The Fecundity of the Individual Case: considerations of the pedagogic heart of interpretive work

Using the example of a beginning teacher's account of the experience of entering her new school for the first time, this paper presents a consideration of the nature of interpetive inquiry in education and how such inquiry treats ‘the individual case’. This is compared with how more traditional, quantitative studies might treat such cases. The pedagogic character of interpretive inquiry is then discussed.     

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTENT REPRESENTATION FOR COMMON-ITEM EQUATING WITH NONRANDOM GROUPS

The equating accuracy of content-representative anchors versus nonrepresen-tative but substantially longer anchors is compared. Content representation was defined as a match between anchors and total test of the percentage of items in each of several content areas. Through a chain of equatings it was found that content representation in anchors was critical for the testing program studied. The results are explained in terms of differences in mean profiles (by content area) of the nonrandom groups used for equating.     

Sustainability and Education: To Sink—or to Swim?

In the 1960s, the role of engineering education was clear, whereas in the 1990s there is a search for a new rationale. These changes have been wrought by social concerns for the environment at both local and global levels. This trend will accelerate further, and both the rate of development of the trend and its implications have been underestimated. There is now a hope and expectation that technology, until now a contributor to environmental problems, can in the future play a large part in the reduction of these problems. While professional engineering organizations have addressed the problem at a policy level, implementation is a major difficulty. This is also true in education, despite efforts by some schools of engineering to adapt existing courses in an environmental direction. It is now clear that the changes needed are too fundamental and the rate of change too great to be dealt with adequately by adaptation. Basic questions of philosophy and capacity will have to be addressed by academia, engineering practice and major business.     

The Acquisition of Conceptual Skills: An Exploratory Study

It was hypothesized that explicit instruction in the use of a conceptual framework would be more effective than feedback about behavior in teaching the conceptual skills of problem definition and goal formulation to beginning practicum students. Counseling trainees received one of two kinds of supervision, instruction or feedback, in written form following an interview with a role-play client. They subsequently interviewed two more role-play clients. After each interview, trainees formulated problem definitions, short-term goals, and outcome goals for the case. At the end of the experiment, they rated the supervision they received and their own counseling performance in the three interviews. Results did not support the hypothesis, but rather the reverse. Feedback was found to be more effective in teaching goal formulation and was perceived by trainees to be more effective.