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.     

“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.     

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.

Developing networks of grass-roots science curriculum action

This paper describes an ongoing process of participatory curriculum development. It outlines some of the tensions which need to be explored in science curriculum development: debates about the nature of science, of society, of school science content and of learning theories. The process whereby action can arise from this debate is also explored. An example will be outlined of a network of science curriculum action which has developed from the work of a range of science education projects in Natal, South Africa. Specializations: science curriculum development from primary to tertiary level. Specializations: inservice primary science teacher development. Specializations: inservice teacher development, biology education. Specializations: environmental education, teacher development. Specializations: environmental education, teacher development.     

Disciplinary Literacies and Learning to Read for Understanding: A Conceptual Framework for Disciplinary Literacy

This article presents a framework and methodology for designing learning goals targeted at what students need to know and be able to do in order to attain high levels of literacy and achievement in three disciplinary areas—literature, science, and history. For each discipline, a team of researchers, teachers, and specialists in that discipline engaged in conceptual meta-analysis of theory and research on the reading, reasoning, and inquiry practices exhibited by disciplinary experts as contrasted with novices. Each team identified discipline-specific clusters of types of knowledge. Across teams, the clusters for each discipline were grouped into 5 higher order categories of core constructs: (a) epistemology; (b) inquiry practices/strategies of reasoning; (c) overarching concepts, themes, and frameworks; (d) forms of information representation/types of texts; and (e) discourse and language structures. The substance of the clusters gave rise to discipline-specific goals and tasks involved in reading across multiple texts, as well as reading, reasoning, and argumentation practices tailored to discipline-specific criteria for evidence-based knowledge claims. The framework of constructs and processes provides a valuable tool for researchers and classroom teachers' (re)conceptualizations of literacy and argumentation learning goals in their specific disciplines.