Ways of composing teaching teams and their impact on teachers’ perceptions about collaboration

The present study examined the impact of teacher team composition on characteristics and attributes regarded as necessary for effective cooperative teaching. The study focused on potential differences between self-selected teacher teams and teams composed by the school administration. The central assumptions were that teachers working in self-selected teacher teams show more positive ratings of enjoyment, shared responsibility, job satisfaction and collective self-efficacy expectations than teachers who worked in institutionally composed teams. In order to investigate these hypotheses, an online survey was created. 321 language arts teachers participated in the survey. MANCOVA revealed significant differences in the dimensions ‘shared responsibility’ and ‘enjoyment with the co-teaching process’, where teachers from self-selected teaching teams showed significantly more positive ratings. These results support the assumption that self-selection of the team-mate is helpful for establishing compatible teaching teams, but does not necessarily lead to a higher quality of collaborative teaching.     

MEDIA TONE AND PUBLIC OPINION: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF MEDIA COVERAGE AND PUBLIC OPINION ON CHANCELLOR KOHL

This study investigates the relationship between media coverageof Helmut Kohl in seven leading German print media and the opinionsof the German general public about the politician between 1975and 1984. For the content analysis evaluative assessments aboutHelmut Kohl on six different dimensions of characteristics werecoded. The analysis of public opinion is based on 72 representativesurveys in which respondents expressed their evaluations ofthe politician. The two time series were compared by means ofcross-lagged correlations. The whole period was first examinedwith aggregations of three-months-intervals; then closer attentionwas paid to the time period since Helmut Kohl took office aschancellor on the basis of monthly intervals. In both cases,the results show that evaluation shifts in the media precedesimilar evaluation shifts in public opinion with a time lagof about three to six months for the whole period of investigation,and a somewhat shorter time lag for the time of his chancellorship.Evaluation shifts in the political magazines Der Spiegel andStern were more closely related to public opinion than evaluationshifts in the national dailies.     

The agencement of taskification: On new forms of reading and writing in BYOD schools

Abstract

The proliferation of digital devices in educational settings has contributed to the decentralization of knowledge from teachers and established textbooks to fluid online personalized resources, and from blackboards as spaces of materialization of this knowledge to personal screens. In this new constellation, school practices such as reading, writing and note-taking take new forms. How are these practices reconfigured when centered around mobile digital devices? In this paper, we investigate routine lesson practices of a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) school by means of an ethnographic observation. Adopting the term agencement as a heuristic device, we explore what practices are being constituted and how they are always in connection with one another. Moreover, we show that by practicing they produce different forms of action. We argue that in such a hybrid constellation, tasks find a different status beyond isolated and self-contained units for enhancing learning in different lessons. We introduce task-agencement, through which the task always entails a process of taskification that formats BYOD schools. With taskification, we mean that the task-agencement expands the domain in which tasks not only influence the organization and structure of lessons, but equally the very organization of the BYOD school by enacting a particular form of schooling. Finally, we propose a taskified form as a form of BYOD schooling that templates and formats how practices such as reading and writing, contextualization and introduction of the lesson are conducted.     

Emerging collaborative and cooperative practices in 1:1 schools

In this article, the authors explored how laptops used in 1:1 classrooms affect cooperation and collaboration practices. Based on an observational time study, the authors found that the most common activity in 1:1 classrooms is group work using the computer. They also found that, despite what the concept 1:1 alludes to about one student working with one computer, most laptop use takes on other forms such as two students working with one computer (1:2) or two students working together using two laptops (2:2). The findings reported in this article about the various different collaboration arrangements have implications for both research and practice. For practice, because teachers can arrange activities based on an awareness of the different student–laptop constellations that emerge when students are given a laptop. Research is likewise informed about the various group work constellations and can build on this knowledge for further analysis of the pros and cons with the different collaborative forms.     

TOPIC EVALUATION

A topic evaluation questionnaire is described which was used with a group of first‐year science undergraduates. Its aim was to determine students’ reactions to individual course topics in terms of: the extent to which they felt they had grasped each topic; those on which they had spent most time; those on which they had wished for more help; and their familiarity with each topic at ‘A’ level. Responses were evaluated in relation to other data collected at the time and highlighted a close relationship between reported ease of grasping and previous familiarity of topics. However, situational and contextual features also significantly affected the extent of grasping. In particular, the pacing and the progressive accumulation of topics in a course which led to difficulties with later topics, and the competing demands of other courses. The paper considers both the results of the topic evaluation questionnaire and how data from such a questionnaire can be more fully interpreted when placed in the context of other sources of evidence.     

Continuing attachments in academic work in neoliberal times: on the academic mode of existence

Is there (still) something specific about academic practice in contemporary neoliberal times? This article reports on a sociomaterial, ethnographic study informed by Deleuze’s untimely empiricism conducted at two research centres of a research university. We unfold the specificity of ‘the academic’ by elaborating upon two central notions: relational aspirations (the attachments of these academics, and the operations that such attachments generate) and mode of existence (the way academic practice comes into being by and through these attachments). The article discerns four types of relations that are typical for academic practice and argues that the way in which academic practice exists nowadays is characterized by a continuous distancing in action, that is, by drawing things together and by slowing things down.     

Scandinavian Approaches to Gender Equality in Academia: A Comparative Study

This study investigates how Denmark, Norway, and Sweden approach issues of gender equality in research differently. Based on a comparative document analysis of gender equality activities in six Scandinavian universities, together with an examination of the legislative and political frameworks surrounding these activities, the article provides new insights into the respective strategies for governing and promoting the advancement of women researchers. In doing so, it exposes some interesting disparities among the cases and shows how Norwegian and Swedish gender equality activities revolve around a broader span of different approaches than the Danish. The study draws upon existing knowledge on the efficacy and implementation success of diversity policy programmes to gain a more profound understanding of implications of these differences.     

Investigating the impact of observation errors on the statistical performance of network-based diffusion analysis

Experiments in captivity have provided evidence for social learning, but it remains challenging to demonstrate social learning in the wild. Recently, we developed network-based diffusion analysis (NBDA; 2009) as a new approach to inferring social learning from observational data. NBDA fits alternative models of asocial and social learning to the diffusion of a behavior through time, where the potential for social learning is related to a social network. Here, we investigate the performance of NBDA in relation to variation in group size, network heterogeneity, observer sampling errors, and duration of trait diffusion. We find that observation errors, when severe enough, can lead to increased Type I error rates in detecting social learning. However, elevated Type I error rates can be prevented by coding the observed times of trait acquisition into larger time units. Collectively, our results provide further guidance to applying NBDA and demonstrate that the method is more robust to sampling error than initially expected. Supplemental materials for this article may be downloaded from http://lb.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.