The relationship among elementary teachers’ content knowledge,attitudes, beliefs,and practices

This study investigated 481 in-service elementary teachers’ level of mathematical content knowledge, attitudes toward mathematics, beliefs about the effectiveness of inquiry-based instruction, use of inquiry-based instruction and modeled the relationship among these variables. Upper elementary teachers (grades 3–5) were found to have greater content knowledge and more positive attitudes toward mathematics than primary teachers (grades K-2). There was no difference in teachers’ beliefs about effective instruction, but primary level teachers were found to use inquiry-based instruction more frequently than upper elementary teachers. Consistent with Ernest’s [Ernest (1989). The knowledge, beliefs and attitudes of the mathematics teacher: A model. Journal of Education for Teaching, 15(1), 13–33] model of mathematics teaching, content knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs were all found to be related to teachers’ instructional practice. Furthermore, beliefs were found to partially mediate the effects of content knowledge and attitudes on instructional practice. Content knowledge was found to be negatively related to beliefs in the effectiveness of inquiry-based instruction and teachers’ use of inquiry-based instruction in their classrooms. However, overall, teachers with more positive attitudes toward mathematics were more likely to believe in the effectiveness of inquiry-based instruction and use it more frequently in their classroom. Teacher beliefs were found to have the strongest effect on teachers’ practice. Implications for the goals and objectives of elementary mathematics methods courses and professional development are discussed.

Professional Academic Societies: Stewards of the Future

ABSTRACT

Academic disciplines are vulnerable in the 21st century to the forces Barnett called supercomplexity, and we argue that academic societies such as the National Association for Kinesiology in Higher Education are especially well positioned to prepare 21st century scholars to respond to contemporary changes in the disciplines and in institutions of higher education. Academic societies can respond by helping to train scholars to be stewards of their disciplines, and the means by which disciplines will do so is to focus on the character of the scholar through the development and reinforcement of specific virtues. Following the arguments of Plato, Ernest Boyer, and Alasdair MacIntyre, we argue that the development of stewards can help kinesiology respond to contemporary issues.     

The status of women in the administration of health science libraries.

Results of a survey of large health science libraries in the United States demonstrate that the relative position of men and women in administration is comparable to that prevalent in other types of libraries. Medical school and the largest libraries are the most likely to be administered by men. The percentage of women who are directors of large biomedical libraries has declined radically since 1950. The statistics presented here will serve as a base for assessing future change.     

云端上的梦

俗话说,志当存高远——那么,渴望翱翔天际、腾云驾雾的梦想,着实够高够远了吧?头脑简单的我,也曾像许多人一样,对那群以飞来飞去为职业的人充满好奇和惊叹。仰视——正如我们需要抬起头来看在空中变得如绿豆般大小的飞机一样。你看啊,这帮人,人不傻,钱又多,而且都是帅哥美女,简直把世上的好处都占去了,能不招人羡慕妒忌恨吗?     

The Arts as a Venue for Developmental Science: Realizing a Latent Opportunity

Children in all cultures readily engage in artistic activities, yet the arts (dance, drama, drawing, and music) have traditionally been marginal topics in the discipline of developmental science. We argue that developmental psychologists cannot afford to ignore such naturalistic activities that involve so many basic phenomena—attention, engagement, motivation, emotion regulation, understanding of others, and so on. Despite historical issues with research methodologies and overdrawn conclusions, a current wave of methodologically rigorous studies shows the depth of arts learning, as well as how arts engagement can be harnessed for transfer to other skills. Here, we present 21 exemplary research case studies, covering an age range of 18 months to 17 years old and discuss how the arts are no more difficult to study than other real‐world developmental phenomena and deserve a thorough examination.     

The Maine electronic document delivery project: a cooperative project of Maine hospital libraries and the NN/LM New England Region

The article discusses an Ariel document delivery project with seven Maine hospital libraries, the University of Massachusetts Medical School Library (UMass), and the New England Regional office of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. Funding was awarded to six network members to purchase equipment or Ariel software. UMass served as a document provider. During the test, libraries received documents from UMass via Ariel or via the Web as a PDF document. This form of document delivery was faster than standard service with better quality of delivered articles. The column describes the project and outlines possible future steps.     

Pacem Portantes Advenerint: Ambivalent Images of Muslims in the Chronicles of Norman Italy

The goal of this essay is to call attention to some of the more positive and ambivalent depictions of Muslims in a set of historical texts associated with the Norman takeover of Sicily in the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries. To achieve that aim, it considers social vocabulary applied to Muslims in five sources written by Amatus of Montecassino, Geoffrey Malaterra, William of Apulia, Alexander of Telese, and Hugo Falcandus. Although recent scholarship has posited that medieval identity was often felt through a “self versus other” or “Christian versus non-Christian” dichotomy, this essay questions the notion that the actual language contained in these sources ever devolved into such simplistic, binary terms. On the contrary, though the perceptions and definitions applied to this group of people were, admittedly, sometimes based on uninformed stereotypes, they were more often deliberately constructed images that were highly dependent on the cultural milieu in which they were created.     

The ‘subject of ethics’ and educational research OR Ethics or politics? Yes please!

This paper outlines a theoretical context for research into ‘the subject of ethics’ in terms of how students come to see themselves as self-reflective actors. I maintain that the ‘subject of ethics’, or ethical subjectivity, has been overlooked as a necessary aspect of creating politically transformative spaces in education. At the heart of egalitarian politics lies a fundamental tension between the equality of voices (or ways of being) and the notion that one way of being or one voice may be deemed more legitimate than another; which in turn puts the equality of beings into question. Building from Michel Foucault’s work regarding ethics and subjectivity, I suggest that a ‘subject of ethics’ can be viewed, in part, as a series of relations of self that form the horizon upon which a subject comes to work on themselves relative to moral codes and power relations. Ethical relations of self can be a useful concept for those interested in educational research that furthers social and ecological justice. In the conclusion of this paper I also discuss the limitations of locating ethics entirely within a constituted human subject.