic nature of the masculine is a very common grammatical rule learnt at school. People may have learned this rule and may understand it, but may not readily apply it.     

“Circle of Friends”—An Exploration of Impact Over Time

This study investigated the impact of different aspects of the circle of friends (CoF) intervention. A naturalistic sample of 14 primary‐aged children with a range of special educational needs were involved, seven of whom were followed‐up a term later, to assess medium‐term impact. The whole‐class meeting was found to be effective in increasing the social inclusion of the focus children. However, with the exception of one child with an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), the weekly CoF meetings produced no measurable further improvements. Possible explanations for the pattern of findings and implications for educational psychology practice are discussed.     

Panoptic performativity and school inspection regimes: disciplinary mechanisms and life under special measures

This paper looks at Ofsted and particularly special measures regimes as part of a disciplinary mechanism. It examines issues such as school effectiveness theories, the increasing powers of Ofsted, and life under special measures and links it to performativity, discipline and surveillance using the metaphor of the panopticon. The change in teachers’ accountability is traced, along with the rise in the audit culture in teaching, and the increase in the power of Ofsted. The research context is a case study of a school over the period 1999–2003. During this time the school was placed into special measures and provided an opportunity to examine the effects of a key Government policy. The issues researched were Ofsted, special measures and the effects that these had on schools and teachers. The paper argues that a special measures regime is an example of panoptic discipline which I call panoptic performativity. The primary research is echoed by much of the existing research and first hand accounts of Ofsted inspections. I also locate special measures regimes in the context of Lyotard’s ‘performativity’, Foucault’s ‘normalization’, and the school effectiveness literature.     

Faculty Perspectives on Course and Teacher Evaluations

Student ratings of instruction have been the subject of numerous studies with much of the research focusing on the validity and reliability of the ratings themselves. Comparatively little empirical investigation has been devoted to the perceptions of the individuals who are the subjects of the ratings, that is, the faculty. The current study explored faculty perspectives on the usefulness of student ratings for formative and summative purposes, and the actual use of student ratings for summative purposes. Contrary to what might have been deduced from the anecdotal literature, the results of this study do not portray a great deal of resistance to student ratings in general or to their use for formative and summative evaluation. It was also found that student ratings are actually being used for the latter purpose. The usefulness of the student feedback was viewed differentially by the faculty, with feedback on their interaction with students seen as most useful, followed by feedback on their grading practices, global ratings of instructor and course, and finally structural issues of the course.     

Investigating the causes of reading comprehension failure: The comprehension-age match design

The reading-level (or reading-age) match design has become a widely-used tool for investigating the possible direction of the relation between particular skills and word reading ability: Cause or consequence. This paper outlines an analogous method for identifying candidate causes of reading comprehension failure, the `comprehension-age match design' and discusses the strengths and limitations of this design.