Personally driven professional development: reflective self-study as a way for teachers to take control of their own professional development

This article is about personally driven professional development through the use of reflective self-study. The argument that teachers need to take responsibility for their own learning while also taking decisions on how and in what areas to develop is strongly made throughout the article. Data for this article were gathered over a 10-year period where the author engaged in several studies using self-study as methodology. Between studies, the author kept using reflective self-study as a professional development tool, and it is these data between various studies that were analysed using thematic and reflective analysis. Such analysis resulted in various overarching themes that show how reflective self-study can be of benefit if used by teachers researching their own classrooms. Benefits include teachers taking full ownership of their learning, relevance of learning, learning that is ongoing and not restricted to specific times and places, taking problematic situations as learning opportunities and how other sources take on new relevance through reflective self-study. Some implications for teacher-education programmes and current school structures are also discussed.     

Why and how mathematicians read proofs: an exploratory study

In this paper, we report a study in which nine research mathematicians were interviewed with regard to the goals guiding their reading of published proofs and the type of reasoning they use to reach these goals. Using the data from this study as well as data from a separate study (Weber, Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 39:431–459, 2008) and the philosophical literature on mathematical proof, we identify three general strategies that mathematicians employ when reading proofs: appealing to the authority of other mathematicians who read the proof, line-by-line reading, and modular reading. We argue that non-deductive reasoning plays an important role in each of these three strategies.     

The effectiveness of university knowledge spillovers: Performance differences between university spinoffs and corporate spinoffs

While much prior research has focused upon how the Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) and other contextual characteristics shape the level of university spinoffs (USO), there is little research on entrepreneurial potential among individual academics, and to the best of our knowledge, no comparative studies with other types of spinoffs exist to date. In this paper we focus on an important but neglected aspect of knowledge transfer from academic research involving the indirect flow to entrepreneurship by individuals with a university education background who become involved in new venture creation by means of corporate spinoffs (CSO) after gaining industrial experience, rather than leaving university employment to found a new venture as an academic spinoff. We argue that the commercial knowledge gained by industry experience is potentially more valuable for entrepreneurial performance compared to the academic knowledge gained by additional research experience at a university. This leads us to posit that the average performance of CSOs will be higher than comparable USOs, but the gains from founder‘s prior experiences will be relatively higher among USOs whose founders lack the corporate context. We investigate these propositions in a comparative study tracking the complete population of USOs and CSOs among the Swedish knowledge-intensive sectors between 1994 and 2002.     

Teacher behavior, student interest and affective learning: putting theory to practice

Students of Project Adapt (PA), an instructional program for at-risk middle school students in Brooklyn NY, have displayed startling improvement on cognitive outcome measures. Teacher given grades and standardized tests illuminate the progress students have made since entering the program. The current investigation attempts to analyze PA on students' affective responses in a pre/post-test experimental design. Upon entering PA, students completed measures of interest, affect, and their previous teachers' behavior (pre). These ratings were then compared to end of year ratings on the same instruments (post). Results indicate students' perceive PA teachers utilizing different behaviors than their previous teachers. Additionally, student affect and interest increased significantly. Results of this study have implications for both instructional researchers and educational practitioners.     

Describing microforms and the marc formats

Conclusion It is easy to get bogged down in the complexities of this topic. What is most important to keep in mind, (and what we tell the SAA MARC-AMC workshop participants) is to create a catalog record that expresses to the user what you want it to. However, this is often easier said than done.