Encouraging Prospective Teachers to Engage Friends and Family in Exploring Physical Phenomena

Involving people outside of a science course can foster learning for students enrolled in the course. Assignments involving friends and family provided such opportunities in an undergraduate physics course for prospective teachers. These assignments included reflecting upon prior experiences, interviewing friends and family members, engaging them in exploring physical phenomena, and teaching them with relevant websites. The six strands of science learning articulated in Learning Science in Informal Environments (National Research Council in Learning science in informal environments: People, places, and pursuits. National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2009) provided a framework for analyzing the prospective teachers’ responses. Through such assignments, the instructor created opportunities for the prospective teachers to use and build upon knowledge learned in class as well as to gain confidence and experience in facilitating the learning of others.     

Phantom Conflict: Lippmann,Dewey, and the Fate of the Public in Modern Society

Contrary to the prevailing view in media and cultural studies, philosopher John Dewey and journalist Walter Lippmann did not represent different schools of thought. They were not adversaries in a great public debate about the fate of the public in modern democracies in the 1920s. Rather, their exchange about the “phantom” public was reframed as a conflict in the early 1980s, a reframing which has achieved broad interdisciplinary acceptance even though its rests on a casual rhetorical trope, not historical documentation. The reframing provides a salutary but inaccurate origin story for American media and cultural studies, illustrates the hazards of relying on secondary interpretations of historical sources, and deflects attention away from realistic assessment of the problems confronting democracy today. Dismantling this disciplinary folklore is essential to the integrity of the emerging “new history” of media and communication.     

Prospective elementary teachers’ motivation to participate in whole-class discussions during mathematics content courses for teachers

Prospective elementary teachers’ (N = 148) motivation to participate in whole-class discussions during mathematics content courses for teachers, as expressed in their own words on an open-ended questionnaire, were studied. Results indicated that prospective teachers were motivated by positive utility values for participating (to achieve a short-term goal of learning mathematics or a long-term goal of becoming a teacher), to demonstrate competence (to achieve performance-approach goals), or to help others (to achieve social goals). Negative utility values for participating were expressed by those who preferred to learn through actively listening. Five motivational profiles, as composed of interactions among motivational values, beliefs, goals and self-reported participation practices, were prevalent in this sample. Self-reported variations among participants’ utility values and participation practices suggested that prospective teachers engaged differentially in opportunities to learn to communicate mathematically. Results provide pedagogical learner knowledge for mathematics teacher educators. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Emergent achievement segregation in freshmen learning community networks

A common assumption about Freshmen Learning Communities (FLCs) is that academic relationships contribute to students’ success. This study investigates how students in learning communities connect with fellow students for friendship and academic support. Longitudinal social network data across the first year, collected from 95 Dutch students in eight FLCs, measure both social and academic relational choices within and beyond the FLCs. Using stochastic actor-based models, the study tests two competing hypotheses. The alignment hypothesis states that students connect with their similar-achieving friends for both academic and social support, leading to an alignment of both types of networks over time. In contrast, the duality hypothesis states dissimilarity between academic support networks and friendship networks: students should connect with better-achieving fellow students for academic support and to more similar peers for friendship. The data support the alignment hypothesis but not the duality hypothesis; in addition, they show evidence of achievement segregation in FLCs: the higher the students’ achievement level, the more they connect with other students for both academic support and friendship, relating in particular to peers with a similarly high achievement level. The results suggest that lower-achieving students are excluded from the support provided by higher-achieving students and instead ask similar lower achievers for support. They thus cannot benefit optimally from the academic integration FLC offer. The article concludes with recommendations of how to support students in an FLC so that they can reach optimal achievement potential.     

When will I succeed in my first‐year diploma? Survival analysis in Dutch higher education

The goal of this study was to illustrate survival analysis with higher education data and gain insight into a limited set of factors that predict when students passed their first‐year examination at a Dutch university. Study participants consisted of 565 first‐year students in four departments. Data were collected on when students pass their first‐year examination, prior achievement and procrastination. The analysis showed that 69% of the students had not passed their examination within the nominal study length of 12 months. The estimated median lifetime, the time when 50% of the students had passed their examination, was after 23 months. Students from the 2nd department passed their examination fastest. Female students reached the estimated median lifetime at 20 months, younger students at 16 months, older students at 24+ months and students with high prior achievement scores at 12 months. The analysis finally indicated that age, prior achievement and procrastination predicted passing first‐year examinations.     

Determining the informational,navigational, and transactional intent of Web queries

In this paper, we define and present a comprehensive classification of user intent for Web searching. The classification consists of three hierarchical levels of informational, navigational, and transactional intent. After deriving attributes of each, we then developed a software application that automatically classified queries using a Web search engine log of over a million and a half queries submitted by several hundred thousand users. Our findings show that more than 80% of Web queries are informational in nature, with about 10% each being navigational and transactional. In order to validate the accuracy of our algorithm, we manually coded 400 queries and compared the results from this manual classification to the results determined by the automated method. This comparison showed that the automatic classification has an accuracy of 74%. Of the remaining 25% of the queries, the user intent is vague or multi-faceted, pointing to the need for probabilistic classification. We discuss how search engines can use knowledge of user intent to provide more targeted and relevant results in Web searching.     

Political symbolism as policy craft: explaining non-reform in South African education after apartheid

The policy literature in developing countries is replete with narratives of ‘failure’ attributed to the lack of resources, the inadequacy of teacher training, the weak design of implementation strategy, and the problems of policy coherence. This research on education policymaking after apartheid presents the following puzzle: what if the impressive policies designed to change apartheid education did not have ‘implementation’ as their primary commitment? Drawing on data from seven detailed case studies, the construct of ‘political symbolism’ is proposed as a first step towards developing a more elaborate theory for explaining one of the most intractable problems in policy studies: the distance between policy ideals and practical outcomes.     

Gender-specific effects of artificially induced gender beliefs in mental rotation

Men outperform women in the Mental Rotation Test (MRT) by about one standard deviation. The present study replicated a gender belief account [Moè, A., & Pazzaglia, F. (2006). Following the instructions! Effects of gender beliefs in mental rotation. Learning and Individual Differences, 16, 369–377.] for (part of) this effect. A sample of 300 adults, whose gender beliefs about mental rotation were manipulated experimentally (instructions given: men are better, women are better, or no gender differences exist) had to complete the MRT. Artificially induced gender beliefs affected performance and guessing behavior differently in relation to gender. Women's performance followed the gender belief induction but their guessing behavior remained unaffected. Men's performance, however, remained unaffected but their guessing behavior followed the gender belief induction. These findings suggest that gender beliefs affect men and women differently, and they also suggest that a gender belief account cannot (fully) explain gender differences in mental rotation performance.     

Examining and elaborating upon the nature of elementary prospective teachers’ conceptions of partitive division with fractions

The purpose of this study was to examine and elaborate upon elementary prospective teachers’ (PSTs) conceptions of partitive division with fractions. We examined the degree to which PSTs’ conceptions were connected (i.e., capable of translating between representations correctly; aware that partitive division generates a unit rate for its quotient) and flexible (i.e., capable of differentiating between opportunities to partition or iterate (or both) when solving a partitive division task; aware that partitioning or iterating (or both) could be associated with the operation of division, as appropriate). Seventeen PSTs participated in task-based interviews prior to instruction in a mathematics content course for teachers. These PSTs demonstrated disconnected conceptions of partitive division with fractions when they incorrectly translated between representations and either inconsistently or did not express awareness that the purpose of the task was to generate a unit rate. These PSTs demonstrated rigid conceptions of partitive division with fractions such that they did not express awareness that the process of iterating could be associated with the operation of division, even when they obtained a correct answer by iterating. Results extend prior research by looking beyond PSTs’ performance on tasks to elaborate upon PSTs’ conceptions of the operation of partitive division. This study contributes new insights into PSTs’ conceptions that can be used by mathematics teacher educators to inform the design of future instructional interventions.