Characteristics of School Districts That Participate in Rigorous National Educational Evaluations

Given increasing interest in evidence-based policy, there is growing attention to how well the results from rigorous program evaluations may inform policy decisions. However, little attention has been paid to documenting the characteristics of schools or districts that participate in rigorous educational evaluations, and how they compare to potential target populations for the interventions that were evaluated. Utilizing a list of the actual districts that participated in 11 large-scale rigorous educational evaluations, we compare those districts to several different target populations of districts that could potentially be affected by policy decisions regarding the interventions under study. We find that school districts that participated in the 11 rigorous educational evaluations differ from the interventions' target populations in several ways, including size, student performance on state assessments, and location (urban/rural). These findings raise questions about whether, as currently implemented, the results from rigorous impact studies in education are likely to generalize to the larger set of school districts—and thus schools and students—of potential interest to policymakers, and how we can improve our study designs to retain strong internal validity while also enhancing external validity.     

Recommendations for effective university study based on students’ point of view

This research examined what university students recommend for effective university study and whether their recommendations differ by gender, faculty or study programme degree. The research was based on 985 questionnaires. The following words were most commonly used in advice for freshmen: Go, Lectures, Learn, Continuously, Be, Prepare, Information, Have, Do, Materials. The fundamental advice seems to be: to go to lectures, to have needed materials and information and to learn and prepare continuously. Some stated recommendations react to the development of information and communication technologies and the massive usage of the Internet (such as obtaining a laptop and a cell phone or setting up a Facebook profile). Quite a lot of advice was connected with health, such as to sleep enough, to eat regularly, to not smoke, to relax and to restrict alcohol consumption. The recommendations gained in this survey were categorised by thematic similarities to characteristics, knowledge, skills, behaviour and background. The findings highlight the fact that given recommendations for effective study differ by the respondent’s gender and faculty. Women concentrated more on recommendations on how to behave and men mentioned more often what personality characteristics are important for effective university study. Students of the Faculty of Multimedia Communications highlighted the necessity of creativity and practical experience more often than others.     

Twitter as a tool for citizen engagement: An empirical study of the Andalusian municipalities

This paper provides a general overview of the way local governments use Twitter as a communication tool to engage with their citizens. More concretely, it tries to identify factors associated with both the channel activity and citizen engagement, to understand the relationship between media type and citizen engagement and to analyse whether different content generated different levels of engagement. A sample of the 29 most populated Andalusian local governments is examined. The results show that the majority of Andalusian local governments have an official corporate Twitter account with certain level of activity. There is no, however, a significant relationship between the population of a municipality and its citizen's engagement, and there is a significant negative relationship between audience and engagement and between activity and engagement. The findings of the study also show the particular media and content types generate higher engagement than others. This paper contributes to the literature on social media and has practical implications for local governments.     

Grotesque Encounters with Adolescence: Reading Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding

This paper takes the grotesque as a model of subjectivity that offers compelling inroads to understanding adolescence. Bakhtin notes that the grotesque ‘seeks to grasp in its imagery the very act of becoming and growth, the eternal, incomplete, unfinished nature of being’. I argue that Carson McCullers' novel, The Member of the Wedding (1946 McCullers, C. 1946/1987. Collected Stories of Carson McCullers, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.  [Google Scholar]), is largely about this ‘act of becoming’ in its heightened form, at the time of early adolescence, and I explore the ways in which puberty estranges 12‐year‐old Frankie Adam from her old body and her old self, resulting in encounters with the uncanny.     

Enhancing environmental educators' evaluation competencies: insights from an examination of the effectiveness of the My Environmental Education Evaluation Resource Assistant (MEERA) website

To conduct evaluations that can benefit individual programs as well as the field as a whole, environmental educators must have the necessary evaluation competencies. This exploratory study was conducted to determine to what extent a self‐directed learning resource entitled My Environmental Education Evaluation Resource Assistant (MEERA) can enhance environmental educators' evaluation competencies. The multiple case studies relied on data from eight environmental educators with limited evaluation experience who used MEERA to evaluate one of their programs. Results suggest that MEERA can (1) increase environmental educators' perceived evaluation competencies, (2) help environmental educators produce quality evaluation outputs, and (3) foster their use of evaluation results. Perceived benefits of using MEERA included obtaining evidence of program success, insights into how to improve programs, and alternative ways of thinking about programs. Perceived challenges included varying difficulties with evaluation tasks such as prioritizing evaluation questions and designing data collection instruments and, in line with this, desiring personal expert assistance for context‐specific advice and reassurance. This research contributes to expanding understanding of how to enhance environmental educators' evaluation competencies and practices.     

The effect of mindfulness on extinction and behavioral resurgence

In the present experiments, we investigated the effects of mindfulness on behavioral extinction and resurgence. Participants received instrumental training; either they received FI training (Experiment 1), or they were trained to emit high rates and low rates of response via exposure to a multiple VR yoked-VI schedule prior to exposure to a multiple FI FI schedule in order to alter their rates of responding learned during Experiment 2. Participants were then exposed to either a focused- (mindfulness) or an unfocused-attention induction task. All participants were finally exposed to an extinction schedule in order to determine whether a mindfulness induction task presented immediately prior to extinction training affected extinction (Experiment 1) and behavioral resurgence (Experiment 2). During the extinction phase, the rates of responding were higher in the control group than in the mindfulness group, indicating that the mindfulness group was more sensitive to the contingencies and, thus, their prior performance extinguished more readily (Experiment 1). Moreover, rates of response in the extinction components less precisely reflected previous training in the mindfulness group, suggesting less resurgence of past behaviors after the mindfulness induction (Experiment 2).     

Equity Traps Redux: Inequitable Access to Foreign Language Courses for African American High School Students

Although much of the current educational research literature on achievement gaps has focused on core curricular areas in public schools, few have focused on racially identifiable gaps in non-core areas such as high school foreign languages. These achievement, and thus advancement, gaps often result in the under-representation of students of color in higher level foreign language classes. This can have long-range negative consequences for students, such as lacking the foreign language credits needed for admission into major universities. Thus, in this qualitative study, we researched the perceptions of teachers, counselors, and school leaders at a racially diverse urban high school in central Texas concerning the enrollment, achievement, and advancement of African American students in high school foreign language courses. The results indicate that equity traps—deficit views, racial erasure, and paralogical beliefs and behaviors—advanced over a decade ago (McKenzie &; Scheurich, 2004 McKenzie, K. B., &; Scheurich, J. J. (2004). Equity traps: A useful construct for preparing principals to lead schools that are successful with racially diverse students. Educational Administration Quarterly, 40(5), 601–632.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) are continuing and even thriving among teachers, counselors, and school leaders in public schools. These equity traps contribute to the foreign language achievement gap, resulting in diminished educational opportunities for African American students. Moreover, we propose that an additional equity trap is at play—organizational constraints—which are the structural obstacles that serve to abet and perpetuate the negative beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and assumptions exposed in the original equity traps. We conclude this article with recommendations for policy makers and practitioners and offer direction for future research.     

Concurrent validity of the Slosson full‐range intelligence test: Comparison with the Wechsler intelligence scale for children–third edition and the Woodcock Johnson tests of achievement–revised

This study examined the concurrent validity of the Slosson Full‐Range Intelligence Test (S‐FRIT) by comparing S‐FRIT scores to the scores of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–Third Edition (WISC‐III) and the Woodcock‐Johnson Tests of Achievement–Revised (WJ‐R). Data from 123 elementary students' screening and psychological testing results were examined. Results revealed that the S‐FRIT scores were more related to overall intelligence, verbal, and math abilities than nonverbal intelligence, reading, or written language abilities. Further, it was found that 89% of the participants' S‐FRIT Full‐Range IQ scores fell within one standard deviation of their WISC‐III FSIQ scores, with an average discrepancy of 7.6 points. Discrepancies between S‐FRIT and WISC‐III scores were also examined by educational diagnostic categories and ability levels. Limitations and suggestions for future research are provided. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.