Producing the evidence: Science teachers' initiations into practical work

The quantity, quality and fitness for purpose of much school practical work has come in for some criticism. This paper reports on questionnaire and interview studies with trainee science teachers. The study examined the reasons and justifications that teachers give for the way in which they conduct practical work. The particular focus is on counter-normative behaviour and what the behaviour indicates about the status of empirical work and the purpose of evidence in science classrooms. The questionnaire was completed by 40 trainee teachers. The analysis of the questionnaire determined the number of teachers who had produced results fraudulently either on their own initiative or had been initiated into it by experienced teachers and/or laboratory technicians. From the questionnaire we were able to select a small sample who we interviewed in order to unpack further the questionnaire responses. In discussing our data, a case for the re-evaluation of practical work in science education will be made and it will be argued that science teacher behaviour is best understood anthropologically. Possible implications for mentoring and school based training are mentioned briefly.     

Body movements of boys with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) during computer video game play

The type and severity of body movements exhibited by 79 (unmedicated) boys clinically diagnosed with ADHD (30 Predominantly Inattentive Type and 49 Combined Type), and 67 non-ADHD boys were recorded while playing Crash Bandicoot I, a Sony Playstation platform computer video game. In Crash Bandicoot, participants control the movements of a small animated figure (CB) through a hazardous jungle environment. Two tasks totaling 12 trials were administered, each of which incorporated with and without Distractor conditions. For those trials with the Distractor, a segment of the television show "The Simpsons" was simultaneously played on a television screen adjacent to the computer game monitor and at an equal volume. Contrary to theory and expectations an analysis of the data did not reveal any statistically significant differences in the frequency, type and severity of body movements between the ADHD and non-ADHD boys, or between the ADHD subtypes during computer video game play. These findings have important implications for assessment and teaching processes in both classroom and therapeutic contexts.     

Mediated transfer testing provides evidence for common coding of duration and line samples in many-to-one matching in pigeons

A three-phase transfer design was used to determine whether pigeons use a single, common code to represent line and duration samples that are associated with the same comparison stimulus. In Phase 1, two sets of samples (two lines and two durations) were associated with either a single set of comparisons (Group MTO, many-to-one) or with different sets of comparisons (Group OTO, one-to-one). In Phase 2, one set of samples was associated with a new set of comparisons. In Phase 3 (transfer test), the alternate set of samples was substituted for the Phase 2 samples. Group MTO, but not Group OTO, demonstrated immediate transfer. It was concluded that associating a line and a duration sample with the same comparison stimulus results in representation of those samples by a single code.     

Using Performance Task Data to Improve Instruction

Two well-accepted ideas among educators are (a) performance assessment is an effective means of assessing higher-order thinking skills and (b) data-driven instruction planning is a valuable tool for optimizing student learning. This article describes a locally developed performance task (LDPT) designed to measure critical thinking, problem solving, and written communication skills of elementary and middle school students in a large school district. An investigation was conducted to determine how middle school teachers use LDPT responses to inform instruction and to ascertain how students are reflecting on their performance. Results from an analysis of documents indicated teachers were engaged in formal data-informed practices within professional learning communities. Moreover, educators examined student work samples and planned instruction based on student-specific needs. Strategies to reinforce proficiency in the skills assessed by the district's LDPT are reported.     

Engaging youth in public lands monitoring: opportunities for enhancing ecological literacy and environmental stewardship

Abstract

The US Forest Service has a long history of youth conservation education. We investigated U.S. Forest Service citizen science programs that involve secondary school students in field collection of monitoring data to understand (1) how the programs integrated science and environmental education and (2) whether these programs advance ecological literacy and environmental stewardship. We conducted semi-structured interviews with the program leads, teachers, and students. Program leads and students said programs produced reliable data and met monitoring and other U.S. Forest Service stewardship objectives. Although these programs varied in design and objectives, our findings suggest these programs were incorporating both science and environmental education, and there is some indication they are creating ecological literacy among participants. Students exhibited environmental stewardship to some degree as a result of all programs, but the extent of this is tied to programs’ objectives and design.     

Cortisol reactivity is positively related to executive function in preschool children attending head start

This study examined relations among cortisol reactivity and measures of cognitive function and social behavior in 4- to 5-year-old children (N = 169) attending Head Start. Saliva samples for the assay of cortisol were collected at the beginning, middle, and end of an approximately 45-min testing session. Moderate increase in cortisol followed by down-regulation of this increase was positively associated with measures of executive function, self-regulation, and letter knowledge but not with measures of receptive vocabulary, emotion knowledge, or false belief understanding. Regression analysis indicates that executive function accounted for the association between cortisol reactivity and self-regulation and letter knowledge.     

Summer session faculty salaries: A research note

This brief research note addresses the issue of summer session faculty salaries. Specifically, it demonstrates that for 77 reporting institutions, only 15 indicated that they paid the standard 2/9ths, or 22.2%, of the previous academic year's salary for full-time summer session teaching. The percentages paid for full-time summer session faculty ranged from 11% to 34%, with an average rate of 17.4%.     

Should education be transformative?

ABSTRACT

It has become commonplace within the educational research community to invoke the transformative power of education. The call to adopt a ‘transformative’ approach to teaching and learning can be heard in fields as different as adult education and school leadership and as estranged as social justice education and educational psychology. While there is undoubtedly great promise in the idea of transformative education, the fact that it involves deep psychological restructuring on the part of the student requires ethical justification. In this article, I analyze the three most pressing ethical problems that arise within a transformative educational environment: the problems of transformative consent, controversial direction and transformative trauma. In the concluding section, I argue that this ethical analysis urges us to adopt an approach to transformative education as a process of initiation.     

Maslow's hierarchy of needs revisited

The paper reviews Maslow's hierarchy of prepotent needs and his characterization of the self-actualizing personality. It suggests that since so few among the general population meet Maslow's own criteria for self-actualization, an educational system designed to produce such personalities must fail of its object in an overwhelming percentage of cases. The goal being unreachable, teachers tend to lower their sights and attend only to the lower stages of the hierarchy (security, self-esteem), and thus dilute the cognitive content of learning. Moreover, Maslow's hierarchy is not dialectical, in the sense that the completion of each stage does not necessarily lead to the next level. The self-actualizing personality appears as a mysterious leap from one stage to another, and cannot be engineered from without. As an alternative, the paper suggests a more logical sequence of needs based on the development of rationality.