The income consequences of the all-doctorate marriage

Income levels and percentage change in 1971–1975 income were regressed on personal and institutional variables for husband and wife doctorates holding full-time academic positions. Results of the composite equation indicate a $1,254 premium associated with being male after controlling for the other variables. Composite results also indicate a negative relationship between income for one spouse and the perceived opportunities for employment of the other spouse. Separate equations for the spouses indicate that this result related only to the wives' perceived opportunities of their husbands' income. By eliminating individuals with education doctorates and substituting the husbands' weights for the wives', the $1,254 differential was partially eliminated. The remaining differential between husbands' and wives' income was due to the greater involvement of the males in consulting and administration, greater involvement of the women in education, and fewer number of years of full-time experience of the wives. Comparison of income changes in both the composite and separate equations indicate that the wives received an 8–9% greater income increase than their husbands.     

Does Student Language Ability Affect the Assessment of Teacher Language Ability?

This article arises from an investigation into the classroom language assessment (CLA) component of the Hong Kong English language benchmark test for lower secondary (Grades 7–9) teachers of English as a second language (ESL). After some background to the benchmarking initiative in Hong Kong and to the CLA test, the article describes a small-scale study into the effect of student levels of ability on grades awarded to teachers working in schools with differing ability intakes. In the study, a group of ESL teachers were videotaped teaching ESL classes at two different student ability levels, with the two sets of videos assessed by trained CLA assessors. Results indicate that, although there is some variety in the grade awarded to the two different classes taught, variation in grades may well be attributable to individual teacher performance rather than to external factors such as the ability levels of the students being taught. The grades awarded were generally consistent, irrespective of whether classes of high-ability students or low-ability students were being taught.     

Reviews

Sam Pickering teaches English at the University of Connecticut     

'Noisy, fallible and biased though it be' (on the Vagaries of Educational Research)

Scholarship in education beyond school has developed largely outside university departments of education, and has rarely engaged systematically with the study of education in schools. The paper concentrates on three areas: adult education, higher education, and further education. The development of the extra-mural tradition meant that adult education was less an object of scholarly study than a means of spreading scholarship to the wider population, with important exceptions such as historical studies. Since the 1970s, the volume of research and postgraduate education in adult education in British universities has grown considerably. The study of higher education was marginal until the 1960s; its subsequent development was relatively slow until the 1990s, when the quality of university teaching came under wider external scrutiny. The study of further education and vocational training is characterised by disciplinary fragmentation, with much activity taking place in departments of psychology, economics, sociology and management, as well as in those former polytechnics that specialised in training further education teachers. The rise of integrative concepts such as lifelong learning suggest greater potential for cross-disciplinary scholarship that can engage the diverse body of those interested in teaching and research about this field.     

Teaching the design and interpretation of graphs through computer-aided graphical data analysis

Graphs are one of the primary means of exploration and communication in the practice of science, but students in science laboratories are customarily taught only the low-level mechanics of constructing a single kind of graph when given a table of information. The use of a microcomputer can relieve the drudgery of plotting, allowing students to pursue higher-level issues in the design and interpretation of graphs through repeated “thought experiments.” We introduced computer-assisted graphical data analysis to inner-city high school students with weak math and science backgrounds, emphasizing the dynamic manipulation of various kinds of graphs to answer specific questions. Drawing on extensive recordings and classroom observations, we describe examples of the performance of these students on open-ended problem-solving tasks in which graphs can be used to arrive at meaningful answers to applied data analysis problems.     

College and university requirements for teachers of the deaf at the undergraduate level: a twenty-year comparison

College and university requirements for undergraduate deaf education teacher preparation programs from 1986 and 2006 were compared. Thirty percent fewer undergraduate programs were in existence in 2006 than in 1986. Compared to programs in the 1986-1987 academic year, programs in 2006-2007 placed less emphasis on course work related to speech and hearing and more emphasis on the development of sign language skills. These findings are discussed in relation to the increasing probability that future employment for program graduates will be in itinerant and resource placements within public schools with children whose hearing losses are less severe than those of children in the past.     

The relationship of role expectations to faculty behavior

This study examines sources of influence over 290 faculty members of a large public university. The role expectations a faculty member has for himself and the role expectations of the employing organization both predict positively and significantly the role behaviors of the respondents. The departmental colleagues' expectations predict significantly role behaviors for the research role only. In addition, the degree of person—role conflict a faculty member is exposed to is related to his productivity (research) but not to his satisfaction. The implications of the results are explored for both role theory and for the understanding of faculty behavior.