College cheating: Immaturity,lack of commitment,and the neutralizing attitude

Through the use of a 49-item questionnaire administered to 380 university students, we investigated student cheating on exams, quizzes, and homework assignments. More than half the students reported cheating during the academic year on at least one of the above. The purpose of this paper was to uncover fundamental factors underlying cheating behavior. Through the use of correlational and factor analysis, three primary factors were identified: student immaturity, lack of commitment to academics, and neutralization. We offer interpretations of these factors and suggestions for testing these and other factors in future research.     

Ting,tang, tong: Emergent bilingual students investigating and constructing evidence-based explanations about sound production

There is a significant amount of research literature on the importance of identifying and building on students' experiences and ideas for making sense of the natural world, especially when engaging in science practices. Simultaneously, approaches to creating justice-oriented science education promote the need to focus on the diverse sense-making repertoires that students, especially those from historically marginalized communities, bring to science classrooms. However, when it comes to emergent bi/multilingual students, science education has favored narrow definitions of what ways of communicating are seen as productive for figuring out natural phenomena, privileging English-based academic vocabulary. In this article, we investigate the myriad conceptual and semiotic resources that third-grade emergent bilingual students developed and used when explaining sound production. Additionally, we explore how students investigated the sounds produced by a string instrument and unpacked the how and whys that give rise to the pitch of the sounds they heard. Our analyses indicate that: (1) students created mechanistic explanations that identified how changes to the salient physical features of strings affected the pitch of the sounds; (2) students created and laminated multiple semiotic resources when sharing their observations and explanations, particularly sound symbolisms; and (3) students navigated both semiotic convergence and divergence as they worked toward conceptual convergence. Based on our findings, we argue that justice-oriented science learning environments must become spaces where emergent bilingual students can build on all their conceptual, semiotic, and cultural resources, without being policed, as they engage science practices.     

The construction of academic time: sub/contracting academic labour in research

In 2009, the South African Department of Education extended tuition fee abolition to schools serving the poorest 60% of students, increased from 40% in 2007. This policy intends to increase access to and longevity in school for the poorest households by removing fees as a barrier and replacing private revenue with increased state funds. Despite this progressive expansion of fee-free schooling, the reported frequency of non-attendance attributable to school fees increased from 2008 to 2009, particularly among poor females and primary-aged children. This paper attempts to explain this phenomenon by presenting three constraints that hamper the potential benefits of fee abolition: (1) the rationalization of educational expenditures; (2) perverse incentives for schools to exclude non-paying children; and (3) the poor targeting mechanisms of fee abolition and government spending. As a result, we find significant lags in the implementation of fee elimination and that many poor households are still required to pay user fees. Several finance policy options are recommended for the South African schooling system. Data originate from South Africa’s National Treasury and General Household Survey.     

The power of positional competition and market mechanism: a case study of recent parental choice development in China

This article draws on data collected during a pilot study conducted in two west London schools exploring young people’s understandings of success. It considers ways in which ‘discourses of success’, as part of New Labour’s project of re‐inventing schooling, may shape young people’s subjectivity. The article examines articulations between New Labour policy and aspects of social difference and how these structure new identifications with success. In particular, the article explores how class, gender and ethnicity shape discourses of success and how they are implicated in their distribution. In conclusion, the article indicates how current education policy (particularly in relation to educational success) articulates the ‘public’ domain with dimensions of the ‘private’ self and suggests that understanding this is vital in the pursuit of social justice.     

Extending the constructs of active learning: implications for teachers' pedagogy and practice

Active learning is a pedagogical construct widely appealed to within the global discourse of lifelong learning. However, an examination of the literature reveals a lack of clarity and consensus as to its meaning. This article provides a critical analysis of a range of dimensions underpinning the concept of active learning including policy discourses, definitions, interpretation and enactments in educational settings, and resultant pedagogical implications. A more robust theoretical framework is presented to support educator understanding which synthesises and extends current constructs and which bridges the divide between active learning considered as either theory of learning or pedagogical strategy.     

Effects of Adult Modeling and Rule Structure on Responses to Moral Situations of Children in Fifth-Grade Classrooms

This study examined the effects of adults modeling responses to moral situations with or without rule strucon responses of fifth-graders in a classroom setting. Ss were exposed to a model who chose a constructive, internal-control response to open-ended stories about getting-even and provided either rule statements regarding that choice (rule-structure group) or a summary of the story (no-rule-structure group) . In the control group, Ss observed no model. Findings indicated that there was a significant (p<. 10) effect of modeling on internal-control scores on post-treatment stories and of modeling combined with rule structure on constructive scores on post-treatment stories. This study is consistent with previous empirical findings of studies conducted in laboratory settings in which modeling has been effective in modifying social behavior. Further examination of modeling is recommended in natural social settings.