Expanding computer science education in schools: understanding teacher experiences and challenges

The increased push for teaching computer science (CS) in schools in the United States requires training a large number of new K-12 teachers. The current efforts to increase the number of CS teachers have predominantly focused on training teachers from other content areas. In order to support these beginning CS teachers, we need to better understand their experiences and challenges encountered in the classroom. This study investigated U.S. CS teachers’ perspectives on the demands of teaching computer science and support needed to ensure quality teaching. Results suggested that teachers face a number of challenges, including isolation, lack of adequate computer science background, and limited professional development resources.     

How person-centred planning can contribute to organisational change in a school

This article reflects on the experience of applying a person-centred approach to promote organisational change in an educational context. A detailed example is drawn from a Planning Alternative Tomorrows with Hope (PATH) process with a group of school staff. The article considers existing research into person-centred approaches and explores key factors that may help or hinder the effectiveness of these approaches. A number of implications for professional practice are discussed.     

Evaluation of information technology in educational management for proactive development

Evaluation will be the key to effective and efficient implementation and use of information technology in education management. As hardware, software and the needs of users develop and change, such evaluation will need to be both proactive and dynamic in that it must continually provide information concerning how the systems need to be modified to allow the potential to be realized fully. Dynamic evaluation can then be used to inform the system design, training, support and documentation to ensure end-user acceptance of the systems and provide administration support and information relevant to enhanced decision-making processes. Findings from a preliminary study of the Hong Kong school administration and management system (SAMS) will be used to illustrate the problems that can occur without carefully planned and contextualized evaluation.     

Teaching Experience and Educational Psychologists' Credibility with Teachers: An empirical investigation

The extent to which educational psychologists' credibility with teachers relies on their own teaching experience is an issue that has been hotly debated in the profession for more than 30 years. It is widely perceived as a key reason for retaining qualified teaching experience as a requirement for training as an educational psychologist (EP). The studies reported in this paper investigate whether teachers know that educational psychologists have been teachers (a logical pre-requisite to affording them high credibility on this basis). The studies also examine the regard in which EPs are held by teachers who know, and teachers who do not know, that EPs have been teachers. Results indicate that teaching experience cannot be regarded as necessary to EPs' credibility with teachers. However, a positive relationship between teaching experience and credibility with teachers, among primary school teachers, raises questions about ways of broadening EPs' pre-course experience.     

Career counselling for the 21st Century -- integrating theory and practice

This article describes the development of a model of career counselling that will be responsive to the nature of career in the 21st Century. It begins by providing a commentary on the relationship between theory and the practice of career counselling, from the early 1900's to the present day. Drawing from contemporary research and theorizing, the article argues for an integrated approach to theory and practice. A framework that integrates developmental perspectives on career learning and client-centred career counselling is proposed. The ontological, epistemological and methodological characteristics of the framework are considered. The development of a constructivist, hermeneutic model of career counselling is then described and demonstrated.     

The influence of a distractor during compound preexposure on latent inhibition

Nonreinforced exposure to a nontarget stimulus that was followed by nonreinforced exposure to a target/nontarget simultaneous compound stimulus resulted in enhanced latent inhibition of the target. Conditioning was slower after this treatment than after nonreinforced exposure to the target stimulus alone (Experiment 1). However, a salient auditory stimulus presented immediately after the compound in the second phase reduced levels of latent inhibition, relative to the enhanced latent inhibition produced when no such extracompound stimulus was presented (Experiments 2 and 3). This effect was not noted if the salient auditory cue was presented 10 sec after the termination of the compound stimulus (Experiment 4). In Experiment 5, there was no disruption of simple latent inhibition produced by a salient stimulus. These results are consistent with enhanced latent inhibition’s being produced by the formation of within-compound associations, which are disrupted by the salient extracompound stimuli.     

Lack of consistent individual differences in rats on tasks that require response inhibition

Hungry rats performed four different tasks which all required responding to be withheld for food reinforcement to be obtained. The tasks were the following: an omission schedule, a go/no-go procedure, a differential reinforcement of low rate schedule, and a choice task in which the subject could respond for a small immediate reward or a large delayed reward. Each rat experienced each task twice. For each task, the rank ordering of the subjects’ performance on the test and retest was highly consistent, indicating the reliability of the task for measuring a particular “ability.” However, there were no consistencies in the performance of individual rats between tasks. This suggests that claims regarding consistent individual differences in brain-lesioned nonhumans across a range of such tasks are not supported in intact subjects.     

Stimulated recall — An effective methodology for examining successful teaching in science

Previous research by the authors (Meade, McMeniman, Wilson, Kanes and Davey, 1991) indicated the effectiveness of the stimulated recall (SR) methodology for examining the knowledge bases underlying the classroom actions of effective teachers in secondary mathematics and science. This study investigates more fully the robustness of the SR technique with special reference to: (i) making explicit the implicit theories of teaching; and (ii) the ways in which teachers construe effective teaching and learning. It probes the teaching practices of one effective high school science teacher, and compares the findings to another such teacher from the 1991 study. The conclusions made are that despite its labour intensive and time consuming nature, SR is a useful methodology for gaining profound insight into the implicit theories and beliefs of teachers, and the relationship between beliefs and actions. In particular, these theories and beliefs mainly concentrate on general pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge.     

Engaging students emotionally: the role of emotional intelligence in predicting cognitive and affective engagement in higher education

Student engagement is a key predictor of academic performance, persistence and retention in higher education. While many studies have identified how aspects of the college environment influence engagement, fewer have specifically focused on emotional intelligence (EI). In this study, we sought to explore whether EI could predict cognitive and/or affective engagement in a sample of undergraduate psychology students in Ireland. Ninety-one students completed two forms of the student engagement instrument, rating current engagement and retrospective secondary school engagement, along with the trait EI (TEI) questionnaire. After controlling for academic ability, gender and school engagement, multiple regression analyses found TEI to be a positive predictor of both cognitive and affective engagement. Previous academic performance acted as an additional predictor of cognitive engagement, while retrospective affective school engagement predicted current affective engagement. These results suggest that interventions aimed at increasing EI may have positive implications for many aspects of student engagement, and hence performance at third level.