Automated Scoring of Constructed‐Response Science Items: Prospects and Obstacles

Content‐based automated scoring has been applied in a variety of science domains. However, many prior applications involved simplified scoring rubrics without considering rubrics representing multiple levels of understanding. This study tested a concept‐based scoring tool for content‐based scoring, c‐rater?, for four science items with rubrics aiming to differentiate among multiple levels of understanding. The items showed moderate to good agreement with human scores. The findings suggest that automated scoring has the potential to score constructed‐response items with complex scoring rubrics, but in its current design cannot replace human raters. This article discusses sources of disagreement and factors that could potentially improve the accuracy of concept‐based automated scoring.     

Yoga for seniors: understanding their beliefs and barriers to participation

ABSTRACT

Yoga has been found to provide numerous health benefits to older adults including preventing or slowing physical frailty and subsequent functional limitations. The purpose of this study was to examine pre-frail or frail older adults’ beliefs about yoga as well as to identify barriers to participation. We recruited 37 older adults from a Faint, Fall, and Frailty Clinic at a medical center and asked them to complete questionnaires regarding their physical health and beliefs about yoga using the Beliefs About Yoga Scale. Frailty and fall risk were obtained through electronic health records. Participants’ had mean age of 72.81 years. Participants were considered to be prefrail (66.7%) or frail (33.3%), and most (78.4%) had fallen at least once in the past year. Over 72% of participants engaged in light physical activity. The BAYS mean score was 59.17 (SD = 12.5; Range 11–77). Higher scores indicted more optimistic beliefs about yoga. Over 90% of participants had not practiced yoga, 97.1% had no intentions to practice, 61.8% did not know locations placed where yoga classes were offered, 82.4% were unsure about the costs associated with yoga, and only 56.3% reported having transportation. The three primary barriers to practicing yoga were perceived difficulty of yoga practice, lack of motivation, and fear of injury. Participants held positive beliefs about yoga, yet had limited experience and little intention to participate indicating a need to provide targeted educational interventions to this population of older adults.     

Principal Leadership for Technology-enhanced Learning in Science

Reforms such as technology-enhanced instruction require principal leadership. Yet, many principals report that they need help to guide implementation of science and technology reforms. We identify strategies for helping principals provide this leadership. A two-phase design is employed. In the first phase we elicit principals’ varied ideas about the Technology-enhanced Learning in Science (TELS) curriculum materials being implemented by teachers in their schools, and in the second phase we engage principals in a leadership workshop designed based on the ideas they generated. Analysis uses an emergent coding scheme to categorize principals’ ideas, and a knowledge integration framework to capture the development of these ideas. The analysis suggests that principals frame their thinking about the implementation of TELS in terms of: principal leadership, curriculum, educational policy, teacher learning, student outcomes and financial resources. They seek to improve their own knowledge to support this reform. The principals organize their ideas around individual school goals and current political issues. Principals prefer professional development activities that engage them in reviewing curricula and student work with other principals. Based on the analysis, this study offers guidelines for creating learning opportunities that enhance principals’ leadership abilities in technology and science reform.     

Children’s Developing Ability to Resolve Disagreements by Integrating Perspectives

Children live in a world where disagreement is commonplace. Although disagreement can sometimes be explained by differences in people’s reliability, disagreement may also indicate that the referent elicits multiple perspectives. The present studies (total N = 129, 5- to 12-year-old ethnically diverse U.S. children, 42% girls) examined children’s ability to resolve disagreement among two individuals by identifying referents that integrated the perspectives, and considered the extent to which any age-related change could be explained by epistemological understanding (i.e., acknowledging that two perspectives can be right). Children’s age was positively correlated with their ability to integrate perspectives, and children performed at above-chance levels by approximately 10 years of age. Age differences in integrating perspectives were partially accounted for by epistemological understanding.     

The rights of children and young people under special educational needs legislation in England: an inclusive agenda?

ABSTRACT

In this article we consider the rights of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities in England, introduced under the Children and Families Act 2014, within the context of the wider reforms made by the Act. Drawing primarily on key informant interviews conducted as part of an ESRC project on Autonomy, Rights and Children with Special Needs: A New Paradigm? (ES/P002641/1), and making reference to the international framework of children’s and disabled persons’ rights, we present an analysis of the (mostly professional) viewpoints gathered and what they tell us about the progress towards the realisation of children and young people’s autonomy and agency in this field.     

The ‘post‐post period’ and environmental education research

Described as ‘postexperimental’ and of the ‘post‐post period,’ the current moment in social science research is typified by multivoiced texts, researcher reflexivity, cultural criticism, and experimental works; characteristics in keeping with poststructurally informed understandings of social science research as contingent, evolving and messy. However, many researchers concerned with environmental education continue within positivistic or postpositivistic traditions, relying on understandings of reality as something that is out there to be discovered or approximated. This article explores the methodological considerations of post‐informed research, seeking to contribute to discussions of how environmental education research might better take issues of representation, legitimation, and politics into account.     

Characteristics of respondents who respond differently to positively and negatively worded items on rating scales

Although evidence prevails that including positively and negatively worded items within the same scale can lead to differential response patterns, little is known about factors that predict how different these responses will be. Thus, three datasets were analysed to investigate the characteristics of respondents whose responses between positively and negatively worded items are most different. The three studies yielded two major findings: (i) responses to the positively worded items yielded statistically significantly higher means than did responses to the negatively worded items, and (ii) several characteristics were identified pertaining to those who tend to have the largest absolute discrepancies in responses between the two sets of items.     

Morphological structure: Latin and Greek roots and affixes as upper grade code strategies

Some students in the upper elementary grades and high schools may benefit from extended decoding and spelling instruction. These students, because of their age level and reading selections, require strategies going well beyond phonics. For these older readers, including adults, learning about morphological structure may provide the strategies needed to decode and spell multisyllabic words found often in literature and content area texts. In this paper, literature providing a rationale for such instruction is reviewed, and a curriculum and instructional plan is described.     

Expectancies as mediators in the differential-reward conditional discrimination performance of pigeons

In a series of within-subject experiments employing a two-choice delayed conditional discrimination task, pigeons chose correctly more often when kind of correct choice and kind of reinforcer were perfectly correlated than when uncorrelated. Correct choice behavior fell to chance levels when the correlation was reversed or when it was removed by using only one kind of reinforcer. Implications for mediation theories are discussed, with the conclusion being that, although the possibility that instrumental mediators are present in this situation cannot be dismissed, the overall pattern of results indicates that classical mediators are of principal importance in this type of task.