Five Essential Practices for Communication: The Work of Instructional Coaches

The work of instructional coaches, both general and discipline-specific, has become increasingly important as more schools rely on their leadership for improvements in teaching and learning. Much of their work hinges upon their effective communication with teachers and school administrators. This article outlines five practices for instructional coaches to use in order to achieve and maintain effective communication; these five practices draw upon the author's prior work as an instructional coach and upon her own research. The practices are presented by sharing the voices of three mathematics instructional coaches, their teacher colleagues, and their school administrators.     

Romanian University Physics Teaching and Research (1860–1940)

The evolution of physics teaching and research in the two most important Romanian intellectual centers Bucharest and Jassy is discussed. Three stages of historical development are reported: 1860–1890: teaching process is predominant; period of first laboratories setting-up; sporadic researches in Physics Departments of Universities; 1890–1940: appearance of small dedicated research centers around Universities (Meteorological, Seismological, Electrotechnical Institutes); after the World War II: founding of contemporary Physics Institutes, e.g. Institute of Atomic Physics, Bucharest. The recognition role played by the Romanian Academy (Scientifical Sessions and Journals) is mentioned. Short biographies of the most important professors-physicists from 1860 to 1940 are presented. Celebrations, in 1996, of one century from the first atomic physics experiment in Romania (a X-ray radiography by D. Hurmuzescu) and of the 100th birthday of H. Hulubei, the founder of modern Romanian Physics are discussed.     

An approach/avoidance behavioral model of college student attrition

We used approach/avoidance theory to develop a conceptual model of student attrition that we estimated using 262 first- and second-year students at a major midwestern research university. We found that we could use psychological theories to enhance our understanding of the retention process; that psychological and sociological factors accounted for 37 percent of the variance in student attrition; and that institutions can enhance retention by developing programs that increase appropriate academic and social approach behaviors and reduce avoidant behaviors.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Pittsburgh, PA, November, 1994.     

Exploiting structural information for semi-structured document categorization

This paper examines several different approaches to exploiting structural information in semi-structured document categorization. The methods under consideration are designed for categorization of documents consisting of a collection of fields, or arbitrary tree-structured documents that can be adequately modeled with such a flat structure. The approaches range from trivial modifications of text modeling to more elaborate schemes, specifically tailored to structured documents. We combine these methods with three different text classification algorithms and evaluate their performance on four standard datasets containing different types of semi-structured documents. The best results were obtained with stacking, an approach in which predictions based on different structural components are combined by a meta classifier. A further improvement of this method is achieved by including the flat text model in the final prediction.     

Introducing an observational measure of standards-based mathematics teaching practices: Evidence of validity and score reliability

The purpose of this study is to introduce a measure of standards-based mathematics teaching practices, the Mathematics Scan (M-Scan), and to examine its validity and score reliability. First, we define standards-based mathematics teaching practices based on eight dimensions that have emerged in recent conceptualizations by researchers and in the context of existing observational measures. Second, we present three sources of validity evidence: content review by experts, analysis of response processes of coders, and convergent and discriminant patterns with existing observational measures. Third, we provide evidence of inter-coder (or inter-rater) reliability through analyses of variance components and calculation of reliability coefficients, using the framework of generalizability theory. Results show the M-Scan holds promise as a useful tool in mathematics education research, measuring indicators of standards-based teaching practices unique to the subject of mathematics.