Who are Rural Students? How Definitions of Rurality Affect Research on College Completion

Research in Higher Education - Given a revived national discourse about rural populations, more educational research on rural students is necessary, including ways that rural students transition to...     

The etiology of mathematical self-evaluation and mathematics achievement: understanding the relationship using a cross-lagged twin study from age 9 to 12

The genetic and environmental origins of individual differences in mathematical self-evaluation over time and its association with later mathematics achievement were investigated in a UK sample of 2138 twin pairs at ages 9 and 12. Self-evaluation indexed how good children think they are at mathematical activities and how much they like those activities. Mathematics achievement was assessed by teachers based on UK National Curriculum standards. At both ages self-evaluation was approximately 40% heritable, with the rest of the variance explained by non-shared environment. The results also suggested moderate reciprocal associations between self-evaluation and mathematics achievement across time, with earlier self-evaluation predicting later performance and earlier performance predicting later self-evaluation. These cross-lagged relationships were genetically rather than environmentally mediated.     

Teacher Efficacy Research 1998–2009: Signs of Progress or Unfulfilled Promise?

This review investigates the state of teacher self- and collective efficacy research conducted from 1998 to 2009. Two hundred and eighteen empirical articles published in 1998–2009 were examined for key characteristics and compared to research published in the previous 12 years (i.e., 1986–1997). Results from the review show increases in overall teacher efficacy research, methodological diversity, domain specificity, internationalization, and focus on collective efficacy. Continuing problem areas were a lack of attention to the sources of teacher efficacy, continued measurement and conceptual problems, a lack of evidence for the links between teacher efficacy and student outcomes, and uncertain relevance of teacher efficacy research to educational practice. An outline of directions for future teacher efficacy research is provided.     

Effect of postsecondary education on the economic status of persons who are deaf or hard of hearing

This article examines the effect that postsecondary education has on earnings and the duration of time spent in the Social Security disability programs for young persons who are deaf or hard of hearing. Our hypothesis is that investments in postsecondary training increase the likelihood of employment for persons who are deaf or hard of hearing and thus reduce dependency on disability-related income support programs. A longitudinal data set based upon records from the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and Social Security administrative records is used for this analysis. We find that those who graduate, even those who graduate with vocational degrees, experience significant earnings benefits and reductions in the duration of time spent on federal disability programs when compared with those who do not graduate with a degree. This finding suggests that reductions in the duration of time spent on Social Security programs are not limited to those with the highest level of scholastic aptitude and that investments in post-secondary education can benefit a broad group of deaf and hard-of-hearing persons. In addition, the data show that individuals who attend college, but withdraw before graduation, fair no better economically than individuals who never attended college.     

Understanding student pathways in context-rich problems

This paper describes the ways that students’ problem-solving behaviors evolve when solving multi-faceted, context-rich problems within a web-based learning environment. During the semester, groups of two or three students worked on five physics problems that required drawing on more than one concept and, hence, could not be readily solved with simple “plug-and-chug” strategies. The problems were presented to students in a data-rich, online problem-based learning environment that tracked which information items were selected by students as they attempted to solve the problem. The students also completed a variety of tasks, like entering an initial qualitative analysis of the problem into an online form. Students were not constrained to complete these tasks in any specific order. As they gained more experience in solving context-rich physics problems, student groups showed some progression towards expert-like behavior as they completed qualitative analysis earlier and were more selective in their perusal of informational resources. However, there was room for more improvement as approximately half of the groups still completed the qualitative analysis task towards the end of the problem-solving process rather than at the beginning of the task when it would have been most useful to their work.     

Concept learning by pigeons: Matching-to-sample with trial-unique video picture stimuli

Pigeons were trained to match-to-sample with several new methodologies: a large number of stimuli, computer-drawn color picture stimuli, responses monitored by a computer touch screen, stimuli presented horizontally from the floor, and grain reinforcement delivered onto the picture stimuli. Following acquisition, matching-to-sample concept learning was assessed by transfer to novel stimuli on the first exposure to pairs of novel stimuli. One group (trial-unique), trained with 152 different pictures presented once daily, showed excellent transfer (80% correct). Transfer and baseline performances were equivalent, indicating that the matching-to-sample concept had been learned. A second group (2-stimulus), trained with only two different pictures, showed no evidence of transfer. These results are discussed in terms of the effect of numbers of exemplars on previous failures to find concept learning in pigeons, and the implications of the positive finding from this experiment on abstract concept learning and evolutionary cognitive development.     

Tracking New Directions in the Evaluation of Postgraduate Supervision

This article focuses on the evaluation of thesis supervision and highlights the vast range of problem areas presently documented as significant areas of concern for both graduate students and their supervisors. Additionally, the authors report on a study completed in 1995, which surveyed all Australian universities about current evaluative practices in postgraduate supervision. The conclusion of this study was that the conduct of such evaluations appears to be minimal and is primarily designed to obtain an indicator of the general health of a university's postgraduate supervision rather than to foster improved supervisory practices. As part of the same study, the authors conducted University faculty-based student and supervisor focus groups. Key issues emerging from these focus groups were: (1) the importance of relational aspects of supervision as the student communicates over the long term with one or more supervisors; (2) the importance of systematic feedback, monitoring, and evaluation to the supervisory process; and (3) the lack of strategies to facilitate this evaluative feedback process. On the basis of these findings, the authors designed evaluative strategies to facilitate regular ongoing feedback between students and supervisors.     

Perseveration of associative strength in rabbit nictitating membrane response conditioning following ISI shifts

The present experiment determined whether associative strength based upon 15 CS-US pairings at various interstimulus intervals (ISIs) could survive shifts of the ISI to influence the subsequent acquisition of the nictitating membrane (NM) CR. The choice of 15 preshift pairings was based upon previous work, which had shown that this training level produced substantial associative strength without NM CR acquisition. Consequently, this experiment, by shifting the ISI before the beginning of CR acquisition, served as an extension to traditional ISI-shift studies that have imposed the manipulation after CR acquisition. The findings of the experiment indicated that 15 preshift pairings in Stage 1 at ISIs from 250 to 4,000 msec were as effective as 15 pairings at a 500-msec ISI in determining the number of trials to the first NM CR in Stage 2 in which the training ISI was 500 msec. Moreover, 15 pairings in Stage 1 at ISIs from 250 to 2,000 msec were equivalent to 15 pairings at 500 msec in controlling the number of trials to 10 successive NM CRs in Stage 2. These outcomes demonstrate that, within a large ISI range, the associative strength based upon relatively few pairings is preserved despite various shifts of the ISI. Therefore, these results suggest that the reductions in CR performance, which have been consistently observed in traditional studies following ISI shifts, are not due to the loss of associative strength.     

A portrait of academic life:

The process of constructing A Portrait of Academic Life web resource has included careful evidence gathering and analysis of student performance necessary to assess learning and give useful feedback to increase the students’ ability to use information effectively in education. The students, too, develop self-assessment and reflective skills as they create online research portfolios. The online resources model new technologyenhanced strategies for teaching and learning that support standards-based teacher education programs in higher institutions. Other artifacts contained in A Portrait of Academic Life include digital video vignettes of students actively completing course assignments and reflecting on the learning process, and instructor reflections on teaching strategies to improve learning outcomes. As a culminating course activity, students showcase their online research portfolios at a gallery walk. The students were tremendously excited to present the wealth of information they have so carefully collected using the powerful technology tools available for their use in the teacher education program at Towson University. The innovation and originality presented in the form of student online research portfolios offered fresh perspectives to the honored guests. Likewise, it will enormously help students and faculty to see examples of the process of transforming traditional research papers into rich, informative online research portfolios.