The Development of Multiple Domains of Child and Adolescent Self-Concept: A Cohort Sequential Longitudinal Design

The development of child and adolescent self-concept was examined as a function of the self-concept domain, social/developmental/educational transitions, and gender. In two overlapping age cohorts of public school students (Ns = 936 and 984), five dimensions of self-concept were evaluated every 6 months in a manner that spanned grades 3 through 11 (representing the elementary, middle, and high school years). Domains of self-concept included academic competence, physical appearance, behavioral conduct, social acceptance, and sports competence. Structural equation modeling addressed questions about the stability of individual differences over time. Multilevel modeling addressed questions about mean-level changes in self-concept over time. Significant effects emerged with regard to gender, age, dimension of self-concept, and educational transition.     

Physical sciences and the school curriculum

The difficulties encountered by pupils and students when learning physics can often be explained by the differences that exist between their spontaneous ideas about the real world and how the scientist models this reality. How can children and adolescents be helped to better understand scientific ideas that could be of use to them? What is the role in learning and in teaching of: peer group interaction, different forms of representation (pictorial analogies, schemes, graphs), intelligent tutoring systems; etc? In this special edition there are a number of pieces of recent research of interest both to the researcher and to educator concerned with the development of knowledge and the teaching of the experimental sciences.     

Professionalism and Politics in High School Teaching Reform

This paper takes the case of math educationreform in California to analyze problems andprospects for reforming high school teaching.The experiences of three math departmentsreveal the profoundly political nature of highschool mathematics reform. First, changing mathinstruction means rejecting established normsfor professional practice in mathematics and inteaching more generally. I argue that radicalteaching reform depends upon professionalismand sustained commitment of teachercommunities, as well as on the knowledge ofreformed practice they generate. Second,successful reform engages politics beyond theteaching profession, as the California ``mathwars' attest. After describing the course oforganized opposition to a reformed high schoolmath department, I examine the rhetoric andvested interests that figure prominently inparents' mobilization against mathematicsreform. The analysis brings into focus the dualproblems for high school teaching reform ofchanging professional practice and engagingpolitical opposition to educational change. Thestunning success of anti-reform politics inAmerican mathematics education highlights theimportance of activist professionalism inteaching.     

To cheat or not to cheat? A trial of the JISC Plagiarism Detection Service with biological sciences students

In the UK, there is great concern about the perceived increase in plagiarized work being submitted by students in higher educations. Although there is much debate, the reasons for the perceived change are not completely clear. Here we present the results of a 2‐year trial of the JISC Plagiarism Detection Service (PDS) involving hundreds of students. The effectiveness of the service in detecting plagiarized material and in acting as a deterrent are discussed. Although an increased number of cases of plagiarism were detected during the trial, the relative contributions of the electronic detection system and increased staff awareness remain unknown.     

Resilience in the AESA During the Last Decades of the Twentieth Century

I belonged to several professional organizations during my career. The AESA was the one in which I engaged most deeply with people from other disciplines than my own. Through those discussions, my ideas about education developed most fully. I thank you all for that. This article explains some of what I, and others, experienced during the years of conservative reaction to both the Civil Rights Movement and the Second Women's Movement following the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan as President of the United States. I hope my ideas may prove useful to you, today.     

An Analysis of the Core Cognitive Curriculum in Early Intervention Programs

This study investigates the existence of an identifiable core cognitive curriculum operative in early intervention programs—its substance and its suitability for preschoolers with developmental disabilities. As an initial approach, the authors present preliminary data on three specific questions: Have early intervention programs adopted a common set of developmental inventories for assessing children? Do the frequently used inventories share a common set of items? Are the common items adopted as Individual Educational Program (IEP) objectives? By polling members of the Division of Early Childhood (DEC), Council for Exceptional Children for their preferred assessment instruments, then listing the common items from their top choices, and, finally, comparing the listed items with written IEP objectives, the authors identified elements of a core curriculum in current use by many early intervention programs. Within the cognitive domain, it was found that at least one out of five items common to the developmental inventories—shapes, colors, quantities, sizes, and puzzles (includes formboards)—were listed as objectives on 75% of the IEPs collected from programs located in the same states as DEC respondents. The appropriateness of these "preacademic" instructional targets in the context of developmental "readiness" is questioned.     

Competency Maps: an Effective Model to Integrate Professional Competencies Across a STEM Curriculum

Curricula designed in the context of the European Higher Education Area need to be based on both domain-specific and professional competencies. Whereas universities have had extensive experience in developing students’ domain-specific competencies, fostering professional competencies poses a new challenge we need to face. This paper presents a model to globally develop professional competencies in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) degree program, and assesses the results of its implementation after 4 years. The model is based on the use of competency maps, in which each competency is defined in terms of competency units. Each competency unit is described by a set of expected learning outcomes at three domain levels. This model allows careful analysis, revision, and iteration for an effective integration of professional competencies in domain-specific subjects. A global competency map is also designed, including all the professional competency learning outcomes to be achieved throughout the degree. This map becomes a useful tool for curriculum designers and coordinators. The results were obtained from four sources: (1) students’ grades (classes graduated from 2013 to 2016, the first 4 years of the new Bachelor’s Degree in Informatics Engineering at the Barcelona School of Informatics); (2) students’ surveys (answered by students when they finished the degree); (3) the government employment survey, where former students evaluate their satisfaction of the received training in the light of their work experience; and (4) the Everis Foundation University-Enterprise Ranking, answered by over 2000 employers evaluating their satisfaction regarding their employees’ university training, where the Barcelona School of Informatics scores first in the national ranking. The results show that competency maps are a good tool for developing professional competencies in a STEM degree.     

A Domain-Referenced Approach to Diagnostic Testing Using Generalizability Theory

This paper describes a four-step approach to constructing diagnostic test profiles that provide precise but practical information on students' instructional needs. The approach is based on the specification and analysis of a domain and uses generalizability theory to determine which skills within the domain need to be assessed to diagnose gaps in students' skills and to estimate score profiles. A 64-item test of pronoun use was constructed to represent 32 categories of usage defined by different combinations of five factors in the domain. Generalizability analyses were conducted to determine the optimal number of categories to be included in students' profiles and the number of items needed for each category, and to produce univariate and multivariate estimates of students' universe scores. Multivariate profiles of universe scores were the most accurate and differed substantially from observed score and univariate universe score profiles.