Researching Race Within Educational Psychology Contexts

In this article, we question why race as a sociohistorical construct has not traditionally been investigated in educational psychology research. To do so, we provide a historical discussion of the significance of race as well as present current dilemmas in the exploration of race, including an examination of the incidence and prevalence of race-related constructs in top educational psychology journals. As a means of expanding educational psychology's use of race as a sociohistorical construct, we introduce the concepts of race-focused and race-reimaged constructs. We end the article with suggestions for how we can begin exploring race as a sociohistorical construct in the field of educational psychology, including the need to challenge traditional paradigms and embrace culturally relevant methodologies.     

Comparative education,the ‘New Paradigm’ and policy borrowing: constructing knowledge for educational reform

Education reform in England is increasingly portrayed as a quest to create ‘world class’ schools through the transfer of features of ‘high performing’ school systems. The demand for evidence to support policy borrowing has been serviced by an influential intermediary network, which uses international data banks to compare education systems, and to identify and promote evidence of ‘what works’. The approach to comparisons has been portrayed as a ‘New Paradigm’ by its advocates, and whilst the network has been extensively critiqued, this has largely focused on its deviation from the norms of academic comparative education. This article explores how the ‘New Paradigm’ operates, identifying its inherent features and the strategies used to overcome the methodological issues associated with policy borrowing. This is pursued through an analysis of the rationale; assumptions; underlying ideology; methodology; omissions and silences; dealing with critics; and language and presentation of four of its influential publications.     

Assessment of Preschooler’s Scientific Reasoning in Adult–Child Interactions: What Is the Optimal Context?

In educational settings, continuous assessment of the child’s level of understanding is necessary to effectively utilize the principles of scaffolding and to create contexts that can advance the scientific reasoning of the child. In this article, we argue that a child’s performance is a dynamic notion that is created by all elements in an interaction, including the task. Therefore, we studied preschoolers’ levels of scientific reasoning varying different properties of the assessment context. Young children were interviewed about four scientific tasks using one out of four different protocols (varying in the degree of flexibility and adaptiveness) by an adult. In the first study, different task contents resulted in different performance levels. The second study indicated that the most structured protocol elicited the highest maximum level of reasoning in children and the highest percentage of correct predictions. The third study showed differences between the protocols in the adult’s verbal behavior. Adaptation in verbal behavior to different children by the adult did not result in higher scientific understanding by the children, whereas a higher degree of task structure did. Combined, the studies emphasize the importance of context, which has implications for assessment and teaching situations.     

Teaching writing to middle school students: a national survey

A random sample of language arts, social studies, and science middle school teachers from the United States were surveyed about their preparation to teach writing, beliefs about responsibilities for teaching writing, use of evidence-based writing practices, assessment of writing, use of technology, and adaptations for struggling writers. The findings from this survey raised concerns about the quality of middle school writing instruction. Many teachers believed their preservice and inservice preparation to teach writing was inadequate. Middle school students spend little time writing or being taught how to write. While most teachers used a variety of evidenced-based writing practices and made adaptations for struggling writers, such methods were applied infrequently. Most teachers did not appear to use assessment data to shape how they taught writing, and computers played a relatively minor role in middle school writing instruction. Even though teachers generally agreed that writing was a collective responsibility, language arts teachers placed a greater emphasis on writing instruction than social studies and science teachers.     

Developing and validating test items for first-year computer science courses

We report on the development, validation, and implementation of a collection of test items designed to detect misconceptions related to first-year computer science courses. To this end, we reworked the development scheme proposed by Almstrum et al. (SIGCSE Bulletin 38(4):132–145, 2006) to include students’ artifacts and to simultaneously incorporate think-aloud interviews and flash tests. We also investigated to what extent the practical efficiency of detecting certain misconceptions could be increased without significantly affecting the sensitivity of the instrument, and present positive and negative results regarding this goal. The results of a first transfer and implementation study suggest that it is indeed possible to use the test items in a large-scale practical setting – both as diagnostic instruments and as interventions.     

Using communities of practice to enhance interdisciplinary teaching: lessons from four Australian institutions

We report on the establishment of communities of practice at four Australian institutions and evaluate their effectiveness and durability as a means of building staff and institutional capacity for interdisciplinary teaching. A community of practice approach is a potentially valuable methodology for overcoming dynamics of fragmentation, isolation and competition within universities. The communities we established were anchored by a shared focus on the topic of climate change and they worked collaboratively to build relationships of trust and reciprocity between teachers in a wide range of disciplines. The aim of each community was to improve the teaching of climate change through enabling members to integrate diverse disciplinary perspectives, to teach collaboratively, to promote innovation through exchange and to demonstrate leadership within their institutions. The key factors that made our communities effective and durable are: (1) designation of two leadership roles, activator and facilitator, (2) provision for institutional autonomy in domesticating the model to fit local circumstances and (3) a pragmatic emphasis on opportunities for teaching innovation and leadership within existing administrative structures, teaching programs and workloads. We conclude that suitably designed and resourced communities of practice are a viable means of improving interdisciplinary teaching of complex problems by facilitating both staff development and institutional learning.     

Talking Smack: Verbal Aggression in Professional Wrestling

The current study presents the results of a content analysis of the verbal aggression found in 36 hours of televised professional wrestling. The coding scheme was adapted from the National Television Violence Study and past research on television verbal aggression. Results show that an abundance of verbal aggression occurs in televised professional wrestling, with swearing, competence attacks, and character attacks being the most common types. In addition, the primary motives for verbal aggression use are amusement and anger. Furthermore, verbal aggression tends to be communicated and received by White, male individuals with no clear dispositional characteristics. The results are discussed in terms of potential effects of exposure to the verbal aggression found in professional wrestling.     

Central states speech association members,as of July 1, 1961

On March 5, 1946, in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill gave one of his most famous and controversial speeches. The ideas and themes of that speech had been used before and would be again, but never with similar explosive effect. The author attempts to analyze six speeches by Winston Churchill in America to discover the variables that combined to create the effect at Fulton.     

Distortion of subordinate to superior communication in organizational settings

In a field setting it was found that messages concerning unfavorable situations were more distorted than messages concerning favorable situations, but mostly when the stimulus situation was task related. For non‐task related stimulus situations messages concerning unfavorable situations were distorted less than were messages concerning favorable situations. This latter finding was attributed to a “real‐life” pratfall effect.     

Enactment as rhetorical strategy in the year of living dangerously

In The Year of Living Dangerously, the philosophical position that is argued in the film's content is reflected also in the film's form; i.e., the film is an enactment of the argument it makes. Failure to recognize enactment as a viable rhetorical strategy may have led to a failure to recognize the film's rhetorical force. Further study of enactment and its rhetorical effectiveness are suggested.