The contextual nature of university-wide curriculum change

We explored the relationships between social contexts and factors that promoted and inhibited curriculum change at two universities. Thirty interviews were analysed using a general inductive approach to identify factors and forces in three social contexts (lecturer, departmental, and institutional). Curriculum change was characterised by six forces: ownership, resources, identity, leadership, students, and quality assurance, each composed of factors that differed in their direction (enabling or inhibiting) and/or intensity (strong or weak). Academic developers should find the approach and lessons learned useful for planning interventions and identifying where they may encounter resistance or enablers in the process of change.     

Leader noticing of facilitation in videocases of mathematics professional development

In this article, we report on Researching Mathematics Leader Learning (RMLL), a project designed to support leaders in learning how to facilitate robust opportunities for teachers’ mathematical learning. Our two-phase research design allowed us to construct a set of videocase seminars, enact the seminar design with leaders, analyze these data, refine our seminar design, and implement a second set of seminars with a new group of leaders. We drew on the noticing literature to examine leaders’ pedagogical reasoning as they discussed videocases of professional development. In this article, we demonstrate how changes in our framework for leader development and the resulting changes in the prompts and tasks shaped leader noticing in three ways: (a) accounting for the mathematical work of the facilitator and teachers in the videocase; (b) linking the mathematical work to goals for teacher learning; and (c) reasoning around the facilitator’s work in advancing those learning goals. Analysis indicates that in Phase II, leader discussions were more focused on the mathematical and pedagogical work needed to advance teacher learning. Based on our research and development work with over 70 leaders, we offer a set of design principles for leader professional development.     

Student perspectives on climate change through place-based filmmaking

Abstract

The study examined high school students’ perspectives on climate change before and after participation in an informal science education program. During the program, students made a short, place-based film about climate change impacts in their communities. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of student data revealed key themes that illustrate how students characterized climate change before and after developing their films. Following the program, students described climate change as locally-relevant, alarming, and a concern that held increased personal importance to them. They also reported greater confidence in their understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change and indicated a stronger sense of both collective and personal responsibility to take action to address climate change challenges in their communities. The study adds to the existing body of literature that describes how making personally meaningful connections with climate change can inspire a sense of responsibility and agency among students.     

The differential antecedents of self-efficacy beliefs of novice and experienced teachers

Among the sources of teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs, mastery experiences are postulated to be the most potent. Thus it seems likely that other sources of self-efficacy would play a larger role early in learning when fewer mastery experiences are available. Among the 255 novice and careers teachers who participated in this study, contextual factors such as the teaching resources and interpersonal support available were found to be much more salient in the self-efficacy beliefs of novice teachers. Among experienced teachers, for whom an abundance of mastery experiences were available, contextual factors played far less important a role in their self-efficacy beliefs.     

Shifting the Zone of Mediation in a Suburban New Immigrant Destination: Community Boundary Spanners and School District Policymaking

This paper explores the context of reception for immigrant students and English learners in one medium-sized suburban school district in the northeastern United States. Using qualitative methods, the authors describe how, despite a troubling context of reception emerging from a normative and political community context that harbored resentment toward the new immigrant population, a community-based organization whose members served as boundary spanners between the school district and the community helped prompt district leaders toward more equity-minded policies. Given increasing culturally and linguistically diverse student populations in suburban school districts across the United States, findings from this paper have important implications for community engagement and school district policymaking.     

CRIS Power! Taming the Reporting Requirements of Open Access

In the United Kingdom, librarians are adapting their roles to support researchers with the Open Access publication of their research in a post-Finch world, including grappling with reporting requirements at the institutional level. Particularly challenging is the need to provide high-level analysis for strategy makers while also extracting low-level detail for service provision and reporting in order to meet the needs of stakeholders across the university and numerous national external bodies. David Walters of Brunel University London describes how the library maximized its reporting capability by using the research management information in the university’s instance of Symplectic Elements, along with other Open Access data sources to establish the effective management of the institution’s Open Access publications data. Monitoring institutional data in real-time is guiding the development of library services and has allowed library staff to tailor appropriate training to researchers in very different disciplines.     

Assessment of balance among adolescent track and field athletes

Track and field events place different demands on athletes and may have an effect on balance. This study investigated the effects of event specialty, gender, and leg dominance on balance among adolescent track and field athletes. Forty healthy adolescent track and field athletes (male = 23, female = 17) categorised into three different groups (sprinter = 20, distance runners = 13, throwers = 7) had their single leg static balance measured with the eyes open and the eyes closed using an AMTI force platform. Dependent variables included average displacement (cm) of the centre of pressure (COP) in the anterior/posterior direction and medial/lateral directions, the average velocity of the COP (cm/s) and the 95% ellipse area (cm²). Variables were analysed using a 3 (event specialty) × 2 (gender) × 2 (leg) ANOVA with repeated measures on the leg variable (p < 0.05). There was a significant difference (p < 0.05) in the average displacement of the COP in the medial/lateral direction for both the eyes open and closed condition, with the non-dominant leg demonstrating greater displacement than the dominant leg. This might increase the risk of injury for the non-dominant leg, but additional data should be collected and analysed on both dynamic balance and performance.     

Retrospectives on factors influencing inclusive opportunities for college students with extensive support needs

Current U.S. legislation calls for students with disabilities to be involved and make progress in general education curriculum. Despite the legislation, students with extensive support needs continue to be segregated from their peers and post-school outcomes remain dismal for this population of students. The purpose of this retrospective study was to explore the perceptions of two students with extensive support needs and their caregivers regarding factors that contributed to their involvement and progress in the general education curriculum and eventual enrolment in four-year, post-secondary institutions in the United States. Findings related to the role of participants’ perceptions of self, participants’ engagement in advocacy roles and activities, and specific human and material supports that both facilitated and acted as barriers to education in the general curriculum emerged as recurrent themes. Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research and practice are presented.     

Effects of lecture video styles on engagement and learning

Educational technology research and development - Lecture videos are an integral part of distance education. Much has been done to investigate the effects of lecture video styles, but many of the...