Perfectly Reasonable in a Practical World: Understanding Chemistry Teacher Responses to a Change Proposal

Curriculum ideals often get compromised as a curriculum moves through its various levels of representation. Across the different science reforms, this process of slippage is clearly present. Research shows that teacher subject matter knowledge, PCK, beliefs and context factors all influence implementation. Professional development arrangements focus on fixing deficiencies in teachers’ knowledge, beliefs or work context. This approach has not solved the problem of slippage, as we still do not understand what mechanisms operate when teachers make decisions about change proposals. In this study, we unpacked the decision mechanisms of three highly qualified chemistry teachers who subsequently adapted an innovative context-based chemistry unit. In spite of a state of the art professional development arrangement and the teachers being highly qualified, slippage occurred. The teachers’ goal systems were used to interpret their reasoning. A goal system is a context-dependent, within-person mental construct that consists of a hierarchy of a person’s goals and means in pursuit of a task. We showed that all three teachers adopted or redesigned elements of the change proposals to meet their core goals, i.e., goals that had multiple connections with other goals. This indicated that the adaptations teachers made were perfectly reasonable ways to serve their professional goals. For change to happen, we contend that one should begin with ways to connect teachers’ core goals with the lesson or unit goal demands of a proposed innovation. Change emerges from the adaptions teachers make in the service of their core goals.     

Attention to Intentions—How to Stimulate Strong Intentions to Change

The implementation of educational reforms requires behavioral changes from the teachers involved. Theories on successful behavioral change prescribe the following conditions: teachers need to possess the necessary knowledge and skills, form strong positive intentions to perform the new behavior, and have a supporting environment for change. However, existing approaches to teacher professional development in the context of educational reforms are predominantly aimed at the development of knowledge and skills and at creating a supporting environment, but lack attention to teachers’ intentions to change. In the study described in this article, we performed “motivating-for-educational-change” interviews (MECI) and explored the influence on teachers’ intentions to change in the direction of the proposed national biology education reform, that is, the introduction of a context-based curriculum. The MECI comprised two tools: building on earlier successful experiences and using lesson segments to rearrange instructional approaches. We explored the influence of the MECI technique on the strength and specificity of participating teachers’ intentions. When conducting the MECI, many participants expressed that they now realized how they had already implemented aspects of the reform in their regular instructional approaches. Furthermore, all the participants formulated stronger and more specific intentions to change their regular instructional approach towards that of the proposed reform while taking their regular instructional approach as a starting point.     

Assessing personal talent determinants in young racquet sport players: a systematic review

Since junior performances have little predictive value for future success, other solutions are sought to assess a young player’s potential. The objectives of this systematic review are (1) to provide an overview of instruments measuring personal talent determinants of young players in racquet sports, and (2) to evaluate these instruments regarding their validity for talent development. Electronic searches were conducted in PubMed, PsychINFO, Web of Knowledge, ScienceDirect and SPORTDiscus (1990 to 31 March 2014). Search terms represented tennis, table tennis, badminton and squash, the concept of talent, methods of testing and children. Thirty articles with information regarding over 100 instruments were included. Validity evaluation showed that instruments focusing on intellectual and perceptual abilities, and coordinative skills discriminate elite from non-elite players and/or are related to current performance, but their predictive validity is not confirmed. There is moderate evidence that the assessments of mental and goal management skills predict future performance. Data on instruments measuring physical characteristics prohibit a conclusion due to conflicting findings. This systematic review yielded an ambiguous end point. The lack of longitudinal studies precludes verification of the instrument’s capacity to forecast future performance. Future research should focus on instruments assessing multidimensional talent determinants and their predictive value in longitudinal designs.     

Teachers and science curriculum materials: where we are and where we need to go

Curriculum materials serve as a key conceptual tool for science teachers, and better understanding how science teachers use these tools could help to improve both curriculum design and theory related to teacher learning and decision-making. The authors review the literature on teachers and science curriculum materials. The review is organised around three main questions: What do teachers do when using science curriculum materials?, What happens when teachers use science curriculum materials? and Why do teachers make the decisions they do? For each question, the authors first summarise the findings of two key reviews from the mathematics education literature, then situate the findings from science education in juxtaposition with those findings. The review uncovers that relatively little is understood about the mechanism underlying how teachers interact with curriculum materials. To try to address this gap, complementing and extending the field’s existing understandings of the teacher–curriculum relationship, the authors make four propositions, grounded in the literature on self-regulation. The propositions reflect a mechanism for teacher curricular decision-making. The self-regulation perspective also helps to develop more targeted support for science teachers aimed at the uptake, adaptation and enactment of curriculum materials in ways that are intended, and that teachers themselves experience as an improvement in their teaching. The authors conclude with a call for research that further explores the ways in which individual science teachers’ decision-making is situated within the wider sociocultural context.     

Responsible Research and Innovation as a Novel Approach to Guide Educational Impact of Mind,Brain, and Education Research

We propose a Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) framework to improve the alignment between mind, brain, and education (MBE) research, the educational practice, and other societal stakeholders. RRI is an approach that has successfully been used in different research fields, but not yet in MBE research. After substantiating the need for, and possibilities of using this framework within MBE research, we report a case study to demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of RRI within an MBE context. This case study entails developing an educational intervention to improve learners' sense of agency regarding their own learning processes using neurofeedback. Using RRI, we found that societal stakeholders (teenagers, parents, and teachers) anticipate different potential impacts of this neurotechnology‐based intervention than researchers did, enabling us to adapt the intervention according to these perspectives. This example demonstrates that RRI enables researchers to be reflexive and responsive to the stakeholders needs and values, to ultimately improve the educational and societal value of MBE research.     

Picturing Sex Education: Notes on the politics of visual stratification

This paper addresses the scarcity of research on depictions and layout in sex education materials. It is argued that pictures and layout can inform an analysis of social stratification based on visual access. This process of social organization is located using four theoretical models. However these models do not lend themselves to a close reading of graphical strategies. To illustrate how pictures operate, three European works are subjected to a comparative semiotic analysis: Zeig Mal! (Germany, 1974), Vies is lekker (Holland, 1979), and Questions children ask and how to answer them (UK, 1997). It is concluded that the works examined inform three pedagogical paradigms of sex education: liberationism, post-structuralism, and stratificationism. These paradigms are discussed in relation to three known paradigms of analysing power (sovereign power, discipline, and control) and a newly discussed paradigm of ultrastructural confinement.     

Perspective-Based Generic Questions as a Tool to Promote Student Biology Teacher Questioning

Research in Science Education - In biological research, generic questions that are derived from perspectives (ways of looking at and thinking about life processes) help in generating specific...     

Item position effects in listening but not in reading in the European Survey of Language Competences

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - In contrast with the assumptions made in standard measurement models used in large-scale assessments, students’ performance may change...     

Academic performance and self-regulatory skills in elite youth soccer players

Although elite athletes have been reported to be high academic achievers, many elite soccer players struggle with a stereotype of being low academic achievers. The purpose of this study was to compare the academic level (pre-university or pre-vocational) and self-regulatory skills (planning, self-monitoring, evaluation, reflection, effort, and self-efficacy) of elite youth soccer players aged 12-16 years (n = 128) with those of 164 age-matched controls (typical students). The results demonstrate that the elite youth soccer players are more often enrolled in the pre-university academic system, which means that they are high academic achievers, compared with the typical student. The elite players also report an increased use of self-regulatory skills, in particular self-monitoring, evaluation, reflection, and effort. In addition, control students in the pre-university system had more highly developed self-regulatory skills than those in the pre-vocational system, whereas no difference was observed within the soccer population. This suggests that the relatively stronger self-regulatory skills reported by the elite youth soccer players may be essential for performance at the highest levels of sport competition and in academia.     

Creating performance benchmarks for the future elites in speed skating

Sports performance benchmarks useful to select and guide future elites are limited in literature. The present study introduces a method to enable comparison between sports performance of different generations and creates performance benchmarks for the future elites in speed skating. 1500 m Season Best Times (SBT) of Dutch skaters (1043 females, 1812 males, age 13–26 years), who competed in at least six seasons between 1993 and 2013, were corrected for the prevailing world record (WR): rSBT=(SBT/WR)*100%. Regression analyses showed that the calendar year affected SBT (p<0.01), but not rSBT (p>0.05). Based on rSBT, performance groups were defined: elite (rSBT<110%), sub-elite (110%<rSBT<115%), high-competitive (115%<rSBT<120%), medium-competitive (120%<rSBT<125%) and low-competitive (rSBT>125%). Benchmarks were based on the slowest rSBT per age of the elite group. Of the total skaters performing within the elite benchmarks, the elite performance group represented <20% up to age 16 and <50% up to age 21. An out of sample group (n=299) confirmed the usability of the benchmarks. So, by correcting time-trial performance for the prevailing WR, elite performance benchmarks can be made based on multiple generations of elite skaters. The benchmarks can be used to select and guide future elite skaters from age 13–26 years.