Writing for learning in secondary science: Rethinking practices

There is now considerable debate over the kinds of writing tasks that will enable secondary students to learn about science and to demonstrate scientific understanding. Advocates of modernist and postmodernist perspectives propose different genres as necessary to achieve very contrasting agendas. This paper presents an overview and analysis of the claims and counterclaims of these competing positions. Drawing on this overview and research on writing for learning including the authors' classroom-based research, a model is proposed to guide writing for learning in junior secondary science.     

The Effects of an Intensive Reading Intervention for Ninth Graders with very Low Reading Comprehension

This experimental study examined the efficacy of a multicomponent reading intervention compared to a control condition on the reading comprehension of adolescent students with low reading comprehension (more than 1½ standard deviations below normative sample). Ninth‐grade students were randomly assigned to treatment (n = 25) and comparison (n = 19). Reading teachers provided instruction for 90‐min, five times every two weeks for approximately 80 sessions. Treatment effects for each outcome measure were estimated using repeated measure of analysis of covariance for measures of reading comprehension and fluency. Results indicate no statistically significant differences between treatment and comparison conditions. Repeated‐measures analyses of variance between students with lower and higher decoding skills indicated a statistically significant interaction between treatment condition and decoding ability on the WJ‐III PC and Bridge‐IT, with large effect sizes (η_p² .16 and .12, respectively), indicating that treatment was differentially beneficial for students with higher decoding skills.     

Correction to: Examining Agency in Children’s Nonfiction Picture Books

Children's Literature in Education - In the original publication of the article unfortunately contained a mistake in the name of co-author Vera Sotirvoska.The correct name should be Vera...     

促进国家和全球利益:美国大学联合会的作用

美国大学联合会在为美国大学争取科研经费,帮助国家制定科技政策,解决知识产权问题等方面,发挥重要作用.他积极推动美国大学之间以及美国大学与政府的对话与合作,以解决美国大学面临的全国性问题.     

Navigating the Methodology of an Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practice with Conscious Bridging

The growing emergent field of interdisciplinary research provides opportunities for discussing and attempting to understand interdisciplinarity at a deeper pedagogical level. The author, having completed a PhD in the field of an interdisciplinary art and design practice, presents an analysis of its methodology to contribute to the discussion. Through incidentally applying the method of Bourdieu's notion of reflexivity onto the practice, a clearer understanding of the approaches undertaken in the practice was experienced. This supported navigating between spectrums of approaches and identifying dichotomic knowledges applied in the practice, which the author terms ‘conscious bridging’. In support of the proposed notion of conscious bridging, the author adds further evidential observations of teams participating in interdisciplinary projects and taking into analysis the processes of varied approaches specific to their discipline. This article presents strategies to consider, adopt and apply in an interdisciplinary art and design practice in order to assist the quality and efficiency of research outcomes.     

Virtual Knowledge‐Sharing Communities of Practice at Caterpillar: Success Factors and Barriers

This article reports the results of a qualitative study of success factors and barriers to the development of virtual knowledge‐sharing communities of practice at Caterpillar Inc., a Fortune 100 multinational corporation. The study identified several prerequisites for successful knowledge management through virtual communities of practice: knowledge sharing as a key element of the corporate culture; employees regarding knowledge as a public good belonging to the whole organization, and not as their individual asset; communities self‐organizing around specific performance‐related problems or areas of professional interest of their members; and communities supported by volunteer managers and active core groups of experts. At the same time, the study has identified a number of important barriers to virtual community development. Specifically, even when employees give the highest priority to the interests of the organization, they tend to shy away from contributing knowledge for a variety of other reasons not related to information hoarding. In addition, corporate security considerations and concerns about the accuracy of the information and the potential information overload could clash with the need to promote spontaneous generation of information. Suggestions for overcoming the identified barriers, future research directions, and implications for HRD professionals are formulated.