What Teachers Believe about Teaching Composite Classes

Teacher knowledge of how to teach a composite class (a class of two or more grades) was studied by observing eight outstanding teachers at work and by eliciting their knowledge of the reasons for their own behaviour. From observation and interviews, 125 incidents, each with an explanatory teacher comment, were collected. A maxim was educed for each and the maxims were classified under six main headings: (1) management, (2) personalisation, (3) class climate, (4) teaching strategies, (5) curriculum, and (6) teaching contexts. The validity of these maxims was assessed by a group of 21 outstanding composite‐class teachers, including seven of the original eight, who also commented on the maxims’ usefulness for in‐service professional development. The majority of outstanding teachers agreed with almost all the maxims and they felt the maxims would be valuable for preservice and in‐service teacher education. This paper discusses the importance of teachers having knowledge and skills in the areas of personalisation of instruction, classroom management and creating a positive class climate. Also discussed are the implications of disagreements amongst teachers over the validity of some of the maxims and the issue of the extent to which composite‐class teaching requires different skills and knowledge from ordinary class teaching.     

Interpreting change in educational equity

The effect of changes in state revenue, property wealth, and enrollment from 1969–1970 to 1976–1977 on the equality of total educational revenue was investigated for nineteen states with available data. An exploratory two-stage methodology allowed a simulation of the effects of holding each of these factors at their 1969–1970 values and comparing the result with 1976–1977 predicted values. It was found that changes in state revenue were most equalizing, while changes in property wealth and enrollment were disequalizing. In addition, it was found that the change in the behavioral relationship between state revenue, property wealth, and enrollment, and local revenues from 1969–1970 to 1976–1977 was equalizing in twelve of the states and was larger than the change in the value of the most important of these factors (state revenue) in seven of the states.     

High school students' understanding of food webs: Identification of a learning hierarchy and related misconceptions

Developing an understanding of the nature of food webs is an important topic in today's biology curricula. The relationships represented in a food web are rule-like in nature. Hence, it should be possible to construct a learning hierarchy for this concept. A hierarchy leading to the ability to determine how a change in the size of one population can affect another population in the same web but not on the same chain was hypothesized. Data from 200 subjects were extremely consistent with the hierarchy. A second major focus related to the identification of specific misconceptions held by subjects for food webs. The need to identify students' misconceptions of important concepts has been expressed widely in the recent science education literature. In the present article, an argument is presented for the usefulness of learning hierarchies in this work. Specific misconceptions and the frequencies of their occurrence are reported.