The Politics of Dissertation Advising: How Early Career Women Faculty Negotiate Access and Participation

Dissertation committees are complex social arenas that underscore expertise, image, and peer relationships—all of which affect professional identity and advancement. This study presents a sampling of how early career women faculty members learn about and negotiate their participation on dissertation committees. Research questions focused on participants’ concerns about the social and political aspects of participation viz à viz peer relationships and faculty rewards. We analyzed interview data using both holistic and constant comparative methods, resulting in a working model of active participation across three domains: knowledge, access, and membership. We also identified developmental trends of dissertation committee engagement across the early career.     

Differential effects of three professional development models on teacher knowledge and student achievement in elementary science

To identify links among professional development, teacher knowledge, practice, and student achievement, researchers have called for study designs that allow causal inferences and that examine relationships among features of interventions and multiple outcomes. In a randomized experiment implemented in six states with over 270 elementary teachers and 7,000 students, this project compared three related but systematically varied teacher interventions—Teaching Cases, Looking at Student Work, and Metacognitive Analysis—along with no‐treatment controls. The three courses contained identical science content components, but differed in the ways they incorporated analysis of learner thinking and of teaching, making it possible to measure effects of these features on teacher and student outcomes. Interventions were delivered by staff developers trained to lead the teacher courses in their regions. Each course improved teachers' and students' scores on selected‐response science tests well beyond those of controls, and effects were maintained a year later. Student achievement also improved significantly for English language learners in both the study year and follow‐up, and treatment effects did not differ based on sex or race/ethnicity. However, only Teaching Cases and Looking at Student Work courses improved the accuracy and completeness of students' written justifications of test answers in the follow‐up, and only Teaching Cases had sustained effects on teachers' written justifications. Thus, the content component in common across the three courses had powerful effects on teachers' and students' ability to choose correct test answers, but their ability to explain why answers were correct only improved when the professional development incorporated analysis of student conceptual understandings and implications for instruction; metacognitive analysis of teachers' own learning did not improve student justifications either year. Findings suggest investing in professional development that integrates content learning with analysis of student learning and teaching rather than advanced content or teacher metacognition alone. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 333–362, 2012     

Segregated school effects on first grade reading gains: Using propensity score matching to disentangle effects for African-American,Latino, and European-American students

Increasing evidence from observational studies indicates that students attending minority segregated schools are at risk for constrained performance in reading. However, analyses of data gathered under observational conditions may yield biased results. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, 1998–1999 Kindergarten Cohort, this study used propensity score matching to address selection bias due to students’ observed socio-economic, literacy, and social-emotional background characteristics, allowing for a less biased estimate of minority segregated schooling on African-American, Latino, and European-American students’ reading gains in first grade. We found that African-American students attending segregated schools made less gain in reading across the first grade year than African-American students in non-segregated schools. There was no evidence for significant negative effects of segregation on reading gains for Latino and European-American students.     

Bridging History of the Concept of Function with Learning of Mathematics: Students’ Meta-Discursive Rules,Concept Formation and Historical Awareness

In this paper we present a matrix-organised implementation of an experimental course in the history of the concept of a function. The course was implemented in a Danish high school. One of the aims was to bridge history of mathematics with the teaching and learning of mathematics. The course was designed using the theoretical frameworks of a multiple perspective approach to history, Sfard’s theory of thinking as communicating, and theories from mathematics education about concept image, concept definition and concept formation. It will be explained how history and extracts of original sources by Euler from 1748 and Dirichlet from 1837 were used to (1) reveal students’ meta-discursive rules in mathematics and make them objects of students’ reflections, (2) support students’ learning of the concept of a function, and (3) develop students’ historical awareness. The results show that it is possible to diagnose (some) of students’ meta-discursive rules, that some of the students acted according to meta-discursive rules that coincide with Euler’s from the 1700s, and that reading a part of a text by Dirichlet from 1837 created obstacles for the students that can be referenced to differences in meta-discursive rules. The experiment revealed that many of the students have a concept image that was in accordance with Euler’s rather than with our modern concept definition and that they have process oriented thinking about functions. The students’ historical awareness was developed through the course with respect to actors’ influence on the formation of mathematical concepts and the notions of internal and external driving forces in the historical development of mathematics.     

Teaching Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) in an MSW Clinical Course

Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) is a relatively brief psychodynamic intervention of approximately 12 sessions focusing on how current interpersonal relationships have contributed to a person’s mental health symptoms. Areas targeted for work involve significant role transitions, grief and loss, and interpersonal disputes. IPT is an evidence-based treatment for depression, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorders. Despite these advantages, social work students rarely receive instruction on the delivery of IPT in their graduate programs. The purpose of this project, therefore, was to begin to address this gap by implementing an IPT component in a clinical practice course and testing student knowledge pre- and post-test. An example of sample assignments involving application of IPT to student fieldwork is provided. The sample in this study involved a small number of students enrolled in a clinical course taught in the first semester of the second year of training. Students improved their knowledge score at a statistically significant level. Implications of the study are explored, with the main conclusion being that more clinical majors in MSW programs be exposed to IPT.     

Metacognitive and multimedia support of experiments in inquiry learning for science teacher preparation

ABSTRACT

Promoting preservice science teachers’ experimentation competency is required to provide a basis for meaningful learning through experiments in schools. However, preservice teachers show difficulties when experimenting. Previous research revealed that cognitive scaffolding promotes experimentation competency by structuring the learning process, while metacognitive and multimedia support enhance reflection. However, these support measures have not yet been tested in combination. Therefore, we decided to use cognitive scaffolding to support students’ experimental achievements and supplement it by metacognitive and multimedia scaffolds in the experimental groups. Our research question is to what extent supplementing cognitive support by metacognitive and multimedia scaffolding further promotes experimentation competency. The intervention has been applied in a two-factorial design to a two-month experimental course for 63 biology teacher students in their first bachelor year. Pre-post-test measured experimentation competency in a performance assessment. Preservice teachers worked in groups of four. Therefore, measurement took place at group level (N?=?16). Independent observers rated preservice teachers’ group performance qualitatively on a theory-based system of categories. Afterwards, experimentation competency levels led to quantitative frequency analysis. The results reveal differing gains in experimentation competency but contrary to our hypotheses. Implications of combining scaffolding measures on promoting experimentation competency are discussed.     

Some Reflections on Motivating Situations and Situational Teaching

Debates about the crisis of school teaching in the Western world have focused more on education as a state of the art and on psychological problems of either teachers or pupils than on situational features which are of importance for teaching and learning situations. In applying K. R. Popper's propensity theory and his idea of situational logic, a preliminary analysis of problem situations is attempted with the aim of identifying biopsychological situational elements in children's preschool life‐conditions that could be simulated at school in their first years thereby enabling them to draw upon already acquired knowledge and skills. Two principal ways of acquiring experience — one instructive, the other selective — are described and discussed in relation to learning, exploration and play. It is argued that, while selection procedures are found in exploration, play and the like, instruction procedures are most often used in teaching situations despite growing evidence that instruction learning is less motivating than learning by action and selection, as various experiences with situational teaching indicate.