Indigenization and University Governance: Reflections from the Transition to Yukon University

Tertiary Education and Management - While literature on university governance in Canada has identified key challenges that need to be addressed, it largely overlooks calls for change towards...     

Peers'' Perceptions of the Consequences That Victimized Children Provide Aggressors

Fourth- through seventh-grade children (mean age 11.5 years) estimated the likelihood that various consequences would occur following hypothetical acts of aggression toward victimized and nonvictimized classmates. Children also indicated how much they would care if the consequences were to occur. When contemplating aggression toward victimized classmates, children were more likely to expect tangible rewards, more likely to expect signs of victim suffering, and less likely to expect retaliation than when considering aggression against nonvictimized classmates. Also, when considering aggression toward victimized classmates, children cared more about securing tangible rewards but were less disturbed by the thought of hurting their victims or by the thought of their victims retaliating than when imagining aggression toward nonvictimized classmates. The foregoing pattern was stronger for boys than for girls. Implications for theories of aggression and for intervention with aggressive and victimized children are discussed.     

Ideas: A system for international data exchange and access for science

An operational prototype inhomogeneous distributed database system has been built to provide homogeneous access for researchers and managers of science policy to data on research projects held in three countries. The architecture is sufficiently general not only to accommodate additional countries and databases on research projects, but also to provide a general framework for other international collaborative projects aimed at the provision of information. The design exhibits an optimal compromise between sufficient data to satisfy a retrieval request and the minimal data for transmission to maintain the database.     

Is the Poor Performance of Self‐Worth Protective Students Linked with Social Comparison Goals?

Students motivated to protect self‐worth perform poorly in situations that threaten to reveal low ability while performing well in situations that involve little threat to self‐worth. One factor contributing to their poor performance is thought to be their orientation towards social comparison goals (goals that have to do with vindicating their ability relative to others rather than pursuing mastery). In the present study, 96 undergraduate students who were either high or low in self‐worth protection were exposed to either success or failure feedback and subsequently primed to pursue either social comparison or mastery goals. For students high in self‐worth protection, the negative effects of either failure or social comparison goal priming is sufficient to give rise to poor performance. However, only when success is combined with mastery goal priming is a positive achievement outcome evident. The requirements of best practice approaches to encouraging students to adopt mastery‐orientated behaviours are discussed.     

Seeking big ideas in algebra: the evolution of a task

In this paper we describe a strand of activities for teachers of mathematics that we used with two cohorts of participants in a professional development program called Revitalizing Algebra (REAL). We first discuss our goals and describe the participants, and then we describe the construction and selection of the tasks followed by teacher responses. Finally, we reflect on different iterations of the tasks, their impact on the teachers’ thinking and practice, and the role of school and department culture in the process of change.     

Constructing Scientific Explanations Through Writing

This study examined the writing strategies andtext characteristics associated withdiscovering a scientific principle by writingabout an experiment. Sixty-four universitystudents (non-science majors) carried out aphysics experiment concerning either buoyancy,or the forces acting on a balance scale, thenwrote an informal journal-style note about itwhile thinking-aloud. They providedexplanations of the phenomena beforeexperimenting, immediately after experimenting(before writing), and again after writing aboutthe experiment. Students' verbal protocolswere segmented and writing operations wereidentified; the rhetorical structures of theirtexts were analyzed; and each students' levelof general writing strategy was identified. Afactor analysis showed that six componentsaccounted for 76% of the variance in thesemeasures. Logistic regression analysis showedthat type of science experiment and two writingfactors, Problem Solving and Comparisons inText, discriminated 86% of cases in whichstudents made explanatory gains during thewriting interval. The results generallyexemplified a metacognitive, problem solvingmodel of writing to learn. However, incontrast to dominant metacognitive models,setting content goals, applying moderatelysophisticated writing strategies, and extensiveuse of content sources were important for learning.     

Challenging teacher beliefs about student engagement in mathematics

This study explored the beliefs about student engagement in mathematics of three Year 5 and 6 teachers, focusing on the shifts that occurred during a 10-week intervention. Data obtained from teacher surveys, interviews, video-recorded workshop observations and artefacts from teachers’ classrooms reveal variations in their reactions to the professional learning experiences. Teacher responses were mediated by personal and contextual elements including teacher efficacy beliefs, teacher confidence in mathematics and their conceptions of student engagement. Theories of teacher conceptual change are used to account for variations to teacher beliefs.     

Funny feet

Phyllis J. Perry is principal at Martin Park Elementary School in Boulder, Colorado. Her published work includes several books for children.     

Two studies of low income parents' involvement in schooling

An interview and an intervention study are reported. Interview findings extend research on the positive relationship of parent involvement to school success. That is, although most of the low income families reported low-moderate participation, a postive relationship was found between parent involvement and school adjustment as early as kindergarten. With respect to negative valuing and barrier interpretations of low participation, the data support the latter; all but a few parents reported positive attitudes toward school involvement, while the majority indicated significant barriers. In comparing Latino and non-Latino groups, the former reported more barriers. Within the Latino group, parents whose children had made a good school adjustment indicated the most participation. Non-English proficient parents reported more barriers than those proficient in English but comparable degrees of involvement. In the intervention study, a simple strategy resulted in more treatment than control parents attending a school event. Differences in attendance were related to ethnicity and language.This work was carried out in conjunction with a dropout prevention demonstration project conducted as a collaborative effort of the School Mental Health unit (Janelle Munn, Director) and Dropout Prevention unit (Pete Martinez, Director) of the Los Angeles Unified School District and the School Mental Health Project at UCLA (Howard Adelman and Linda Taylor, Co-directors). Partial support for the project came from the U.S. Department of Education. The authors, of course, assume full responsibility for the contents, but we want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of participating schools and project staff (especially Mary Beth DiCecco and Alison McAlpine). And although she declined author credit, this work could not have been accomplished with the many contributions of Linda Taylor, the project director. We would also like to thank Regina DeWitter, Teresa Gonzales, Kathy Eides and the many other UCLA students who assisted in various phases of the research.     

Students’ perception of frequent assessments and its relation to motivation and grades in a statistics course: a pilot study

This pilot study measures university students’ perceptions of graded frequent assessments in an obligatory statistics course using a novel questionnaire. Relations between perceptions of frequent assessments, intrinsic motivation and grades were also investigated. A factor analysis of the questionnaire revealed four factors, which were labelled value, formative function, positive effects and negative effects. The results showed that most students valued graded frequent assessments as a study motivator. A modest number of students experienced positive or negative effects from assessments and grades received. Less than half of the students used the results of frequent assessments in their learning process. The perception of negative effects (lower self-confidence and more stress) negatively mediated the relation between grades and intrinsic motivation. It is argued that communication with students regarding the purpose and benefits of frequent assessments could mitigate these negative effects.