Setting Sail or Missing the Boat: Comparing the Beliefs of Preservice Elementary Teachers With and Without an Inquiry-Based Physics Course

We examined the beliefs about science teaching and learning held by elementary preservice teachers in a science methods course, comparing students who had experienced an inquiry-based physics course with those who had not. Students who had taken the physics course prior to the methods semester were better equipped to recognize and learn from inquiry and better able to apply an inquiry approach to their lesson planning. Students who were concurrently enrolled in the physics course began to revise their incoming beliefs about what it means for students to be active learners in science. The students with no experience in the inquiry-based physics course maintained their limited view that science teaching should be fun, with the teacher as teller and fun-maker.     

Do Southeastern Public Universities Adhere to the ACRL Tenure and Promotion Standards?

Faculty status and tenure are goals for many academic librarians in the Southeast. However, the adoption of tenure differs between institutions. In an effort to discover how much adherence there is to the ACRL Standards for Faculty Status for Academic Librarians, librarians at the University of South Alabama sent a survey to 148 public universities in this region. The results illustrated the significant areas of consensus and where consensus was lacking. The outcome suggested the standards were not fully applied, showed the need for further study, and suggested a reassessment of the ACRL Standards.     

Contesting discourses in higher education curriculum restructuring in South Africa

This article describes effortsfrom the mid-1990s in South Africa to reshapehigher education curricula, and the responsesof universities to a series of policyinitiatives concerned with higher educationcurriculum reform. Pressures of globalisationand the local challenges of reconstruction anddevelopment formed the context in which highereducation curriculum restructuring occurred.Two discourses, acredit-accumulation-and-transfer discourse anda disciplinary discourse, have shaped educationpolicy making in South Africa since themid-1990s, particularly in higher education.Policy initiatives to re-shape higher educationcurricula are discussed, as well as the ways inwhich science and humanities faculties atuniversities have responded to theseinitiatives. A typology of different curriculumforms is presented which suggests that in spiteof the influence of the credit exchangediscourse in policy documents, undergraduatecurricula continue to be presented on a largelydisciplinary basis.     

Supporting struggling readers with digital game-based learning

Educational technology research and development - This study investigates the effectiveness of a digital game—GraphoLearn (GL)—in supporting second-grade students who have persistent...     

The Child Care Center Director: Policy Perspectives on Increasing Requisite Qualifications

While the prevailing wisdom in the literature supports the proposition that the early childhood center director is the “gatekeeper to quality”, little is known about the type of formal and informal training center directors have had and their attitudes about the appropriateness of that training. The lack of reliable data about center directors has hampered efforts by child care advocates around the country to press for licensing standards that are reasonable and enforceable, yet also promote quality. This article provides a framework for understanding the many issues related to requisite qualifications. It synthesizes the research regarding directors' education, experience, and training and provides policy recommendations for the licensure of personnel assuming this position.