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.     

Pupil Speech during Morning News: the effects of reducing teacher questions and increasing pauses and praise

Classroom discourse patterns were examined in the morning news sessions of a primary school classroom. The effects of reducing teacher questions and increasing rates of teacher pauses, praise and directives were investigated. Child words spoken and child expansions were recorded, as well as class call‐outs and teacher control statements. Frequencies of child words spoken showed no significant changes across the phases of the study. However, reducing teacher questions and increasing teacher pauses significantly decreased child expansions, while reducing teacher questions and increasing teacher praise significantly increased child expansions. Replacing teacher questions with directives had no significant effect upon child expansions. Class call‐outs and teacher control statements showed no significant changes across the intervention phases. The results of this study suggest that, for this teacher and class, teacher questions may be decreased without adversely affecting either child utterances or class behaviour, and that replacing questions with praise may increase children's contributions — particularly in the form of verbal expansions — to morning news talks.     

“I Heard it through the Grapevine”: Doctoral Student Socialization in Chemistry and History

Twenty doctoral students in the disciplines of chemistry and history were interviewed to better understand the socialization processes that influence their success and how these processes differ by year in the degree program and disciplinary culture. Five major themes emerged describing these socialization processes and how they facilitate or impede degree success, including Ambiguity, describing the programmatic guidelines and expectations that surrounded much of the students’ experience; Balance, pointing to the students’ need to balance graduate school responsibilities along with external relationships and demands; Independence, describing the students’ desire to find equilibrium as they transitioned to the role of independent scholar; Development, highlighting the significant cognitive, personal, and professional development that occurs in these students’ graduate experience; and Support, describing the faculty, peer, and financial support needed for the students’ success in their degree programs. Suggestions for policy, practice, and further research are discussed.     

From data source to co-researchers? Tracing the shift from ‘student voice’ to student–teacher partnerships in Educational Action Research

This article provides a review of the concept of student voice as it has been represented in Educational Action Research from the 1990s to the present day. Contextualised within an exploration of the challenges posed by educational action research that incorporates student voice in the current age of accountability as reflected and understood in academia, we explore issues of power and authority, issues of process and issues of ownership as they emerge in the literature. We note ways in which these challenges are manifest in primary and secondary schooling and in tertiary education. Finally, we survey some recent representations of student voice in Educational Action Research, observing something of a shift from earlier conceptualisations of students as a ‘data source’ to a more active involvement as co-researchers and joint constructors of knowledge, progressing toward more active student–teacher partnerships.     

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.     

The Comparability of Scores from Different Digital Devices: A Literature Review and Synthesis with Recommendations for Practice

Evidence of comparability is generally needed whenever there are variations in the conditions of an assessment administration, including variations introduced by the administration of an assessment on multiple digital devices (e.g., tablet, laptop, desktop). This article is meant to provide a comprehensive examination of issues relevant to the comparability of scores across devices, and as such provide a starting point in designing and implementing a research agenda to support the comparability of any assessment program. This work starts with a conceptual framework rooted in the idea of a comparability claim—a conceptual statement about how each student is expected to perform on each of the devices in question. Then a review of the available literature is provided, focusing on how aspects of the devices (touch screens, keyboards, screen size, and displayed content) and aspects of the assessments (content area and item type) relate to student performance and preference. Building on this literature, recommendations to minimize threats to comparability are then provided. The article concludes with ways to gather evidence to support claims of comparability.     

The effects of isolation and handling on reactivity to footshock and tactile dorsal stimulation

The effects of isolation and handling on the reactivity of rats to two tactile stimuli were assessed in two experiments. In the first experiment, reactivity to more intense footshock was increased in rats raised in isolation but was not affected by handling by an experimenter. In the second experiment, increased reactivity to airpuff stimuli presented to the dorsal surface of isolation-reared rats was reduced by handling. The data suggest that the effects of handling on shock-motivated behaviors are not due to altered reactivity to shock and that the effect of housing or handling must be considered in behavioral tests in which reactivity to tactile stimulation might play a role as dependent or independent variables.