Complex patterns for kindergartners

Knowing what kinds of patterns are easy for children to recognize early in their kindergarten year, and what kinds are difficult, can be a useful guide for patterning instruction. Hence, the ability of children to recognize complex patterns early in their kindergarten year was assessed in two experiments. One experiment showed that the children were significantly less accurate on patterns made of progressively higher numbers or of letters that came progressively later in the alphabet than on patterns made of clock faces that showed increasing amounts of time or were made of rotating objects. There was an interaction between the type of element of which the pattern was composed and the pattern’s orientation. A second experiment showed that symmetric patterns were easier than growing patterns, and there were effects of orientation and the elements of which a pattern was composed, as well as interactions. This research indicates that instruction on clock faces and rotating objects should precede instruction on letters and numbers, and that symmetric patterns can also be easily understood.     

Predicting abuse-prone parental attitudes and discipline practices in a nationally representative sample

OBJECTIVE: According to sociological and ecological models of abuse, typically nonabusive parents could behave abusively towards their children under certain circumstances. The purpose of this study was to examine factors that place parents at risk of abusing their children by predicting parents' use of discipline practices and attitudes that may bias parents towards abusive behaviors, which we refer to as abuse-proneness. METHOD: A telephone interview was administered by the Gallup Organization to a nationally representative sample of 1,000 parents. Using a set of theoretically relevant risk factors, multiple regression was used to predict variations in parental attitudes (i.e., attitudes towards physical discipline and attitudes that devalue children) and parental discipline practices (i.e., physical discipline, nonphysical discipline, and verbal abuse). RESULTS: The findings confirmed the importance of examining elements of parental attitudes, history, personality characteristics, as well as religion and ideology in predicting abuse proneness. Child age also was an important predictor in all analyses except predicting parental attitudes that devalue children. The findings suggest also, however, that it may be unduly simplified to regard parents as somewhere on a continuum of nonpunitive to punitive disciplinarians. Social isolation was not a significant predictor in any of the analyses. CONCLUSIONS: Although many important theoretical predictors of abuse proneness were confirmed, many questions arise regarding the diversity of discipline practices that parents use, and the relevance of child's age and social isolation in predicting abuse proneness. Implications for practitioners and future research are discussed.     

Preservice teacher education

Conclusion Responsible educators find the need for continual renewal. The rapid advance of technology requires teachers learn new strategies and techniques for the productive use of these tools. The projects described above provided preservice faculty, students, and inservice educators with opportunities to learn about new technologies and to explore innovative uses of the technology. Opportunities to utilize distance education systems, such as the Iowa Communications Network, are numerous throughout the entire teacher preparation process. Iowa teacher educators have the opportunity to prepare their students to be capable classroom teachers who have the knowledge and skills to facilitate learning in an array of educational environments.     

Images of rate and operational understanding of the fundamental theorem of calculus

Conceptual analyses of Newton's use of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus and of one 7th-grader's understanding of distance traveled while accelerating suggest that concepts of rate of change and infinitesimal change are central to understanding the Fundamental Theorem. Analyses of a teaching experiment with 19 senior and graduate mathematics students suggest that students' difficulties with the Theorem stem from impoverished concepts of rate of change and from poorly-developed and poorly coordinated images of functional covariation and multiplicatively-constructed quantities.Research reported in this paper was supported by National Science Foundation Grants No. MDR 89-50311 and 90-96275, and by a grant of equipment from Apple Computer, Inc., Office of External Research. Any conclusions or recommendations stated here are those of the author and do not necessarity reflect official positions of NSF or Apple Computer. Also, I wish to thank Paul Cobb and Guershon Harel for their helpful reactions to an earlier draft of this article.     

School psychology and issues of sexual orientation: Attitudes,beliefs, and knowledge

The purpose of this study was to investigate school psychologists' attitudes toward lesbians and gay males. Aspects of school psychologists' knowledge, beliefs, current practices, and levels of preparedness related to issues of sexual orientation were also explored. A sample of 288 school psychologists (215 females and 73 males, mean age = 44 years) who were members of NASP participated in this study. Participants completed research packets containing a hypothetical case analogue vignette and three questionnaires querying their attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge about issues of sexual orientation. The results indicated school psychologists endorse relatively positive attitudes toward lesbians and gay males, report low‐to‐moderate levels of knowledge about lesbian and gay male issues, are willing to address lesbian and gay male issues on the job, are generally aware of how such issues impact schools, and are inadequately prepared to deal with lesbian and gay male issues. These findings are discussed in relation to their impact on the field and the implications for graduate training. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 41: 201–210, 2004.     

The assertive-aggressive distinction and the cross-cultural perspective

Are assertive and aggressive behaviors distinguishable from each other across different cultures? A limited amount of research, reviewed here, indicates that they are. It seems that, across cultures, assertive and aggresive behaviors are identifiable as different constructs and that they vary independently from each other. Other variables that mediate differences on assertiveness between cultures such as individualism versus collectivism and masculinity versus femininity are considered. Finally, recommendations regarding research methodology for the study of assertive behaviors across cultures are presented.     

Learning analytics: challenges and limitations

Learning analytic implementations are increasingly being included in learning management systems in higher education. We lay out some concerns with the way learning analytics – both data and algorithms – are often presented within an unproblematized Big Data discourse. We describe some potential problems with the often implicit assumptions about learning and learners – and indeed the tendency not to theorize learning explicitly – that underpin such implementations. Finally, we describe an attempt to devise our own analytics, grounded in a sociomaterial conception of learning. We use the data obtained to suggest that the relationships between learning and the digital traces left by participants in online learning are far from trivial, and that any analytics that relies on these as proxies for learning tends towards a behaviorist evaluation of learning processes.     

The Narrative Approach in Art Education: A Case Study

This case study takes as its focus the work of the Fine Art graduate Dumile Johannes Ndita, who visually narrates his experience of life in contemporary South Africa. The artist graduated from Border Technikon, East London, an institution which teaches the narrative approach. It is the aim of the authors to illustrate how this method enables students to transfer lived experience into image. The three voices in this paper come from different backgrounds. The artist will explain the meaning of his drawings, the teacher will give background information on the community and culture in which he himself and the artist operate and outline teaching methods. Students taught by this method create work that has impact and meaning beyond the confines of the art school. To argue this point, the theoretician will add her voice and reflect on meta‐narratives presented in Dumile Johannes Ndita's drawings. Intricate inter‐textual patterns, shared and interconnecting institutional narratives tie our individual voices to those of the wider community and culture of present‐day South Africa and beyond.     

Introduction

This paper conceptualises think tanks and edu-businesses in relation to education policy work in the Australian polity. It situates the enhanced influence of both in relation to the restructured state, which has lost some key capacities in relation to the generation of research and ideas for policy. This restructuring has been strongly influenced by the techniques of new public management, the auditing of education through national and international testing and new forms of network governance, which have opened up spaces for the increased influence of think tanks and edu-businesses across the policy cycle in education. We see here the workings of a ‘polycentric state’. The paper also considers changing concepts of ‘evidence’, ‘expertise’ and ‘influence’ in respect of the involvement of think tanks and edu-businesses in circulating policy ideas and affecting policy development in Australian education. This introduction to this special issue of The Australian Educational Researcher serves as a provocation to further research on this new policy scenario.