Effects of integrated video media on student achievement and attitudes in high school chemistry

This study explored the effects of an integrated video media curriculum enhancement on students' achievement and attitudes in a first-year general high school chemistry course within a multiculturally diverse metropolitan school district. Through the use of a treatment-control experimental design, approximately 450 students in Grades 9–12 were sampled on measures of chemistry achievement and attitude over the period of 1 academic year. The results revealed significantly higher achievement scores on standardized measures of achievement as well as on microunit researcher-designed, criterion-referenced quizzes for the treatment students who experienced a general chemistry course enhanced with an integrated use of a structured chemistry video series. Correlation of student achievement with logical thinking ability revealed that students with high levels of logical thinking ability benefited most from the video-enhanced curriculum. Treatment students also scored significantly higher than control students on the chemistry attitude instrument. These results along with qualitative supportive evidence suggest that this integrated video media curriculum intervention can positively affect student chemistry achievement and attitude across ability levels and across a diverse multicultural population. Furthermore, the data suggest that educational science video media in general, and the World of Chemistry video series in particular, are instructional tools that can be used effectively to bring the often abstract, distant worlds of science into close focus and within the personal meaningful realm of each individual student. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 34: 617–631, 1997.     

Agent-regret and sporting glory

ABSTRACT

When sporting agents fail through wrongful or faulty behaviour, they should feel guilty; when they fail because of a deficiency in their abilities, they should feel shame. But sometimes we fail without being deficient and without being at fault. I illustrate this with two examples of players, Moacir Barbosa and Roberto Baggio, who failed in World Cup finals and cost their teams the greatest prize in sport. Although both players failed, I suggest that neither was at fault and neither was deficient. I argue that we can fail through no fault of our own because our abilities are always fallible. This fallibility means that to succeed – to achieve sporting glory – we must run the risk of failure. The appropriate emotion to feel over such failures is agent-regret. Sporting agents and observers should not take up what I call the ‘critical position’: the idea that someone who fails must be deficient or must have been at fault. This allows for a softer, but also more accurate, attitude towards our own failures and the failures of others. I end by suggesting that the fallibility of our abilities is made clear through playing or watching sport, and this can illuminate life more broadly.     

POLITICAL ACTS? TOWARD THE RECUPERATION OF OPINION

Encouraging debate on inclusion and equity can meet with awkward silences, particularly across disciplinary boundaries. In disability studies, for example, it can be difficult to build dialogue with other disciplines; as a consequence, the different disciplinary groups within the field of education often end up working in their own "equity" silos. In this essay Valerie Harwood addresses this concern by drawing on Hannah Arendt's emphasis on the importance of opinion together with Michel Foucault's work on truth-telling and critique. Following Arendt's emphasis on opinion and the political, Harwood makes the case that political acts in education require that we recuperate the importance of opinion and to take account of how truth functions in our contemporary context.     

Young people,education and unlawful non‐citizenship: spectral sovereignty and governmentality in Australia

This paper considers Judith Butler’s discussion of the intersections between governmentality and sovereign power in Precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence. We consider this interrelationship with a view to considering how this might enable us to expand our understanding of contemporary discourses governing young people within and outside Australia. In particular we focus on the production of groups of young people, such as those classified as ‘illegal immigrants’ who may be situated outside the frame of ‘public good’ or the ‘private interest’. This enables for a theorisation of the lives of groups of young people who may ‘have no definitive prospect for a re‐entry into the political fabric of life, even as one’s situation is highly, if not fatally, politicized’. It is questionable whether the Foucauldian notion of governmentality gives sufficient account of the lives of these young people whose conduct is effectively considered irrelevant by the State. As educators, it is arguable that we have an ethical imperative to encourage our students to care for themselves, and for others, especially those others whose lives have been ‘fatally politicized’.     

‘It’s more than care’: early childhood educators’ concepts of professionalism

This article reports on the findings from a small-scale study of early childhood educators’ perceptions of their roles, responsibilities and ideas related to professionalism. Twenty-five early childhood educators from Canada (Ontario), Nigeria and South Africa participated in qualitative interviews to address the following questions: (1) In what ways do early childhood educators perceive of themselves as professionals? (2) How is the concept of professionalism impacted by values, beliefs and experiences? And (3) Do contextual variations exist in conceptualizations of ECE professionalism? Valuable insights were gained into the commonality of educators’ experiences and ideas across contexts, as well as the prominence of an ‘ethic of care’ as an inherent aspect of teacher professionalism. The study’s findings provide support for the literature advocating for care (and passion) as a social principle within education and socially constructed ideals of professionalism.     

Literature of broadcasting: Books in review

TELEVISION AND RADIO ANNOUNCING. By Stuart W. Hyde. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1959. 451 pp. $6.00.

TELEVISION ADVERTISING. By Clark Aknew and Neil O'Brien. New York: McGraw‐Hill Book Company, 1958. 330 pp. $9.50.

INTRODUCTION TO MASS COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH. Edited by Ralph O. Nafziger and David Manning White. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1958. 244 pp. $5.00.

THE MERGER. By Sterling Quinlan. New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1958. 331 pp.

SCREEN WRITING AND PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES. By Charles W. Curran, New York. Hastings House, 1958. 240 pp., illus. $4.95.     

Literature of broadcasting: Books in review

THE TELEVISION COMMERCIAL, revised edition, by Harry Wayne McMahan. New York: Hastings House, 1957. 223 pp. $6.50.

THE AGE OF TELEVISION. By Leo Bogart. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1956. 348 pp. $6.50. Text edition, $4.75.

ELEMENTS OF COLOR IN PROFESSIONAL MOTION PICTURES, prepared by a Special Committee of the SMPTE, W. R. Holm, Chairman. Published (1957) by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, 55 West 42nd Street, New York 36; 104 pages, 27 in color, 53/4”; by 81/2”; hard‐bound. Price is $3.50 for single copies.

TELEVISION AUDIENCE RESEARCH FOR GREAT BRITAIN. By Arthur C. Nielsen. A. C. Nielson Company, 1955. 143 pp.

SAY IT SAFELY. By Paul P. Ashley. The University of Washington Press, 1957. 117 pp. $2.50.     

Earnings & education of men & women in selected media occupations

Using basic census information, and manipulating that data to show sexual differences in rates of pay, the following brief note provides a statistical basis for some commonly‐held assumptions on the low‐pay status of women. The author is professor and Dean of the School of Communications and Theater at Temple University in Philadelphia.