Being chimaera: a monstrous identity for SoTL academics

Lurking on the fringes of university culture are academic identities that do not fit into the usual disciplinary communities. Aiming to explore the experience of ‘being academic’ when not linked directly to a discipline, this paper examines the stories of a diverse group of SoTL scholars who work in a centralised multi-campus academic skills support centre in an Australian university. Framed as group auto-ethnography, the paper inquires into the everyday experience of these academics through narrative analysis of multiple first-person accounts and makes apparent the monstrousness of de-affiliated academic identities. Despite diverse disciplinary backgrounds, the author-participants found that they now shared a tripartite academic identity formed through the negotiation of three roles: the teacher, the disciplinarian, and the educational researcher. Using the chimaera, a mythical three-headed monster as an organising metaphor, this paper aims to provide agency and visibility for often under-represented and unacknowledged academic identities.     

Assessing the play beliefs of African American mothers with preschool children

A rating scale measuring parent beliefs about play was developed and validated with a sample of 224 African American mothers of children attending Head Start. Principal components analyses of the Parent Play Beliefs Scale (PPBS) revealed two factors, Play Support and Academic Focus, which capture parent attitudes regarding the developmental significance of play. Maternal ratings of Play Support correlated positively with ratings of children's interactive peer play and were positively associated with parent education. Maternal ratings of Academic Focus were negatively correlated with prosocial peer play ratings and positively correlated with ratings of disruptive and disconnected play in children. Findings support the psychometric utility of the new measure. Future directions involving parent play beliefs in conceptual models of children's social competence during early childhood are discussed.     

Measuring Pedagogy and the Integration of Engineering Design in STEM Classrooms

The present study examined changes in high school biology and technology education pedagogy during the first year of a three-year professional development (PD) program using the INSPIRES educative curriculum. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) calls for the integration of science and engineering through inquiry-based pedagogy that shifts the burden of thinking from the teacher to the student. This call is especially challenging for teachers untrained in inquiry teaching and engineering or science concepts. The INSPIRES educative curriculum materials and PD provided a mechanism for teachers to transform their teaching to meet the NGSS challenges. This study followed a longitudinal triangulation mixed methods design. Selected lessons were video recorded, scored on the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) rubric, and examined for qualitative trends. Year 1 results indicated that teachers had begun to transform their teaching and pointed to particular lessons within the INSPIRES curriculum that most facilitated the reform. Instructional practices of participants improved significantly as a result of the INSPIRES PD program and also aligned with previous, similar studies. These findings provide insights for rethinking the structure of professional development, particularly in the integrated use of an educative curriculum aligned with intended professional development goals.

     

Defending Constructivism in Science Education

After an impressive development throughout the last two decades, supported by a greatamount of research and innovation, science education seemed to be becoming a newscientific domain. This transformation of Science Education into a specific field of researchand knowledge is usually associated with the establishment of what has been called anemergent consensus about constructivist positions. However, some voices have begunto question these constructivist positions and therefore the idea of an advancementtowards a coherent body of knowledge in the field of science education. The goalof this work is to analyse some of the current criticisms of the so-called constructivistorientations and to study their implications for the development of science education asa coherent body of knowledge.     

Video self-modelling: an intervention for children with behavioural difficulties

There has recently been a growth in interest in the use of video technology in the practice of educational psychologists. This research explores the effects of a video self-modelling (VSM) intervention on the behaviours of a child in mainstream education using a single case study design set within a behaviourist paradigm. VSM is a behavioural intervention that requires the participant, in this instance a six year old boy, to view a short video of himself engaging in target behaviours. Baseline and post-intervention data were collected through classroom-based observations by the researcher in order to monitor the frequencies of the target behaviours and to evaluate the effectiveness of the VSM intervention. The participant demonstrated higher frequencies of target behaviours following the intervention. The results suggest that VSM is a promising method for educational psychologists to use as a proactive approach with pupils in educational settings to improve target behaviours.     

Examining the impacts of the structures writing intervention for teaching fourth-grade students to write informational text

Reading and Writing - Expository writing may be especially difficult for elementary grade students due to lack of background knowledge and unfamiliar text structures. A text structure writing...     

How does national culture affect the teaching style in higher education and what are the implications for the student experience?

Tertiary Education and Management - One of the effects of globalization in Higher Education is that teachers in institutions and faculties increasingly come from diverse cultural backgrounds. This...     

E-culture of Russian students: Socio-cultural differentiation

Education and Information Technologies - Electronic culture constitutes a new form of social adjustment in the digital era. Our study aims to reveal socio-cultural differentiation in the social...     

Does teacher homework feedback matter to 6th graders’ school engagement?: a mixed methods study

Metacognition and Learning - The effectiveness of homework on improving student academic achievement depends on several factors; for example, feedback provided by the teacher (i.e. grading) and...