Toward Integration: From Quantitative Biology to Mathbio-Biomath?

In response to the call of BIO2010 for integrating quantitative skills into undergraduate biology education, 30 Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Program Directors at the 2006 HHMI Program Directors Meeting established a consortium to investigate, implement, develop, and disseminate best practices resulting from the integration of math and biology. With the assistance of an HHMI-funded mini-grant, led by Karl Joplin of East Tennessee State University, and support in institutional HHMI grants at Emory and University of Delaware, these institutions held a series of summer institutes and workshops to document progress toward and address the challenges of implementing a more quantitative approach to undergraduate biology education. This report summarizes the results of the four summer institutes (2007–2010). The group developed four draft white papers, a wiki site, and a listserv. One major outcome of these meetings is this issue of CBE—Life Sciences Education, which resulted from proposals at our 2008 meeting and a January 2009 planning session. Many of the papers in this issue emerged from or were influenced by these meetings.     

Peer assessment in a project-based engineering course: comparing between on-campus and online learning environments

As the number of participants in online distance learning courses increases, peer assessment is becoming a popular strategy for evaluating open assignments and for breaking the social isolation surrounding distance education. Yet, the quality and characteristics of peer assessment in massive online courses has received little attention. Hence, this study was set to examine peer feedback quality and grading accuracy in a project-based course. The study applied a sequential exploratory mixed methods design. It included 339 participants who studied the same engineering course, but in three different modes: on-campus (n = 77), small private online course (n = 110), and massive open online course (MOOC) (n = 152). Content analysis of feedback comments identified four categories: reinforcement, statement, verification and elaboration, arranged in an ascending scale of cognitive ability. The findings indicated that the MOOC participants provided more feedback comments and volunteered to assess more projects than their counterparts did. However, the on-campus students provided higher quality feedback and their peer grading was better correlated with the grades assigned by the teaching assistants.     

Specificity of Reading Self-Efficacy Among Primary School Children

We investigated the specificity of reading self-efficacy among second- to fifth-grade children in Finland (N?=?1,327). Bandura (1997 Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: Freeman. [Google Scholar]) theorized that efficacy beliefs can be assessed at different levels of specificity; however, empirical support for this view is scarce among young children. Efficacy beliefs targeting reading-related activities were assessed at three specificity levels (general, intermediate, and specific). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that these specificity levels are separable, but correlated, and the structure was invariant across gender and grade level. Self-efficacy factors were positively associated with reading fluency, but the strength of these associations varied according to specificity level. Findings suggest that reading self-efficacy in primary grades can and should be assessed at different specificity levels according to research aims.     

Teachers’ Collective Efficacy,Job Satisfaction,and Job Stress in Cross-Cultural Context

This study examines how teachers’ collective efficacy (TCE), job stress, and the cultural dimension of collectivism are associated with job satisfaction for 500 teachers from Canada, Korea (South Korea or Republic of Korea), and the United States. Multigroup path analysis revealed that TCE predicted job satisfaction across settings. Job stress was negatively related to job satisfaction for North American teachers (i.e., teachers from Canada and the United States), whereas the cultural dimension of collectivism was significantly related to job satisfaction for the Korean, but not for North American teachers. For motivation theorists, the results from this study provide evidence that cultural context influences how motivation beliefs are understood and expressed in diverse settings. For educators, this study underlines the importance of collective motivation as a source of individual job satisfaction.     

From process to practice: research,reflexivity and writing in adult education

The greater involvement by adult education practitioners in research poses the need to locate and problematise research as an activity. By seeing research as a social practice rather than a process it becomes possible to highlight the vital and neglected dimension of reflexivity. The paper argues that there is a need to recognise the place of writing in adult education research. Research can then be understood as a textual practice where it is impossible to ignore the workings of reflexivity and the need for researchers to be reflexive. The different forms reflexivity can take are considered in order to show that reflexivity does not refer exclusively to the effects of the researcher's psychological make‐up or personal values. It is argued that there is a need for adult education researchers to become critical writers and readers of research texts and a framework is outlined which makes it possible to highlight the workings of reflexivity as a movement away from the purely personal to an awareness of the operation of language, discourses and power/knowledge formations in the assumptive structures and unconscious values of research.