Assessing the Practicum in teacher education – Do we want candidates and mentors to agree?

One of the most important components of teacher education is the practical part, the Practicum, and assessment of the candidates’ performance plays a major part in forming the future generation of teachers. Little is known about the extent of agreement between the two main actors in the Practicum, the candidates and the school-based teacher educators. The aim of this paper is to add information about a rather blurred area of assessment in teacher education. The findings indicate there is a considerably extent of disagreement about assessment in the Practicum between the mentors and the candidates. It is suggested that instead of seeing the disagreements merely as obstacles to valid assessment, they can be exploited to initiate professional learning for the candidates.     

A controlled vocabulary for nursing and allied health in Norway

Nursing and allied health libraries at educational institutions in Norway have generally indexed their book collections with uncontrolled terms. With the reorganization of higher education in 1994, the majority of these libraries joined BIBSYS, which is a joint library system for higher education and research in Norway. This has led to chaos when searching the joint catalogue for literature on nursing and related fields. A term such as 'behaviour problems' may have up to five synonyms. In an attempt to improve the quality of searching the health literature, BIBSYS appointed a working group in the Spring of 1999 to find a suitable controlled vocabulary for this subject area, and to see how this vocabulary could be integrated into BIBSYS. The group presented its recommendations in October 1999. The report has been well received by the BIBSYS Board and by user groups. There are no Norwegian vocabularies that are suitable for use in nursing and allied health, therefore it will be necessary to translate and combine existing thesauri. The group has looked at the Nordic Multilingual Thesaurus on Health Promotion, the Swedish Spriline Thesaurus, MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) and CINAHL Subject Heading List. Other relevant thesauri are AMED/CATS Thesaurus, Bioethics Thesaurus (Bioethicsline) and the RCN thesaurus. The group recommends the development of a Norwegian thesaurus based on a translation of parts of MeSH and CINAHL Subject Heading List.     

The Critical Inquiry Imperative: Information Literacy and Critical Inquiry as Complementary Concepts in Higher Education

Sharing a variety of characteristics and theories, critical inquiry and information literacy have the potential to complement one another in a higher education setting. This article explores an initiative at the University of South Carolina Aiken to help students with their critical thinking and reasoning skills through the implementation of a new, one-credit, freshman seminar course. The class, entitled Critical Inquiry, would address three student learning outcomes, including one directed at information literacy. A case study of how the initiative was implemented is discussed.     

Academic Engagement and Achievement Among Latina/o and Non-Latina/o Adolescents

This article presents an exploratory study of the relation between academic engagement and academic achievement for Latina/o and non-Latina/o adolescents attending a predominantly low-income, Latina/o urban middle school in Southern California. A sample of 61 students (37 Latinas/os and 24 non-Latinas/os) participated in the study. The Latina/o students’ mean grade point average was lower than the non-Latina/o students’ mean grade point average. The study results revealed a significant interaction between academic engagement and grade point average for Latina/o students but not for non-Latina/o students. Findings are discussed in regard to the promotion of Latina/o adolescent achievement through increased levels of academic engagement.     

Guiding Principles for Internet Policy: A Comparison of Media Coverage in Four Western Countries

The governance of the Internet on the global level has attracted much attention. In the process the importance of the national context has gotten downplayed. We argue that understanding of the national context is a necessary complement to research on global governance for an understanding of the dynamics of Internet development. We spotlight the importance of the national context by showing that seemingly global principles have varying import and meaning in four countries—the United States, Germany, Finland, and Sweden. We do so via a qualitative content analysis of leading newspapers.     

Research Circles: Supporting the Scholarship of Junior Faculty

This article describes and assesses “Research Circles” as a mechanism for enhancing faculty collegiality and research. Recently established on our campus, these circles, composed of three to four faculty members, have had a particularly powerful effect on the new faculty members' adjustment to their tenure track positions, especially since they entered a context that might otherwise have been challenging: a new interdisciplinary upper-division campus with high expectations for teaching excellence. Based on the end-of-year evaluations, journals, and focus groups, the co-authors described themes that emerged from their participation in these circles. Circle participation not only facilitated faculty writing throughout their first year, but it also fostered the development of an interdisciplinary community which nurtured creativity and risk taking in writing. All authors are currently teaching in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (IAS) at The University of Washington, Bothell (UWB). Except for Diane Gillespie, Professor and Associate Director of IAS, all other authors are Assistant Professors in IAS. Diane Gillespie received her Ph.D. in cultural and psychological studies in education from The University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Her interests include critical pedagogy, narrative psychology, and cultural diversity. Nives Dolšak received a joint Ph.D. in public policy and political science from Indiana University. Her interests include public policy, environmental policy, and international relations. Bruce Kochis, received his Ph.D. in Slavic languages & literatures at the University of Michigan. He focuses on global human rights policy, discourse analysis, and political theory. Ron Krabill received his Ph.D. in sociology and historical studies from New School for Social Research. His interests include comparative media, politics and social movements with a special emphasis on South Africa, as well as the study of peace, conflict, social justice, and human rights. Kari Lerum received her Ph.D. in sociology from The University of Washington. Her interests include culture, organizations, sexuality, qualitative methods, and visual studies. Anne Peterson received her Ph.D. from Washington University. Her interests include urban politics and policy and the distribution of natural resources at the local level. Elizabeth Thomas received her Ph.D. in psychology from The University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign. Her interests include community-based resources for adolescent development, cultural psychology, and the social context of learning.     

Handwriting fluency and the quality of primary grade students’ writing

Reading and Writing - Until children can produce letters quickly and accurately, it is assumed that handwriting disrupts and limits the quality of their text. This investigation is the largest...     

Understanding oral reading fluency among adults with low literacy: dominance analysis of contributing component skills

This study extends the literature on the component skills involved in oral reading fluency. Dominance analysis was applied to assess the relative importance of seven reading-related component skills in the prediction of the oral reading fluency of 272 adult literacy learners. The best predictors of oral reading fluency when text difficulty was fixed at a single reading level was word reading efficiency. When text difficulty varied based on readers?? comprehension levels, word reading efficiency was also the best predictor with vocabulary and auditory working memory emerging as important predictors as well. Our findings suggest the merit of investigations into whether adults with low literacy may need vocabulary and auditory working memory strategy interventions to improve their reading fluency.     

Using a social justice framework to assess educational quality in Tanzanian schools

This paper uses a social justice framework to assess the educational quality of over 100 primary and secondary schools surveyed in northern Tanzania from 2009 to 2011. Significant shortages of teachers, infrastructure, and teaching resources were observed in all government schools. National test exam scores for secondary school students highlighted the growing inequities between private and public schools as a learning environment. Although Tanzania has made some progress, severely under-resourced schools and dismal exam scores raise questions about the quality of education offered. This paper calls for a radical transformation of the current curriculum, strategies, and accountability systems.