Support and Challenge in Learning to Teach: the role of the mentor

The increased emphasis on school‐based programmes as part of initial teacher education has resulted in renewed efforts to forge more effective partnerships between higher education institutions and schools. The University of Bath has established a mentor development programme to ensure that subject mentors have an opportunity to examine ways to engage novice teachers in critical reflection about their practice while providing the support and challenge necessary to help them develop as teachers. This study is based on experienced mentors’ and their perspective on their work with novice teachers and it is a follow‐up to earlier research based on Daloz’ model (1986, Effective Teaching and Mentoring, San Francisco, Jossey Bass) of support and challenge. It examines an emerging mentoring pedagogy through which experienced mentors attempt to engage novice teachers in shaping their own vision of teaching. Three mentor profiles are discussed—the laissez‐faire, the collaborative and the imperial mentor.     

Exploring the educational beliefs of primary education student teachers in the Chinese context

Teacher educational beliefs may be largely shaped by culturally shared learning experiences and social values. The main purpose of this study is to explore educational beliefs of Chinese student teachers. An adapted version of the Teacher Beliefs Scale (TBS)??developed in a Western context (Woolley et al. in Educational and Psychological Measurement, 64: 319?C331, 2004)??was validated in this study, and the profiles of student teacher educational beliefs were analyzed. The research participants consisted of 727 Chinese student teachers from four different teacher education universities. A factor analysis of the Chinese version of the TBS supported the dimensions of the original instrument, but some items had to be discarded to less consistent factor loading. The ANOVA results showed that there were significant differences in constructivist teaching beliefs with respect to gender, study year, and majoring subjects. But no significant differences in the adherence to traditional teaching beliefs were observed. The results also show that the first year student teachers hold stronger constructivist beliefs as compared to senior student teachers. This can be linked to the latter larger teaching and learning experiences in real classroom settings. Implications are drawn for further research in teacher education contexts.     

The Motivations of Book Publishers in Germany and Australia: An Empirical Comparison

Our study compares the motivations of Australian and German book publishers. The results demonstrate remarkable similarities, but also a significant difference regarding the effects of the publishers’ self-concept. In the German case the publishers with a dominant economic orientation are more proactive than the publishers with a dominant cultural orientation. In the Australian case, this correlation does not exist. The same difference holds for the relationship between the economic orientation and extrinsic motivation. We discuss these results and examine empirical evidence and theoretical suggestions to explain the differing findings. The data stem from surveys conducted in the two countries with responses of 196 (Germany) and 54 publishers (Australia).     

Mobile self-fashioning and gendered risk: rethinking Chinese students’ motivations for overseas education

This article complicates dominant instrumentalist understandings of international student motivation by focusing on Chinese female tertiary students in Australia. Based on longitudinal fieldwork with 56 such students, it analyses motivations described by students and their parents in interviews, showing that these far exceed instrumentalism and engage tactics of both gendered risk management and cosmopolitan self-fashioning. Discussion of the gendered risks in post-socialist China that students seek to mitigate through study abroad illustrates the complexity of students’ motivations, and underlines the limitations of western European sociological theories of risk society which assume that gender inequality tends to decrease in late modernity.     

Interventions supporting baccalaureate achievement of Latinx STEM students matriculating at 2-year institutions: A systematic review

Numerous national reports have identified the importance of significantly improving pathways that begin with Latinx students enrolling in 2-year institutions and ultimately completing baccalaureate degrees in STEM fields at 4-year institutions. Many programs using multiple interventions have been designed, implemented, and studied to achieve this goal. To synthesize what has been learned from studies of these programs, this article presents a systematic review of published studies of programs designed to support Latinx student success in 2-year institutions and successful transfer to 4-year institutions, particularly for STEM majors. A total of 49 quantitative, 9 qualitative, and 16 mixed-methods studies published as reports, articles, or dissertations since 1980 were identified that met the criteria for the review. Studies covered a wide range of interventions, including mentoring, counseling, advising, study groups, tutoring, scholarships, orientations, career services, undergraduate research, articulation agreements, and transfer programs. Individually, these studies report positive influences on student success outcomes, including 2- and 4-year graduation, transfer to a 4-year institution, retention, and success in individual courses. However, the number of qualifying studies was surprisingly small, considering the importance of improving success of Latinx students and the length of time during which the problem has been repeatedly emphasized. Few interventions have been undertaken from explicitly assets-based perspectives or theoretical frameworks. The lack of explicit frameworks underlying interventions—combined with a sole/primary focus on students—suggests many interventions were approached from a deficit-based perspective. Further, the study found no pattern of replication studies that might confirm effectiveness of potentially promising interventions. Based on our analysis of evaluations presented in the studies, it does not appear that the research community has developed agreed-upon methods to evaluate commonly agreed-upon outcomes. Finally, no intervention has been sufficiently supported that widespread implementation could be recommended.     

CERN document server: Document management system for grey literature in a networked environment

Conclusion In this paper we briefly described the current status of research in the field of digital libraries interoperability, mainly with respect to federated data processing such as permitted within the Open Archive Initiative framework. We then presented the CERN Document Server Software suite that is a free software package main-tained by CERN providing an online digital library solution for mid- to large-sized document repositories. The set of CDSware modules was described and the differ-ences with other existing tools briefly mentioned. Finally we have mentioned a typical usage statistics illustrating the scope of grey literature and networked con-ditions of the CERN Document Server. We pointed out that the current trend in grey literature management goes toward institutional repositories build upon the distributed and federated model. Further research is going on within the CDS collaboration in this area, focused particularly on (i) semantic interoperability using ontologies in distributed and federated data processing and (ii) ranking technologies when searching grey literature in OAI compliant repositories.     

OECD划分高技术产业、测度ICT和生物技术产业的方法

本文介绍了由OECD开发的虽各不相同、却密切相关的三个领域的科技测度方法,这些问题也是中国近年来一直非常感兴趣的。     

Interpreting examiners' annotations on examination papers: a sociocultural analysis

In Ireland and the UK it is accepted practice that agencies with formal responsibility for delivering school examinations allow examination candidates, and in many cases their teachers, to see their examination papers once they have been marked. Returned papers can carry various pieces of information; as well as the total score given for a performance, additional information is included in the form of the annotations left on the examination paper by the marking examiner. As far as we know there has been no research into how this information affects those who come into contact with it. The study uses teacher interview and survey data to explore whether a sociocultural approach to analysis can illuminate the factors that might influence their interpretation of those annotations. These analyses suggest that a key influence on the valid interpretation of an examiner's annotations is a teachers' involvement in examining activity. The analyses support further conceptualisation that these teacher-examiners' interpretative capacity is related to their positioning in a boundary zone between two different activity systems.