‘Maintaining competence’: a grounded theory typology of approaches to teaching in higher education

This paper presents a contingency theory of approaches to teaching in Higher Education adopted by university academics who teach heterogeneous student cohorts within a changing university context. The study is located within the substantive context of academics within Australian universities who teach within the broad field of management studies. Orthodox grounded theory is employed to generate a contingency typology comprised of four separate teaching approaches: Distancing, Adapting, Clarifying, and Relating. The model demonstrates how academics utilise a variety of teaching approaches to address their ‘main concern’, namely maintaining their professional competence within the context of a rapidly changing university landscape and significantly heterogeneous groups of students. We have labelled this process ‘Maintaining Competence’. This model stresses the importance of the twin forces of structure and individual agency in determining teaching approaches. It emphasises the value of analysing what academics actually do in the classroom situation, rather than concentrating on normative assumptions of what they should do in terms of best practice.     

Steps to evaluating a statewide internship program: Model,trainee, and student outcomes

Internships play a pivotal role in the future of school psychology, and internship training is influenced by disciplinary trends including (a) an increased focus on accountability and demonstrating the positive impact of trainees' practices on student outcomes and (b) growing emphasis on scientifically based and empirically based practice. These influences also include greater sophistication in decision making as well as different ways of outcome‐focused decision making. System‐wide approaches such as Positive Behavior Support (PBS) and response to intervention (RTI) require high training demands to develop intervention‐related decision and accountability skills. Programmatically, accountability systems to meet the training needs of intervention services require scaling up. This article describes a multiyear developmental project bringing diverse universities together to institutionalize a statewide system of accountability. We share data from 3 years (N of interns = 278) and suggest recommendations for outcome‐oriented evaluation for other universities, agencies, school psychological services delivery units, or states. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Smiling Faces and Colored Spaces: The Experiences of Faculty of Color Pursing tenure in the Academy

Through a comprehensive literature review, this article identifies and discusses barriers to recruitment and retention of faculty of color. Marginalization, racism and sexism manifested as unintended barriers are presented as a few of the barriers faculty of color face in successfully navigating the tenure process. Informed by this literature review, we conducted a self-study that presents the experiences of four faculty of color navigating the tenure process in a predominately white Research Institution. The purpose of this study was to share the experiences of three junior faculty of color as they navigate the tenure process, and one tenured faculty of color who is informally mentoring them through the process. This article highlights the findings of one component of a broader study: focus group discussions about how diversity efforts and activities are subsequently evidenced in teaching, research agendas and service. Four themes are presented: Academic Identity; Confronting Diversity, Mentoring, and Safe Spaces. A discussion of the consequences of these findings on faculty of color retention and recruitment is included. Recommendations are made to other predominately white institutions on how to address issues facing faculty of color.     

Real books vs reading schemes: a new perspective from instructional psychology

A fiercely contested debate in teaching reading concerns the respective roles and merits of reading schemes and real books. Underpinning the controversy are different philosophies and beliefs about how children learn to read. However, to some extent debates have largely been rhetoric‐driven, rather than research‐driven. This article provides a theoretical perspective derived from instructional psychology and explores the assumptions that have been made about the use of real books and reading schemes, which have tended to polarise arguments about their respective strengths and limitations. It analyses the structures of adult literature, children’s real books, and reading schemes, and examines the demands that they make on children’s sight vocabulary and phonic skills. The critical high‐frequency words and grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs) are identified that will enable children to read the majority of phonically regular and irregular words that they encounter which, perhaps surprisingly, occur more often in real books than structured reading schemes. Learning additional sight words or GPCs is of limited value due to their relatively low occurrence in written English and, thus, potentially minimal impact on children’s reading. Finally, the implications of this research for teaching reading are considered, particularly the complementary roles of real books and teaching methods derived from instructional psychology. In the past they have been viewed as diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive.     

Students’ perceptions of undertaking workplace tasks within a foundation degree – health and social care

Foundation degrees (FDs) involve the fusion of academic and vocational paths in higher education (HE) qualifications; the challenge for academics and employers is the credible assessment of the student’s workplace learning. Focusing to the workplace enables participants to learn from their daily routines encountered at work. The challenge is to help them demonstrate learning from experience within the workplace, by developing their ability to think at a higher level. A vital aspect of using workplace learning in partnership with employers/sector skills councils is that the learning is valid to the role. In response, the programme development group, which was composed of academics and employers, felt that workplace tasks (WPTs) would allow students to demonstrate role development through experiential learning at work. Therefore, this article uses a pilot case study (n = 16), using a focus group methodology, to discuss the assessment of the WPTs within a FD and the students’ perception towards this form of assessment. Findings show that participants value WPTs, they motivate participants to learn and improve their self‐esteem, however, some groups need specialist skills training where workplace competence is required.     

Genetic Determinism in the Genetics Curriculum

Twenty-first-century biology rejects genetic determinism, yet an exaggerated view of the power of genes in the making of bodies and minds remains a problem. What accounts for such tenacity? This article reports an exploratory study suggesting that the common reliance on Mendelian examples and concepts at the start of teaching in basic genetics is an eliminable source of support for determinism. Undergraduate students who attended a standard ‘Mendelian approach’ university course in introductory genetics on average showed no change in their determinist views about genes. By contrast, students who attended an alternative course which, inspired by the work of a critic of early Mendelism, W. F. R. Weldon (1860–1906), replaced an emphasis on Mendel’s peas with an emphasis on developmental contexts and their role in bringing about phenotypic variability, were less determinist about genes by the end of teaching. Improvements in both the new Weldonian curriculum and the study design are in view for the future.     

Effect of Content Knowledge on Angoff‐Style Standard Setting Judgments

Evidence to support the credibility of standard setting procedures is a critical part of the validity argument for decisions made based on tests that are used for classification. One area in which there has been limited empirical study is the impact of standard setting judge selection on the resulting cut score. One important issue related to judge selection is whether the extent of judges’ content knowledge impacts their perceptions of the probability that a minimally proficient examinee will answer the item correctly. The present article reports on two studies conducted in the context of Angoff‐style standard setting for medical licensing examinations. In the first study, content experts answered and subsequently provided Angoff judgments for a set of test items. After accounting for perceived item difficulty and judge stringency, answering the item correctly accounted for a significant (and potentially important) impact on expert judgment. The second study examined whether providing the correct answer to the judges would result in a similar effect to that associated with knowing the correct answer. The results suggested that providing the correct answer did not impact judgments. These results have important implications for the validity of standard setting outcomes in general and on judge recruitment specifically.     

Chinese‐American parents’ perspectives about using the Internet to access information for children with special needs

As the Internet contains large amounts of health‐ and education‐related information, it provides a potentially efficient and affordable format for directly reaching a large number of families with evidence‐based health‐ and education‐related information for their children with disabilities. Little is known, however, about Internet information‐seeking patterns for parents from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. This study explored Chinese‐American parents’ perspectives about using the Internet to access health‐ and education‐related information for their children with disabilities. A survey was developed and conducted through a large community service centre in the western USA. Fifty‐two parents completed the survey; results suggest that challenges and barriers within the context of the Internet can limit parents from accessing meaningful and high‐quality information. Implications for research and practice are provided.     

Economic,population and political determinants of the 2014 World Cup match results

In this study, it is found that economic, population and political variables are significant determinants of the goal differences in the 2014 football World Cup matches after taking into consideration the football strength of the two teams on the field. It is shown that the strength difference of the two teams had a strong positive non-linear impact on goal differences and that the goal difference increased with strength but at a decreasing rate. Non-linear impact was also evident with regard to the political conditions of one country relative to the rival country. Furthermore, per capita income and population have a positive linear impact. A number of dummy variables were also found to have a non-significant impact on the game results. It was noted that only the variable that relates to the continent of the football teams had a positive impact.