Beyond Evolution: Addressing Broad Interactions Between Science and Religion in Science Teacher Education

Science and religion are two indisputably profound and durable cultural forces with a complex history of interaction. As ASTE members are aware, these interactions often manifest themselves in classrooms and in the surrounding communities. In this essay, we encourage science teacher educators to broaden their perspectives of science–religion interactions so that they may better assist pre- and in-service science teachers with addressing topics such as the age and origins of the universe and biological evolution in an appropriate manner. We first introduce some foundational scholarship into the historical interactions between science and religion as well as current efforts to maintain healthy dialogue between perspectives that are frequently characterized as innately in conflict with or mutually exclusive of one another. Given that biological evolution is the dominant science–religion issue of our day, in particular in the USA, we next summarize the origins and strategies of anti-evolution movements via the rise and persistence of Christian Fundamentalism. We then summarize survey and qualitative sociological research indicating disparities between academic scientists and the general public with regard to religious beliefs to help us further understand our students’ worldviews and the challenges they often face in campus-to-classroom transitions. We conclude the essay by providing resources and practical suggestions, including legal considerations, to assist science teacher educators with their curriculum and outreach.     

Political education and civic education—The British perspective and the Hong Kong perspective

The decolonisation of Hong Kong takes the form of reversing the sovereignty to the mother country (China) rather than the creation of an independent state. This is unique in the history of global decolonisation. At this juncture, there are widespread social demands for strengthening civic education. The government has responded by promulgating Guidelines on Civic Education in Schools. The present paper compares and contrasts the conceptualisation of political education in England, as represented by the Programme for Political Education, with civic education in Hong Kong.     

Students as Partial Employees: A Metaphor for the Student-Institution Interaction

We propose a new metaphor for describing the interaction between students and their institutions of higher education, students as partial employees. Several current metaphors anchored in the quality movement are reviewed to provide a background for this new way of viewing today's college students. This article provides the readers with examples of the metaphor in use and describes why the partial employee transcends the academic and administrative structures of higher education.     

Child Development in Cultural Contexts: Implications of Cultural Psychology for Early Childhood Teacher Education

In this article we argue that early childhood educators, under the influence of last century’s grand universal theories of child development, have not been attentive enough to the centrality of culture in children’s development. We discuss how the exploration of contemporary developmental perspectives is critical to the field and illustrate cultural views of child development based on cultural psychology. The goal of cultural psychology is to study the co-creation of human beings and cultures by focusing on both mentalities and practices, on both culture and biology. Using this lens, we explore the implications that cultural psychology holds for early childhood educators.     

The role of IQ in a component model of reading

The purpose of this study was to test the role of visual processing speed and IQ in a model of reading. This study investigated whether the processes involved in reading differ between a group of children with and a group without reading disability. These two groups of children completed tests of reading comprehension, listening comprehension, decoding, processing speed, and intelligence. The results indicated that processing speed explains a significant amount of variance in reading comprehension over that accounted for by the simple view of reading. Also, IQ accounts for a significant amount of variance in reading over that accounted for by the simple view of reading and processing speed. Path analyses indicated that the effect of IQ on reading is partially mediated by decoding in the children with reading disability. The results point to the importance of the role of IQ in predicting reading comprehension.     

A cross‐national review of evidence‐based psychosocial treatments for children and adolescents with autistic spectrum disorders in the United Kingdom,Ireland, and United States

The most thoroughly researched topic in relation to autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) is the evaluation of interventions. Educational psychology in the United Kingdom and Ireland is the most closely allied profession to school psychology in the United States. In considering what is published by and for the profession, it is important to include all of those journals that are directly relevant to the profession including educational psychology journals. This review reports on the type, focus, and quality of school‐based ASD intervention research reported in school and educational psychology journals between 2005 and 2015. Twelve evaluation studies are reported, which evaluated 10 discrete interventions and two commercial packages. These interventions targeted academic, social, communication, and behavioral outcomes. Implications for the practice of school psychologists are discussed including the application of research to the idiographic nature of the work of school psychologists.     

The development and validation of the Attitudinal Learning Inventory (ALI): a measure of attitudinal learning and instruction

In this paper, we present the development and validation of a new measure of attitudinal learning—the Attitudinal Learning Inventory (ALI). While specific scales are available for measuring attitudes, they largely focus on established attitudes, not the impact of instruction on those attitudes. We developed the inventory with two explicit objectives: (1) to measure a broad range of attitude constructs representing a holistic view of attitudinal learning and instruction; and (2) to facilitate the measurement of attitudinal learning that can be useful for educational researchers beyond traditional metrics. The ALI was developed and validated across two samples of a total of 1009 participants with diverse demographics. The ALI comprises 15 scale items and exhibited good psychometric properties and conformed to the theoretical four-dimensional structure of attitudinal learning: cognitive, affective, behavioral, and social. The ALI was also shown to correlate with behavioral metrics of class engagement. Future uses of the new measure are discussed. Participants were taken from entirely online populations, and while demographically diverse, implementation of the scale with face-to-face instruction, in varied settings, and across different groups of learners is needed to provide additional evidence of its intended generalizability and consider possible biases.     

A Habermasian Approach to Critical Reading

This article explores the connection between critical reading and Jurgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action. It proposes that Habermas’s criteria used for evaluating validity claims in communicative action can be applied in reading texts critically. Analyses of different types of texts are presented to show how critical reading is done in a Habermasian way. This article ends with a discussion of the application of Habermas’s theory in addressing educational issues.