Transforming Elementary Science Teacher Education by Bridging Formal and Informal Science Education in an Innovative Science Methods Course

We investigated curricular and pedagogical innovations in an undergraduate science methods course for elementary education majors at the University of Maryland. The goals of the innovative elementary science methods course included: improving students’ attitudes toward and views of science and science teaching, to model innovative science teaching methods and to encourage students to continue in teacher education. We redesigned the elementary science methods course to include aspects of informal science education. The informal science education course features included informal science educator guest speakers, a live animal demonstration and a virtual field trip. We compared data from a treatment course (n = 72) and a comparison course (n = 26). Data collection included: researchers’ observations, instructors’ reflections, and teacher candidates’ feedback. Teacher candidate feedback involved interviews and results on a reliable and valid Attitudes and Beliefs about the Nature of and the Teaching of Science instrument. We used complementary methods to analyze the data collected. A key finding of the study was that while benefits were found in both types of courses, the difference in results underscores the need of identifying the primary purpose for innovation as a vital component of consideration.     

Circumstances surrounding cheating: A questionnaire study of college students

A questionnaire assessing beliefs and behaviors associated with cheating was administered to 365 college students. Circumstances rated most likely to increase cheating were low instructor vigilance, unfair exams, an instructor who does not care about cheating, and dependence of financial support and long-term goals on good grades. Circumstances rated most likely to decrease cheating were high instructor vigilance, fair exams, high punishment for getting caught, essay exams, widely spaced exam seating, and valuable course material. Principal components analyses revealed several factors underlying planned cheating: difficulty/negative consequences of cheating, pressures, instructor personality, social norms, and interest in the course. These factors relate to the determinants of behavior specified by the theory of planned behavior. Self-reports indicated that 83 percent of respondents cheated in college and that the two most common types of cheating were giving (58 percent) and getting (49 percent) exam questions to and from other students before an exam. Acts of helping someone else cheat were more commonly reported than corresponding acts of cheating for oneself. Students with high cheating scores tended to be male rather than female, to have a low goal grade-point average, and to believe that the prevalence of cheating in college is high.Both authors contributed equally to this research.A version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Ontario, August 1993.     

Addressing Equity and Diversity with Teachers Though Informal Science Institutions and Teacher Professional Development

This study explores how activities developed by science experts in partnership with middle school teachers were employed and interpreted. The goals of this partnership were to (a) help the science teacher meet earth science content standards in new ways, (b) expose students to ‘real world’ experiences outside their school setting, and (c) positively impact teacher practice by providing a program to be used as a catalyst for future learning. Over 300 sixth graders mostly underrepresented science students attended activities at an aquarium serving an urban West Coast urban context. Science teachers, non-science teachers, scientists, and volunteers were all engaged in pre-trip instruction, professional development opportunities, and follow-up activities as this partnership effort explored ways to enhance local literacy initiatives across the curriculum. Results suggest that teacher beliefs about informal education impacted their view and participation in the program and the level of submersion of teachers in collaboration strongly affects the ability to serve underrepresented students on informal excursions. Implications for teacher education and outreach are discussed.     

Validity and Automad Scoring: It's Not Only the Scoring

What are the validity issues involved in automated scoring of tests? What is the nature of the interplay among construct definition, task design, examinee interface, tutorial, test development tools, and automated scoring and reporting?     

Re-negotiating the discourse of lower track high school students

The purpose of this study was to examine how lower track science students would understand shifts in standard classroom discourse patterns. The researcher videotaped his daily efforts to renegotiate the lower track classroom environment to become more representative of a scientific community. This paper is an analysis of the implicit obstacles inherent in shifting class discussions to classroom arguments examining tentative hypotheses. Students have inserted struggles for social status into classroom arguments about scientific ideas making it difficult to separate in a group discussion when the evidence convinced a student or whether the social politics of the class had persuaded her. As a result of changing classroom rules for participation, engagement, and collaborative inquiry, students' abilities to argue scientifically were changed. Despite these shifts students continued to insert their own interpretations of argumentation, social norms, and strategies for active re-negotiation of the teacher's agenda for the construction of scientific classroom discourse.     

A Technology Integration Education (TIE) Model for Millennial Preservice Teachers: Exploring the Canonical Correlation Relationships Among Attitudes,Subjective Norms,Perceived Behavioral Controls,Motivation, and Technological,Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) Competencies

Intellectual goods can follow the same pattern as physical goods with the product life cycle of birth, growth, maturity, and decline. For the intellectual good of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK), its birth began with Shulman (1986 Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 1987 Shulman, L. S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1–22.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) was used to test the relationships among five of the 12 constructs in the technology integration education (TIE) model developed by Holland and Piper (2014 Holland, D. D., &; Piper, R. T. (2014). Technology integration education (TIE) model: Millennial preservice teachers' motivations about technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) competencies. Journal of Education Computing Research, 51(3), 257–294.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Based on the patterns of cross-loading correlations, this study found that there were limited correlational relationships between the set of independent variables and the set of dependent TPACK variables. For this pilot study, the sample consisted of 90 elementary education majors and 51 secondary education majors.