Preservice Teachers' Development and Implementation of Science Performance Assessment Tasks

Preservice teachers in a science methods course were provided instruction on performance assessment, then guided through a design and implementation process of performance assessment tasks. We assessed the effect of designing and implementing a performance assessment task on preservice teachers' understanding of standards-based assessment. The findings show that these preservice teachers improved in their understanding of assessment as a formative process as well as their science content understanding of the topic addressed in their designed task. We found that preservice teachers need to experiment with performance assessment tasks in an authentic context in order to understand the full potential and value of the task.     

Nonshared environmental influences on individual differences in early behavioral development: a monozygotic twin differences study

The monozygotic (MZ) twin differences method was used to investigate nonshared environmental (NSE) influences independent of genetics. Four-year-old MZ twin pairs (N = 2,353) were assessed by their parents on 2 parenting measures (harsh parental discipline and negative parental feelings) and 4 behavioral measures (anxiety, prosocial behavior, hyperactivity, and conduct problems). Within-pair differences in parenting correlated significantly with MZ differences in behavior, with an average effect size of 3%. For the extreme 10% of the parenting-discordant and behavior-discordant distributions, the average NSE effect size was substantially greater (11%), suggesting a stronger NSE relationship for more discordant twins. NSE relationships were also stronger in higher risk environments, that is, families with lower socioeconomic status, greater family chaos, or greater maternal depression.     

Young Children's Projective Abilities: what can a monster see?

Abstract A series of four tasks was presented to 3‐7 year‐old children in order to investigate their understanding of the way in which an obstruction restricts a person's view of an array. The results indicated that children's ability to predict another person's line of sight and field of view develops significantly during this period. The responses of most 4‐7 year‐olds in a nonverbal hiding game were consistent with their verbal judgments about what another person could see, but 3‐year‐olds’ responses in the hiding game were much more sophisticated than could be expected from their performance on the verbal tasks. The possibility is raised that satisfactory performance in hiding games may not always depend on a child's first working out what a seeker can see.     

PCC: A Leader of Change

Abstract

From its beginnings, the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) has been an international leader of change in bibliographic and authority control and maintenance, and metadata creation and distribution. This article highlights some PCC achievements in these areas.     

Searching the Polish Medical Bibliography (Polska Bibliografia Lekarska) for trials

Background: The Polish Medical Bibliography (Polska Bibliografia Lekarska) contains 350 000 records dating from 1979. These records from the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, health care systems and preclinical sciences are from nearly 300 biomedical journals published in Poland. Methods: We systematically searched the Polish Medical Bibliography Part II (1996–2006) CD‐ROM (July 2006) using both English and Polish phrases for randomized trials, manually checked results and, for the trials identified in this way, sought these on medline and embase . Results: Systematic searching identified records of 680 randomized trials from all areas of health care. Nearly 40% of these were not found on either medline or embase . Conclusions: The Polish Medical Bibliography should be of interest to health care information specialists concerned with comprehensive searches for trials.     

Correspondence of document file structures to discipline structures

Online data bases might be more valuable to users if their structures more closely matched those of the disciplines represented by the data bases. To explore this concept, a structure for the field of tropical medicine was derived from the interrelationships of signs and symptoms of 37 tropical diseases. A similar structure was derived for the interrelationships of sign and symptom index terms applied to articles on these topical diseases in the MEDLINE data base. The poor correlation of the two structures led to the suggestion that rigorous indexing of articles with sign and symptom index terms or check tags would enhance the usefulness of the data base. Similar studies could be envisioned for other disciplines and data bases.     

Reading difference: picture book retellings as contexts for exploring personal meanings of race and culture

In racially and culturally homogeneous school settings, opportunities for children to interact with those who are unlike themselves are not always available. Picture book retellings provide contexts within which students are exposed to racial and cultural differences by allowing them to engage in vicarious events with people they might not otherwise encounter. In this article, the authors explore two fourth graders' aided and unaided picture book retellings. They argue that retellings are dialogic literacy events that provide children with opportunities to explore difference through social imagination and develop empathetic response to a wide range of fictional others.     

Index of mechanical efficiency in competitive and recreational long distance runners

The purpose of this investigation was to compare external work and net energy expenditure during a bout of repetitive stretch-shortening cycles between competitive and recreational long-distance runners. Participants were divided into either competitive or recreational runners based on their maximal oxygen consumption and self-reported 1600 m times. The stretch-shortening cycle involved a repetitive hopping protocol on a force plate while measuring oxygen consumption and lactate accumulation for a total of 10 min. External work and net energy expenditure were calculated for 3 min after steady state was achieved and the ratio between these variables was utilised as an index of mechanical efficiency. Lower extremity stiffness was calculated during this interval as well. Net energy expenditure was significantly lower in competitive runners (152.6 ± 33.3 kJ) in comparison to recreational runners (200.6 ± 41.4 kJ) (P = 0.02) given similar amounts of external work performed in both groups (competitive runners = 65.6 ± 20.1 kJ, recreational runners = 68.8 ± 12.1 kJ) (P = 0.67). Index of mechanical efficiency was significantly different between competitive runners (43.2 ± 9.0%) and recreational runners (34.8 ± 5.3%) (P = 0.03). No significant differences were found in lower extremity stiffness (P = 0.64). Competitive distance runners can perform similar levels of external work with lower net energy expenditure and thus a higher index of mechanical efficiency during repetitive stretch-shortening cycles in comparison to recreational runners with similar values of lower extremity stiffness. This ability could possibly be due differences in muscle–tendon length changes, muscle pre-activation, cross-bridge potentiation and short-latency reflex responses as a result of training which should be considered for future investigation.     

Hebrew Teachers College of Boston (1921–1951)

The collection of data for a study of research currently in progress necessarily entails certain inherent difficulties since there are no published sources to which one can turn for a record of such work; research normally is published only after it has been completed. For this reason, it is almost certain that the present investigation has failed to include a certain number of research studies in Jewish education currently being pursued. This is true particularly in the case of research carried on independently by individual members of the profession without institutional sponsorship. There simply is no practical way in which to determine what every single member of our profession is doing in the way of research until these studies actually appear in print.