Research On The Effects of Group Standardized Testing On Instruction, Pupils, and Teachers: New Directions for Policy

In response to an increasingly "test driven" approach to curriculum and instruction, a growing body of research is documenting the negative effects of standardized testing on instruction, pupils, and teachers. The curriculum has been narrowed to fit the tests, valuable instructional time is spent on test preparation, students are stressed by the preparation and the test-taking, and teachers are pressured to use unacceptable testing procedures which may even include blatant cheating. Students are subjected to instructional methods that provide them with test taking skills but no genuine understanding of the subject matter. Research supports that there is an urgent need for a change in testing policies. Massive standardized testing of young children must be eliminated. More authentic and performance based evaluation such as the development of student portfolios should be instituted. Attention to the negative effects of standardized testing and the elimination of such testing of young children is especially urgent in light of the current discussions centering on increasing the scope of national testing beginning with the administration of a school readiness instrument prior to school entry.     

Copyright and you

Educators and their attorneys must evaluate the merits of filing a federal lawsuit and the potential recovery available in litigation against the more expeditious and less costly arbitration procedure when domain name disputes are involved. Since complex intellectual property law pervades both proceedings, it is important to work with an experienced intellectual property attorney     

NARST: a lived history

In this Forum, we construct a history of the National Association for Research in Science Education (NARST) through the analysis of documents and through the personal perspectives of individuals. The history of NARST is inseparable from the biography of the individuals through whose lives it was produced and reproduced. The history of NARST is a living history that both shapes and was shaped by the biographies of its members.

Training science teachers with fully-interactive,distance education technology

Conclusion Our experience with interactive distance education for science teachers has been both exciting and rewarding. This class has convinced us that activity-based science method classes can be presented with this technology. Working with distance education equipment requires the creative combination of long-established teaching techniques with novel procedures required by the technology. Although the technology does involve inevitable limitations and compromises, it sharpens some teaching skills and provides an opportunity for teachers to learn and do more science. As available tools for distance education become even more sophisticated, delivery techniques will have to be altered continually. Doubtlessly, technological developments will continue to be increasingly site friendly. In the future, one can anticipate forms of distance education that will enable communication with an infinite number of remote sites, thus establishing the definitive electronic science classroom.     

Committed to learn: student engagement and care in higher education

Efforts to evaluate and improve student engagement have been pervasive in higher education over recent years. Critics argue, however, that troubling affinities are evident between student engagement efforts and a neoliberal agenda which emphasises accountability through performativity. Neoliberalism manifests in policies that focus on the economic benefit to individuals of higher education, rather than the broader social or intrinsic benefits. In this conceptual article, we draw on the work of Martin Heidegger and Nel Noddings in arguing that efforts aimed at promoting engagement and commitment to learn by students should include developing a capacity to care about others and things. Through the lens of care, our aim is to extend current notions of what engagement of students in their learning might look like. Challenging and supporting students entail encouraging them to take a stand on what they are learning and who they are becoming. This enriched conceptualisation has the potential to re-orient student engagement away from a narrow neoliberal agenda, while enabling students to realise the full benefits a higher education can provide.     

Information and Reliability for Percentile Ranks and Other Monotonic Transformations of the Number-Correct Score: Reply to De Gruijter

De Gruijter (1997) has claimed that May and Nicewander (1994) erred on two points that indicated that both reliability and information in the number-correct score could be reduced considerably by converting to percentile ranks. The points raised by De Gruijter are very well taken, and we are pleased to have an opportunity to respond.     

Embodying skilful performance: Co-constituting body and world in biotechnology

This article offers a philosophical-empirical account of embodied skilful performance in the practice of plant biotechnology. Drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty and others, we elaborate how skilful performance emerges from and through reciprocal relations encompassing the body-in-the-world and the world-in-the-body. The contribution of this article lies in offering an account of skilful performance that is attentive to a perceiving, motile, feeling body entwined with world. In genetically modifying plants, scientists direct their senses of touch and vision to manipulating plant materials and matter, ‘reading’ subtle changes in tissue cultures, plantlets and so on. In rhythmic movements, they extend their bodies through skilful use of complex equipment, while calling on ‘intuition’ to guide their work. Skilful performance, then, relies on our lived body that is not merely a physical object among other objects, nor a passive instrument for the mind, but dynamic and inescapably entwined with people and things in a world in flux. Bringing to the fore how perceiving, motile, feeling bodies are implicated in skilful performance has significant implications for education and workplace training.