The Right “Fit”: Exploring Science Teacher Candidates’ Approaches to Natural Selection Within a Clinical Simulation

Teachers and students struggle with the complexities surrounding the evolution of species and the process of natural selection. This article examines how science teacher candidates (STCs) engage in a clinical simulation that foregrounds two common challenges associated with natural selection—students’ understanding of “survival of the fittest” and the variation of species over time. We outline the medical education pedagogy of clinical simulations and its recent diffusion to teacher education. Then, we outline the study that situates each STC in a one-to-one interaction with a standardized student who is struggling to accurately interpret natural selection concepts. In simulation with the standardized student, each STC is challenged to recognize content misconceptions and respond with appropriate instructional strategies and accurate explanations. Findings and implications center on the STCs’ instructional practices in the simulation and the use of clinical learning environments to foster science teacher learning.     

A Person-Centered Approach to Students' Evaluations of Perceived Fear Appeals and Their Association With Engagement

A person-centered approach was employed to investigate how students' evaluation of perceived teacher utility value messages, i.e., fear appeals, as a threat and as a challenge, combined within individuals and how these combinations related to student engagement. Two studies were conducted with students in their final two years of secondary education. Empirically distinct clusters emerged at two time points in the academic year. Evaluating the message in the fear appeal at a higher level of challenge than threat was beneficial. Unexpectedly, high threat was associated with high engagement, as long as high challenge was also present, however, this combination was also related to high emotional disaffection. Moderate threat combined with moderate challenge had the most detrimental relationship with student engagement. Educational interventions should aim to increase the likelihood of a challenge evaluation.     

Examining child sexual abuse evaluations: the types of information affecting expert judgment

OBJECTIVE: There were two aims: First, to determine to what extent four variables, disclosure, doll play, affect and collateral information, affect the decision-making processes of child sexual abuse experts and lay persons when confronted with an abuse allegation, and second, to see how these two groups of raters might differ from one another. METHOD: A randomized block partially confounded factorial design was used. Participants made abuse likelihood and confidence ratings in response to six hypothetical cases of child sexual abuse, four of which had varying combinations of the four types of information and two of which were constant across all raters. Participants also completed attitudes and knowledge questionnaires. RESULTS: Disclosure and collateral information both had large effects on both rater groups. Doll play and affect had little or no effect on the decisions of either group. Experts were slightly more conservative in their judgments over all than students were. Experts also displayed more knowledge of the sexual abuse literature and more child-believing attitudes than their student counterparts. CONCLUSION: Concrete information such as disclosure statements and collateral information affected abuse decisions while inferential data such as doll play and affect did not. The goal of these evaluations may be the clarification of such concrete information and the inferential data may be used only to guide one's inquiry. This conclusion argues against the concern that experts might jump to conclusions of abuse merely based upon suggestive, symbolic material.     

Education Policy Research and the Global Knowledge Economy

Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold; it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.(Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: a report on knowledge. , 1984, p.4)
We live in a social universe in which the formation, circulation, and utilization of knowledge presents a fundamental problem.If the accumulation of capital has been an essential feature of our society, the accumulation of knowledge has not been any less so.Now, the exercise, production, and accumulation of this knowledge cannot be dissociated from the mechanisms of power; complex relations exist which must be analysed.(Michel Foucault, Remarks on Marx: conversations with Duccio Trombadori , 1991, p.165)     

IMPLICATIONS OF PRESTEL AND OTHER TV PRINT SOURCES

Since Prestel and other televised print sources signal a revolution in the presentation of reading material to the public, it is necessary to ensure that the viewers are able to read the material. Are they ready and able to adapt their reading skills to read televised texts? Differences between page print and television print are discussed, with respect to form and style, and recommendations are made about the responsibility of the educational establishment towards the preparation of potential viewers.     

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS AND ABSTRACT SYSTEMS IN EDUCATION

A bstract .  In this essay, Benjamin Endres examines how teaching is caught between the ideals of formal, systemic institutions, on the one hand, and the ideals of more intimate or personal relations, on the other. Endres uses Anthony Giddens's account of "abstract systems" and "pure" relations to suggest that the tension that teachers face is not only the result of opposing ideologies or philosophies of teaching, but it is the product of conflicting undercurrents in modern social and economic life. Although there is no simple solution to the ambiguous and contested status of teaching, Endres points to two examples of how the interpersonal dimensions of teaching may gain recognition and support by the institutional system of schooling: research on the effects of class size and legal guarantees for individualized educational plans in the area of special education. He concludes by emphasizing the particular challenge of cultivating interpersonal relations for the most disadvantaged students.     

Multicultural Complexity: an Intersectional Lens for Clinical Supervision

The author discusses the need for counselor educators and supervisors to promote the intersectional nature of identities in counselor trainees and supervisees, especially as supervision serves as the vanguard for professional development and provides a more individually tailored space. This article introduces the concept of multicultural complexity, along with its current dearth in the counseling literature. The utility of multicultural complexity is explored, and recommendations made in the form of sample action plans (Appendix) regarding how counselor educators and supervisors can further incorporate the concept into the practice of clinical supervision.