Teachers' Professional Noticing

Teachers' instructional practice is pedagogically vulnerable when not anchored within detailed and comprehensive observation and understanding of students' immediate responses during instruction. Professional noticing ability, then, is central to, and integrated within, teachers' ability to provide instruction appropriately adapted to students' immediate needs. This article explicates a model of expert noticing for literacy instruction and relates this model to the characteristics of microadaptive teaching decisions. Characteristics, for example, that distinguish expert from less expert noticing during literacy instruction include detailed hypothesizing, breadth and depth of elaboration, observation of learners' metacognitive behavior, and identification of pivotal events. Teacher noticing ability is generally not related to years of experience, but can be learned through participation in sustained, multilevel professional development with an explicit focus on noticing ability. This complex learning integrates teachers' pedagogical and content knowledge with observation of student behaviors, and supports teachers' learning from practice.     

Gender ratios in high school science departments: The effect of percent female faculty on multiple dimensions of students' science identities

To examine how school characteristics are tied to science and engineering views and aspirations of students who are underrepresented in science and engineering fields, this mixed‐methods study explores relationships between aspects of students' science identities, and the representation of women among high school science teachers. Quantitative analyses tested the hypothesis that percent female faculty would have a positive effect on girls' science interests, and perceptions in particular, given the potentially greater availability of women role models. Findings indicate that percent female science faculty does not have an effect on a range of science measures for both male and female students, including the ways in which they understand scientific practice, their science self‐concept, and their interest in science‐related college majors. As qualitative data demonstrate, this could reflect practical constraints at schools where female faculty are concentrated and narrow perceptions of science teachers and “real” science. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 980–1009, 2007     

Distance education plans: Course planning for online adult learners

Summary There can be an untethered excitement connected with ever-expanding technologies and the vastness of educational opportunities that online learning generates. Yet, these new and exciting opportunities do not diminish the real-life concerns and issues that online professors face. Lack of planning often sets the stage for disastrous educational experiences. Problems with technology, the lack of professor guidance and the inability to build community, facilitate communication or humanize learning can sabotage educational efforts. Minimal or nonexistent evaluation can lead to a recycling of futile educational efforts in future online courses. Yet, you can circumvent these issues with proper planning-with the use of distance education plans     

Supporting Teachers' Professional Learning by Navigating Openings in the Curriculum

Researchers agree that achieving thefundamental changes called for by currentreforms in mathematics education requires newlearning on the part of teachers. Currently,across the United States there exists atremendous variety of teacher-enhancementprojects representing a range of perspectivesand approaches to supporting teachers'learning. This paper presents a comparativeanalysis of three teacher educators using acurriculum designed for use with elementaryteachers in an inquiry-group setting. The aimof the study was to examine the process anddemands of supporting teachers' learning andteachers' efforts to reform their practices. Analyses revealed that the central demand ofsupporting teachers' learning through inquiryinvolved navigating through what we have calledopenings in the curriculum. Theseopenings took the form of unanticipatedquestions, challenges, observations, or actionsby participating teachers that requiredfacilitators to make on-the-spot judgmentsabout how to guide the discourse. Examinationsof the facilitators' processes of navigatingthese openings revealed a set of threeactivities they employed in determining how torespond. Analysis of the activities offacilitators in response to openings furtherilluminates the work involved in supportingteachers' learning and has implications for theskills needed by teacher educators engaged inthis work.     

Economic Deprivation and Early Childhood Development

We consider 3 questions regarding the effects of economic deprivation on child development. First, how are developmental outcomes in childhood affected by poverty and such poverty correlates as single parenthood, ethnicity, and maternal education? Second, what are the developmental consequences of the duration and timing of family economic deprivation? And, third, what is the comparative influence of economic deprivation at the family and neighborhood level? We investigate these issues with longitudinal data from the Infant Health and Development Program. We find that family income and poverty status are powerful correlates of the cognitive development and behavior of children, even after accounting for other differences—in particular family structure and maternal schooling—between low- and high-income families. While the duration of poverty matters, its timing in early childhood does not. Age-5 IQs are found to be higher in neighborhoods with greater concentrations of affluent neighbors, while the prevalence of low-income neighbors appears to increase the incidence of externalizing behavior problems.     

The “Autodidact”, the Pursuit of Subversive Knowledge and the Politics of Change

This paper contrasts two types of “autodidact” located in the UK in different historical periods, which utilised different learning/research technologies to different ends. From the 1920s to the 1960s some working-class activists committed to the Communist Party of Great Britain became “educated” in Marxism (and more) through the processes intrinsic to their politics. This radical acculturation was undertaken outside the universities in consequence of both an absence of access to higher education and because of the relatively enclosed social world of British Communism. The widening of educational opportunities and the decline of political Marxism effectively extinguished this kind of autodidact. New technologies have meant that the 21st century is witnessing individuals and cyber-communities that are creating knowledge-based challenges to professional and institutional power in the face of personal/family “medical” crises. The paper outlines the characteristics of these two categories of autodidact and a new terrain of counter-hegemonic learning.     

The retention and success of under-represented groups in a Bachelor of Education program in New Zealand

For several decades researchers have raised questions regarding factors that enable undergraduate students, particularly those from ethnic minority groups living in low socio-economic areas, to persist with their studies to degree completion. Seeking answers to these questions becomes more urgent as universities around the world enrol increasingly diverse cohorts of students. This article reviews the patterns of participation and success for students enrolled in a Bachelor of Education program at one university, distributed across three different locations and attracting different cohorts of students. This provided the university with a unique opportunity to learn about the retention and success of diverse cohorts, particularly those traditionally under-represented at undergraduate-level study. At least 75% of students in the under-represented groups passed their courses. Surprisingly the pass rates of students at the three campuses were similar, despite dissimilarities in ethnicity, socio-economic status and previous academic success.     

THE UTILITY OF MAZE ACCURATE RESPONSE RATE IN ASSESSING READING COMPREHENSION IN UPPER ELEMENTARY AND MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS

This study examined the predictive utility of five formative reading measures: words correct per minute, number of comprehension questions correct, reading comprehension rate, number of maze correct responses, and maze accurate response rate (MARR). Broad Reading cluster scores obtained via the Woodcock–Johnson III (WJ III) Tests of Achievement served as the criterion variable. Examiners administered all reading measures to 98 students enrolled in upper elementary (UES) and middle school (MS) grades (grades 4 through 8). Results indicated significant intercorrelations within all predictor variables for the combined and UES samples; fewer intercorrelations existed at the MS level. MARR exhibited the highest correlation with WJ III Broad Reading across all correlational analyses. Additional regression analyses indicated that the MARR technique best predicted WJ III Broad Reading cluster scores across all groups analyzed. Limitations of the current study and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Children's responses to questions about transformations and their relationship to strategies used in problem solving

This paper describes some preliminary results comparing two groups of children's performance on a set of Piagetian conservation tasks. The findings point to the need to sensitise parents and teachers to current views on appropriate learning environments for young children, in particular, the strategies that they might use to make sense of their experiences. In addition, the findings are used to support the argument that it is important to emphasise adults’ roles in giving structure and direction to children's early learning experiences. It is anticipated that if parents and some teachers understand the basis for this approach to tutoring, their support and encouragement will relieve the potentially damaging pressure to ‘ succeed at all costs ‘, a current dilemma for parents of children in Singapore. Given the emphasis on structure and attainment in the Singaporean Pre‐Schools in this paper, experiences involving aspects of problem solving are selected for investigation, given their reported relationship with school attainment. (Bruner, 1972).