Social Networking as an Admission Tool: A Case Study in Success

The concept of social networking, the focus of this article, targets the development of online communities in higher education, and in particular, as part of the admission process. A successful case study of a university is presented on how one university has used this tool to compete for students. A discussion including suggestions on how to enhance the success of this tool in your recruitment process is also provided.     

Individual and group sensitivity to remedial reading program design: examining reading gains across three middle school reading projects

The purpose of this project was to examine group- and individual-level responses by struggling adolescents readers (6th–8th grades; N = 155) to three different modalities of the same reading program, Reading Achievement Multi-Component Program. The three modalities differ in the combination of reading components (phonological decoding, spelling, fluency, comprehension) that are taught and their organization. Latent change scores were used to examine changes in phonological decoding, fluency, and comprehension for each modality at the group level. In addition, individual students were classified as gainers versus non-gainers (a reading level increase of a year or more vs. less than 1 year) so that characteristics of gainers and differential sensitivity to instructional modality could be investigated. Findings from both group and individual analyses indicated that reading outcomes were related to modalities of reading instruction. Furthermore, differences in reading gains were seen between students who began treatment with higher reading scores than those with lower reading scores; dependent on modality of treatment. Results, examining group and individual analyses similarities and differences, and the effect the different modalities have on reading outcomes for older struggling readers will be discussed.     

Reflections on “recognition and development of academic talent in educationally disadvantaged students”

The challenge for school administrators is to direct system-wide initiatives that redefine leadership in ways that support the use of proven practices and link administrative interventions to increased educational achievement for each student who has a disability and for all the students who are in their charge. Leadership that embraces evidence-based practices promises new opportunities for collecting and using data related to student achievement, and determining which leadership practices contribute toward positive student outcomes. Responsive administrative interventions that support teaching and learning, system-wide progress monitoring, and collaborative problem-solving, are suggested as methods for promoting effective school outcomes for all students. This discussion proposes that administrators who organize teams to implement responsive leadership interventions, strategies for system-wide progress monitoring, and problem-solving, create cultures for data-based decisions that link leadership initiatives to instruction and learning outcomes for students who have disabilities.     

The impact of the MARS curriculum on students' ability to coordinate theory and evidence

The Model-Assisted Reasoning in Science (MARS) project seeks to promote model-centered instruction as a means of improving middle-school science education. As part of the evaluation of the sixth-grade curriculum, performance of MARS and non-MARS students was compared on a curriculum-neutral task. Fourteen students participated in structured interviews in which they experimented with a balance apparatus that provided three manipulable variables (two affected balance, one was a non-causal distractor variable). Although both groups were equally able to identify and test variables, all MARS students discovered a quantitative rule to describe the operation of the balance, whereas only one non-MARS student did so. MARS students discovered this numerical relationship through experimentation, regardless of their scientific reasoning profile (i.e. theory-generating, theory-modifying, or theory-preserving). The critical components of MARS instruction that may foster the ability to flexibly coordinate theory and evidence include multiple opportunities to draw conclusions from data and an emphasis on the successive refinement of models.     

Designing a Moodle course with the CADMOS learning design tool

CADMOS is a graphical learning design (LD) authoring tool that helps a teacher design a unit of learning in two layers: (i) the conceptual layer, which seems like a concept map and contains the learning activities with their associated learning resources and (ii) the flow layer, which contains the orchestration of these activities. One of CADMOS’ main innovative features is that it can bridge the gap between the design of a unit of learning and its enactment into Moodle. This paper presents how one can create a LD using CADMOS and deploy it into Moodle. Also, the paper shows the findings from a case study which was organized in order to evaluate the usability of the tool, its pedagogical flexibility and the usefulness of its innovative feature of deploying a LD into Moodle. CADMOS seems to be an easy-to-use tool, which offers guidance and flexibility during the design process.     

Beyond method: assessment and learning practices and values

This article reports the findings of a survey of 558 teachers in England. It describes how conceptual and empirical insights from the literature informed the construction of questionnaire items to provide answers to questions about the way in which teachers value different classroom assessment practices and how congruent with these values they perceive their practices to be. Results from item, factor and cluster analyses reveal three underlying dimensions of assessment practice, sizeable values-practice gaps on two dimensions that appear to be in tension (promoting learning autonomy and performance orientation), and differences among teachers which show that over half of this sample report that they are unable to sustain practices across all dimensions in line with their values. We conclude that teachers are demonstrably committed to the values (not just the methods) of assessment for learning within a moral framework that gives importance to the quality of students' learning, yet they experience and need to resolve contradictions in order to realize their values.     

The opportunism of the 'glocal': Malta's education policies

This article examines the dynamic of the relationship between the global and the local in education policy through a case study of recent policy initiatives in the small island state of Malta. The main initiative has been the setting up of a Foundation for Educational Services, which is now competing with services previously offered by the state Division of Education. It is argued that whilst the global, in this case the transnational company (TNC) HSBC Bank and the supranational European Union (EU), has particular power and can develop opportunity structures, this power is never closed or complete. The local has the power to enter or exit the global discursive field, including specific practices and structures. When the local interprets its needs to coincide with the global, as with the Foundation for Educational Services, HSBC Malta plc and the EU, then there is evidence that some political, economic or cultural 'opportunism' leads to the development of 'glocal' policy making. In this process, new and promiscuous actors and structures may take the place of older and more democratic ones. Moreover, the 'Trojan horse' politics of TNCs lead to new policy agendas in which the TNCs may be the major beneficiaries. The 'glocal' is a contested terrain over which we need to struggle.     

Students' Agentic Engagement Predicts Longitudinal Increases in Perceived Autonomy-Supportive Teaching: The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease

Recognizing that teachers' motivating styles predict students' classroom engagement, we investigated whether students' classroom engagement might predict a change in teachers' motivating styles, though we investigated only students' perceptions of these changes. Using a self-determination theory framework and a classroom-based longitudinal research design, 336 Peruvian university students self-reported their teachers' perceived autonomy-supportive teaching and four aspects of their own engagement (behavioral, emotional, agentic, and cognitive) at the beginning (T1) and end (T2) of a semester. As expected, earlysemester perceived autonomy-supportive teaching predicted longitudinal increases in all four aspects of students' late-semester engagement. More importantly, students' early-semester agentic engagement predicted longitudinal increases in perceived autonomy-supportive teaching, which suggests that students' classroom engagement may recruit greater perceived autonomy support.