Counselor Educators' Experiences Preparing Preservice School Counselors: A Phenomenological Study

The authors conducted a phenomenological study to explore the experiences of 32 school counselor educators preparing preservice school counselors. Analysis of data from 3 focus groups revealed 3 themes: breadth versus depth, balancing specialties and professor partiality, and preparation versus practice. These results highlight the need for collaboration across counseling specialties at the preservice level.     

The Professional Education of Teachers

Teachers, unlike their counterparts in other professions such as doctors and lawyers, lack professional control over their profession. This paper examines how this has come about in the United Kingdom by identifying the problems in seeing teaching as a profession and explains why the professional development of teachers should be a central concern of universities. Many parallels can be drawn with problems highlighted in this paper and those encountered elsewhere.     

Why Do We Want to Change Teachers’ Beliefs and How Could We Support These Changes? The Case of Conceptions of Learning

The theoretical part of this paper argues for an embedding of the question of stability and change of teachers’ conceptions of learning into the researchers epistemological standpoint. The empirical part illustrates this statement by showing how changes in a teacher's conception of learning could be understood from a constructivist perspective. According to this perspective, conceptions are related to other relational and environmental variables that form a meaningful configuration. Thus, although conceptions of learning appear as relatively stable cognitive structures, they are also related to environmental variables to be managed by the teachers’ educators. This research result determines the discussion of the basic questions addressed in the title of this paper: why do we want to change teachers beliefs and how could we, as teachers’ educators, support these changes.     

Introduction to the special issue on genes, environment, and reading

This introduction to the special issue on Genes, Environment, and Reading presents an overview of the background for behavior- and molecular-genetic research on dyslexia and individual differences across the normal range. The general methods, questions addressed, and selected results are summarized for each of the papers in the order of their presentation in the special issue. Concluding comments reflect on the influence of environmental range on estimates of genetic and environmental influences, and the future of behavior- and molecular-genetic research on reading.     

Using Statistical Control Charts to Analyze Data from Student Evaluations of Teaching

In this paper, a method for analyzing data from student evaluations of teaching is presented. The first step of the process requires development of a regression model for teacher's summary rating as a function of student's expected grade. Then, two‐sigma control charts for individual evaluation scores (section averages) and residuals from the regression model are used to identify both excellent and poor outcomes. The performance of an individual whose scores are out of control on both charts cannot be explained by expected grade and therefore is worthy of note.     

Peer evaluation: A case study

Peer evaluation is the process whereby students critique the performances of other students. A peer evaluation format emphasizes skills, encourages involvement, focuses on learning, establishes a reference, promotes excellence, provides increased feedback, fosters attendance, and teaches responsibility. The process of peer evaluation is explained, the criteria are specified, the training for use is described, and how standards are maintained is explained. Finally, objections are suggested and addressed. Peer evaluation is a unique, controlled, and precise form of classroom evaluation that involves carefully constructed evaluation instruments, structured classroom situations, and exact evaluative assessments. Peer evaluation is a new and different form of evaluation.     

Nationalistic Education in a Post-colonial Age: the Impact of Study Trips to China and the Development of Hong Kong Students' National Identity

With the return of its sovereignty to the People's Republic of China (PRC) on 1 July 1997, Hong Kong attained a new political status as a Special Administrative Region. Hong Kong students, under British rule, had long been receiving de-politicised education, and a sense of belonging to China was limited to the cognitive domain of Chinese history. The ideal of promoting national identity, underpinned in the current civic education curriculum, is proving to be a difficult task. While much literature has documented how curriculumbased educational practices fail to instil students with such an identity, little study has been undertaken to suggest effective alternatives and to examine how they work. This paper reports a study investigating the impact of study trips on developing students' national identity. Through observation and interviews, it takes an in-depth look into students' experience, into how they identify with a Chinese identity. Results indicate that though the study trips help to nurture the cognitive and affective dimensions of national identity, there are limits and possibilities involved. This paper concludes with reminders which teachers should have taken into account when thinking of using co-curricular activities to address the legitimate need of fostering nationalistic education.     

Compatibility and Complementarity of Classroom Ecology and Didactique Research Perspectives in Physical Education

ABSTRACT

A large diversity of theoretical frameworks exists in the physical education literature. This article focuses on two of those frameworks to examine their compatibility and their complementarity. The classroom ecology paradigm concentrates on the balance between three task systems, two vectors, and programs of actions proposed by the physical education teacher and negotiated by students. The didactique research program studies the teaching and learning processes using the concepts of didactic contract and didactic milieu that focus on how the knowledge content emerges within teacher and students’ joint action. The article underlines the complementarity and the compatibility of the two frameworks when analyzing teaching and learning in physical education. It argues that the gray areas left by the classroom ecology paradigm could be filled with the insights of the didactique research program. A concise example of how the two frameworks have already been utilized is presented.     

Gender differences in responding to open-ended problem-solving questions

We reanalyzed data from published studies (Harp & Mayer, 1997, 1998; Mayer & Moreno, 1998, Mayer et al., 1995, 1996) in which college students learned about the formation of lightning, and were then given open-ended problem-solving question. When asked, “What could you do to decrease the intensity of lightning?,” females were approximately eight times more likely than males to refuse to answer on the grounds that nature cannot be altered. The pattern persisted across four data sets involving 810 participants. The results have practical implications for the design of alternative assessment instruments involving open-ended questions and theoretical implications for gender-based differences in verbal communication styles.