University students’ perceptions of summative assessment: The role of context

We report on a mixed-method study that compared students’ perceptions of summative assessment across two distinct disciplines – education and mathematics, at two research-intensive institutions in the UK. The disciplines chosen represent opposing positions in Biglan’s classification of academic disciplines, as well as having very different assessment practices. Results suggest that these education students prefer to be assessed by methods they perceive to discriminate on the basis of academic abilities. Moreover, they perceive the traditional closed-book examination as inadequate to assess the capabilities which are key to being successful in their subject, which fits some but not all of the general findings in the literature. However, comparing these results with those of an identical study with mathematics students, we find that the perceptions of summative assessment are very different. We account for that difference by suggesting that students’ epistemic beliefs play a role in shaping these perceptions and conclude that, in designing summative assessment in higher education, generalised and centralised forces for change need to be tempered by contextual and disciplinary factors.     

Communication in Online Learning – How Important is It?

Abstract

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe teacher experiences of teacher-to-student technology-mediated communication (TMC) in secondary virtual school (VS) environments in Alabama. The central research question for this study was: How do virtual school teachers in Alabama describe their experiences of teacher-to-student technology-mediated communication in secondary virtual school environments? Students educated in virtual environments use TMC, so teachers must know what kinds of TMC work best. The problem is that the teacher voice has been ignored in identifying teacher-to-student TMC that is effective in secondary VS environments. Using purposeful sampling of 12 VS teachers in Alabama, this research utilized semi-structured interviews, artifacts, and an asynchronous online focus group to uncover teacher experiences of teacher-to-student interactions in VS environments. In seeking meaning from their experiences, the predominant theme of whatever is best for the students became evident. Four themes developed pertaining to the participants’ experiences: Teacher mindset, teacher presence, integration of technology into instruction, and technology issues.     

Estimating Business and Management journal quality from the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise in the UK

The 2008 Research Assessment Exercise in the UK involved the peer review of over 12,500 research outputs in Business and Management, of which 92% were journal articles. Each output was graded on a 4-point scale from “world leading” to “national” with a fifth point being unclassified. These grades were accumulated for each department to provide an overall quality profile in terms of the proportions of its outputs in each category. The assessments of individual papers were not made public but the papers submitted by each department were. This data provides a major opportunity for addressing issues of concern about the evaluation of research and the effects of journal rankings, as well as the possibility of reconstructing the judgements made by the Panel about journal quality. Given the submission details and the resulting grade profile for each department, we have used linear programming to produce the best estimate of the grades awarded to papers from each journal that had more than three entries. This provides both a grade profile for each journal and a single quality estimate. The results are shown to have good validity in comparison with other journal rankings. Apart from providing a ranking of 700 journals based on the RAE results, the paper is also able to shed light on issues such as the accuracy and coverage of the ABS ranking; the degree of selectivity of submissions; the dispersion of grades for a journal; and differences between different subject areas.     

Researching research: mathematics education in the Political

We discuss contemporary theories in mathematics education in order to do research on research. Our strategy consists of analysing discursively and ideologically recent key publications addressing the role of theory in mathematics education research. We examine how the field fabricates its object of research by deploying Foucault’s notion of bio-politics—mainly to address the object “learning”—and ?i?ek’s ideology critique—to address the object “mathematics”. These theories, which have already been used in the field to research teaching and learning, have a great potential to contribute to a reflexivity of research on its discourses and effects. Furthermore, they enable us to present a clear distinction between what has been called the sociopolitical turn in mathematics education research and what we call a positioning of mathematics education (research) practices in the Political.