UNDERSTANDING THE CHILD'S PERSPECTIVE: PRESERVICE TEACHERS SEE THE CLASSROOM WITH NEW EYES

It is difficult for teacher candidates (university preservice teachers) to accept and use an innovative teaching method or strategy if they do not have an opportunity to actually engage in using the method or see it modeled in an early childhood classroom. Teacher candidates used Project Approach to learn about multicultural education. Their own work demonstrated the value of using Project Approach and helped to deepen their belief in the importance of multicultural education and cultural perspectives. In addition, the candidates themselves became engaged learners. They took responsibility for their own learning and demonstrated that teaching and learning for themselves and for children can be meaningful when using constructivist theory.     

Increasing MSW Students’ Information Competencies through Online Tutorials,Application Exercises,and Course Assignments

Increasing MSW students’ information competencies was achieved through a 2-year project in which online video tutorials, in-class exercises, and course assignments were created and integrated into two required foundation courses. Tutorials demonstrated basic and advanced search techniques, online databases, and online course-specific research guides. Tutorials were viewed during and outside of class. In-class exercises and course assignments enabled students to immediately apply what they had learned. Results indicate a significant increase in the adequacy of students’ search for online information and ability to critically examine sources and evidence. Implications for social work education are discussed.     

Student Interpretations of Phylogenetic Trees in an Introductory Biology Course

Phylogenetic trees are widely used visual representations in the biological sciences and the most important visual representations in evolutionary biology. Therefore, phylogenetic trees have also become an important component of biology education. We sought to characterize reasoning used by introductory biology students in interpreting taxa relatedness on phylogenetic trees, to measure the prevalence of correct taxa-relatedness interpretations, and to determine how student reasoning and correctness change in response to instruction and over time. Counting synapomorphies and nodes between taxa were the most common forms of incorrect reasoning, which presents a pedagogical dilemma concerning labeled synapomorphies on phylogenetic trees. Students also independently generated an alternative form of correct reasoning using monophyletic groups, the use of which decreased in popularity over time. Approximately half of all students were able to correctly interpret taxa relatedness on phylogenetic trees, and many memorized correct reasoning without understanding its application. Broad initial instruction that allowed students to generate inferences on their own contributed very little to phylogenetic tree understanding, while targeted instruction on evolutionary relationships improved understanding to some extent. Phylogenetic trees, which can directly affect student understanding of evolution, appear to offer introductory biology instructors a formidable pedagogical challenge.     

Helping counts: predicting children's intentions to disclose being bullied to teachers from prior social support experiences

Despite possible negative effects, many children do not tell their teachers when they have been bullied. This study examined junior school pupils' (N = 294) reports of instrumental, emotional and validation social support received after disclosing being bullied to teachers, and associations with intentions to disclose in the future. Overall, participants reported receiving modest to high levels of social support. The three social support variables accounted for a significant proportion (16.3%) of the variance in intentions to disclose. Each of them also emerged as significant non unique predictors (i.e. not controlling for their shared variance), and validation social support did so even after controlling for the influence of the other two types. These effects were stronger for boys than for girls, and some varied by age. Findings are discussed in terms of outcome‐ expectancy theory and practical implications.     

学术简讯

不同国家依据市场准则对高等教育进行调整,这些调整导致了新的社会阶层——学生消费者的产生,从而影响了高等教育的性质、目的和价值观。政府支持学生消费者权利的重要尝试体现在高校与学生的合约中,这些合约规定了学生期望获得服务的水平以及他们为之应尽的义务。作者运用布迪厄的理论框架分析了高校的组织特征和运作机制,关注其对学生学习过程和教师学术行为的影响。高校为提高市场运作而提供了很多生产和服务信息,通过研究这些信息,作者发现高校常常营造一种特殊形象向即将升学的学生进行宣传,这种形象同时也调整着在校生的预期。这说明信息并非中立,而往往能构建起学生体验的独特概念,影响着学生的身份并强化了学生作为消费者的地位。就此而言,我们认为在变革了的社会经济政治环境中,高等教育作为公共产品与私人产品的平衡被重建了。在学术与政策层面,对消费主义的关注为大学注入了外在驱动的实用主义目标,从而强化了当前将高等教育看作私人投资的观念。     

“It’s not them,it’s me”: competing discourses in one aspiring teacher’s talk

In this paper, we deploy M.M. Bakhtin’s notions about how language works to understand aspiring teachers’ struggles about the intersecting roles race, class, gender, language background, and sexual orientation play in students’ school lives and learning. Through life-history interviews and document analysis, we investigated the authoritative and internally persuasive discourses one aspiring teacher brought with her and took from a 15-week long course on a predominantly White Midwestern public university campus. Ideas she encountered in the course and its required tutoring component challenged her thinking about how various facets of people’s lives (such as those we list above) and the contexts in which they live, work and are schooled, affect how they are perceived, what they know, and can do.     

STUDENTS’ ATTRIBUTIONS OF ACADEMIC SUCCESS

This study investigates higher education students’ own attributions of success using free responses, exploring in particular the relative importance of ability and effort‐related attributions on the one hand and luck‐related attributions on the other. A sample of 150 first year polytechnic degree course students from both Arts and Science faculties was investigated. A rank order of 12 categories was established: study habits, lecture‐content, lecturer, social, interest, motivation, ability, domestic security, peers, luck, financial security, health. Among study habits a rank order of 7 categories was also established: reading skills, examination technique, time, note‐taking skills, organisation of work, revision, place. Knowledge of, and practice in, study habits, is clearly important, and other implications are the need for further awareness of the lecturer‐student relationship and more research into the consistency of student attributions across faculties beyond the first year.     

Digging behavior in 12 taxa of muroid rodents

The digging behavior of 12 taxa of muroid rodents was observed on sand and peat substrates. Overall, significantly more digging was performed on peat than on sand. The percentage of animals of each taxon that dug was found to be positively correlated with both the duration of digging and the number of bouts of digging and negatively correlated with latency to dig. Differences across taxa in the duration of digging were correlated with field observations of the nesting behavior of these taxa; taxa that frequently utilize subterranean nest sites exhibited more digging than those that do not. The motor patterns used in digging are described;Mus musculus was the only species that appeared to exhibit a unique digging pattern. Digging behavior appears to be a pattern that is readily elicited in the laboratory, related to behavior in the field, and appropriated for further laboratory study.