Engineering design processes in seventh-grade classrooms: bridging the engineering education gap

This paper reports on some findings from the first year of a three-year longitudinal study, in which seventh- to ninth-graders were introduced to engineering education. Specifically, the paper addresses students’ responses to an initial design activity involving bridge construction, which was implemented at the end of seventh grade. This paper also addresses how students created their bridge designs and applied these in their bridge constructions; their reflections on their designs; their reflections on why the bridge failed to support increased weights during the testing process; and their suggestions on ways in which they would improve their bridge designs. The present findings include identification of six, increasingly sophisticated levels of illustrated bridge designs, with designs improving between the classroom and homework activities of two focus groups of students. Students’ responses to the classroom activity revealed a number of iterative design processes, where the problem goals, including constraints, served as monitoring factors for students’ generation of ideas, design thinking and construction of an effective bridge.     

Film Genre Studies

Les Adams and Buck Rainey's Shoot-em-Ups: The Complete Reference Guide to Westerns of the Sound Era (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978---$30.00)

David Rothel's The Singing Cowboys (Cranbury, N.J.: A.S. Barnes, 1978---$19.95)

Lawrence H. Suid's Guts & Glory: Great American War Movies (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978---$12.95/6.95)

Jack G. Shaheen, ed. Nuclear War Films (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978---$10.00/4.95)

Thomas Cripps' Black Film as Genre (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978---$10.00)

Neil P. Hurley's The Reel Revolution: A Film Primer on Liberation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1978---$7.95, paper)

Anita Loos' San Francisco, A Screenplay (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979---$10.00/4.95)

Eugene Rosow's Born to Lose: The Gangster Film in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978---$19.95)     

Retrieval,visualization, and mining of large radiation dosage data

Radiation dose monitoring has become an essential service that hospitals must perform. Depending on the system in place, this can result in the collection of large quantities of data, ripe for analysis. These data should include a wide variety of variables for each study because assessment of the propriety of the patient’s dose is dependent on many factors, including patient age and size, as well as the body section that is being scanned. Moreover, the scanners themselves have many properties that affect patient dose, such as model, pitch and kVp. In this paper, we propose an engine that seamlessly integrated with a clinical PACS to retrieve radiation dosage data. We devised several schemes to analyze these data through visualization and mining techniques that examine it at different scopes. We demonstrate the utility of such visual methods at examining large, noisy, and multi-dimensional data, which is embodied in the collected radiation data.     

Playing the game: examining parental engagement in schooling in post‐millennial Queensland

The abolition of the probationary year for teachers in 1991 by the Department for Education was short-lived, with new requirements for the setting of Induction Standards, monitoring of performance, the administration of assessment procedures, and the possible de-registration of new teachers introduced in the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998. The article describes the policy context of the initiative; the characteristics of the new requirements; the complex induction problem, which needs solving; and the failed promises on induction, which preceded the new provision. It argues for a more imaginative alternative to be developed, capable of ensuring that new teachers are able to contribute actively and in meaningful ways to the reconstruction of education.     

School structure and its relationship to instructional methods and student outcomes in mathematics

Details of teachers' instructional approaches, and students' achievement and attitudes from a probability sample of 102 Ontario schools with grade 8 classes were examined as a function of school structure (public vs. separate, the number of pupils, the teachers' qualifications). Students in separate (Roman Catholic) schools, while not differing from their public schools peers in socio-economic background and plans for further education, reported less use of English in the home and less family help with mathematics. Except in a few details, the teachers at the schools in question do not differ in their educational approaches. The conclusions suggested by the research literature, of the better achievement and attitudes of pupils in separate schools, were supported in the case of attitudes, but contrary to expectations, student achievement differences, when they occurred, favoured students enrolled in public schools. On the whole, the differences which were observed amongst pupils were neither a function of student background characteristics nor of differences in teachers' experience.

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Zusammenfassung Einzelheiten der Lehransätze von Lehrern und der Leistungen sowie Einstellungen von Schülern wurden in einem Wahrscheinlichkeitssample an 102 Schulen mit einer 8. Klasse als Funktion einer Schulstruktur untersucht (öffentliche im Gegensatz zu separaten Schulen, d.h. römisch-katholischen, die Schülerzahl, die Qualifikationen der Lehrer). Obwohl sich Schüler an separaten (römischkatholischen) Schulen in ihrem sozio-ökonomischen Hintergrund und ihren Plänen bezüglich ihrer Weiterbildung von ihren Altersgenossen an öffentlichen Schulen nicht unterschieden, berichteten sie, daß der englische Sprachgebrauch zu Hause weniger üblich sei und daß sie weniger häusliche Hilfe bei Mathematikaufgaben erhielten als jene. Bis auf ein paar Einzelheiten unterschieden sich die Lehrer der besagten Schulen nicht in ihren Lehransätzen. Die Schlußfolgerungen, die in der Forschungsliteratur über bessere Leistungen und besseres Verhalten der Schüler an Separatschulen nahegelegt wurden, unterstützten diese Einstellungen, aber anders als erwartet, fielen die Unterschiede bei den Schülerleistungen, wenn sie auftraten, zugunsten der Schüler an öffentlichen Schulen aus. Insgesamt lassen sich die festgestellten Leistungsunterschiede der Schüler weder auf deren sozialen Hintergründe noch auf unterschiedliche Erfahrungen der Lehrer zurückführen.

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Résumé Les détails relatifs aux approches éducatives des enseignants, aux acquis et attitudes d'élèves pris sur un échantillon de probabilité de 102 écoles de l'Etat de l'Ontario avec des classes du degré 8 ont été examinés en tant que fonction de la structure scolaire (école publique par rapport aux écoles libres, nature des effectifs, qualification des enseignants). S'ils ne se distinguaient pas de leurs pairs des écoles publiques par leur milieu socio-économique ou les plans d'éducation continue, les élèves des écoles libres (catholiques) ont rapporté qu'ils faisaient un moins grand usage de l'anglais à la maison et recevraient moins d'aide de leur famille pour résoudre leurs exercices de mathématiques. A quelques détails près, les enseignants des écoles en question ne différaient pas par leurs approches éducatives. Les conclusions suggérées par les travaux de recherche sur les acquis plus positifs et les attitudes plus favorables des élèves des écoles libres étaient corroborées pour ce qui est des attitudes mais, contrairement aux attentes, les différences en matière de connaissances acquises, si de telles différences se manifestaient, étaient à l'avantage des élèves inscrits dans les écoles publiques. En général, les différences de niveau observées chez les élèves ne dépendaient pas des caractéristiques de leur milieu de provenance, ni de l'expérience des enseignants.