Teacher Acceptability of Functional Assessment-Derived Treatments

This study examines whether teachers find a treatment clearly linked to a functional assessment more acceptable than treatments based on arbitrarily selected reinforcers. We randomly assigned 111 elementary school teachers to 3 experimental conditions. In all conditions, a problem vignette was read that included the same functional assessment summary but varied according to whether the treatment recommendation was linked to the assessment results. A one-way analysis of variance revealed significantly higher pretreatment acceptability ratings and likelihood of use for the treatment linked to assessment. Implications of these results for school-based consultation are discussed.     

Creating a learner-centered teaching environment using student choice in assignments

Learner-centered teaching (LCT) has been found to be a more effective pedagogy for online students, as traditional teaching methods do not work well in online courses. Professors in an upper-level technology management class revised their online introductory course to incorporate cafeteria-style grading. This LCT approach allowed students to select assignments they wanted to complete. More assignments were offered than needed to achieve an A grade. They included traditional projects such as research papers as well as more engaged activities such as demonstrating or mastering skills. To determine whether these changes promoted active learning, course data were obtained and analyzed. Students completed a range of assignments, showed mastery on a number of skills, and were overwhelmingly positive about having flexible options. Tellingly, 36% of students completed more assignments than were needed to earn the top grade.     

Partnerships in Learning: A Collaborative Project between Higher Education Students and Elementary School Students

Higher education and K-12 school partnerships are typically designed with an end-goal that serves the instructional needs of one group over the other. For this project, a university professor and elementary school instructor used problem-based and project-based learning strategies to design a curriculum that served the academic needs of both groups of students. Undergraduate students in an urban planning course partnered with elementary students from a local school to work on an interdependent civic engagement project. The partnership provided innovative, twenty-first teaching for both groups of students while also reinforcing public service.     

High Possibility Classrooms as a pedagogical framework for technology integration in classrooms: an inquiry in two Australian secondary schools*

Understanding how well teachers integrate digital technology in learning is the subject of considerable debate in education. High Possibility Classrooms (HPC) is a pedagogical framework drawn from research on exemplary teachers’ knowledge of technology integration in Australian school classrooms. The framework is being used to support teachers who teach various stages of schooling to take ‘pedagogical steps’ in their practice with technology. This article focuses on the use of the HPC conceptual framework in a study of seven teachers and their students at two secondary schools in New South Wales, Australia. Analysis confirms the practicality of this conceptual framework for technology integration in secondary school classrooms. This inquiry has implications for addressing the reluctance of teachers to integrate technology in curriculum. The article concludes by suggesting that more schools might consider using conceptual frameworks like HPC to support secondary school teachers to enhance student learning with technology.     

Narrative inquiry as travel study method: affordances and constraints

This article maps how narrative inquiry—the use of story to study human experience—has been employed as both method and form to capture cross-cultural learning associated with Western doctoral students’ travel study to eastern destinations. While others were the first to employ this method in the travel study domain, we are the first to comprehensively explore the affordances and constraints of the methodology and the possibilities it holds for illuminating knowledge developments, community growth, and identity transformations on the part of participating students. Story fragments illustrating each of these opportunities and challenges are drawn from the China Study Abroad Program, a program sponsored by the University of Houston’s Asian American Studies Center that has been underway since 1995. Affordances of the narrative inquiry research method include such things as detailed accounts of individuals in interaction with diverse people/places/things and explications of stories people live in and by. Accounts, which are “true for now,” as opposed to true for all time and the dangers of human fallibility form two examples of narrative inquiry’s constraints.