African American and Latino Men's Recommendations for an Improved Campus Environment

The purpose of this study was to share findings from semistructured qualitative interviews with 9 African American and 12 Latino men about their ideas on how university personnel could better support their needs. Stressing the need for African American men to learn self–reliance to counter microaggressions, African American participants offered recommendations to students rather than personnel. Latino participants discussed the need for personnel to provide critical information about college resources.     

Real-time output trajectory tracking neural sliding mode controller for induction motors

This paper deals with real-time discrete adaptive output trajectory tracking for induction motors in the presence of bounded disturbances. A recurrent high order neural network structure is used to design a nonlinear observer and based on this model, a discrete-time control law is derived, which combines discrete-time block control and sliding modes techniques. Applicability of the scheme is illustrated via experimental results in real-time for a three phase induction motor.     

Exploring Resilience in Latina/o Academic Outcomes: A Latent Class Approach

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between various protective factors with academic outcomes of Latina/o high school students. We use two groups of protective influences, individual and family, and their relationship to 12th grade mathematics achievement, dropout rates, and enrollment in post-secondary education. Latent class analysis was used to identify academic protective profiles, or latent groups/classes, among high school Latina/o students (N?=?1610) and assess group differences with respect to gender, SES, immigrant status, student’s native language, preschool attendance, and 10th grade mathematics. Results indicated the presence of four academic protective groups, which differed with respect to academic discussions with parents, and attitudes about mathematics. The four classes are compared with respect to academic outcomes and differences are discussed as well as implications for practice.     

The Conceptual Nature of Gain in Vocabulary Research: An Analysis of Vocabulary Data from Schoolchildren

Two ways of measuring change are presented and compared: A conventional “change score”, defined as the difference between scores before and after an interim period, and a process-oriented approach focusing on detailed analysis of conceptually defined response patterns. The validity of the two approaches was investigated. Vocabulary knowledge was assessed by means of equivalent multiple-choice tests administered before and after an intervention, and four characteristic responses were observed: Words consistently not understood; words inconsistently understood; learned words; and words consistently understood. The results showed that inclusion of the category “words consistently not understood” offered a “truer” gain score than did the conventional change score. It captured more variance from age and cognitive constraints and appeared educationally more reliable from an assessment-for-teaching-perspective.     

Evaluation of the initial effects and implementation of Success For All in England

Success For All is a comprehensive programme for restructuring primary schools where students are ‘at risk’ of not developing functional literacy by the end of Key Stage 1 (age 7 years). The programme was developed at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA, and uses research-based approaches to curriculum, instruction, assessment and classroom management, with one-to-one tutoring being provided for those students falling behind in their reading. This paper reports on the initial implementation (September 1997 – March 1998) of the Success For All (SFA) reading/school improvement programme in a family of inner city primary schools in Nottingham, England. The purpose of the research was to provide empirical evidence on the process of implementation of SFA in England, and to assess how such an innovative programme could contribute to the British government’s National Literacy Strategy (DfEE, 1998). The main findings suggest that as a result of initial involvement in the SFA programme, students appear to have made as much progress in one term in reading as they would normally have been expected to make in one year, their motivation, behaviour, attitude to and skills in learning have also increased. Furthermore, teachers claim to have learned a great deal from SFA, particularly about the effective teaching of reading, co-operative teaching strategies and their own professional development.     

The role of non-formal contexts in teacher education for STEM: the case of horno3 science and technology interactive centre

Abstract

Teacher education can benefit directly from experiences in non-formal settings. This article presents a research study with elementary teachers who were teaching in public schools in the state of Nuevo León, México, and participated in a STEM Continuous Professional Development (CPD) workshop. The workshop provided a platform for teachers to interact with scientists and disseminators of science, allowing the appropriation of scientific knowledge applied to everyday activities and settings. Participants improved the quality of their teaching practices in classrooms and gained a new understanding of STEM subjects, enabling them to promote inspiring learning experiences with their students, where dialogue, experimentation and elucidation became an important part of their lessons. The study was carried out using ethnographic tools for analysing recorded videos, 15 sets of field notes, and 49 questionnaires. The sequential analysis of talk and gestures in their participation in the CPD workshop demonstrated high levels of involvement, creativity, and collaborative solution of STEM problems.