Teaching Them to Teach: Programmatic Evaluation of Graduate Assistants’ Teaching Performance

Academic libraries are one of the most important sources of “on the job” training for future library instructors. Librarians who supervise and assess these future library instructors (often in graduate assistant positions) often choose to provide observations and feedback each semester to these instructors in training. Scholarly literature, however, provides little information on whether this system helps graduate assistants to develop as teachers. The authors of this article assessed graduate assistants’ performance as teachers over three semesters using a system of observation and self-assessment. They analyzed both patterns and areas of growth and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this system.     

Rats remember not wisely but too well

Rats were trained in a three-alternative spatial delayed matching-to-sample task in a starburst maze. Samples consisted of rewarded forced choices of one arm, and retention was indicated by rats’ returning to that arm after a 90-sec delay. If a rat made an error on its first choice, it was returned to the start compartment and allowed a second choice. Unlike in previous experiments with this task, all three arms were available during the animals’ second choices. The rats tended to perseverate in their second choices by returning to the arm that they had erroneously visited on their first choice. In Experiment 1, the accuracy of second choices following first-choice errors was below chance during the first block of sessions, when a 90-sec delay intervened between the first choice and the second choice, and at chance during the second block of sessions, when a short (5–6 see) delay intervened between first and second choices. In Experiment 2, long-delay and short-delay sessions were randomly presented to naive subjects. Similar results were obtained. In both experiments, the tendency to repeat the erroneous first choice was greater when long delays separated the two choices than when short delays were used. The results suggest that rats make their first-choice errors because they erroneously encode or remember the location of the sample and that they base their second choices on the same erroneous-memory. The increase in perseveration at long delays implies some kind of rehearsal-like mechanism that slows forgetting of the memory controlling the first choice.     

Lecturers on teaching within the ‘supercomplexity’ of Higher Education

While a vast literature exists on students and their learning, work on lecturers and their teaching continues to lag some way behind. This paper explores the notion that the complexity of Higher Education (HE) today significantly impacts upon what goes on in the classroom through a two-tiered study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore lecturers’ perceptions and experiences of teaching a specific module. Interviewees raised issues pertaining to the wider departmental, institutional and socio-political context. Consequently, focus groups were run with key people in the University to explore their perceptions of teaching and learning within the current HE climate. The findings suggest that lecturers perceive numerous external factors to impinge upon their teaching and attempt to militate against these in various ways in order to achieve ongoing enhancement of learning for students.

Channel One Revisited: Prospective Teachers and the Role of American Higher Education

This study examined perceptions of college of education students and their experiences with Channel One, a privately-owned news service used in public education. Given that about one-third of middle and high schoolers in the US view the broadcast every school day, the authors surveyed 172 freshmen to discern their views and attitudes toward Channel One programming and commercials and the role colleges and universities might play in relation to this media service. While most studies on Channel One have been conducted from a K-12 point of view, the goal of this study was to reconsider the topic from the perspective of prospective teachers and post-secondary education. A. J. Angulo  is Assistant Professor of Social Foundations, Winthrop University. He received an Ed.D. and Ed.M. from Harvard University. His research interests include history of education, technology and education, and student rights. Susan K. Green  is Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, Winthrop University. She received a Ph.D. in social psychology from Loyola University, Chicago and a Ph.D. in educational psychology and research from the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Her interests include classroom assessment, motivational and instructional strategies to promote learning, and multicultural issues in education.     

A Qualitative Examination of the Challenges, Resources, and Strategies for Serving Children Learning English in Head Start

The dramatic growth in the number of children learning English as a second language in our country has led to a corresponding increase in the need to understand how teachers and schools can effectively teach children who are learning English as a second language. Many teachers report not feeling prepared to meet the needs of these children (National Center for Education Statistics, Teacher preparation and professional development: 2000. , 2002). The current study used focus group interviews to examine how Head Start teachers in one program addressed the special learning needs of children learning English in their classrooms. Key challenges involved communicating with children and their families in their home language. Teachers used other staff, parents, and children in the classroom to interpret. Strategies involved visual aids, pictures, gestures, and a welcoming classroom environment. Resources used by teachers were professional development and language skills of other staff. However, available resources were often underutilized and limited for teachers to use in meeting the challenges the teachers faced in the classroom. Suggestions are presented for overcoming the challenges and limited resources encountered by teachers, such as changes in preservice and inservice training opportunities, and second language learning opportunities for teachers. Further implications for training and research are discussed.     

The inadequacy of individual educational program (IEP) goals for high school students with word-level reading difficulties

This investigation analyzed goals from the Individual Educational Programs (IEPs) of 54 high school students with diagnosed reading disabilities in basic skills (decoding and/or word identification). Results showed that for 73% of the students, the IEPs written when they were in high school failed to specify any objectives regarding their acute difficulties with basic skills. IEPs from earlier points in the students’ educations were also reviewed, as available. For 23 of the students, IEPs were present in the students’ files for three time points: elementary school (ES), middle school (MS), and high school (HS). Another 20 students from the sample of 54 had IEPs available for two time points (HS and either MS or ES). Comparisons with the IEPs from younger years showed a pattern of decline from ES to MS to HS in the percentage of IEPs that commented on or set goals pertaining to weaknesses in decoding. These findings suggest that basic skills deficits that persist into the upper grade levels are not being sufficiently targeted for remediation, and help explain why older students frequently fail to resolve their reading problems.     

Making broadcast television participative: Eliciting mathematical behavior throughSquare One TV

The current reform movement in mathematics education has called for new ways of teaching that encourage children to become active participants in mathematical problem solving. In this article, the potential of educational television to elicit such behavior is investigated by reviewing research on theSquare One TV television series. A sizable body of evidence indicates that, through viewer participation,Square One TV can promote mathematical behavior directly among its target audience of 8- to 12-year-olds. Described in the article are the types of viewer participation that have been observed, threeSquare One TV formats that have consistently been found to elicit participative behavior, and several characteristics of these formats that may have been responsible for increased viewer participation. If these characteristics are incorporated into future television-based materials, they may increase the potential of the materials to elicit active participation among viewers. The production ofSquare One TV and the research described here were supported by the National Science Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Carnegie Corporation, and the U.S. Department of Education. Production of the first season was also supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and by the IBM Corporation. Additional funding for the fourth and fifth seasons was provided by the Intel Corporation. This article is based on a paper presented at the 1993 meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Atlanta, Georgia.     

Working and Playing Together: Prediction of Preschool Social-Emotional Competence from Mother-Child Interaction

The impact of mother-child interaction on preschoolers' social-emotional competence was evaluated. Twenty-five girls and 23 boys (mean age = 44 mos) and their mothers were videotaped performing four play/teaching tasks. Preschool teachers completed the Baumrind Preschool Behavior Q-Sort and the Behar Problem Behavior Questionnaire. Mother-child interaction aggregates represented task orientation, positive emotion, and allowance of autonomy/reliance on mother. Results indicated that specific maternal interaction aggregates coherently predicted the children's Positive Social Behavior, Assertiveness, and Sadness in the preschool setting. Child aggregates were less effective predictors of teachers' ratings. Several gender differences in the prediction of social-emotional competence were found (e.g., maternal allowance of autonomy predicted girls' sadness, but boys' sadness was predicted by their own negative emotion). These findings' contributions to the parent-child literature are discussed.     

Improbable or impossible? How children reason about the possibility of extraordinary events

The present study investigated the development of possibility-judgment strategies between the ages of 4 and 8. In Experiment 1, 48 children and 16 adults were asked whether a variety of extraordinary events could or could not occur in real life. Although children of all ages denied the possibility of events that adults also judged impossible, children frequently denied the possibility of events that adults judged improbable but not impossible. Three additional experiments varied the manner in which possibility judgments were elicited and confirmed the robustness of preschoolers' tendency to judge improbable events impossible. Overall, it is argued that children initially mistake their inability to imagine circumstances that would allow an event to occur for evidence that no such circumstances exist.