Viewing students consistently: how stable are teachers’ expectations?

ABSTRACT

Over the past 50 years, research has shown that teacher expectations can influence student outcomes. Many studies have examined within-year effects. There is, however, a paucity of research that has investigated the stability of teachers’ expectations across a single year, and there are no studies that have examined stability beyond 1 year. The current study examined the stability of 94 teachers’ expectations within 3 separate years and across 3 years in mathematics and reading. In both subject areas, teachers’ expectations remained relatively stable from beginning to end-of-year for each separate year and also across 3 years. Additionally, teachers who under- or overestimated their students by more than half a standard deviation continued to do so across all periods in the study. This was despite the teachers having different students each year. The study suggests that teachers view students’ capabilities similarly despite having different student cohorts.     

Oral Interactions in Secondary Science Classrooms: a Grounded Approach to Identifying Oral Feedback Types and Practices

Feedback is an important practice in promoting learning. This study examines teachers’ oral feedback practices, with an analysis grounded in students’ perceptions of what helps them learn. Based on 38 hours of lesson observations, interviews with 10 teachers and 84 students, we identify how teachers conceptualise and practice oral feedback. Based on student interviews, three main types of oral interaction were found to constitute feedback: discrepancy, success criteria comments and open questions. Current practices appear to address the feedback dimensions of ‘How am I going?’ and ‘Where to next?’, but seem to be lacking with respect to addressing the question related to ‘Where am I going?’ Feedback is infrequently used by science teachers compared with other types of oral interaction and the feedback types most frequently reported by students to help learning were used least often. Teachers used oral feedback types differently in whole class and small group situations. We use findings to elaborate an ideal-typical model of feedback practices, with divergent practices involving more frequent use of oral feedback, focusing on learning rather than task. The study concludes with implications for practice in teaching and teacher education.

     

Key determinants of time to 5 m in different ventral swimming start techniques

The aim of this study was to determine the biomechanical parameters that explain ventral start performance in swimming. For this purpose, 13 elite swimmers performed different variants of the ventral start technique. Two-dimensional video analyses of the aerial and underwater phases were used to assess 16 kinematic parameters from the starting signal to 5?m, and an instrumented starting block was used to assess kinetic data. A Lasso regression was used to reduce the number of parameters, providing the main determinants to starting performance, revealing different combinations of key determinants, depending on the variant (r²?≥?0.90), with flight distance being the most relevant to all variants (r?≤??0.80; p?r?=??0.79; p?r?≤?0.61; p?r²?=?0.66) or block time and flight distance (r²?=?0.83). These data provide relevant contributions to the further understanding of the biomechanics of swimming starts as well as insights for performance analysis and targeted interventions to improve athlete performance.     

When Choice Motivates and When It Does Not

This article addresses the controversy regarding the value of offering choices as a teaching practice. Inconsistent of results regarding the effects of choice in various settings suggest that choice can be either motivating or de-motivating. Based on the self-determination theory of motivation (Deci & Ryan, 2000), we propose that choice can be motivating when the options meet the students’ need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. For example, choice is motivating when the options are relevant to the students’ interests and goals (autonomy support), are not too numerous or complex (competence support), and are congruent with the values of the students’ culture (relatedness support). Given the many factors involved, it is not surprising that in some studies choice was not found to promote engagement. However, when choice was offered in a way that met the needs of the students, it was found to enhance motivation, learning, and well-being.     

Estimation of relative elasticities of substitution and relative compensation for part-time faculty

Part-time workers have become a visible and noticeably larger component of the labor force in recent years. From an economic perspective, relative compensation changes may be a major factor determining the growth of the part-time sector. Yet, surprisingly little has been done to explore the effects of these changes on the relative rates of growth in part- and full-time labor markets. In part, this is because of the difficulty in obtaining data on the compensation paid to part-timers. In this paper, we suggest a methodology for deriving such data through statistical estimation and use survey data of over 2,100 institutions of higher education, conducted by the American Association of University Professors.     

Mothering matters: Maternal style predicts puppies’ future performance

Bray et al. (2017, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(32), 9128–9133) recently showed that maternal interactions between service dog mothers and their puppies were predictive of puppies’ future success as a candidate service dog. These findings prompt questions into the role of genetics and early experiences and may provide useful selection tools for working dog breeding programs.