Preparing gifted leaders for a futuristic society

Social studies teachers rely too heavily on textbooks which contain minimal problem solving or other high level cognitive tasks. This finding raises serious questions about the capacity of a social studies curriculum meeting the goals for a program for the gifted.     

The Surveillance of Learning: A Critical Analysis of University Attendance Policies

Universities have recently strengthened their class attendance policies along with associated practices that intensify the surveillance of learning: a series of administrative and pedagogic strategies that monitor the extent to which students conform with behavioural expectations associated with learning. Drawing on university policy statements, the paper identifies implicit arguments underpinning attendance requirements for students in higher education. These include demonstrating the accountability of publicly funded higher education, a concern for the pastoral and academic welfare of students and their appropriate preparation for expectations associated with workplace and professional practice. In a critique it is argued that attendance policies promote presenteeism as part of the discourse of learnerism. Such rules further infantilise students rather than developing their capacity to make informed choices as adults thereby failing to respect their academic freedom.     

Assessing faculty performance using student evaluations of teaching in an uncontrolled setting

This paper provides new evidence on the disparity between student evaluation of teaching (SET) ratings when evaluations are conducted online versus in‐class. Using a multiple regression analysis, we show that after controlling for many of the class and student characteristics not under the direct control of the instructor, average SET ratings from evaluations conducted online are significantly lower than average SET ratings conducted in‐class. Further, we demonstrate the importance of controlling for the factors not under the instructor’s control when using SET ratings to evaluate faculty performance in the classroom. We do not suggest that moving to online evaluation is overly problematic, only that it is difficult to compare evaluations done online with evaluations done in‐class. While we do not suppose that one method is ‘more accurate’ than another, we do believe that institutions would benefit from either moving all evaluations online or by continuing to do all evaluations in‐class.     

Expertise reversal for iconic representations in science visualizations

The influence of prior knowledge and cognitive development on the effectiveness of iconic representations in science visualizations was examined. Middle and high school students (N = 186) were given narrated visualizations of two chemistry topics: Kinetic Molecular Theory (Day 1) and Ideal Gas Laws (Day 2). For half of the visualizations, iconic representations of key information were added. Results indicated a main effect of prior knowledge on learning in Day 1. In Day 2, a three-way interaction was found between prior knowledge, age group and icons: icons were effective for all middle school students and for high school students with low prior knowledge, but were not effective for high school students with high prior knowledge. These findings indicate that the expertise reversal effect can be mediated by cognitive development and other factors, not just domain specific prior knowledge.