Academic nightmares: Predatory publishing

Academic researchers who seek to publish their work are confronted daily with a barrage of e‐mails from aggressive marketing campaigns that solicit them to publish their research with a specialized, often newly launched, journal. Known as predatory journals, they often promise high editorial and publishing standards, yet their exploitive business models, poor quality control, and minimal overall transparency victimize those researchers with limited academic experience and pave the way for low‐quality articles that threaten the foundation of evidence‐based research. Understanding how to identify these predatory journals requires thorough due diligence on the part of the submitting authors, and a commitment by reputable publishers, institutions, and researchers to publicly identify these predators and eliminate them as a threat to the careers of young scientists seeking to disseminate their work in scholarly journals. Anat Sci Educ 10: 392–394. © 2016 American Association of Anatomists.     

The development of cutoff scores on a WISC-R in the multidimensional assessment of gifted children

The summed scores of the WISC-R dyad, Vocabulary and Block Design, were cross-tabulated with full scale WISC-R scores for 249 children referred to a gifted program. The initial results indicated that the Vocabulary-Block Design dyad could be a useful tool in predicting full scale IQ for some children and thus leave time available for other types of assessment of students.     

Eye‐rollers,risk‐takers,and turn sharks: Target students in a professional science education program

In classrooms from kindergarten to graduate school, researchers have identified target students as students who monopolize material and human resources. Classroom structures that privilege the voice and actions of target students can cause divisive social dynamics that may generate cliques. This study focuses on the emergence of target students, the formation of cliques, and professors' efforts to mediate teacher learning in a Master of Science in Chemistry Education (MSCE) program by structuring the classroom environment to enhance nontarget students' agency. Specifically, we sought to answer the following question: What strategies could help college science professors enact more equitable teaching structures in their classrooms so that target students and cliques become less of an issue in classroom interactions? The implications for professional education programs in science and mathematics include the need for professors to consider the role and contribution of target students to the learning environment, the need to structure an equitable learning environment, and the need to foster critical reflection upon classroom interactions between students and instructors. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 819–851, 2006     

Challenges in preparing aspiring principals for instructional leadership: voices from the field

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the challenges professors of educational leadership encounter as they prepare aspiring principals to be instructional leaders. Drawing upon an open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured interviews of professors from across the U.S.A., we analyzed significant statements and created themes that illuminate the challenges facing university faculty in preparing aspiring principals for instructional leadership. From the analysis of the combined data sources, five overarching challenges emerged for preparing future principals for the role of instructional leader. These challenges are: (a) teaching instructional leadership via online courses, (b) time in the internship to focus on instructional leadership, (c) instructional leadership mindsets, (d) pedagogical knowledge for use in instructional leadership and (e) the professor’s knowledge/experience in instructional leadership. The five challenges presented in the findings highlight the need for continuous program evaluation and collaboration among faculty to address coursework both in the classroom and in the internship. Additionally, the challenges highlight the need for more research in how to prepare aspiring principals to be culturally responsive and adopt a growth-mindset when it comes to teacher development, and how to create powerful learning experiences for aspiring principals in varying program contexts.     

Forum: dialogue about dialogue—cogeneration, research and science education

This forum discussion focuses on seven themes drawn from Sonya’s fascinating paper: the terminology of “cogenerative dialogues,” the roles of participants and their power relations within such dialogues, the use of metaphor and analogy in the paper, science and science education for all students, the ways in which students’ expectations about learning change in innovative classrooms, teacher research and the “theory-practice gap,” and the tension between conducting cogenerative dialogues with individual students or with whole classes. These themes by no means exhaust the ideas in Sonya’s paper, but we feel that they have allowed us to explore the classroom research she reports, and to extend our discussion beyond the paper to explore some of these themes more broadly.     

More than a conversation: using cogenerative dialogues in the professional development of high school chemistry teachers

This paper focuses on content-based and pedagogical instructors’ use of cogenerative dialogues to improve instructional practice and to evaluate program effectiveness in a professional development program for high school chemistry teachers. We share our research findings from using cogenerative dialogues as an evaluative tool for general assessment of various program-related issues. We discuss how engaging students in cogenerative dialogues improved teaching and learning in chemistry and chemistry education courses. This research provides insights and direction for improving content-based professional development programs for science teachers and the learning experiences of high school science students. Cogenerative dialogue has the potential to expand evaluation methodologies that will position participants more centrally in not only the collection of data, but also the analysis of these data to catalyze transformative practices in educational programs.