What parts of teaching do academics see as feasible to delegate?

This paper investigates Australian academics' views about teaching by asking them about the aspects of their job they could contract to other. In particular, it contrasts the views of 26 academics the Humanities with those of 26 in the Social Sciences. The results showed no differences as a function of level of appointment or gender but a significant difference by teaching area: academics from the Social Sciences were more likely to approve in general the practice of buying out time. When asked about contracting out specific aspects of teaching, the only area of difference was for marking (Social Sciences were more often in favour). In all other respects, the viewpoints expressed by academics from the Humanities and Social Sciences were very similar. Such approval was rarely given unconditionally, however. Concerns were expressed about the need to maintain some degree of supervision or responsibility for teaching. Academics agreed on their overall goals in teaching, on whether or not lecturing, tutorials and student consultation could be contracted to others and on the ideal amounts of time to spend on teaching, research, and administration. It is argued that this pattern of results is more likely to reflect a difference in implementation of goals rather than a difference in baseline ideas as a result of different cultures in the two teaching areas.     

Teacher Evaluation Within a Community of Truth: Testing the Ideas of Parker Palmer

Parker Palmer, in The Courage to Teach (1997), proposed an alternative approach to traditional teaching evaluations, one deeply rooted in a holistic view of education which focuses on the potential for creating self-knowledge and relationships between colleagues. This article describes a project in which we studied these claims and tested the feasibility of an open-door evaluation process. Our main purpose was to determine whether Palmer's methods could help us to improve our teaching. In addition, we asked whether this holistic approach may influence summative evaluations that affect personnel decision-making and its potential for influencing the culture of teaching in higher education.     

Text Comprehension and Oral Language as Predictors of Word-Problem Solving: Insights into Word-Problem Solving as a Form of Text Comprehension

This study was designed to deepen insights on whether word-problem (WP) solving is a form of text comprehension (TC) and on the role of language in WPs. A sample of 325 second graders, representing high, average, and low reading and math performance, was assessed on (a) start-of-year TC, WP skill, language, nonlinguistic reasoning, working memory, and foundational skill (word identification, arithmetic) and (b) year-end WP solving, WP-language processing (understanding WP statements, without calculation demands), and calculations. Multivariate, multilevel path analysis, accounting for classroom and school effects, indicated that TC was a significant and comparably strong predictor of all outcomes. Start-of-year language was a significantly stronger predictor of both year-end WP outcomes than of calculations, whereas start-of-year arithmetic was a significantly stronger predictor of calculations than of either WP measure. Implications are discussed in terms of WP solving as a form of TC and a theoretically coordinated approach, focused on language, for addressing TC and WP-solving instruction.     

Online Communities of Practice: A Catalyst for Faculty Development

This article addresses the concept of communities of practice and how it has come of age for the professional development of professors as teachers. Thanks to current technological options, faculty developers can enhance the opportunity for the entire faculty to learn through the use of online communities. Designing a faculty development portal using community of practice concepts can be an effective means to jump-start, facilitate, develop, and sustain faculty involvement in academic communities.     

Understanding conceptual change: connecting and questioning

We engage in a metalogue based on eight papers in this issue of Cultural Studies of Science Education that review the state of conceptual change research and its possible affect on the teaching and learning of science. Our discussion addresses three aspects of conceptual change research: theoretical, methodological, and practical, as we discuss conceptual change research in light of our experiences as science educators. Finally, we examine the implications of conceptual change research for the teachers and students with whom we work.

Individual differences among undergraduate women in methods of coping with stressful events: the impact of cumulative childhood stressors and abuse

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the current study was to determine if a history of greater exposure to different types of adverse and/or abusive experiences in childhood would influence coping strategies used by undergraduate women to deal with new stressful events in young adulthood. METHOD: A sample of 828 women undergraduates from a New England state university participated in this questionnaire study. Disengagement and engagement coping strategies used in response to recent stressors were compared in groups who had none, one, two, or three or more types of adverse and/or abusive childhood experiences (sexual abuse, physical abuse, witnessing domestic violence, having an alcoholic parent, and parental rejection). RESULTS: There was an increased reliance on disengagement methods of coping (wishful thinking, problem avoidance, social withdrawal, and self-criticism) as a function of more extensive child abuse histories. Engagement methods of coping (problem solving, cognitive restructuring, social support, and express-emotions), however, did not show a corresponding decrease as a function of increased exposure to different types of childhood stressors and/or abuse. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that undergraduate women with cumulative adverse and/or abusive childhood histories are particularly at-risk of relying on maladaptive disengagement coping strategies to deal with various new stressors later in life.     

Preschoolers' Emotional Control in the Disappointment Paradigm and Its Relation to Temperament, Emotional Knowledge, and Family Expressiveness

The present research evaluated a conceptual model that links temperament, emotional knowledge, and family expressiveness to preschoolers' emotion regulation ability. The emotional understanding of 82 preschoolers was assessed with 2 separate tasks. After the second emotional knowledge task, the children were presented a "disappointing" prize, and their facial displays of positive and negative affect were recorded. The children and their mothers also participated in a game designed to elicit maternal expressive behavior. Mothers provided information about the preschoolers' temperament and about the frequency of positive and negative affect expressed within their families Results indicated that children's positive displays when presented the "disappointing" prize were inversely related to the temperamental dimension of emotional intensity and positively associated with children's understanding of emotion. Maternal reports of sadness within the family were inversely related to children's positive affective displays. Children's negative emotional displays in the disappointment situation were inversely related to observed maternal positive emotion. The findings from this study give greater specification to the unique and joint contributions of temperament, emotional knowledge, and family expressiveness in predicting preschoolers' expressive control of emotion.     

The nature of reader ability differences in lexical access

Can good and poor readers be differentiated by their use of word-naming and lexical access codes? Poor readers experience extreme difficulty in decoding nonsense words, indicating that they cannot use the spelling to sound rules which underlie the indirect phonological route to word pronunciation. However, recent evidence suggests that poor readers do use a phonological route for lexical access in word and picture naming tasks which rely upon the production of a phonological code. Is this also true of other tasks, which are not dependent upon phonological representation? Two such tasks are described in the present study: one involving picture-word interference, and the other involving a lexical decision paradigm. Results showed that poor readers do use a phonological route to lexical access independent of task demand. A review of findings in this area to date shows several inconsistencies, and an attempt is made to resolve these by drawing on Stanovich's (1980) interactive-compensatory model of reading.     

The Outcome of a Social Cognitive Training for Mainstream Adolescents with Social Communication Deficits in a Chinese Community

The use of cognitive-based strategies for improving social communication behaviours for individuals who have solid language and cognition is an important question. This study investigated the outcome of teaching Social Thinking^®, a framework based in social-cognition, to Chinese adolescents with social communication deficits. Thirty-nine students (33 with Autism Spectrum Disorders and six without), ranging in age from 12 to 15 years with social communication deficits, participated in a 12-week intervention. Students’ pre- and post-intervention social behaviours were measured by six aspects of the Social Thinking-ILAUGH Scale involving 115 familiar raters. Students showed significant improvement in all the six subscales of the Social Thinking-ILAUGH except humour after training. Agreements on ratings among parents and school personnel were satisfactory. A framework based in social cognitive strategies, with appropriate linguistic and cultural adaptations, appears to be a promising tool for Chinese adolescents with social learning issues. Social behaviours improved across school and home settings as noted by groups of raters familiar with the students.     

In search of pedagogical content knowledge in science: Developing ways of articulating and documenting professional practice

This study examines the development of ways of documenting and portraying science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). As a result of a longitudinal study into science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge, a method is developed for capturing and portraying PCK that comprises two important elements. The first is linked to the particular science content, termed Content Representation (CoRe), and the second is linked to teaching practice, termed Professional and Pedagogical experience Repertoire (PaP‐eR). Through this approach new understandings of PCK emerge that are of interest in terms of both academic (knowledge building about PCK) and teaching perspectives. This study includes a full CoRe and one PaP‐eR and fully demonstrates how these two elements interact to begin to portray science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 370–391, 2004