Engaging Undergraduate Students in Research Activities: Are Research Universities Doing a Better Job?

Engaging undergraduate students in research activities has been advocated as an innovative strategy to improve American higher education (Boyer Commission, Reinventing undergraduate education: A blueprint for America’s research universities. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Stony Brook, NY, 1998). This study compared the frequency of undergraduate student research experiences at different types of colleges and universities from the early 1990s through 2004. The results indicate that the frequency of student research experiences increased since 1998 at all types of institutions and that students at research universities were not more likely than their counterparts elsewhere to have such experiences. The findings were consistent across major fields. To live up to their claims, research universities must find additional ways to involve undergraduates in research with faculty members. Shouping Hu is Associate Professor of Higher Education at Florida State University. He received his M.S. degree in Economics and Ph.D. in Higher Education from Indiana University. His research and scholarship focuses on postsecondary access and persistence, college student experience, and higher education finance. George D. Kuh is Chancellor’s Professor of Higher Education and Director of the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University Bloomington. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Iowa. His research focuses on the quality of undergraduate education. Joy Gaston Gayles is Associate Professor in Adult and Higher Education at North Carolina State University. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Shaw University, Master’s degree from Auburn University, and Ph.D. in Higher Education from The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on college student learning and development.     

The Stability of Rater Severity in Large-Scale Assessment Programs

The purpose of this study was to investigate the stability of rater severity over an extended rating period. Multifaceted Rasch analysis was applied to ratings of 16 raters on writing performances of 8, 285 elementary school students. Each performance was rated by two trained raters over a period of seven rating days. Performances rated on the first day were re-rated at the end of the rating period. Statistically significant differences between raters were found within each day and in all days combined. Daily estimates of the relative severity of individual raters were found to differ significantly from single, on-average estimates for the whole rating period. For 10 raters, severity estimates on the last day were significantly different from estimates on the first day. These fndings cast doubt on the practice of using a single calibration of rater severity as the basis for adjustment of person measures.     

Supporting mathematics vocabulary instruction through mathematics curricula

Abstract

This study examines four of the most commonly-used core mathematics curricula in the USA for evidence of support for research-based instructional strategies for mathematics vocabulary in first and second grade. Content analyses of the teachers’ editions of two units for each grade level were analyzed per curriculum (n?=?16). Statistically significant differences among curricula were found for number of target words (range 6–51 per unit), level of difficulty of terms (basic to technical), and number of support strategies per word. Multiple means of representation varied in terms of verbal and non-verbal strategies for target terms. These differences indicate children are experiencing substantially different mathematics vocabulary learning opportunities, which may impact later mathematics achievement. Implications for practice, curriculum development, and future research are addressed.     

Research Matters: a call for the application of empirical evidence to the task of improving the quality and impact of environmental education

This paper argues for an increase in the application of empirical evidence to the task of improving the quality and impact of environmental education. Whilst the global scene in environmental education appears to portray optimism and great endeavour, there remain key issues to resolve. Such issues include the apparent lack of impact of formal educational programmes on individual's environmental awareness and concern. The paper argues that an empirical research base can illuminate significant findings relating to human motivation and cognition which may help to resolve such issues. It provides an overview and discussion of some of the findings of one particular substantial international research project in order to illustrate the underpinning case for using research to inform both policy and practice and gives some examples of how the evidence generated from this research programme is being used to shape educational policy and practice.     

The wicked problem of embedding academic literacies: exploring rhizomatic ways of working through an adaptive leadership approach

Embedding academic literacies in higher education courses has been a major focus of the work of learning advisers. A number of studies present the results of embedding in specific courses without discussing the processes of negotiation or the different people involved. This paper is about embedding academic literacies in the Business faculty as part of an English language proficiency model at an Australian university. After initial slow progress, a team of learning advisers began to evaluate the process by reflecting on practice. This reflection focused on the space between the top-down process as planned and what actually happened in the complex academic environment. There were tensions between the proposed plan and the expectations and understandings of the disciplinary academics. These were used as a starting point to explore the issues in more detail. This paper argues that the task of embedding academic literacies bears all the hallmarks of a ‘wicked problem’ which eludes a linear formulation and is open to multiple framings. The botanical metaphor of the rhizome from the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari and an adaptive leadership approach offer ways of responding to this problem. This paper reinterprets the team’s experiences using these theories and suggests alternative work practices. By moving away from the concept of a model, more opportunities to bring about attitudinal and curriculum change can be created to make academic literacies explicit for students.