Advancing the case for creativity through graduate business education

We describe an MBA course focusing on creativity and innovation in organizations. Drawing on the creativity literature and experiential learning theory, the theoretical foundations of the course are discussed. Core aspects of the course include reading articles from academic journals and business periodicals, engaging a wide variety of experiential activities, keeping a personal journal, and completing two individual projects. We sought to understand the effect of the course on students’ perceptions of the importance of creativity for organizations, their own creativity and self-perceptions of creativity, as well as their perceptions of the utility of journaling. Data were collected at the beginning and end of the course to examine these issues. The results suggest that the course had a positive influence in each case. These results are discussed and thoughts for future research are provided.     

Consultants and Coteachers Affecting Student Outcomes with Numbered Heads Together: Keeping All Engaged

General education teachers, special education teachers, social workers, psychologists, and a myriad of specialists are responsible for delivering content to all students within inclusive environments. These educational teams continue to search for strategies that can be recommended or used in an inclusive environment. Researchers have discovered that an instructional strategy such as Numbered Heads Together (NHT) increases both academic and behavioral outcomes for students with and without disabilities. This article provides consultants, Response to Intervention (RtI) team members, and coteaching teams with a specific strategy of NHT that can be used by two or more professionals to develop lessons or deliver instruction using a coteaching or consultant approach with both professionals (consultant and general education teacher) assessing learner outcomes after the completion of the activity.     

Predictors of Criminal Justice Undergraduates’ Intentions to Pursue Graduate Education in Criminology or Criminal Justice

This study relies on data from 388 junior and senior criminal justice majors to examine predictors of intentions to pursue graduate education in criminology, criminal justice, or a closely related field. Logistic regression results demonstrate that women, students who receive greater encouragement to attend graduate school, students with a lower aversion to reading, writing, and statistics, and students who perceive greater diversity intolerance are more likely to report graduate school intentions. Although students’ race was not found to be significant in the overall model, split-sample models revealed that the significance of predictors varied by race and ethnicity. In discussing the findings, special attention is given to the need for primarily White institutions (PWIs) to partner with historically Black college and universities (HBCUs). We conclude by calling for departments to redouble their efforts to diversify their faculty and student bodies.     

The effect of an informal science intervention on middle school girls’ science affinities

This study investigates the impact of an informal science outreach programme built around theories of identity formation and self-efficacy on middle school girls’ science affinities. A lottery-based, randomised control trial was used to identify programme effects on four science affinity outcomes: science interests, efficacy with science, science attitudes, and science identity. A multivariate analysis of variance demonstrated that programme participants scored higher than their control group peers on weighted composite of post-programme affinity indicators. These results suggest that informal science education may offer a venue through which to support the formation of science identities and efficacy in girls. Implications for including psychosocial support elements into science classroom pedagogy and science education standards are discussed.     

Analysis of teaching physical education to second-grade students using sport education

The purpose of this article was to provide an account of second-grade students and teachers, as well as a non-participant observer, after they participated in a season of Sport Education. For a total of 12 lessons, students participated in a season of developing throwing and catching and kicking skills. Interviews were conducted at the conclusion of the season to collect data from students and teachers regarding their experience. Field notes from the non-participant observer were also recorded. Although Sport Education is commonly introduced to students no earlier than the fourth grade, results revealed that there is the potential for introducing Sport Education to students as early as the second grade, a year in which the children typically turn eight years old. It is suggested that future studies of Sport Education with second-grade students could potentially enhance the learning experience of physical education students at the beginning of their school career.     

An Investigation of the Effectiveness of an Evaluation Instrument Designed for Use with Modular Masters Courses in a Range of International Contexts

In a previous paper the construction of an instrument designed to be of use in the evaluation of modular Masters courses for teachers and administrators in international schools was described. Initial impressions of the efficacy of the instrument were encouraging, and its use was extended in a number of ways within the scheme of continuing professional development organised through the Centre for the study of Education in an International Context at the University of Bath. In particular, the evaluation model was extended to three different modules taught in an increased number of Study Centre locations, by different tutors, to groups of different sizes and composition. Under such a range of conditions the question arises of parity of quality in the delivery of the modules, and the usefulness of the evaluation instrument in contributing to an assessment of the quality of teaching and learning was explored. This paper describes the results of an investigation undertaken to test the robustness of the instrument with respect to both the increased range of dimensions involved and the level of detail possible. The outcomes confirm initial impressions of the overall value of the instrument in assessing general levels of satisfaction expressed by participants with respect to a variety of course features, but also indicate the ways in which it could be employed as a tool to evaluate the relative contributions to overall success made by a set of components concerned with the content of the modules, the teaching arrangements, support for participants and the relevance of the modules to the educational work of those taking part.     

A Critical Study of Comics

The paper describes a project for Liverpool John Moores University PGCE Art and Design students in which they carried out practical research into comics and graphic novels as part of their preparation for teaching. The students were encouraged to investigate the history of the genre, its formal properties as well as its potential as a vehicle for social realism. The practical task was to prepare a single comic book page design, in the course of which they explored a range of possibilities from imaginative children's stories to serious issues such as illness and abuse. They took the opportunity to investigate the potential of this sequential medium to construct narratives using devices such as sequence, repetition and multiple perspectives as well as the juxtapositions of image and text. The paper contains examples of students' work where the investigations yielded interesting and innovative results.     

Differentiating the neural response to intervention in children with developmental dyslexia

Developmental dyslexia is associated with functional abnormalities within reading areas of the brain. For some children diagnosed with dyslexia, phonologically based remediation programs appear to rehabilitate brain function in key reading areas (Shaywitz et al., Biological Psychiatry 55: 101–110, 2004; Simos et al., Neuroscience 58: 1203–1213, 2002). However, a non-trivial number of children diagnosed with dyslexia fail to respond to these interventions (Torgesen, Learning Disabilities Research & Practice 15: 55–64, 2000). A cross-sectional fMRI study investigating post-treatment effects was conducted in an effort to better understand differences in brain function between treatment responders and non-responders. Educational testing and brain activation measured after treatment suggested that the reading intervention used in the present study rehabilitated several basic level reading processes in all participants diagnosed with dyslexia. However, activation in the left inferior parietal lobe differentiated treatment responders and non-responders in comparison to non-impaired readers. Children with persistent deficits in single word decoding (treatment non-responders) demonstrated significantly less activation in the left inferior parietal lobe when compared to non-impaired readers.