Designing a Deeply Digital Science Curriculum: Supporting Teacher Learning and Implementation with Organizing Technologies

This paper examines the impacts of technology (e.g., Chromebooks, Google Drive) on teacher learning and student activity in the development and implementation of a deeply digital high school biology unit. Using design-based implementation research, teachers co-designed with researchers and curriculum specialists a student-centered unit aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) that utilizes classroom technology. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected to understand the barriers that inhibit the implementation of a digital curriculum as well as the extent that teachers engage in the design process and begin to make shifts in their practice. We found that through the co-design process teachers began to shift their knowledge of NGSS, technology implementation, and adapted to tensions and barriers inherent in the process.     

Mentors and Muses: New Strategies for Academic Success

Mentoring programs in higher education institutions have met with mixed success. In response to the limitations inherent in the dominant approaches to mentoring, we present an example of a unusual mentoring program, the New Scholars Network (NSN). The NSN is a variant of traditional mentoring approaches, having evolved from mentoring into musing. Framed within a radical humanist philosophy, musing is a process of creating peer communities that facilitates connections between naturally developing relationships, shared power, and collective action. Through mentoring as musing new faculty have the potential to evolve as change agents in the institution, instead of assimilating into the existing system.     

Emergence of choice strategies in the rat: Shift-stay differentiation precedes win-lose differentiation

The choice strategies of rat pups between 12 and 21 days of age were studied in a two-choice discrimination procedure that used access to a nonlactating anesthetized dam as a reward. After receiving a reward (win) or not receiving a reward (lose), a pup repeated a previous choice (stay) or made an alternative response (shift). At 12 and 15 days of age, pups demonstrated neither a stay nor a shift response strategy; at 18 and 21 days of age, pups had a robust tendency to shift. Winning or losing did not alter behavior until 21 days of age, at which point winning produced a greater tendency to return to the initially visited location for rats in the stay condition.     

Adult Education and the Health Literacy of Hispanic Immigrants in the United States

Discussion on the advantages of integrating health literacy into adult education has primarily been theoretical and conceptual. There is a need for studies that assess the impact of adult education on health literacy. This study implemented a quasi-experimental design to explore whether basic adult instruction may constitute a venue for improving health literacy among Spanish-speaking immigrants. Participants included adults in a High School Equivalency program in a US-Mexico border community who received either a standard GED curriculum or a GED curriculum enhanced with health literacy content. The Short Spanish TOFHLA was used to measure health literacy. While S-TOFHLA scores and health literacy levels improved in all participants, no statistically significant differences were observed across groups. Results are consistent with recommendations supporting adult education as a strategy for improving health literacy.     

Multiple Perspectives in Supervision: Using a Peer Consultation Model to Enhance Supervisor Development

Research and literature in the profession of counselor supervision primarily focus on the development of the trainee and what supervision and supervisors can do to help foster that development. Considerably less attention has been paid to the developmental path of the supervisor or how specific training or experiences in supervision can be used in intentional ways to help influence the development of the supervisor. This article reviews what is known about supervisor development and discusses a specific intervention, the use of a peer consultation model with an intentionally diverse group of supervisors, to enhance supervisor cognitive development.     

Tool time: Gender and students' use of tools,control, and authority

In this study, we examined how students used science equipment and tools in constructing knowledge during science instruction. Within a geographical metaphor, we focused on how students use tools when constructing new knowledge, how control of tools is actualized from pedagogical perspectives, how language and tool accessibility intersect, how gender intersects with tool use, and how competition for resources impacts access to tools. Sixteen targeted students from five elementary science classes were observed for 3 days of instruction. Results showed gender differences in students' use of exclusive language and commands, as well as in the ways students played and tinkered with tools. Girls tended to carefully follow the teacher's directions during the laboratory and did little playing or tinkering with science tools. Male students tended to use tools in inventive and exploratory ways. Results also showed that whether or not a student had access to his or her own materials became indicative of the type of verbal interactions that took place during the science investigation. Gender‐related patterns in how tools are shared, how dyads relate to the materials and each other, and how materials are used to build knowledge are described. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 760–783, 2000     

“Do We Have to Call It That?” The Response of Neoliberal Multiculturalism to College Antiracism Efforts

The authors discuss the ways in which neoliberal multiculturalism influences the reception and implementation of antiracist initiatives on college campuses. They suggest the intersections of neoliberalism and racism produce a resistance to antiracist efforts and desire for softened multicultural approaches that maintain the status quo. Since the logics of White supremacy and capitalism dominate every space of our society, critical multiculturalism must address these oppressive systems in antiracism education.