Collective Bargaining and District Costs for Teacher Health Insurance: An Examination of the Data from the BLS and Wisconsin

District costs for teachers’ health insurance are, on average, higher then employer costs for private-sector professionals. How much of this is attributable to collective bargaining? This article examines the question using data from the National Compensation Survey (NCS) of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the state of Wisconsin. In addition, the impact of collective bargaining on employer costs is decomposed into the impact on total premiums and the employer’s share of those premiums.     

Infant vocalizing and phenotypic outcomes in autism: Evidence from the first 2 years

Infant vocalizations are early-emerging communicative markers shown to be atypical in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but few longitudinal, prospective studies exist. In this study, 23,850 infant vocalizations from infants at low (LR)- and high (HR)-risk for ASD (HR-ASD = 23, female = 3; HR-Neg = 35, female = 13; LR = 32, female = 10; 80% White; collected from 2007 to 2017 near Philadelphia) were analyzed at 6, 12, and 24 months. At 12 months, HR-ASD infants produced fewer vocalizations than HR-Neg infants. From 6 to 24 months, HR-Neg infants demonstrated steeper vocalization growth compared to HR-ASD and LR infants. Finally, among HR infants, vocalizing at 12 months was associated with language, social phenotype, and diagnosis at age 2. Infant vocalizing is an objective behavioral marker that could facilitate earlier detection of ASD.     

Reconceptualizing student ratings of teaching to support quality discourse on student learning: a systems perspective

Higher Education - This paper summarizes the discourse on student ratings of teaching in higher education. It reconceptualizes student ratings within a larger process of promoting quality in...     

Causal knowledge and children’s possibility judgments

Children often say that strange and improbable events, like eating pickle-flavored ice cream, are impossible. Two experiments explored whether these beliefs are explained by limits in children's causal knowledge. Participants were 423 predominantly White Canadian 4- to 7-year-olds (44% female) tested in 2020–2021. Providing children with causal information about ordinary events did not lead them to affirm that improbable events are possible, and they more often affirmed improbable events after merely learning that a similar event had occurred. However, children were most likely to affirm events if they learned how similar events happened (OR = 2.16). The findings suggest that knowledge of causal circumstances may only impact children's beliefs about the possibility after they are able to draw connections between potential events and known events.     

“I’m not the only victim…” student perceptions of exploitative supervision relation in doctoral degree

Higher Education - Drawing on a five-ethical principles framework, this study examines how the thirteen recruited doctoral students across disciplines in Hong Kong interpret the idea of and...     

Quantitatively Investigating Inservice Elementary Teachers’ Nature of Science Views

Research in Science Education - Many nature of science (NOS) studies have demonstrated that teachers can improve their understandings of NOS with explicit and reflective instruction; however, the...     

Untangling Trustworthiness and Uncertainty in Science

Science & Education - This article focuses on uncertainty—ways in which scientists recognize and analyze limits in their studies and conclusions. We distinguish uncertainty from...