Supporting Online AP Students: The Rural Facilitator and Considerations for Training

Online courses supplemented by on-site facilitators help many rural students pursue advanced coursework, but research is warranted to better understand facilitator role and training needs. This study examined facilitation experiences, demographic characteristics, and professional development activities of rural on-site facilitators associated with an online Advanced Placement (AP) program. Themes in qualitative data collected aligned with challenges related to facilitator role that have been documented in existing literature. One theme included facilitator engagement in direct AP instruction despite the facilitator role not requiring that responsibility. Self-reported facilitator demographic characteristics and professional development activities were then compared with those of on-site AP teachers in the same state. Results showed that facilitators demographically resembled teachers but lacked similar engagement with AP professional development. The role of facilitator excludes direct instruction, but specialized professional development like that for AP may match the needs and interests of these facilitators.     

Visual and auditory priming influences the production of low-frequency spellings

Three experiments investigated whether production of low-frequency spellings could be influenced by other words containing those spellings. Participants saw visually-presented primes (Experiment 1) or heard primes presented auditorily and produced their spelling (Experiments 2 and 3). Primes either shared both orthography and phonology (e.g., chapl ai n) or only orthography (e.g., ord ai n) with the target word (e.g., porcel ai n). Following the primes, participants attempted to produce the correct spellings of auditorily-presented target words containing low-frequency spellings, such as the ai in porcelain. Participants correctly spelled the targets’ low-frequency spelling more often when preceded by either type of prime, relative to unprimed targets. Furthermore, priming only occurred when the prime’s spelling was produced correctly; primes spelled incorrectly reduced the correct production of target spellings. These results suggest that unlike the priming of nonwords, the basis of lexical priming of real words is orthographic, resulting from the priming of specific graphemes that increases the probability of reactivating the same spelling pattern in the target.

Enhancing self-efficacy for computer technologies through the use of positive classroom experiences

The effects of experience on attitudes toward computers and judgments of confidence, or self-efficacy, for specific computer technologies were investigated. Thirty-two students in a computer applications in physical education course participated in the study. The Computer Technologies Survey was used as a pretest and posttest measure to assess students' attitudes toward computers and perceived self-efficacy for electronic mail (e-mail) and word processing. Treatment conditions required the students to communicate with the instructor via e-mail, a word-processed note, or handwritten note. These conditions manipulated experience with e-mail and word processing while keeping instructor-student interaction constant. Students' judgments of computer capability significantly increased from pretest to posttest across all treatments. A direct relationship between time-on-task and levels of confidence was not found which suggests that quality rather than quantity of computer experience may be most critical.     

Evaluation of a school‐based transition program designed to facilitate school reentry following a mental health crisis or psychiatric hospitalization

In recent decades, increasing attention has been paid to the number of adolescents experiencing extended absences from school due to mental health crises. Upon returning to school, these students often face difficulties in functioning, risk of relapse, and vulnerability to academic failure and social isolation. This paper presents results of a study examining a school‐based support program model designed to provide short‐term academic, social, and emotional support to help students successfully reacclimatize to school after an extended absence. The paper describes demographic, academic, and clinical characteristics of 189 program participants across eight high schools. Improvements were observed in participants’ day‐to‐day functioning based on the results of pre/postassessments completed by program clinicians. Preliminary data showed positive trends in participants’ school attendance and high school graduation rates. Finally, the paper considers implications for school‐based mental health practice and next steps in related research.     

Do Biologists’ Conceptions of Science as a Social Epistemology Align with Critical Contextual Empiricism?

From literature on understandings of the “nature of science” (NOS), we know that sometimes scientists and others that participate in teaching and mentoring in the sciences lack an informed view of the philosophical underpinnings of their discipline. In this study, we ask whether biologists who are also teachers or mentors for college students agree with the tenets of critical contextual empiricism (CCE), a social epistemology of science that foregrounds the importance of a diversity of voices in knowledge-producing communities. We used a Q-sort methodology to examine beliefs about social knowledge construction that are related to teaching science inclusively. Overall, we found that biologists-teachers held viewpoints somewhat consistent with the tenets of Critical Contextual Empiricism. Although participants shared many beliefs in common, we found two significantly different groups of participants that were characterized under the themes “knowledge is constructed by people” and “the truth is out there.” Overall, although participants believed a diversity of cognitive resources aids scientific communities, they failed to recognize the more nuanced ways certain social interactions might impact objective knowledge production. For one group, outside of a belief that collaboration in science is valuable, other social influences on science were assumed to be negative. For a second group, the search for universal truth and the separation of rational and social aspects was critical for scientific objectivity. We use the results of our Q-sort to identify areas for professional development focused on inclusive science teaching and to recommend the explicit teaching of CCE to science educators.

     

Rational Higher-Order Belief Revision in Young Children

Belief revision can occur at multiple levels of abstraction, including lower-level and higher-order beliefs. It remains unclear, however, how conflicting evidence interacts with prior beliefs to encourage higher-order belief revision. This study explores how 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 96) respond to evidence that directly conflicts with their causal higher-order beliefs. When shown a single event that directly violated a strongly supported prior belief, preschoolers largely maintained their initial higher-order belief. However, when the prior belief was more weakly supported and the counterevidence was stronger, children changed their minds. These findings indicate that young children can revise their higher-order beliefs and, furthermore, do so depending on the strength of both the evidence and their prior beliefs.     

Equity in access? The number of the books available in grade 1, 3 and 5 classroom libraries

Learning Environments Research - In this study, we examined students’ access to text, defined as the number of texts freely available to children in their classrooms. From 60 elementary...     

The flow of instructors through the segmented labor markets of academe

This paper focuses on two categories of teaching personnel, those inside and outside of the tenure stream, who together provide instruction in North American post-secondary institutions. Segmented labor market thinking is used to examine the extent to which entry to the tenure stream is achieved by those who begin on appointments outside of these internal labor markets. Tabulations provided by Statistics Canada on the fate of seven entering cohorts of full-time instructors at Canadian universites (excluding Quebec) seven years after their initial appointment are analyzed. We find that a consistent and meaningful proportion of each cohort achieves entrance to the tenure stream from an initial external labor market appointment and that such an employment history accounts for almost half of all entrants who actually remain. Thus, despite the hardships of many who have no opportunity to be considered for continuing employment, external labor market appointees are, nonetheless, an important pool for recruitment of permanent faculty. This study adds to the growing body of knowledge that identifies their major role in the provision of post-secondary instruction. Disadvantages accruing to women and young academics and their relationships to external labor markets are discussed, as are the implications of these patterns for the changing career trajectories of those currently entering academe.