Staff development: Old dogs can learn new tricks

Abstract

Peer coaching, study groups, and mentoring are all valuable methods for staff development. When all three can occur during the same year with a group of veteran teachers, the result is a learning community that enhances shared professionalism. This article describes such a year in which four veteran teachers came to teach in a residential high school for gifted and talented adolescents. This article reports that the focus from the perspective of the staff developer, as well as the focus from the perspective of three of the four teachers, emphasizes the power of these formats for professional development.     

The Evolution of Content and Style in Printed Materials for Development Communication

Abstract

The author, a Professor of Telecommunications at Indiana University, had the opportunity of helping to develop the radio component of a large non‐formal education project in Bolivia. Accompanying print material was seen as an important element, and in this article he describes how sensitive observations helped the style and content to evolve and become more effective.     

A Technical Note on IRT Simulation Studies: Dealing With Truth,Estimates, Observed Data,and Residuals

Simulation studies are extremely common in the item response theory (IRT) research literature. This article presents a didactic discussion of “truth” and “error” in IRT‐based simulation studies. We ultimately recommend that future research focus less on the simple recovery of parameters from a convenient generating IRT model, and more on practical comparative estimation studies when the data are intentionally generated to incorporate nuisance dimensionality and other sources of nuanced contamination encountered with real data. A new framework is also presented for conceptualizing and comparing various residuals in IRT studies. The new framework allows even very different calibration and scoring IRT models to be compared on a common, convenient, and highly interpretable number‐correct metric. Some illustrative examples are included.     

High IQ is sufficient to explain the high achievements in math and science of the East Asian peoples

It is argued that it is unnecessary to propose that Confucian values explain the high achievements in math and science of the North East Asian peoples, and that these can be satisfactorily and more parsimoniously be explained by their high IQs.