Promoting field trip confidence: teachers providing insights for pre-service education

Pre-service teachers need experiences in practical matters as a part of field trip preparations programmes. For 14 years, a private, non-profit university in Turkey has involved pre-service teachers in field trip planning, implementation and evaluation. A programme assessment was conducted through a case study to examine the long-term effects of pre-service field trip preparation. Through a survey created for the study, teachers shared their field trip activities and reported confidence levels. The survey was administered to 44 alumni of the biology education department with a response rate of 72.7% (N = 32). This study will help researchers learn which programme areas need to be improved and can serve as a model for other institutions interested in evaluating field trip preparation programmes.     

Lecture recording system in anatomy

The literature reports that using Learning Recording Systems (LRS) is usually well received by students but that the pedagogical value of LRS in academic settings remains somewhat unclear. The primary aim of the current study is to document students' perceptions, actual pattern of usage, and impact of use of LRS on students' grade in a dental gross and neuroanatomy course. Other aims are to determine if students' learning preference correlated with final grades and to see if other factors like gender, age, overall academic score on the Dental Aptitude Test (DAT), lecture levels of difficulty, type of lecture, category of lecture, or teaching faculty could explain the impact, if any, of the use of LRS on the course final grade. No significant correlation was detected between the final grades and the variables studied except for a significant but modest correlation between final grades and the number of times the students accessed the lecture recordings (r=0.33 with P=0.01). Also, after adjusting for gender, age, learning style, and academic DAT, a significant interaction between auditory and average usage time was found for final grade (P=0.03). Students who classified themselves as auditory and who used the LRS on average for fewer than 10 minutes per access, scored an average final grade of 16.43 % higher than the nonauditory students using the LRS for the same amount of time per access. Based on these findings, implications for teaching are discussed and recommendations for use of LRS are proposed. Anat Sci Educ 6: 376–384. © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.     

Urban high school students’ perspectives about sexual health decision-making: the role of school culture and identity

Studies across fields such as science education, health education, health behavior, and curriculum studies identify a persistent gap between the aims of the school curriculum and its impact on students’ thinking and acting about the real-life decisions that affect their lives. The present study presents a different story from this predominant pattern in the literature. Through a year-long ethnographic investigation of a health-focused New York City public high school’s HIV/AIDS and sex education program, this study illustrates a case in which 20 12th grade students respond positively to their education on these topics and largely assert that school significantly influences their perspectives and actions related to sexual health decision-making. This paper presents the following interpretation of this positive influence: school culture influences these students’ perspectives and decisions around sexual health by contributing to the formation of students’ identities. This paper further shows how science learning in particular becomes important for students in relation to decision-making when it is linked to issues of identity. These findings suggest that, in addition to attending to the design of classroom curriculum, HIV/AIDS and sex education researchers and curriculum developers (as well as those in science education focusing on other controversial science topics) might also explore the kinds of relational and school-wide factors that potentially influence students’ identities, decisions, and responses to school learning.     

Halting the Summer Achievement Slide: A Randomized Field Trial of the KindergARTen Summer Camp

In this randomized field trial of KindergARTen Camp, a 6-week summer enrichment program in literacy and the fine arts, we analyzed the summer learning outcomes of 93 treatment and 35 control students from high-poverty schools in Baltimore, Maryland. This experiment offers evidence concerning the causal effect of the program on 5 measures of students' literacy achievement. We found treatment effects during the summer months that were of both practical and statistical significance on the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) and the Word List A assessments. In addition, results from surveys of KindergARTen Camp students, parents, and teachers revealed strong satisfaction with the program. We conclude by discussing the contextual factors that may have contributed to these results.     

A review of models of vertical,leg, and knee stiffness in adults for running,jumping or hopping tasks

Abstract

The ‘stiffness’ concept originates from Hooke's law which states that the force required to deform an object is related to a spring constant and the distance that object is deformed. Research into stiffness in the human body is undergoing unprecedented popularity; possibly because stiffness has been associated with sporting performance and some lower limb injuries. However, some inconsistencies surrounding stiffness measurement exists bringing into question the integrity of some research related to stiffness. The aim of this study was to review literature which describes how vertical, leg and knee stiffness has been measured in adult populations while running, jumping or hopping. A search of the entire MEDLINE, PubMed and SPORTDiscus databases and an iterative reference check was performed. Sixty-seven articles were retrieved; 21 measured vertical stiffness, 51 measured leg stiffness, and 22 measured knee stiffness. Thus, some studies measured several ‘types’ of stiffness. Vertical stiffness was typically the quotient of ground reaction force and centre of mass displacement. For leg stiffness it was and change in leg length, and for the knee it was the quotient of knee joint moments and change in joint angle. Sample size issues and measurement techniques were identified as limitations to current research.     

The Effect of Teachers' Memory‐Relevant Language on Children's Strategy Use and Knowledge

Building on longitudinal findings of linkages between aspects of teachers' language during instruction and children's use of mnemonic strategies, this investigation was designed to examine experimentally the impact of instruction on memory development. First and second graders (N = 54, M_age = 7 years) were randomly assigned to a science unit that varied only in teachers' use of memory‐relevant language. Pretest, posttest, and 1‐month follow‐up assessments revealed that although all participating children learned new information as a result of instruction, those exposed to memory rich teaching exhibited greater levels of strategic knowledge and engaged in more sophisticated strategy use in a memory task involving instructional content than did students exposed to low memory instruction. The findings provide support for a causal linkage between teachers' language and children's strategic efforts.     

Islands Apart: Leadership Studies in Two Island States

School leadership is situated within a context of social and political factors that work to distribute power while also holding it in check. There are connections between how societal political structures facilitate democratic participation and the operation of schools. Educational leadership straddles the interface between proactive agency and the politics of social control. This tension between holding and using authority, yet acceding to political and social practice, is one which many school leaders face.

Research studies conducted in two island nations, Jersey (Channel Islands) and Tonga (Pacific Islands), in different hemispheres of the world, illustrated contrasting forms of educational service and different challenges for school principals. As island communities, the context was clearly definable and provided a set of variables that were manifested through sector processes. The principals held pivotal roles that were molded by the contextual factors which shaped the delivery of educational practice. School principals in Jersey and Tonga illustrated how leadership is complicated if the purposes leadership should serve are unclear or contested (O'Brien, Murphy, and Draper 2003).     

Living with imperfect comparisons: The challenges and limitations of comparative paralympic sport policy research

In this article, the authors explores the challenges and limitations of conducting cross-comparative management/policy research in the Paralympic sporting domain. The comparative sport policy debate in able-bodied sport has emerged, in part, due to the increasing complexity, uncertainty, and competitive nature of high performance sport environments and a desire to understand why some countries are more successful than others at international sporting competition. The same issues and questions have also emerged within the Paralympic context. As a precursor to establishing a research agenda in this area, however, it was deemed important to begin to address the epistemological, methodological, and practical issues in comparative sport research. The analysis draws upon the broader sociological literature and examples from the Paralympic sporting context to identify and discuss the challenges and limitations of the comparative approach as well as recommendations for mitigating against them.