Veteran teachers’ job satisfaction as a function of personal demands and resources in the relationships with their students

Many teachers experience their profession as stressful, which can have a negative impact on their job satisfaction, and may result in burnout, absenteeism, and leaving the profession. The relationship with students can have both positive and negative implications for the job satisfaction of teachers, both early and later in their careers. The current study focused on the relationship between veteran teachers’ job satisfaction and their aspirations in teacher-student relationships. Data were gathered among 12 Dutch veteran secondary school teachers, including interviews, the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction, and the Questionnaire on Teachers’ Self-Efficacy. Veteran teachers’ job satisfaction appeared to be positively related to the extent to which their aspirations in teacher-student relationships had been realized. Teachers who had failed to realize their aspirations in teacher-student relationships showed relatively low job satisfaction, or avoided feelings of low job satisfaction by reducing the number of tasks that were directly related to teaching students. An implication for coaching veteran teachers is the need to pay more attention to the teacher-student relationship so that they can adhere to the way they would like to teach students.     

Faculty at Mid-Career: A Program to Enhance Teaching and Learning

While the number of mid-career faculty currently in U.S. higher education is significant, professional development programming that addresses the teaching and learning issues of this population has not been a priority. This article describes the Mid-Career Teaching Program (MCTP) and presents data that assesses its impact on participants' professional and personal lives. Survey and interview results indicate positive changes in teaching behaviors and knowledge as well as an increase in teaching satisfaction and confidence. Faculty also reported that MCTP renewed their energy and enthusiasm and positively impacted their life outside of the academy.     

Do interim assessments reduce the race and SES achievement gaps?

The authors examined differential effects of interim assessments on minority and low socioeconomic status students' achievement in Grades K–6. They conducted a large-scale cluster randomized experiment in 2009–2010 to evaluate the impact of Indiana's policy initiative introducing interim assessments statewide. The authors used 2-level models to analyze the single-grade data and determine whether interim assessments interacted with student ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, or school composition (i.e., percent of minority or disadvantaged students). The authors also combined estimates across grades using fixed effects meta-analysis. Results indicated little evidence about differential effects. The majority of interaction estimates were insignificant and close to zero. There is some indication that in Grades K–2 Indiana's interim assessment may have closed the Hispanic–White gap in reading. In kindergarten and Grade 3 the treatment may have widened the gap between schools with higher and lower percentages of minority students and may have reduced the gap between schools with higher and lower percentages of economically disadvantaged students in mathematics.     

Developing Coherent Conceptual Storylines: Two Elementary Challenges

The ‘conceptual storyline’ of a lesson refers to the flow and sequencing of learning activities such that science concepts align and progress in ways that are instructionally meaningful to student learning of the concepts. Research demonstrates that when teachers apply lesson design strategies to create a coherent science content storyline, student learning is positively impacted (Roth et al., 2011). Because the conceptual storyline is often implicit within a lesson, and teachers often have difficulty articulating this aspect of lesson design (Lo et al., 2014), our professional development program engages elementary teachers in analyzing and developing graphic representations of a lesson’s conceptual storyline to make that element explicit. In this exploratory study, we present typologies that represent two primary challenges teachers faced in developing coherent conceptual storylines in their lesson design, and examine the extent to which professional development enhanced their capacity to develop a coherent conceptual storyline.     

Visual performance of adults with prelingual auditory impairment

Reaction times and picture evaluations by 18 adults with hearing loss were compared with those of 18 matched controls during two visual priming tasks. In Task 1, participants reacted to sexual and plant target pictures (while influenced by similar preceding pictures) by pressing "sex" or "plant" buttons. In Task 2, they evaluated target Japanese ideographs (while influenced by preceding positive or negative facial expressions as prime pictures) by pressing "positive" or "negative" buttons. In Task 1, the controls had the faster responses. In Task 2, they showed the usual congruent priming effect during very short prime presentations. Participants with hearing loss showed this effect only during short and long prime presentation times; thus, they were not superior to the controls in picture recognition, instead showing (a) impaired processing of visual information or (b) impaired perceptual-motor skills regarding quick responses to visual information (or both).     

Building Latent Class Growth Trees

Researchers use latent class growth (LCG) analysis to detect meaningful subpopulations that display different growth curves. However, especially when the number of classes required to obtain a good fit is large, interpretation of the encountered class-specific curves might not be straightforward. To overcome this problem, we propose an alternative way of performing LCG analysis, which we call LCG tree (LCGT) modeling. For this purpose, a recursive partitioning procedure similar to divisive hierarchical cluster analysis is used: Classes are split until a certain criterion indicates that the fit does not improve. The advantage of the LCGT approach compared to the standard LCG approach is that it gives a clear insight into how the latent classes are formed and how solutions with different numbers of classes relate. The practical use of the approach is illustrated using applications on drug use during adolescence and mood regulation during the day.     

The triangel (socio-therapeutical institute)

We have given a brief outline of the work which is being done at the Triangel. We do not pretend to present a report based on a scientific justification. The aid we give seems to be better described as “the arm around the shoulder of someone in distress” than by the use of precise scientific terms. The common, natural reaction to a disturbed person is a spontaneous gesture of help. We should not try to classify him, or to adopt an attitude of cool scientific interest. The natural, instinctive approach seems to us the most obviously supportive and in this respect the Triangel would seem to serve as a model for all assistance agencies.     

Quality of infants' attachments to professional caregivers: relation to infant-parent attachment and day-care characteristics

75 infants (mean age 15 months) were observed 3 times in the Strange Situation with their professional caregivers, mothers, and fathers. Sensitivity of these attachment figures to the infant's signals during free play, as well as a number of day-care characteristics, were assessed. Attachment classification distribution of infant-caregiver dyads did not differ significantly from infant-mother or infant-father attachment classification distributions. The quality of infant-caregiver attachment was independent of both infant-mother and infant-father attachments. About 10% of the infants had 3 insecure attachments. Professional caregivers observed with more than 1 infant did not have similar types of attachment classifications to all infants with whom they were observed. Infants who were securely attached to their professional caregivers spent more hours per week in day-care, and came from a middle-class background. Their caregivers appeared to be younger and more sensitive during free play than caregivers with whom the infants developed an insecure relationship.     

A research model for the study of science teachers’ PCK and improving teacher education

In this article, a new research model for the study of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is presented which aims to improve teacher education. This model called “educational reconstruction for teacher education” (ERTE) represents the framework for an integrative approach to the study of science teachers’ topic specific PCK, which is a largely unexplored field. By integrating the PCK concept, originating in the American Curriculum tradition, into the German (Fach)didaktik tradition, this model adds a new perspective to (Fach)didaktik. This paper, therefore, also aims to clarify the PCK concept and its relation to Fachdidaktik.