A Case Study in the Integration of Assessment and General Education: Lessons learned from a complex process

This paper tracks an ongoing, 15-year initiative to reform and assess a general education programme at a regional comprehensive university in the US. The paper identifies four key phases in the process, chronicling emergent challenges, describing key setbacks and highlighting noteworthy successes. The authors identify five key lessons that may prove useful to other institutions planning or currently attempting to integrate assessment into their general education programme, and conclude that designing and implementing general education assessment is more challenging than assessing other programmes in post-secondary settings because it is influenced by more internal and external constituencies than any other assessment process.     

Inquiry into Children's Mathematical Thinking as a Means to Teacher Change

In the context of U.S. and world wide educational reforms that require teachers to understand and respond to student thinking about mathematics in new ways, ongoing learning from practice is a necessity. In this paper we report on this process for one teacher in one especially productive year of learning. This case study documents how Ms. Statz's engagement with children's thinking changed dramatically in a period of only a few months; observations and interviews several years later confirm she sustained this change. Our analysis focuses on the mathematical discussions she had with her students, and suggests this talk with children about their thinking in instruction served both as an index of change, and, in combination with other factors, as a mechanism for change. We identified four phases in Ms. Statz's growth toward practical inquiry, distinguished by her use of interactive talk with children. Motivating the evolution of phases were two sorts of mechanisms: scaffolded examination of her students' thinking; and asking and answering questions about individual students' thinking. Processes for generating and testing knowledge about children's thinking ultimately became integrated into Ms. Statz's instructional practices as she created opportunities for herself, and then students, to hear and respond to children's thinking.     

Contributions of Male and Female Guests and Hosts to Peer Group Entry

92 7–9-year-old children (47 girls) were observed while attempting to join 2 relatively unfamiliar same- or opposite-sex peers who were playing a board game. Female guests were less obtrusive than male guests in their entry approaches, whereas male guests were more active and assertive. Guests were less behaviorally constrained when approaching same- than opposite-sex hosts. Female hosts were more attentive to the guests than male hosts, who tended to ignore the newcomers. Successful guests received initiations from the hosts, responded contingently to host initiations, and performed activity-related behavior. Since female hosts initiated more behavior to the guests than male hosts, and female guests were more contingently responsive than male guests, girls entering female groups were the most successful. These findings support the thesis that peer group entry processes and outcomes are affected by the personal characteristics and contexts of both the entering children and their hosts.     

Guidance and counselling in New Zealand: Weathering a decade of transformation

This paper considers guidance and counselling needs and services in a country where dramatic changes in economic and social conditions have occurred over the past decade. The welfare state foundations of the nation are described followed by an outline of a move to a free market economy. Increased needs for guidance and counselling services and modified responses are outlined with the main features being a distinct shift from public to private sector provisions. Related domains of training and professional associations are addressed along with current issues facing the profession. The overall picture is of a more diversified climate of needs with a reduced but intensified coverage of services. The immediate future for the guidance and counselling field in New Zealand seems unpredictable. There is certainly a healthy and maturing level of professionalism evident, but also a need for greater sophistication in influencing social policy towards restoring greater social equity.Gary Hermansson is an Associate Professor and Susan Webb a Senior Lecturer in the Education Department at Massey University in New Zealand. Both are counsellor educators of longstanding.     

An empirical investigation of actual cheating in a large sample of undergraduates

Cheating behavior of university students enrolled in an upper-division mass-lecture business course was investigated in a two-semester study. It was found that slightly over 3% of the students plagerized/copied a library research assignment. The findings indicate the need for more empirical studies of what studentsdo—as opposed to what theysay they do—when it comes to academic dishonesty in undergraduate education. Such an approach holds the greatest promise for pinpointing just how widespread cheating really is in the lecture halls and classrooms of academe.     

Feedback (F) Fueling Adaptation (A) Network Growth (N) and Self-Organization (S): A Complex Systems Design and Evaluation Approach to Professional Development

This paper reports on the efficacy of a professional development framework premised on four complex systems design principles: Feedback, Adaptation, Network Growth and Self-organization (FANS). The framework is applied to the design and delivery of the first 2 years of a 3-year study aimed at improving teacher and student understanding of computational modeling tools. We demonstrate that structuring a professional development program around the FANS framework facilitates the development of important strategies and processes for program organizers such as the identification of salient system variables, effectively distributing expertise, adaptation and improvement of professional development resources and activities and building technological, human and social capital. For participants, there is evidence to show that the FANS framework encourages: professional goal setting, engagement in a strong professional community and personal autonomy by enabling individualized purpose—all fundamental components in promoting self-organization. We discuss three meta-level themes that may account for the success of the FANS framework: structure versus agency, exploration versus exploitation and short-term versus long-term goals. Each illustrates the tension that exists between competing variables that need to be considered in order to work effectively in real world complex educational systems.     

Local States of Emergency: The contradictions of neo-liberal governance in education in New Zealand

In the present paper, we argue that neo-liberal governance regimes are deeply contradictory and that these contradictions are increasingly evident within the education sector. Drawing on a case study of the consequences of restructuring in education in New Zealand, arguably a paradigm case of neo-liberal governance, we suggest the state is faced with a dilemma about how best to manage these tensions and contradictions within the framework of the political rationality itself. One strategy is to isolate and localise these problems in order to contain and manage the risks associated with them. We identify five variants we argue can broadly be viewed as local states of emergency.     

Testosterone during pregnancy and gender role behavior of preschool children: a longitudinal,population study

Levels of testosterone (T) and sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) were measured in blood samples from pregnant women and related to gender role behavior in 342 male and 337 female offspring at the age of 3.5 years. Gender role behavior was assessed using the Pre-School Activities Inventory, a standardized measure on which a parent indicates the child's involvement with sex-typical toys, games, and activities. Levels of T, but not SHBG, related linearly to gender role behavior in preschool girls. Neither hormone related to gender role behavior in boys. Other factors, including the presence of older brothers or sisters in the home, parental adherence to traditional sex roles, the presence of a male partner in the home, and maternal education, did not relate to gender role behavior in this sample and did not account for the relation observed between T and behavior. Although other, unmeasured factors may explain the relation, the results suggest that normal variability in T levels prenatally may contribute to the development of individual differences in the gender role behavior of preschool girls.     

Collaborative action research for middle grades improvement

Technology’s rapid evolution applies constant pressure to educational organizations, suggesting a need to continually re-envision schools for the digital age. Yet educators often struggle to understand the growing chasm between students’ out-of-school and in-school technology lives. This gap is particularly noticeable during the middle grades years, when home technology use increases dramatically. The purpose of this research was to examine the experiences of teachers and students engaged in collaborative action research for middle school improvement in technology-rich settings. We begin by outlining our theoretical framework, emphasizing Fletcher’s Ladder of Student Involvement. We then describe our case-study design and methods. Findings are organized by action research components and a discussion of key themes follows. Finally, we consider the implications of this study for action research as a means of student involvement and teacher learning.