The Evaluation of Student Fitness Levels in Exercise Science and Physical Education Teacher Education Programs

The debate on whether kinesiology students should undergo fitness testing is controversial. Some are strong proponents of fitness testing, while others are in strong opposition. As advocates for fitness testing among kinesiology majors, we aimed to assess the fitness levels of Exercise Science and Physical Education Teacher Education majors and evaluate current physical education teacher education (PETE) fitness criterion. One hundred and sixteen participants (males N = 49; females N = 67) underwent health-related fitness assessments. 37% of males and 51% of females met PETE’s fitness criteria. Both groups performed significantly better in body fat percentage and upper body strength than PETE’s acceptable (average) standards; however, most were significantly lower than target (above average) standards. Presented are fitness passing criteria for PETE majors and fitness reporting that aids in improved fitness tracking and accountability. We also highlight the need for NASPE and SHAPE America to clearly define fitness expectations for PETE majors and encourage other kinesiology faculty to consider implementing fitness testing in their programs.     

Externalizing Behavior Problems and Low Academic Achievement: Does a Causal Relation Exist?

Educational Psychology Review - Children’s low academic skills are associated with a variety of behavior problems and maladaptive outcomes throughout childhood and adulthood. Given the...     

Geo-Policy Barriers and Rural Internet Access: The Regulatory Role in Constructing the Digital Divide

A combination of geography, public policy, and commercial investment in information infrastructure combines to create geo-policy barriers that in turn structure the ability of rural citizens to access the Internet. A statistical study of 208 rural telephone exchanges in Texas combined with case studies from rural counties explores the impact of distance and policies aimed at enabling rural telephone connection on the presence of Internet service providers. Market territories, including exchange areas and LATAs, and the distance requirements of expanded local calling policy in Texas can both help and hinder Internet access in remote areas.     

Through the camera's eye: A phenomenological analysis of teacher subjectivity

The purpose of this study is to understand how preservice teachers experience a common university assignment: the videotaping and analysis of their own instruction. Using empirical data and the thought of the French philosophers Michel Foucault and Emmanuel Levinas, the study examines the difficulties in transitioning from student subjectivity to teacher subjectivity within the context of university-based teacher education. The paper ends by considering the role teacher educators can play in helping student teachers grow through their preservice experiences.     

The AECT Project: Modeling the Effective Use of Technology in Teacher Preparation

Conclusion The AECT Project builds on ISTE’s groundbreaking work in the development of technology standards for teachers. The Project adds specificity and has developed a comprehensive set of tools for pre-service teacher education. Teacher educators can use these tools to ensure that their graduates leave with the technology skills needed for their selected teaching specialty. The commitment and leadership demonstrated by the U.S. Department of Education in offering the Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers for Technology program has earned their leaders our respect. Through this program the AECT Project has been able to develop tools and can now offer them at no cost to institutions of higher education. The PT3 Program has galvanized educators across America, has helped to create important, ongoing collaborations, and has helped to instill an unprecedented mass consciousness valuing educational change. The partners in the AECT Project are proud to have this opportunity to contribute, in important ways, to technology integration in teacher education. We are honored to join with all of the other PT3 Projects from across the Nation in creating teaching and learning opportunities that will shape our educational systems in the 21st century. We welcome other teacher education institutions and professional associations as partners as we move ahead. For more information, please contact us through our Website athttp://aect.org/pt3, or send email to us ataect@psu.edu     

Assessing Multimedia Influences on Student Responses Using a Personal Response System

To date, research to date on personal response systems (clickers) has focused on external issues pertaining to the implementation of this technology or broadly measured student learning gains rather than investigating differences in the responses themselves. Multimedia learning makes use of both words and pictures, and research from cognitive psychology suggests that using both words and illustrations improves student learning. This study analyzed student response data from 561 students taking an introductory earth science course to determine whether including an illustration in a clicker question resulted in a higher percentage of correct responses than questions that did not include a corresponding illustration. Questions on topics pertaining to the solid earth were categorized as illustrated questions if they contained a picture, or graph and text-only if the question only contained text. For each type of question, we calculated the percentage of correct responses for each student and compared the results to student ACT-reading, math, and science scores. A within-groups, repeated measures analysis of covariance with instructor as the covariate yielded no significant differences between the percentage of correct responses to either the text-only or the illustrated questions. Similar non-significant differences were obtained when students were grouped into quartiles according to their ACT-reading, -math, and -science scores. These results suggest that the way in which a conceptest question is written does not affect student responses and supports the claim that conceptest questions are a valid formative assessment tool.     

Networks of knowledge, matters of learning, and criticality in higher education

Higher education in the UK has become preoccupied with debates over the authority of knowledge and of criticality. In this article we argue that approaches to knowledge in higher education might benefit from a network sensibility that foregrounds the negotiated processes through which the material becomes entangled with the social to bring forth actions, subjectivities and ideas. We draw from a set of analytic perspectives that have arisen from actor-network theory traditionally associated with the writings of Bruno Latour. These approaches emphasise the contingent in knowledge production, even to claim that objects, knowledge or otherwise, come into being through enactment as effects within particular webs of relations. What becomes visible in such analysis is the precarious fragility of concepts and categories often assumed to be immutable, and the work required to establish their stability. We argue that this actor-network analysis helps to move away from a focus on separate entities and individuals to understand their material relationality. This analysis also foregrounds the controversies that tend to be foreclosed in what Latour calls ‘matters of fact’, and makes visible the different worlds in which knowing is evoked in practice. From this departure point the issue of interest is not which knowledge accounts are superior but how and when particular accounts become more visible or valued, how they circulate, and what work they perform in the process. These approaches afford a criticality that we argue open important entry points for rethinking curriculum, teaching and learning in higher education.     

Fifth graders' science inquiry abilities: A comparative study of students in hands‐on and textbook curricula

A large number of American elementary school students are now studying science using the hands‐on inquiry curricula developed in the 1990s: Insights; Full Option Science System (FOSS); and Science and Technology for Children (STC). A goal of these programs, echoed in the National Science Education Standards, is that children should gain “abilities to do scientific inquiry” and “understanding about scientific inquiry.” We have studied the degree to which students can do inquiries by using four hands‐on performance assessments, which required one or three class periods. To be fair, the assessments avoided content that is studied in depth in the hands‐on programs. For a sample of about 1000 fifth grade students, we compared the performance of students in hands‐on curricula with an equal number of students with textbook curricula. The students were from 41 classrooms in nine school districts. The results show little or no curricular effect. There was a strong dependence on students' cognitive ability, as measured with a standard multiple‐choice instrument. There was no significant difference between boys and girls. Also, there was no difference on a multiple‐choice test, which used items released from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). It is not completely clear whether the lack of difference on the performance assessments was a consequence of the assessments, the curricula, and/or the teaching. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 467–484, 2006