Small fingers,big data: Preschoolers’ subitizing speed and accuracy during interactions with multitouch technology

This study focused on 18 students 4–5?years old in an urban full-day preschool program in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Over the course of a month, students used a touchscreen tablet to interact with Fingu, an app designed to develop students’ early number sense. Using backend data generated by the app, 8,153 individual task attempts were recorded. Multilevel growth modeling, with task attempts nested within students, was used to examine the extent to which students’ speed of response and response accuracy changed over the course of the study, as well as whether any individual characteristics were associated with either speed or accuracy. Results indicate that, on average, students become both faster and more accurate. Girls were also found to be more accurate than boys, and older students were found to be both slightly slower to respond and less accurate.     

The Role of Content Knowledge and Problem Features on Preservice Teachers’ Appraisal of Elementary Mathematics Tasks

The objective of this study was to examine the nature of preservice teachers’ evaluations of elementary mathematics problems using the Mathematical Tasks Framework (MTF), a model designed to discriminate among tasks according to their cognitive complexity. We also tested the relationship between mathematics content knowledge and problem length on the preservice teachers’ evaluations. Twenty-six undergraduate students enrolled in an elementary mathematics methods course at a large urban university were introduced to the MTF and cognitive complexity during a class lecture and were subsequently required to sort 32 mathematics problems according to the framework. Results demonstrated that overall, the preservice teachers had more difficulty accurately classifying problems considered to represent high levels of cognitive complexity compared to problems that were less complex. Those with strong mathematics content knowledge, as measured by a standardized test, were able to sort the problems more accurately than those with weaker content knowledge. Two open-ended items assessing content knowledge were not related to sorting performance. Finally, the preservice teachers were influenced by the surface characteristic of task length; the data indicated that the teachers tended to label short problems as less cognitively demanding and long problems as more so. Implications for preservice professional development include an increased emphasis on mathematics content knowledge as well as expert modeling of the identification of deep conceptual principles at the heart of the mathematics curriculum.     

A New Framework For Quality

Quality emerges as an important theme in the British Government White Paper,'Higher Education: A New Framework' published in May 1991. Quality in both research and teaching receive attention. This article looks particularly at the latter, the differing approaches on each side of the binary line, the likely remit of the emerging audit unit, the difficulties of quality assessment in a single higher education system and the criteria for determining how far degree awarding powers should be bestowed on smaller institutions.     

Teacher Professional Development in the Area of 'School-Reporting-to-Parents'

In recent years there has been increasing interest internationally in the monitoring and reporting of student achievements in school. Australia is no exception regarding this interest. Here some of the developments regarding reporting to parents have also raised a variety of questions for research. The following paper is one attempt to meet the challenge presented. It is concerned with developing an understanding of the impact of school reporting in one Australian state, Western Australia (WA), with the aim of developing a set of propositions for discussion in teacher professional development programmes. While cognisance was taken of the associated research literature in the development of these propositions, they emerged mainly from a project which used a case study approach to develop an understanding of the variety of perspectives which the various stakeholders in WA government schools have on school reports and school reporting--past, present and future.     

eVALUate: an evaluation instrument for measuring students’ perceptions of their engagement and learning outcomes

In the current climate in Australian higher education, quality assurance in university teaching is a priority. In particular, the introduction of the Learning and Teaching Performance Fund (LTPF) has refocused attention on universities’ internal student evaluation survey instruments. This paper reports the development, validation and implementation of a new unit survey instrument which prompts students to reflect on what helps their achievement of unit learning outcomes, and to report their levels of motivation, engagement and overall satisfaction with a semester‐long course or unit of study. The instrument (eVALUate) was created from precepts reported in the research literature, current practices in evaluating teaching, and sound quality assurance practices appropriate to a university outcomes‐focused education paradigm.     

Scaffolding students: suggestions on how to equip students with the necessary study skills for studying in a blended learning environment

In this paper we consider the implications of moving from a paper‐based delivery of study support materials to electronic delivery. The paper is based on telephone interviews with 60 students who had received a range of study support materials from a series of ‘student toolkits’, which are printed resource booklets for students of the UK Open University. McLoughlin (2002) sees the integration of electronic delivery at the primary, secondary and tertiary education levels as requiring an extension to current concepts of scaffolding. The extension we propose in this paper is the need to establish study skills plus the ways and means to seek support in a resource‐based environment. However, there is a delicate balance between increased provision and overloaded provision in resource‐based learning.     

Teacher and child variables as predictors of academic engagement among low‐income African American children

A causal model for understanding the complex interplay between student‐reported teacher behaviors, student self‐systems, and student engagement was tested. One hundred seventeen African American students in grades 1 through 12 completed a comprehensive questionnaire regarding teacher context, self, and engagement variables. A series of hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test the hypothesized mediation models and to construct a path model. Most hypotheses were supported. Student self‐system variables (perceived competency and autonomy) mediated relations between teacher context (structure and autonomy support), and engagement. Contrary to predictions, however, teacher involvement exerted a strong and direct effect on student engagement even when controlling for grade level and self‐system variables. Given existing research showing that African American students are at risk for low teacher involvement and that engagement is critical for academic success, research and intervention strategies are urgently needed to promote teacher involvement with these students. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.