Interactive Broadcast Television in Australia

Interactive television is being used increasingly as a delivery format for distance education and open learning courses. In most applications, the delivery is to a closed audience within the framework of formal programmes of study. This paper reports on programmes in Western Australia where interactive educational television is being used in broadcast modes. The paper discusses the impact of the ensuing interactivity on the quality of the broadcast programmes from an instructional perspective.     

An international collaborative investigation of beginning seventh grade students' understandings of scientific inquiry: Establishing a baseline

Although understandings of scientific inquiry (as opposed to conducting inquiry) are included in science education reform documents around the world, little is known about what students have learned about inquiry during their elementary school years. This is partially due to the lack of any assessment instrument to measure understandings about scientific inquiry. However, a valid and reliable assessment has recently been developed and published, Views About Scientific Inquiry (VASI; Lederman et al. [2014], Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51, 65–83). The purpose of this large-scale international project was to collect the first baseline data on what beginning middle school students have learned about scientific inquiry during their elementary school years. Eighteen countries/regions spanning six continents including 2,634 students participated in the study. The participating countries/regions were: Australia, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Mainland China, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States. In many countries, science is not formally taught until middle school, which is the rationale for choosing seventh grade students for this investigation. This baseline data will simultaneously provide information on what, if anything, students learn about inquiry in elementary school, as well as their beginning knowledge as they enter secondary school. It is important to note that collecting data from all of the approximately 200 countries globally was not humanly possible, and it was also not possible to collect data from every region of each country. The results overwhelmingly show that students around the world at the beginning of grade seven have very little understandings about scientific inquiry. Some countries do show reasonable understandings in certain aspects but the overall picture of understandings of scientific inquiry is not what is hoped for after completing 6 years of elementary education in any country.     

Reliability and Validity Evidence for Achievement Goal Models in High School Physical Education Settings

Although empirical research in academic areas provides support for both a 3-factor as well as a 4-factor achievement goal model, both models were proposed and tested with a collegiate sample. Little is known about the generalizability of either model with high school level samples. This study was designed to examine whether the 3-factor model (Mastery Goals, Performance-Approach Goals, and Performance-Avoidance Goals) or the 4-factor model (Mastery-Approach Goals, Mastery-Avoidance Goals, Performance-Approach Goals, and Performance-Avoidance Goals) is appropriate in high school physical education settings. The factorial validity of the models and internal consistency reliability were tested with confirmatory factor analysis, invariance testing, and tests of internal consistency across 2 samples. The results reveal that the items from the 4-factor achievement goal model can produce internally consistent and valid scores for high school students in physical education settings; the 4-factor model provides a better fit to the data than the 3-factor model. The multistep invariance analysis, however, reveals only metric invariance across 2 school samples.     

Seven Years After the Call: Students’ and Graduates’ Perceptions of the Re-envisioned Ed.D.

Given continued confusion about the Ed.D.degree, universities affiliated with the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) have re-envisioned it using a set of guiding principles and design features. In this study, we investigated why students and graduates chose to pursue the Ed.D., what and how they learned, how they viewed themselves, and whether they perceived their programs to be aligned with CPED’s principles. Data were collected from 296 participants at 14 CPED institutions using an online survey. Results indicated respondents agreed that their programs were aligned with CPED principles, helped them meet their professional and personal goals, and developed them as scholarly practitioners.     

Learning from distance‐teaching materials: a study of students’ mediating responses

It has been suggested that improvements in the quality of distance‐teaching materials could be effected if the mental responses that mediate study of and learning from such materials were known. This project aimed at identifying the types and origins of students’ convert mediating responses to distance‐teaching materials during study sessions. Three one‐half hour study sessions were videotaped for each of four student volunteers in a room set up on the campus. Immediately following each study session stimulated‐recall interviews were conducted, the data from these being audiotaped and then transcribed for further analysis. Interview protocols revealed that approaches to study were influenced by a set of interdependent factors, which, when combined with a set of study strategies, resulted in two broad classes of study orientation. Twenty different types of mental processes were identified, seven of which were used more frequently than the others. Furthermore, textual features which activated mental processes were identified using the stimulated‐recall technique, and promising suggestions for textual design were gleaned from the data. Areas for further research were also identified.     

The relations between disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge and the length of teaching experience of biology and geography teachers

Concept mapping was used to tap the conceptual disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge of seven biology and six geography teachers with short or long teaching experience. Based on five knowledge structure dimensions, the results were that (1) the disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge of teachers of both biology and geography is quite unsatisfactory; (2) the two types of knowledge did not improve with experience and the latter slightly deteriorated; and (3) the teachers mastered their disciplinary knowledge better than their pedagogical knowledge. The results are discussed in relation to the nature of the instructional activities and the different status of the disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge in teaching.     

The factor structure and criterion validity of a test for assessment of cognitive abilities. Comparing students in special and regular education

As a consequence of a recent reform of junior secondary education in the Netherlands, instruments for the assessment of cognitive abilities of students who are eligible for special educational support must be designed. In constructing a new test battery contemporary theory on crystallized and fluid intelligence (Gf-Gc theory) was considered. Complete coverage of the factors in Gf-Gc theory was not striven for, because the status of some of these factors in relation to referral to education with special educational support is not entirely clear. The sample in the study consisted of students from regular and special primary as well as secondary education, aged between 11 and 15 years. Approximately two-thirds of the sample was of Dutch origin, whereas the remaining third was of a different ethnic origin. Results show that the factors verbal-crystallized ability, fluid-reasoning ability, spatial-visualization ability and memory capacity can explain the positive correlations between the tests in the battery for the greater part. Students from regular and special education can be distinguished on the basis of their cognitive profiles reasonably accurate, thus supporting the criterion validity of the test battery. Students requiring special educational support are characterized by a significant discrepancy between short-term recall and long-term retention and retrieval.