Rubrics: Design and Use in Science Teacher Education

Journal of Science Teacher Education -     

Correlates of Attachment at School Age: Maternal Reported Stress, Mother-Child Interaction, and Behavior Problems

The contribution of attachment, maternal reported stress, and mother-child interaction to the prediction of teacher-reported behavior problems was examined for a French-Canadian sample of 121 school-age children. Attachment classifications were assigned on the basis of reunion behavior with mother when the children were between 5 and 7 years of age. Maternal reported stress and mother-child interaction patterns were assessed concurrent to the attachment measure, whereas behavior problems were evaluated both at ages 5 to 7 and 7 to 9 years. Security of attachment significantly predicted the likelihood of school-age behavior problems: Controlling/other children were most at risk for both externalizing and internalizing problems across both age periods. Younger ambivalent children presented clinical cut-off levels of externalizing problems, and older avoidant boys had higher internalizing scores. Patterns of maternal-reported stress and mother-child interaction differed across attachment groups and contributed to prediction of school-age behavior problems, partially mediating the relation between attachment and adaptation. Results support the importance of attachment in explaining school-age adaptation and validity of attachment coding for children of this age.     

The relationship between syntactic awareness and reading performance

This study was designed to examine the relationship between syntactic awareness and reading performance. A major concern was to provide an estimate of the effect of syntactic training that was not confounded with training that focused on semantic features of words. The training exercises used in the study focused on all levels of syntactic awareness in order that the effect of such training could be assessed on students’ performance on tasks that tapped each of the levels. Results of this study showed that syntactic awareness could be improved through training. The effect was stable, being apparent at the two post-test times. However, no evidence was found for a systematic effect of improved syntactic awareness on reading ability. Moreover, syntactic training did not show any greater effect than no treatment or semantic training on children’s grammatic comprehension, their ability to use fix-up strategies, or on their general reading ability score. Training had a different impact on the accuracy of oral reading for the syntactic and semantic training groups. Thus, in terms of the developmental sequence of syntactic awareness proposed by Gombert (1992), children trained in the cloze procedure improved at the two highest levels, whilst showing neither a corresponding change in the lower levels of awareness, nor improved functional reading performance.     

Components of Rater Error in a Complex Performance Assessment

Numerous studies have examined performance assessment data using generaliz-ability theory. Typically, these studies have treated raters as randomly sampled from a population, with each rater judging a given performance on a single occasion. This paper presents two studies that focus on aspects of the rating process that are not explicitly accounted for in this typical design. The first study makes explicit the "committee" facet, acknowledging that raters often work within groups. The second study makes explicit the "rating-occasion" facet by having each rater judge each performance on two separate occasions. The results of the first study highlight the importance of clearly specifying the relevant facets of the universe of interest. Failing to include the committee facet led to an overly optimistic estimate of the precision of the measurement procedure. By contrast, failing to include the rating-occasion facet, in the second study, had minimal impact on the estimated error variance.     

Value Profiles During Middle Childhood: Developmental Processes and Social Behavior

Little is known about how children's value priorities develop over time. This study identifies children's value priority profiles and follows their development during middle childhood. Australian children (N = 609; ages 5–12 at Time 1) reported their values over 2 years. Latent Transition Analysis indicated four profiles: Social-Focus, Self-Focus, Growth-Focus and Undifferentiated. Within person development was characterized by profile stability or transfer to the Social-Focus profile. Younger children were more likely to have an Undifferentiated profile (or Self-Focus among boys) than older ones. Girls were more likely to have a Social-Focus profile or transfer to it, and less likely to have a Self- or Growth-Focus profile than boys. Social-Focus profile membership over time predicted more prosocial and less aggressive behavior.     

Science capital or STEM capital? Exploring relationships between science capital and technology,engineering, and maths aspirations and attitudes among young people aged 17/18

We previously proposed that science capital (science-related forms of cultural and social capital) can be used as a theoretical lens for explaining the patterned nature of aspirations and educational participation among young people aged 11–16. Building on these findings, the present article investigates whether science capital is related to post-18 aspirations to pursue further STEM study and whether science capital can be extended to related disciplines including engineering, maths and technology. Specifically, we report on correlational analyses exploring the relationships between science, technology, engineering and maths attitudes and science capital. Drawing on data from a new survey of 7,013 17/18 year old English secondary school students, analyses showed that science capital, while strongly related to engineering and physical science future study aspirations, was not strongly related to the pursuit of either maths or technology postsecondary study. The findings also suggest that engineering and maths attitudes have a stronger relationship to science capital than attitudes relating to technology. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings and propose that science capital might be more usefully applied to “SEM,” with links to technology fields and aspirations needing further exploration.     

印刷企业积极进取的力量

Julie：在过去的几周里,美国和世界金融市场经历了非常困难的时期。世界上一些大型的银行机构和投资公司纷纷破产或由政府接管。在未来的几周里,世界各地可能会有更多的金融公司带来更多的坏消息。许多金融专家们对世界经济充满沮丧和悲观的情绪。