Development and Testing of a Curriculum to Improve Decision-Making Skills in Middle and High School Students

Adolescence is a key developmental period for developing and strengthening brain circuits that underlie effective decision-making skills, which profoundly impact lifelong health and academic, professional, and economic achievement. But decision-making skills are learned rather than inherent. School presents an ideal environment for the direct instruction and frequent practice of decision-making skills, however, finding time in the school day is a challenge for contemporary educators. We have developed a learning curriculum that involves active student participation to strengthen decision-making skills that is sufficiently flexible and adaptable to be utilized in a wide variety of content-specific classwork. Using this curriculum, students show evidence of improved decision-making skills, including increased consideration of the number of factors that are relevant to their decision, the resources needed to make a particular decision, and both the short-term and long-term consequences of decisions.     

Transformative learning approaches for public relations pedagogy

Public relations educators are frequently challenged by students' flawed perceptions of public relations. Two contrasting case studies are presented in this paper to illustrate how socially-oriented paradigms may be applied to a real-client project to deliver a transformative learning experience. A discourse-analytic approach is applied within the case studies as a technique for identifying changes in students' understandings of the ideological structures, power relations and knowledge systems that underpin public relations and for determining whether transformative learning has taken place. The discourse engagement and normative/critical/ethical paradigmatic orientations examined in this paper provide conceptual foundations for developing civic responsibility that needs to be underpinned by salient social theory.     

Parent Teacher Education Connection: Preparing Preservice Teachers for Family Engagement

This article describes the Parent Teacher Education Curriculum, a Web-based curriculum focused on instructing teachers about best practices in family involvement and assesses its impact on the knowledge and attitudes of preservice teachers related to family involvement. Pre- and post-measures of preservice teacher candidate knowledge of and attitude toward parent involvement were analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and paired-samples t-tests. Findings revealed a significant multivariate main effect for the time of knowledge assessment administration (pre vs. post): Wilks' λ = .613, F(6, 449) = 47.308, p < .001, partial eta squared = .387. This suggested that overall Knowledge increased significantly from pre- to post-administration. In addition, multivariate analysis for the time of attitude assessment administration (pre vs. post) was Wilks' λ = .982, F(3, 1548) = 9.65, p <. 001, partial eta squared = .018. This suggested that overall Attitude increased significantly from pre- to post-administration.     

Fair and equitable assessment practices for all students

This paper focuses on promoting fairness and equity in student assessment practices. The researchers used questionnaires and interviews and the study encompassed a total of 3312 individuals representing a range of stakeholders. The paper is presented in two parts: fairness and discrimination, and challenging policy and practice. Five key principles emerged. Educators must strive to address the personal impact of assessment practices on individual students and their families. Assessment must be differentiated to accommodate the ability, social, cultural and linguistic background of students. All members of school communities must challenge the complacency associated with accepting indefensible assessment practices. The frequency, intensity and intrusiveness of assessments must not be overwhelming for students and their families. Finally, assessment must not be used to counter inappropriate student behaviour or reward desired behaviour. Implications for practice are presented. Additionally, the authors describe changes to policy and practice that occurred as a result of the study.     

PISA,TIMSS and Finnish mathematics teaching: an enigma in search of an explanation

Finnish students’ success on all three content domains of each of the four cycles of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has created much international interest. It has also prompted Finnish academics to offer systemic explanations typically linked to the structural qualities of Finnish schooling and teacher education. Less well-known has been the modest mathematics performance of Finnish grade 8 students on the two Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in which Finland has participated, which, when compared with its PISA successes, has created something of an enigma. In this paper, we attempt to shed light on this enigma through analyses of Finnish mathematics classroom practice that draw on two extant data sets—interviews with Finnish teacher educators and video-recordings of sequences of lessons taught on standard topics. Due to the international interest in Finnish PISA success, the analyses focus primarily on the resonance between classroom practice and the mathematical literacy component of the PISA assessment framework. The analyses indicate that Finnish mathematics didactics are more likely to explain the modest TIMSS achievements than PISA successes and allude to several factors thought to be unique to the Finns, which, unrelated to mathematics teaching practices, may be contributory to the repeated Finnish PISA successes. Some implications for policy-borrowing are discussed.     

AN EVALUATION OF A COMPUTER SCIENCE ORIENTATION PROGRAMME

A short and intensive orientation programme was offered to a small group of students before the start of their first computer science course. During the orientation programme, students studied Karel, a simple programming language which provides pre‐programming skills for students embarking on a Pascal programming course. The programme was evaluated in terms of the assistance it gave participants in coping with the computing course. This evaluation placed emphasis on both the content of the programme and the social orientation aspects.     

A Note on the Application of Multiple Matrix Sampling to Standard Setting

In many of the methods currently proposed for standard setting, all experts are asked to judge all items, and the standard is taken as the mean of their judgments. When resources are limited, gathering the judgments of all experts in a single group can become impractical. Multiple matrix sampling (MMS) provides an alternative. This paper applies MMS to a variation on Angoff's method (1971) of standard setting. A pool of 36 experts and 190 items were divided randomly into 5 groups, and estimates of borderline examinee performance were acquired. Results indicated some variability in the cutting scores produced by the individual groups, but the variance components were reasonably well estimated. The standard error of the cutting score was very small, and the width of the 90% confidence interval around it was only 1.3 items. The reliability of the final cutting score was.98     

The handicapped child and child abuse

For a group of children with handicaps, growth and development are also affected by abuse or neglect. Our understanding of the problems of the abused, handicapped child emerges from experience with 37 children with cerebral palsy who have been maltreated, coupled with a review of the literature in related areas. We identify the following four problems as crucial to the study of abuse and neglect to the child with handicaps: (1) abuse that causes handicaps, (2) abuse that occurs to the handicapped child, (3) compromises in care that can occur when the handicapped child becomes involved with the medical and legal systems, and (4) arrangements for foster care or other out-of-home placement for the child with handicaps. We conclude that the very systems designed to protect and care for the child often fail, leaving the handicapped child without opportunity to reach developmental potential. In light of our observations, we recommend that the pediatrician not only be aware of the existence of abuse and neglect in the population of handicapped children, but also serve in the dual role of coordinator of services and advocate for these children.     

French secondary school students' perceptions of the education-labor market link

A survey was conducted to examine the strength of beliefs among French school pupils in three perceptions of the education-labor market link traditionally studied in the economy of human capital: ‘productivity’, ‘screening’ and ‘credentialism’. 247 male and female French students aged between 14 and 24 years responded to a paper-and-pencil questionnaire. The purpose of the study is by means of introducing the concepts of ‘productivity’, ‘screening’ and ‘credentialism’ into the field of psychology of education to identify on the one hand the relative dominance of these three conceptions, and on the other hand to study each in relation to classical demographic variables and psychosocial variables such as academic self-evaluation, self-assessment of the range of vocational options and type of education and training sought by the pupils. Results indicate that students are more inclined to believe that the achievement of academic degrees acts more as a ‘screening’ device and as evidence of achievement than a factor enhancing productivity in the workplace. It seems that the variability of the role assigned to education as regards employability depends on the students' social and academic standing and on the way they deal with it.     

Course evaluation in medical education

Course evaluation is integral to medical education. We discuss (1) distinctive features of medical education that impact on course evaluation, (2) a framework for course evaluations, (3) details that shape the evaluation process, (4) key measurement issues important to data gathering and interpretation, and (5) opportunities for expanding the scope of research regarding course evaluations. Drawing from higher education and medical education literature, a great deal is known about course evaluations. High-quality rating scales have been developed. There is evidence that ratings are valid and reproducible given sufficient ratings are gathered, but there remain many areas deserving of more research.