Distributed Departments: A New Approach to Protecting the Vitality of Small Programs

The Texas Electronic Coalition for Physics was established in 2000 as a means of demonstrating that by linking together, small programs can maintain their vitality in higher education. Using Interactive Television, the Internet, telephones, faxes, and other electronic media, five physics programs scattered across the state of Texas formed a distributed physics department. In addition to jointly offering lecture courses, the group (i) established procedures for operating as a unified entity, (ii) encouraged research regardless of location, (iii) provided a locus for professional camaraderie, (iv) created a distance-based advanced physics laboratory course, and (v) developed assessment tools for measuring success in a distance environment. Through these, the coalition demonstrated that a distributed department can carry out all of the functions associated with a traditional department.     

Adventures in Implementing a Testing Program

What are the ways in which a testing program can run aground? What are some suggestions for avoiding these problems?     

Interpersonal behaviour styles of primary education teachers during science lessons

This study reports the first development in Australia of primary science teacher typologies of teacher–student interpersonal behaviour, which was measured by students’ perceptions using the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI). Earlier work with the QTI in The Netherlands has revealed eight different interpersonal styles, which were later confirmed with an American sample of secondary-school teachers and which were similar to types found with Australian secondary-school science teachers. The present study investigated the extent to which typologies found in earlier studies also apply to primary teachers. A cluster analysis was used to determine Australian typologies and to compare these with earlier findings. Prior typologies could only be partially confirmed, and the found typology of six styles was able to explain variance in both student outcomes and perceptions of cultural elements of the learning environment.