Kindergarten entrance assessment: Is it worth the effort?

School psychologists frequently are involved in assessment programs for children entering kindergarten. A comparison is made between screening and assessment related to norm-based and criterion-referenced assessment. Normbased testing can be either categorical or deficit-centered, while the criterion approaches tend to be academic or cognitive-developmental. In order to make appropriate decisions, we need to know the problems and outcomes related to each approach. It is also felt that assessment should be related to the underlying issues in developmental psychology and the type of kindergarten experiences provided for the child.     

Science Motivation and Achievement Among Minority Urban High School Students: an Examination of the Flipped Classroom Model

Journal of Science Education and Technology - The effect of the flipped classroom model (FCM) on high school students’ science motivation and achievement in an urban public school was...     

Relationship between Perception of Pull and Draw in Archery

Abstract

Subjects (21 men and 28 women) were tested for maximal pull and comfortable pull, were assigned bows on the basis of comfortable pull, were retested for maximal and comfortable pull after 24 lessons. Although there was some relationship between bow weight and comfortable pull when data were analyzed on a coeducational basis, there was no such relationship when the analysis was on a single sex basis. There was also no adaptation of kinesthetic perception of a comfortable pull to the amount of pull in a comfortable draw.     

Predictive relationship between gender,ethnicity, science self-efficacy,teacher interpersonal behaviors,and science achievement of students in a diverse urban high school

Learning Environments Research - We examined the predictive relationship between high school students’ gender, ethnicity, science self-efficacy as measured by the Science Self-Efficacy...     

Examining the influence of a STEM certification model on female,minority science outcomes

The authors of this exploratory study examine the influence of the Georgia science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) model; gender; race; and other achievement on elementary students’ science outcomes in Title I schools. Results of the study demonstrate that a positive relationship exists between students participating in a STEM-certified school and science achievement at the third-grade level (n = 339), and that race, gender, and mathematics and reading achievement did not significantly explain science achievement. At the Grade 5 level (n = 279), a negative relationship was found between science achievement and type of school, with students participating in STEM schools scoring lower than those students participating in non-STEM schools. Moreover, in Grade 5, the combination of demographic variables, race and gender, did significantly explain science achievement. The practical and empirical implications of the results are discussed.     

Book reviews

Educational technology research and development -     

The Effect of Online Collaboration on Adolescent Sense of Community in Eighth-Grade Physical Science

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Using a quasi-experimental, nonequivalent pretest/posttest control group design, the researchers examined the effects of online collaborative learning...     

Social reproduction and sex in German primary schools

To understand the relationship between social background and sex in schooling, we use Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction and a feminist perspective of gender as practice. We pose two questions: (1) What is the relationship between economic and cultural capital and achievement for 4th-grade females versus males studying in Germany? (2) Is the relationship between school composition and student achievement different for 4th-grade females versus males? We report no differences between females and males in the relationships between social background and achievement (p > 0.05). However, the relationship between class-aggregated social background and achievement is halved in female-majority mathematics classrooms (β = -12.6, p < 0.05).