Systematic quality development work in a Swedish leisure-time centre

There is increasing activity in the area of quality issues in education in Europe. Diverse discourses of policy for quality are encountered in daily practice. This article explores systematic quality development work in a Swedish educational setting: the leisure-time centre. By following 2 teachers’ enactments of policy in planning, organising, documenting, and evaluating the quality of a leisure-time centre and children's achievement of objectives, different logics were found. Tensions in practice that visualise pluralistic intentions in policy and educational approaches were also revealed. Planning and organising as parts of systematic quality development work reveal an emerging individualistic perspective. However, when teachers carry out documentation and evaluation, they reconstruct a social pedagogical approach grounded in the tradition of the leisure-time centre with a group-oriented focus.     

Training reading fluency in dysfluent readers with high reading accuracy: Word specific effects but low transfer to untrained words

The outcome of a training study attempting to increase German speaking poor readers’ reading fluency is reported. The aim of the training was to help children establish orthographic representations for a limited set of training words as well as for high-frequency onset clusters. A sample of 20 dysfluent readers (8 to 11 years) received a computerized training of repeated reading of a limited set of 32 training words over a period of up to 25 days. Each day, training words were presented up to six times with a special emphasis on the onset segment. Post-tests were carried out one and five weeks after the last training day. A considerable decrease in reading times could be achieved for the trained words that remained stable for both post-tests. However, even for the limited set of training words, a remarkable amount of repetitions did not lead to age adequate word recognition speed. Generalization to untrained words starting with a trained onset cluster (transfer words) was statistically reliable but small. The current study was funded by the Jubilee Fund of the Austrian National Bank (grant no. 8501). Karin Landerl is currently supported by an APART-grant of the Austrian Academy of Science.     

Responsiveness to mathematical problem-solving instruction: comparing students at risk of mathematics disability with and without risk of reading disability

This study assessed responsiveness to a 16-week mathematical problem-solving treatment as a function of students' risk for disability. Among 301 third graders, TerraNova scores were used to categorize students as at risk for both reading and mathematics disability (MDR/RDR; 20 control and 12 experimental), at risk for mathematics disability only (MDR-only; 5 and 8), at risk for reading disability only (RDR-only; 12 and 15), or not at risk (NDR; 60 and 69). Interactions among at-risk status, treatment, and time showed that as a function of treatment, MDR/RDR, MDR-only, and RDR-only students improved less than NDR students on computation and labeling, and MDR/RDR students improved less than all other groups on conceptual underpinnings. Exploratory regressions suggested that MDR/RDR students' math deficits or their underlying mechanisms explained a greater proportion of variance in responsiveness to problem-solving treatment than reading deficits or their underlying mechanisms.     

Student Perspectives on Teaching and its Evaluation

The research on student ratings of instruction, while voluminous, has had minimal focus on the perceptions of the students who do the ratings. The current study explored student perspectives on course and teacher ratings as well as some issues related to teaching effectiveness and faculty roles. It was found that students are generally willing to do evaluations and to provide feedback, and have no particular fear of repercussions. However, they have little confidence that faculty or administrators pay attention to the results, and do not even consult the ratings themselves. The students view teaching and advising as the most important roles that should be played by faculty, yet project that faculty, while also viewing teaching as the most important, would rank research above the more student-interactive advising. Canonical correlations among various scales reveal a strong emphasis on such issues of the importance of faculty respect for student views.     

Dealing with Critical Incidents in the Postformation Phase: Design and Evaluation of an Entrepreneurship Education Course

Entrepreneurship education is a growing field of research within vocational education. During the last decade, an increasing number of empirical studies have been conducted on the impact of entrepreneurship education courses (EECs). Yet studies on entrepreneurship education still lack evidence on how to prepare entrepreneurs to handle dynamism and risks appropriately as well as how to identify and address entrepreneurial challenges and upcoming crises. This paper presents an EEC that intends to step into these gaps using a case-oriented learning environment that concentrates on critical incidents in the postformation phase. Preliminary studies identified these incidents as entrepreneurial challenges that typically emerge in young start-ups and threaten to lead to severe financial crises. The design of the EEC is systematically based on educational research. The EEC offers future entrepreneurs opportunities to develop entrepreneurial competence by experiencing the critical incidents that occur in the everyday working life of a young entrepreneur of a fictional model company. The participants are encouraged to slip into the entrepreneur’s shoes, to identify emerging problems, and to reflect on solutions. The evaluation shows that the seminar was perceived as fruitful and supportive. Based on self-ratings this EEC is an intervention that women in particular seem to benefit from. The paper provides fruitful ideas to specify aims and to design EECs in the realm of risk management in the postformation phase.     

A two-dimensional analysis of student ratings of instruction

Student ratings of instruction were analyzed in terms of two global factors. One factor, which includes items on advanced planning, presentation clarity, and increased student knowledge, was named pedagogical skill. The other factor taps information about class discussion, grading, and the availability of help and was named rapport. Ratings on the skill factor did not covary with class size or the leniency of the instructor's grading but did correlate with a reasonable external criterion of student learning. Ratings of rapport correlated inversely with class size and directly with average class grade and showed only a weak relationship to the external criterion of student learning. The skill factor showed more interclass stability than the rapport factor. Previous research studies which have examined the reliability and validity of instructional ratings and their relationship to student grades and class size have reported inconsistent findings. These inconsistencies appear to result from an inappropriate unidimensional analysis of ratings which should be examined in terms of two of more separate attitude dimensions.     

Teachers’ response to curriculum change: balancing external and internal change forces

The present study investigates teachers’ perceptions of curriculum change targeting the expanded freedom teachers were given as curriculum developers in the implementation process of the 2006 school reform in Norway. The new curriculum marks a distinct shift, moving from a content-driven to a learning outcomes-driven curriculum. Policy makers expressed confidence in teachers’ professional autonomy: local curricula had to be designed in all subjects to meet the learning outcomes defined in the curriculum. This qualitative study uses focus group interviews and addresses teachers in primary and lower secondary school. Teachers do not see their expanded freedom as real freedom; their world is deeply contextualized and they see a gap between their experienced world and the intended world of the curriculum. What was communicated as extended freedom by policy makers is perceived as extended demands. In this initial phase the teachers place themselves in the position of respondents rather than being progressive change agents themselves.     

Representation visuals' impacts on science interest and reading comprehension of adolescent English learners

This experimental study explored the impact of representation + glossary label visuals on science outcomes in a sample of 174 Grade 7 English learners (ELs). Analysis of covariance results indicated that, regardless of English proficiency, ELs in both treatment and control conditions performed similarly on reading comprehension (p = .26) and triggered interest (p = .65) measures, with a trend in means favoring the no-visuals, control group. These findings suggest that, although recommended by the literature, representation + glossary label visuals for ELs may be associated with deleterious (seductive details) rather than beneficial (dual coding) effects. Additional research is needed on higher-level visuals (organization, interpretation, transformation) to identify visual accommodations most effective in supporting ELs' science learning. Regression analysis results indicated that triggered situational interest predicted science reading comprehension above and beyond English language proficiency, suggesting the importance of instructionally stimulating this interest type. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.