A Hong Kong case of lesson study—Benefits and concerns

In recent years, there has been a feeling that effective teachers can be fostered by grounding professional development in actual classroom practice. This paper reports how a group of teachers adopted a lesson study approach and worked collaboratively so as to improve their class instruction on wh-question formation. Teachers’ reflections indicate that the collaborative environment throughout the study enabled them to gain insights into how to improve their teaching strategies. Also identified are some of the problems faced by teachers, which may undermine the gains of lesson study.     

Co-constructors of data,co-constructors of meaning: Teacher professional development in an age of accountability

This research examines how engaging teachers in collaboratively constructing situated assessments enhances teacher professional development, fosters meaningful shifts to practice, and supports productive conceptions of accountability. We conducted case studies of six teachers engaged as partners in investigating new approaches to assessing and fostering literacy. Findings suggested that supporting teachers to generate, interpret, and act upon assessment data within instructional change cycles assisted them in monitoring student performance, grounding instructional decisions in data, and enacting changes to practice. We also document how collaboratively constructing assessments with teachers supported conceptions of accountability considered meaningful by individuals adopting differing socio-political perspectives.     

Evaluating fifth- and sixth-grade students’ expository writing: task development, scoring, and psychometric issues

Drawing from multiple theoretical frameworks representing cognitive and educational psychology, we present a writing task and scoring system for measurement of students’ informative writing. Participants in this study were 72 fifth- and sixth-grade students who wrote compositions describing real-world problems and how mathematics, science, and social studies information could be used to solve those problems. Of the 72 students, 69 were able to craft a cohesive response that not only demonstrated planning in writing structure but also elaboration of relevant knowledge in one or more domains. Many-facet Rasch Modeling (MFRM) techniques were used to examine the reliability and validity of scores for the writing rating scale. Additionally, comparison of fifth- and sixth-grade responses supported the validity of scores, as did the results of a correlational analysis with scores from an overall interest measure. Recommendations for improving writing scoring systems based on the findings of this investigation are provided.     

Fermion number fractionization

Solitons emerge as non-perturbative solutions of non-linear wave equations in classical and quantum theories. These are non-dispersive and localised packets of energy — remarkable properties for solutions of non-linear differential equations. In the presence of such objects, the solutions of Dirac equation lead to the curious phenomenon of ‘fractional fermion number’. Under normal conditions the fermion number takes strictly integral values. In this article, we describe this accidental discovery and its manifestation in polyacetylene chains, which has led to the development of organic conductors. (left) Kumar Rao is a Postdoctoral Fellow at PRL, Ahmedabad. He is interested in particle physics phenomenology as probed in particle colliders and formal aspects of quantum field theory. (right) Narendra Sahu is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Lancaster University, UK. His main research area includes Cosmology and Astroparticle physics. Currently he is working on dark matter and matter anti-matter asymmetry of the universe. (center) P K Panigrahi’s research interests are in the area of quantum computation, solitons in Bose Einstein condensates & nonlinear optical media. He is also deeply interested in science education and derives pleasure from long weekend walks.     

Classroom

In this section of Resonance, we invite readers to pose questions likely to be raised in a classroom situation. We may suggest strategies for dealing with them, or invite responses, or both. “Classroom” is equally a forum for raising broader issues and sharing personal experiences and viewpoints on matters related to teaching and learning science. This project was done as part of the Research Education Advancement Programme held over weekends at the Bangalore Association for Science Education, Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, Bangalore.     

Genetic and environmental influences on reading and listening comprehension

We report preliminary behaviour genetic analyses of reading and listening comprehension from The Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center. Although the twin sample with these new measures is still of limited size, we find substantial, and significant, genetic influences on individual differences in both reading and listening comprehension. In addition, word recognition and listening comprehension each accounted for significant independent genetic influences on reading comprehension. Together, they accounted for all the genetic influence on reading comprehension, indicating a largely genetic basis for the ‘simple model’ of individual differences in reading comprehension proposed by Hoover and Gough (1990) .     

Comparing Automatic and Manual Measures of Parent–Infant Conversational Turns: A Word of Caution

The Language ENvironment Analysis system (LENA) records children’s language environment and provides an automatic estimate of adult–child conversational turn count (CTC). The present study compares LENA’s CTC estimate to manually coded CTC on a sample of 70 English-speaking infants recorded longitudinally at 6, 10, 14, 18, and 24 months of age. At each age, LENA’s CTC was significantly higher than manually coded CTC (all ps < .001, Cohen’s ds: 0.9–2.05), with the largest discrepancies between the two methods observed at younger ages. The Limits of Agreement Analyses confirm wide disagreements between the two methods, highlighting potential problems with automatic measurement of parent–infant verbal interaction. These findings suggest that future studies should validate LENA’s CTC estimates with manual coding.