Metacognitive strategies and reading comprehension in elementary-school students

The aim of this study was to explore comprehension monitoring and perceived use of reading strategies as factors of reading comprehension. Participants were elementary school students from the fifth to the eighth grade. Error correction and text sensitivity tasks from the Metacomprehension test (Pazzaglia, De Beni, &; Cristante, 1994). and the cloze-task were used as measures of comprehension monitoring during reading. A Strategic reading questionnaire (Koli?-Vehovec &; Baj?anski, 2001b) was applied as a measure of perceived use of strategies during reading. Girls had better results than boys on text comprehension, all measures of comprehension monitoring, as well as on the Strategic reading questionnaire. Significant developmental improvements in comprehension monitoring occurred after the fifth grade and between the sixth and the eighth grade. A similar change was evident in reading comprehension. All measures of comprehension monitoring were significantly related to text comprehension in all age groups. However, perceived use of reading strategies was significantly related to reading comprehension only in eighth-grade students.     

Exploring alternative conceptions from Newtonian dynamics and simple DC circuits: Links between item difficulty and item confidence

Croatian 1st‐year and 3rd‐year high‐school students (N = 170) completed a conceptual physics test. Students were evaluated with regard to two physics topics: Newtonian dynamics and simple DC circuits. Students answered test items and also indicated their confidence in each answer. Rasch analysis facilitated the calculation of three linear measures: (a) an item‐difficulty measure based upon all responses, (b) an item‐confidence measure based upon correct student answers, and (c) an item‐confidence measure based upon incorrect student answers. Comparisons were made with regard to item difficulty and item confidence. The results suggest that Newtonian dynamics is a topic with stronger students' alternative conceptions than the topic of DC circuits, which is characterized by much lower students' confidence on both correct and incorrect answers. A systematic and significant difference between mean student confidence on Newtonian dynamics and DC circuits items was found in both student groups. Findings suggest some steps for physics instruction in Croatia as well as areas of further research for those in science education interested in additional techniques of exploring alternative conceptions. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 150–171, 2006     

Contradictions in practising distributed leadership in public primary schools in New South Wales (Australia) and Slovakia

The concept of distributed leadership has been widely accepted and scrutinised in research and practice since the beginning of the new millennium. Nonetheless, there is a lack of academic research on how school staff members perceive the term and to what extent they are willing to employ it as part of their daily practices. This article aims to explore these understandings and attitudes in two public primary schools – one in New South Wales (Australia) and one in Slovakia – whilst using qualitative research methods based on semi-structured interviews with staff members. The findings of this study reveal that participants often present very contradictory attitudes towards employing distributed leadership in practice. On the one hand, they require maximising the processes of distributed leadership and, on the other hand, they welcome various instances of solo/autocratic leadership practices by the principal. They also often conflated the concepts of distributed leadership and democratic leadership. In addition, the article discusses how wider social and political context may shape these perceptions and attitudes towards distributed leadership.     

That’s Not For Our Kids: The strange death of philosophy and ethics in a low socioeconomic secondary school

Abstract

This article reflects on the successes and failures of a new Philosophy and Ethics course in a low socioeconomic context in Perth, Western Australia, with the eventual demise of the subject in the school at the end of 2010. We frame this reflection within Deleuzian notions of geophilosophy to advocate for a Philosophy and Ethics that is informed by nomadic thought, as this offers a critical freedom for students to transform themselves and their society and suggests practical ways both of overcoming the prejudices which led to its demise and of student reluctance to engage in open discussion in class. We consider the demise of the course a ‘missed opportunity’ because it had so much potential to be transformative of student subjectivities in schools.     

Complexity leadership in learning analytics: Drivers,challenges and opportunities

Learning analytics (LA) has demonstrated great potential in improving teaching quality, learning experience and administrative efficiency. However, the adoption of LA in higher education is often beset by challenges in areas such as resources, stakeholder buy-in, ethics and privacy. Addressing these challenges in a complex system requires agile leadership that is responsive to pressures in the environment and capable of managing conflicts. This paper examines LA adoption processes among 21 UK higher education institutions using complexity leadership theory as a framework. The data were collected from 23 interviews with institutional leaders and subsequently analysed using a thematic coding scheme. The results showed a number of prominent challenges associated with LA deployment, which lie in the inherent tensions between innovation and operation. These challenges require a new form of leadership to create and nurture an adaptive space in which innovations are supported and ultimately transformed into the mainstream operation of an institution. This paper argues that a complexity leadership model enables higher education to shift towards more fluid and dynamic approaches for LA adoption, thus ensuring its scalability and sustainability.     

Ethnic,Familial, and Religious Identity of Roma Adolescents in Bulgaria,Czech Republic,Kosovo, and Romania in Relation to Their Level of Well‐Being

This study examines ethnic, national, familial, and religious identity and well‐being of 632 Roma minority and 589 majority adolescents (age: M = 15.98 years, SD = 1.34) in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Kosovo, and Romania. Results indicated that Roma showed lower endorsement of national identity but stronger religious identity than their majority counterparts. Path models showed positive associations of familial and religious identities with well‐being, whereas Roma identity was negatively associated with well‐being, particularly for Roma in Bulgaria and Kosovo (countries with a less active policy toward improving conditions of Roma). In the latter countries, Roma ethnic identity is less relevant and weakly associated with psychological well‐being of youth.     

All good readers are the same,but every low-skilled reader is different: an eye-tracking study using PISA data

PISA results show that a considerable number of 15-year-old pupils after 8 to 10 years of schooling have a low level of functional reading literacy, as defined in the PISA framework. While PISA results help identify the level of reading competency, they do not reveal what might be the reasons why some students fail to solve the tasks. One way to explore the difficulties students encounter while solving PISA reading tasks is to track their eye movements during reading. The main aim of this study was to explore the similarities and differences in eye movement patterns between students with high and low scores on PISA reading tasks. A sample of 92 students took part in the pre-test, which was based on PISA items, and administered to identify groups of students with high and low PISA reading scores. Based on student pre-test results, 20 students were selected for the main, eye-tracking test—10 participants with low scores and 10 with high scores. The eye-tracking test consisted of four different released PISA reading tasks, three of them continuous and one non-continuous. The continuous items were followed by one multiple-choice question each at L1, L2, and L3 levels of difficulty. The non-continuous text was followed by three multiple-choice questions (also L1–L3).Three main findings were the following: regarding saccadic amplitudes, the reading was found to be less fluent for the low-skilled group; according to the heat maps, they had difficulty finding the relevant material; and taking into account standard deviations of eye-tracking measures, the variability was found to be larger in this group. Taken together, the findings of this study show that the PISA results differentiating low- and high-scoring groups go hand in hand with insights from more fine-grained eye-tracking measurements.     

Research Circles: Supporting the Scholarship of Junior Faculty

This article describes and assesses “Research Circles” as a mechanism for enhancing faculty collegiality and research. Recently established on our campus, these circles, composed of three to four faculty members, have had a particularly powerful effect on the new faculty members' adjustment to their tenure track positions, especially since they entered a context that might otherwise have been challenging: a new interdisciplinary upper-division campus with high expectations for teaching excellence. Based on the end-of-year evaluations, journals, and focus groups, the co-authors described themes that emerged from their participation in these circles. Circle participation not only facilitated faculty writing throughout their first year, but it also fostered the development of an interdisciplinary community which nurtured creativity and risk taking in writing. All authors are currently teaching in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (IAS) at The University of Washington, Bothell (UWB). Except for Diane Gillespie, Professor and Associate Director of IAS, all other authors are Assistant Professors in IAS. Diane Gillespie received her Ph.D. in cultural and psychological studies in education from The University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Her interests include critical pedagogy, narrative psychology, and cultural diversity. Nives Dolšak received a joint Ph.D. in public policy and political science from Indiana University. Her interests include public policy, environmental policy, and international relations. Bruce Kochis, received his Ph.D. in Slavic languages & literatures at the University of Michigan. He focuses on global human rights policy, discourse analysis, and political theory. Ron Krabill received his Ph.D. in sociology and historical studies from New School for Social Research. His interests include comparative media, politics and social movements with a special emphasis on South Africa, as well as the study of peace, conflict, social justice, and human rights. Kari Lerum received her Ph.D. in sociology from The University of Washington. Her interests include culture, organizations, sexuality, qualitative methods, and visual studies. Anne Peterson received her Ph.D. from Washington University. Her interests include urban politics and policy and the distribution of natural resources at the local level. Elizabeth Thomas received her Ph.D. in psychology from The University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign. Her interests include community-based resources for adolescent development, cultural psychology, and the social context of learning.     

Identification of discipline violations and its role in planning corrective and preventive discipline in school

Many surveys confirm a substantial number of discipline problems in schools, but not many surveys are aimed at their identification. Identification of discipline violations is indispensable for prudent planning of their interventions in and prevention of their occurrence. Earlier studies focused mostly on the teachers’ perceptions of discipline problems and they were not interested in how discipline problems are perceived by students. In this study, teachers and students identified the most frequent and disturbing discipline violations. Given the results of the survey, it would be necessary to pay more attention to preventing disruption of lessons and improper attitude, which are, in the views of teachers and students alike, the most frequent and disturbing violations.