Who's the winner? Children's math learning in competitive and collaborative scenarios

Games are frequently used to promote math learning, yet the competitive and collaborative contexts introduced by games may exacerbate gender differences. In this study, 1st and 2nd grade children in the U.S. (ages 5–8; N = 274; 70% White, 15% Asian, 2% Black, 1% Native American, 14% mixed or other race; 17% Hispanic) played either a competitive, collaborative, or solo game to learn about a challenging novel math concept: proportion. Overall, both social contexts boosted perseverance and task attitudes. However, analyses revealed the competitive condition yielded gender differences in attention to proportion in the presence of competing cues, with older boys underperforming in the competition condition. Potential explanations for these findings, as well as implications for classroom math learning, are discussed.     

National Information Infrastructures in Central and Eastern Europe: Perspectives from the Library Community

Information infrastructures (IIs) are a complex arrangement of people, technology, institutions, content, and conduits. Their development is shaped by the environment in which they evolve and the visions ascribed to them by the various actors. This article examines the assumptions, meanings, and definitions associated with IIs in four Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. In particular, it focuses on how one stakeholder group, the library community, frames the policy debates around IIs. In-depth interviews were conducted in 1999 with 49 library policymakers in 37 institutions. The data shed light on the respondents' collective story and visions and help us gain a better understanding of political and cultural differences in the development of IIs.     

Behavior of liquid plugs at bifurcations in a microfluidic tree network

Flows in complex geometries, such as porous media or biological networks, often contain plugs of liquid flowing within air bubbles. These flows can be modeled in microfluidic devices in which the geometric complexity is well defined and controlled. We study the flow of wetting liquid plugs in a bifurcating network of micro-channels. In particular, we focus on the process by which the plugs divide as they pass each bifurcation. The key events are identified, corresponding to large modifications of the interface curvature, the formation of new interfaces, or the division of a single interface into two new ones. The timing of the different events and the amplitude of the curvature variations are analyzed in view of the design of an event-driven model of flow in branching micro-networks. They are found to collapse onto a master curve dictated by the network geometry.     

Critically Conscious or Dangerously Dysconscious?: An Analysis of Teacher Candidates' Concerns in Urban Schools

Drawing on a teacher concerns framework, alongside notions of critical consciousness, this article examines the extent to which teacher candidates' (TCs') concerns are related in any way to the critical scholarship they have engaged with throughout their teacher education coursework. Utilizing teacher candidates' written dilemmas of practice during student teaching as the primary data source, the authors utilize consensual qualitative research for data analysis and share results within and across concern categories as related to notions of critical consciousness and dysconsciousness (King, 1991). Results indicate that TCs' posted self concerns lacked a critical inward journey; that TCs were more likely to be critically conscious regarding their own positionality in schools, yet overwhelmingly dysconscious when talking about students and families; and that large percentages of dysconscious task concerns seem related to TCs' lack of critically conscious posts about self. The authors suggest the importance of more focused mentorship and assignments aimed at asking questions designed to promote critically conscious ways of being in classrooms, and similarly suggest the importance of considering notions of critical consciousness in concerns-based studies moving forward. The authors end with a note of caution on the movement toward “core practices” in teacher preparation and instead suggest the importance of programming that focuses on uncovering and eradicating dysconsciousness among TCs working with historically marginalized youth.     

A critical evaluation of the usefulness of a coding scheme to categorise levels of reflective thinking

The use of reflective learning journals to encourage higher order learning outcomes is a growing area in higher education research and practice. However, without a unified and clear definition of reflection, identifying and assessing reflection is problematic for educators. In an attempt to address this issue, in 1999 Kember and colleagues devised a coding scheme based on the work of Mezirow, to identify and assess levels of reflective thinking in students' written journals. We evaluated the usefulness of this coding scheme in a business education context. Findings revealed that the scheme was useful in identifying categories of reflective thinking. Inter‐coder agreement was 0.802 which is satisfactory. On average, 65% of the journal content was coded as non‐reflection and 35% as reflection. A further outcome of the research was to refine the coding scheme and to provide suggestions for its application in teaching practice.     

Historical view of the influences of measurement and writing theories on the practice of writing assessment in the United States

The purpose of this study is to examine the interactions among measurement theories, writing theories, and writing assessments in the United States from an historical perspective. The assessment of writing provides a useful framework for examining how theories influence, and in some cases fail to influence actual practice. Two research traditions are described to classify measurement theories (test-score and scaling), and three research traditions are proposed for classifying writing theories (form, idea and content, and sociocultural context). The results of this study trace the impact of measurement and writing traditions on writing assessment practices within selected time periods during the 20th century in the United States. One of the major findings of this historical analysis is that measurement theory has had a strong influence on writing assessments, while writing theory has had minimal influence on writing assessments. We also found support for the idea that a new discipline of writing assessment has emerged. This new discipline combines multiple fields including the writing, composition, and measurement communities of scholars, and it has the potential to set the stage for the future of writing assessment in the 21st century.     

Psychology students’ perception of and engagement with feedback as a function of year of study

Undergraduate students’ perception of feedback and level of engagement with the feedback they receive have gained increasing attention in the educational literature recently to identify areas which require educators’ attention. However, research in this area has generally been based on limited self-selecting samples, and has not considered how students’ relationship with feedback may alter depending on their year of study. To address this, a survey measuring students’ views and practices regarding feedback was completed at a higher education institution by 447 first-, second- and third-year psychology students, representing 77% of the cohort. Findings revealed that third years responded more negatively in both areas than their first- and second-year counterparts, whose ratings on these aspects themselves were far from optimal. These findings highlight the need for early interventions to improve students’ perception of and engagement with feedback in the earlier years, and to prevent the recorded deterioration later on in the degree course.     

Profiles in the development of behavior disorders among youths with family maltreatment histories

Violent conduct by youths ranks among the types of inappropriate behavior generally originating in difficult family and social contexts. A proper understanding of the development of violent conduct must consider the situation taken as a whole. This article documents the results of a qualitative study which aimed to determine the psychosocial profiles and needs of youths with serious behavior problems and a family history of physical, psychological or sexual abuse. The results are based on the review of clinical files of 12 boys and 11 girls between the ages of 9 and 17, who were under child protection. The 23 files were analyzed to document the simultaneous evolution of behavior problems, abuse, family and school context, and the intervention of child protection services (reporting, evaluation, measures taken, foster care). The qualitative analysis followed the chronology and life history of each youth, resulting in the emergence of three generic profiles: the Undesirable, the Explosive, and the Delinquent. Each of the profiles is described and placed in perspective using the attachment, trauma and socialization theories respectively. The study concludes with proposals of distinct intervention models to be applied to these youths in the school environment.     

Using an integrated theoretical framework for understanding inter-agency collaboration in the special educational needs field

This paper draws upon qualitative data from a study that examines inter-professional and inter-agency collaboration between education and social work authorities in assessing the special educational needs of pre-school children. It is argued that only by combining aspects of the three main models of inter-agency collaboration, namely the social exchange, power/resource dependency and political economy perspectives, is it possible to understand the complexity of inter-organizational relations and the reasons why collaboration into special educational needs continues to be limited in extent and poor in quality. It is shown how the motivation of inter-agency collaboration between education and social work authorities is simultaneously internal and voluntary (social exchange model) and external and involuntary, in terms of being imposed by a third party (political economy model). It is demonstrated how these two welfare agencies are engaging in some exchange and some power/resource dependency interactions. It is argued that it is difficult to assess the extent of interdependence (unilateral interdependence and reciprocal interdependence) in exchange relationships and, thus, whether there is symmetry and/or equality in these interactions. The internal and external factors that influence such interactions are briefly outlined in the final section.