Student resistance movements in higher education: an analysis of the depiction of Black Lives Matter student protests in news media

Abstract

Popular media shapes societal perceptions and discourse. The growing use of news media in higher education practices (outreach, admissions, and campus communication) have heightened the need for institutional leadership to not only understand the general impact of popular media but also to comprehend students’ representation, as well as the acquisition and dissemination of media content. In this study, authors present a media content analysis of newspaper coverage of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the well-known periodical, the Chronicle of Higher Education. Ultimately, this study demonstrates (1) organizational leadership can be influenced and disrupted to promote racial justice and (2) the discursive treatment of the BLM in popular media and, and by extension, in the United States’ public imagination. Overall, this study suggests that in situations where institutional policies perpetuate racial inequity, BLM student movements have the capacity to complicate existing discourse about Blackness in higher education and catalyze substantial social change.     

Contextual Factors Related to Math Anxiety in Second-Grade Children

As the United States falls farther behind other countries in standardized math assessments, the author seeks to understand why U.S. students perform so poorly. One of the possible explanations to U.S. students’ poor math performance may be math anxiety. However, math anxiety in elementary school children is a neglected area in the research. The author aimed to close the gap in knowledge about math anxiety in children by examining contextual factors related to math anxiety in second-grade children. The author used the theory of triadic reciprocity as the theoretical model in this study in which children (n = 91) and their parents (n = 81) completed a series of self-report measures on math anxiety, math self-concept, reading self-concept, math self-efficacy, and aspects of the home math environment. Results indicated that the strongest predictor of math anxiety in second-grade children was their level of math self-concept. The addition of environmental factors did not significantly increase the amount of variance explained in math anxiety.     

Using automated analysis to assess middle school students' competence with scientific argumentation

Argumentation is fundamental to science education, both as a prominent feature of scientific reasoning and as an effective mode of learning—a perspective reflected in contemporary frameworks and standards. The successful implementation of argumentation in school science, however, requires a paradigm shift in science assessment from the measurement of knowledge and understanding to the measurement of performance and knowledge in use. Performance tasks requiring argumentation must capture the many ways students can construct and evaluate arguments in science, yet such tasks are both expensive and resource-intensive to score. In this study we explore how machine learning text classification techniques can be applied to develop efficient, valid, and accurate constructed-response measures of students' competency with written scientific argumentation that are aligned with a validated argumentation learning progression. Data come from 933 middle school students in the San Francisco Bay Area and are based on three sets of argumentation items in three different science contexts. The findings demonstrate that we have been able to develop computer scoring models that can achieve substantial to almost perfect agreement between human-assigned and computer-predicted scores. Model performance was slightly weaker for harder items targeting higher levels of the learning progression, largely due to the linguistic complexity of these responses and the sparsity of higher-level responses in the training data set. Comparing the efficacy of different scoring approaches revealed that breaking down students' arguments into multiple components (e.g., the presence of an accurate claim or providing sufficient evidence), developing computer models for each component, and combining scores from these analytic components into a holistic score produced better results than holistic scoring approaches. However, this analytical approach was found to be differentially biased when scoring responses from English learners (EL) students as compared to responses from non-EL students on some items. Differences in the severity between human and computer scores for EL between these approaches are explored, and potential sources of bias in automated scoring are discussed.     

Do charismatic presidents influence college applications and alumni donations? Organizational identity and performance in US higher education

The effect of charismatic leadership on organizational performance is contested. Yet despite the lack of consistent evidence of the value of charismatic leadership to organizations, presidential searches have increasingly favored charismatic candidates. This study shows how organizational identity mediates the relationship between charismatic leadership and organizational performance. Among religious colleges, but not among private colleges considered overall, there is a positive relationship between presidents’ charismatic leadership and the number of applications for enrollment and the amount of financial donations colleges receive. This suggests that among organizations with atypical identities, charismatic leadership can be interpreted as a meaningful signal of organizational performance.     

The Intersection of Inquiry-Based Science and Language: Preparing Teachers for ELL Classrooms

As teacher educators, we are tasked with preparing prospective teachers to enter a field that has undergone significant changes in student population and policy since we were K-12 teachers. With the emphasis placed on connections, mathematics integration, and communication by the New Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (Achieve in Next generation science standards, 2012), more research is needed on how teachers can accomplish this integration (Bunch in Rev Res Educ 37:298–341, 2013; Lee et al. in Educ Res 42(4):223–233, 2013). Science teacher educators, in response to the NGSS, recognize that it is necessary for pre-service and in-service teachers to know more about how instructional strategies in language and science can complement one another. Our purpose in this study was to explore a model of integration that can be used in classrooms. To do this, we examined the change in science content knowledge and academic vocabulary for English language learners (ELLs) as they engaged in inquiry-based science experience utilizing the 5R Instructional Model. Two units, erosion and wind turbines, were developed using the 5R Instructional Model and taught during two different years in a summer school program for ELLs. We analyzed data from interviews to assess change in conceptual understanding and science academic vocabulary over the 60 h of instruction. The statistics show a clear trend of growth supporting our claim that ELLs did construct more sophisticated understanding of the topics and use more language to communicate their knowledge. As science teacher educators seek ways to prepare elementary teachers to help preK-12 students to learn science and develop the language of science, the 5R Instructional Model is one pathway.     

Science in a school of social priority

The National Literacy Strategy Framework (DfEE, 1998) requires primary children to, ‘become increasingly conscious of the writer's intentions’ (p.7) and The National Curriculum for English (1999) states that children should, ‘use and adapt the features of a form of writing, drawing on their reading’ (p.28). Developing a process approach to writing, where children are supported as they draft and redraft texts, was the aim of a university funded school-partnership project between Sycamore Junior School, in the City of Nottingham, and Nottingham Trent University. The article describes how Years 3 and 4 children developed an understanding of narrative structure and became reflective writers, as they responded to each other's work, during writing workshops.     

Single-sex Classes and Equal Opportunities for Girls and Boys: Perspectives through time from a mixed comprehensive school in England

The recent concern with the apparent 'under-achievement' of boys in England's comprehensive schools has led schools to review the potential of single-sex classes as a means of improving performance. This paper reviews the arguments for such a strategy, in the context of one school where such an approach has underpinned the organisation of the school through the last three decades. We examine the rationale behind the original decision to implement single-sex teaching, consider the evolution of the curriculum through time, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this mode of organisation from the varying perspectives of parents, students and teachers. We consider whether the strategy has contributed to an improvement in the achievement levels of girls, and discuss the extent to which single-sex teaching has the potential to have a positive impact in raising boys' performance. In reviewing the evidence, we conclude that the single-sex mode of teaching in the school is effective in contributing to high achievement levels, in many contexts providing a conducive and supportive environment for students' learning. We suggest that such groupings may offer more advantages for girls than for boys; we argue that the potential of the system will only be fully realised when it is explicitly recognised that girls and boys do respond differently, in certain contexts, to different teaching-learning styles.     

EDUCATION FOR THE ELDERLY: TRENDS AND PROBLEMS IN THE 1980s

The 1980s will see a trend toward lifelong education and a resulting shift in educational emphasis to educating older people. As part of this trend, more people will reach retirement in good health and with high educational levels. Therefore the elderly will become a more notable group of educational consumers in the decade to come. This paper identifies four groups of elderly educational consumers based on their interests and needs. Each group is delineated, and problems inherent in meeting their needs are discussed.