Roles and relationships in qualitative research on teachers' thinking: A reconsideration

Much research about teachers and teaching is still planned and conducted by researchers who give little thought or effort to the involvement and learning of the teachers who are their subjects. Whilst this continues to be the predominant research paradigm, and until collaborative networks between educators from different sectors of the professions are established, the traditional separation between academics - those who research - and teachers - those who teach - will remain, and the usefulness of research to both communities will continue to be subject to critical comment. This paper proposes a set of different roles and relationships for researchers involved in qualitative research in which researchers may also be consultants, and in which affective, human-relating skills hold the same importance as the more traditional technical skills of the researcher.     

Differential effectiveness of alternative middle-school science sequences for students of different ethnicities

Learning Environments Research - For a sample of 367 middle-school students in the USA, learning environment criteria were used to evaluate two alternative science curriculum sequences...     

An Emotion-Based Prevention Program for Head Start Children

Empirical research shows that poor emotional competence is an early risk factor for the development of psychopathology. Numerous school-based prevention programs have been developed with the goal of decreasing behavior problems. Several of these programs include a discrete emotions component, but none of them are solely or primarily guided by emotion theory for their design and implementation. The prevention program described in this paper, the emotions course (EC), is a theoretically-coherent program based on differential emotions theory and is designed to be implemented by teachers in Head Start classrooms. Children participating in a pilot implementation of EC showed larger increases in emotion knowledge and less growth in negative emotion expression than their peers in control classrooms. These findings provide initial support for EC. Future implementations of the program need increased monitoring of implementation fidelity as well as additional methods to assess the success of the program.     

Fascinating technology: computer games as an issue for religious education

Computer games as an important part of youth culture can, from a certain perspective, be highly relevant for religious education. I will review the role of computer games, and then give a brief overview, suggesting a specific phenomenological approach for research on computer games and religious education. After presenting one example of such research I will explore the potential religious dimensions of computer games and raise the question of the possible consequences for religious education.     

Assessing Teacher Appraisals and Stress in the Classroom: Review of the Classroom Appraisal of Resources and Demands

Stress research increasingly emphasizes the role of appraisal in determining which events are perceived as stressful. The Classroom Appraisal of Resources and Demands (CARD) was developed to measure teachers’ appraisals of their classroom demands and resources in order to assess their risk for experiencing occupational stress. The present purposes are to review the literature identifying appraisals as a key determinant of stress, to describe the development of the CARD, and to provide meta-analytic results from 18 studies comparing CARD scores to the following variables: teacher’s job satisfaction and occupational commitment, burnout symptoms, stress prevention resources, and challenging student demands. Results suggest moderate effects for associations between the CARD and these constructs, and implications for educational policy aimed at reducing turnover and increasing teacher and student welfare are discussed.     

The effects of sensory stimulation in inducing or intensifying the “transport response” in white rats

A series of experiments was carried out to investigate the ability of different types of stimulation to induce or intensify the “transport response” in 15-day-old rat pups when an initial stimulus, a pinch to the nape of the neck, produced either no transport response or only a very weak response. Rat pups given supplemental tactile stimulation, in the form of either an airpuff to the ventrum of a pinch to the tail, showed consistently stronger response intensities than when given only a pinch to the nape of the neck. Visual and auditory stimuli produced no increment in response intensities over those with only a dorsal pinch. Two additional experiments were carried out. The first investigated the ability of a puff of mist from an atomizer to induce a transport response in rats too old to show a strong response. The second investigated the induction of the transport response with supplemental stimulation in 19-day-old pups given haloperidol. Results suggest a nondopaminergic system subserving the response facilitation seen with supplemental tactile stimulation.     

Why Do Students Misbehave? An Initial Examination of Antecedents to Student Misbehavior

The current study utilized constant comparative thematic analysis to uncover antecedents of student misbehavior from the perspective of collegiate instructors. Results indicated nine distinct antecedents of student misbehavior that were classified into three distinct categories: deficiency antecedents, belief antecedents, and external antecedents. These findings extend previous research on antecedents of student misbehavior by forwarding a more nuanced classification structure that centers on attribution theory as an explanatory mechanism. Overall, by understanding the potential reasons that underlie student misbehavior, educators can create more meaningful and enriching experiences for students by thoughtfully addressing these problematic behaviors and the underlying conditions that promote them.