Comparing Virtual and Physical Robotics Environments for Supporting Complex Systems and Computational Thinking

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Both complex systems methods (such as agent-based modeling) and computational methods (such as programming) provide powerful ways for students to...     

Changing the English Classroom: When Large-scale ‘Common’ Testing Meets Secondary Curriculum and Instruction in the United States

This article explores the intersection of new, large-scale standards-based testing, teacher accountability policy, and secondary curriculum and instruction in the United States. Two federally funded consortia – the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Readiness of College and Careers – prove focal to this paper, as these two organisations are creating new tests that will assess 42–49% of the K–12 student population in the United States in 2014–2015. Because greater teacher accountability for student performance will be given for these tests, there is more reason to pay attention to what these tests measure and what they do not. Our analysis suggests that these new tests will hold secondary English teachers accountable for literacy and disciplinary knowledge outside the field of English and thus raise important questions about what English teachers should, can and will do, especially when their jobs are on the line.     

Building Women’s Innovation Capacities Through Undergraduate Experiences

Research in Higher Education - This study examines how collegiate climates and practices can promote innovation capacities among an international longitudinal sample of undergraduate women. Using a...     

Amplifying organisational discourses to the public: Media narratives of Teach For Australia, 2008–2020

Alternative teacher education programmes have emerged in many countries as a new approach to recruiting, educating and placing teachers in underperforming schools. The media plays an important role in framing perceptions of these programmes and their teachers, including in Australia, but this has not been the subject of significant research to date. This study examines how one alternative teacher education programme—Teach For Australia (TFAus)—has been positioned and framed within the news media since its inception. It critically analyses the portrayal of TFAus and concomitant educational discourses to explore their connection to larger issues surrounding teacher education and teaching quality. Drawing on an analysis of 122 print/online media articles, we identify narratives related to prestige, benevolence and the ‘alternative’ nature of the programme, alongside a narrative critical of TFAus. Despite this critical narrative, in investigating and opening up a dialogue on the perceptions and depictions of TFAus, we posit that the programme—although controversial in nature—has generally benefited from print media coverage, advancing its reputation as a major contributor to education reform and champion of educational equity.     

Effects of student-facilitated learning on instructional facilitators

We investigated perceptions about learning strategy use and instructional roles among a sample of high needs adolescents (n = 230) who acted as near-peer instructional facilitators. The sample was drawn from science and mathematics classes in nonselective public secondary schools in New York City. Students participated in an inschool intervention that draws on social constructivism, theory and research on metacognition and learning strategies, role theory, and empirical findings from the peer-to-peer learning literature to promote advanced achievement among students who act as facilitators. Using a pre- and post-test single group design, we surveyed student instructional facilitators before and after program participation and related their perceptions about learning strategy use and perceptions about teaching roles to data about academic achievement. We found no survey gains in student perceptions about learning strategies or instructional roles between pre-survey (fall) and post-survey (spring). We found small but significant effects of individual perceptions about learning strategies and teaching roles on academic gains among instructional facilitators. The study also suggests that an in-school near-peer facilitated learning program can be an effective means to raise achievement in urban high schools. The study provides partial support for theories that hold that metacognition and role perceptions are involved in the academic gains of instructional facilitators, as gains in these dimensions were small compared to achievement gains.