The stability of kindergarten teachers’ effectiveness: A generalizability study comparing the Framework For Teaching and the Classroom Assessment Scoring System

To meet recent accountability mandates, school districts are implementing assessment frameworks to document teachers’ effectiveness. Observational assessments play a key role in this process, albeit without compelling evidence of their psychometric rigor. Using a sample of kindergarten teachers, we employed Generalizability theory to investigate (across teachers, raters, and lessons) the stability of scores obtained with two different observation measures: The CLASS K-3 and the FFT. We conducted a series of Decision studies to document (for both measures’ constituent domains) the number of lessons per teacher and raters per lesson that would justify the use of observation scores for high stakes decisions. Acceptable, stable scores for individual-level decisions about teachers may generally require more raters and lessons than is typically used in practice (1–2 raters and fewer than 3 lessons). The considerable variability of observation-based scores raises concerns about either measure’s appropriateness for making individual or group decisions about teachers’ effectiveness.     

Book Review: Fairbrother Gregory P. 2003. Toward Critical Patriotism: Student Resistance to Political Education in Hong Kong and China.Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. 213 pp. ISBN 96-220-9622-0

International Review of Education -     

PREDICTION OF GRADE POINT AVERAGES IN NURSING SCHOOLS USING SECOND-ORDER MULTIPLE REGRESSION MODELS

The present study was concerned with the prediction of first year grade point averages of associate degree nursing students. The primary objective of this investigation was to determine whether the inclusion of quadratic and/or interaction terms in a regression model would improve the prediction of student nurses' grade averages. The predictor battery included cognitive, biographical, and personality variables. Results indicated that interaction and quadratic terms improve both the predictability of grade point averages and the replicability of these predictions. The inclusion of higher order terms in prediction research is suggested as a means of improving predictive efficiency.     

Cognitive Illusions as Hindrances to Learning Complex Environmental Issues

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Teaching and learning complex issues is often confounded by the presence of simplistic mental models that are held by students. These simplistic models...     

Working Memory, Motivation, and Teacher-Initiated Learning

Working memory is where we “think” as we learn. A notion that emerges as a synthesis from several threads in the research literatures of cognition, motivation, and connectionism is that motivation in learning is the process whereby working memory resource allocation is instigated and sustained. This paper reviews much literature on motivation and working memory, and concludes that the apparent novelty of the proposal offered to describe motivation in terms of working memory results from the apparent lack of cross-channel exchange among these research traditions. The relation between working memory and motivation is explored in the context of the interactive compensatory model of learning (ICML) in which learning is considered to result from the interaction of ability, motivation, and prior learning. The ICML is recast in light of the revised definition of motivation offered here. This paper goes on to suggest ways in which a range of teaching and learning issues and activities may be reconceptualized in the context of a model emphasizing a learner's working memory that makes use of chunks of previously acquired knowledge.     

The synergy of minority student persistence and faculty renewal

In response to increased student assessment and accountability concerns, colleges and universities have been called on to increase their efforts to improve the retention rates of an increasingly diverse student body. This article outlines a synergistic strategy for promoting minority student persistence through faculty renewal efforts that encourage faculty to question their cultural beliefs and academic values concerning the teaching and learning enterprise.Dr. Kay F. Norman is currently with Delaware State University where she is Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching. She also teaches graduate courses in Educational Assessment and Special Education Administration and Supervision. She holds an Ed.D. in Higher Education Administration with emphasis in Student Services from Texas Southern University. Her research interests are in student retention, assessment, and effective teaching. James Norman, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Education at Delaware State University's School of Education. He is a graduate of Ohio State University. Dr. Norman's research interest include special education monitoring and compliance issues, and behavioral management systems.     

Hospice program integration: an issue for policymakers

As the number of hospice programs in the United States expands, policymakers face a variety of issues concerning the care of the terminally ill. Do hospice programs offer a truly unique approach in caring for the dying? Are hospice services cost effective? Should hospice programs become integrated into the mainstream of medical care service delivery? Based on data from hospice programs in an industrialized Midwestern state, this paper explores the strategies employed by hospice programs to become integrated, the conflicts that have arisen among providers of hospice care, and the impact of hospice program integration on patient care. Results show that as hospice programs become more integrated, they have lost some of the idealism on which they were founded, have altered organizational structures, and have changed certain patient services. However, there is no evidence to suggest that integration of hospice programs into the medical mainstream has decreased the quality of patient care or patient satisfaction for hospice services.     

Do infants see emotional expressions in static faces?

To determine whether young infants discriminate photographs of different emotions on an affect-relevant basis or on the basis of isolated features unrelated to emotion, groups of 17-, 23-, and 29-week-olds were habituated to slides of 8 women posing either Toothy Angry, Nontoothy Angry, or Nontoothy Smiling facial expressions and were then shown 2 new women in the familiarized expression and in a novel Toothy Smiling expression. At all 3 ages, recovery to the novel Toothy Smiling faces occurred only after habituation to Nontoothy faces (whether smiling or angry), not after habituation to Toothy Angry faces, indicating that infants had been responsive to nonspecific features of the photographs (presence or absence of bared teeth) rather than to affectively relevant configurations of features. In a second experiment, 2 older age groups (35 and 41 weeks) also proved to be insensitive to affect-related aspects of still faces, though more so for angry than for happy expressions. It is suggested that the young infant's difficulty in extracting emotional information from static stimuli may be attributable to the absence of the critical invariants (dynamic, multimodally specified) that characterize naturalistic expressions of emotion.