Students as Consumers of Knowledge: Are They Buying What We’re Selling?

Academic entitlement, an attitude marked by students’ beliefs that they are owed something in the educational experience apart from what they might earn from their effort, has received attention recently in the literature. In previous work, academic entitlement has been shown to be related to parenting styles and personality constructs. The current study departs from previous research by taking a phenomenological approach to understanding academic entitlement. Focus groups were conducted with a total of 52 first-year students. Responses were coded into six facets of academic entitlement: product value of education, social promotion, role of professors, teaching assistants, administrators, and shoppers or scholars.     

Changing Primary Students’ Perceptions of Teacher Interpersonal Behaviours in Science

The paper reports on part of a large-scale study aimed at examining students’ perceptions of teacher–student interactions. This paper will report on a study utilising mixed methodology in 12 Queensland primary classrooms. After the students’ perceptions were established, the teachers, through a consultative process, developed strategies to change the students’ perceptions of their classroom over a 3 month period. The paper reports on what strategies these teachers utilised and what changes in students’ perceptions resulted. The classroom teachers were interviewed about the change in students’ perceptions, what changes they had sought to promote in their classrooms, and what they felt had been achieved in their classrooms. The study found that students were able to articulate what changes the teacher had implemented, what their reaction was to these changes and their perception of the classroom environment as a result of these implemented strategies.     

A Bayesian Hierarchical Selection Model for Academic Growth With Missing Data

Using a sample of schools testing annually in grades 9–11 with a vertically linked series of assessments, a latent growth curve model is used to model test scores with student intercepts and slopes nested within school. Missed assessments can occur because of student mobility, student dropout, absenteeism, and other reasons. Missing data indicators are modeled using logistic regression, with grade 9 and potentially unobserved growth scores used as covariates. Under a hierarchical selection model, estimates of school effects on academic growth and missingness are obtained. The results from the selection model are compared to a model that ignores the missing data process.     

Communication Intervention on the Playground: A case study on teaching requesting to a young child with autism

This paper describes a playground-based communication intervention for a young child with autism. Opportunities for teaching the child to request more play were created at multiple points on the playground by momentarily interrupting the child's ongoing play using the behaviour chain interruption strategy (BCIS). In addition, probes were conducted to determine if the child would generalise his use of the requesting response to an earlier point in the routine and to a second teacher. There were no correct responses during baseline. With intervention, correct requests increased to a high level after approximately 100 instructional opportunities. This high level of correct requesting was maintained with a new teacher and generalised to an earlier point in the routine (i.e., when he was interrupted while on his way to the playground). The results suggest that the BCIS can be used to provide effective communication intervention on the playground.     

Mathematics teachers’ learning: a conceptual framework and synthesis of research

How do practicing mathematics teachers continue to develop the knowledge and habits of mind that enable them to teach well and to improve their teaching over time? The question of how (and what) teachers learn lies at the crux of any effort to provide high-quality mathematics teaching for all students. This article reviews 106 articles written between 1985 and 2008 related to the professional learning of practicing teachers of mathematics. We offer a synthesis of this research, guided by Clarke and Hollingsworth’s (Teach Teach Educ 18(8):947–967, 2002) dynamic model of teacher growth. Their model emphasizes the recursive nature of teachers’ learning and suggests that growth in one aspect of teachers’ knowledge and practice may promote subsequent growth in other areas. We report the results in six major areas of teacher learning, identify several crosscutting themes in the literature, and make recommendations for future research aimed at understanding teachers’ professional learning.     

Mathematical Concepts and Proofs from Nicole Oresme

This paper examines the mathematical work of the French bishop, Nicole Oresme (c. 1323–1382), and his contributions towards the development of the concept of graphing functions and approaches to investigating infinite series. The historical importance and pedagogical value of his work will be considered in the context of an undergraduate course on the history of calculus.