Test-Based Learning: Inconsistent Effects Between Higher- and Lower-Level Test Questions

Providing test questions after an initial study phase is a common instructional technique. In theory, questions that require higher-level (deep) processing should be more beneficial than those that require lower-level (shallow) processing. However, empirical evidence on the matter is inconsistent. To shed light on two potential reasons for these inconsistencies, we conducted an experiment (N = 81) to analyze the role of (a) the share of information to which test questions direct learners and (b) the learning activities performed in the initial study phase with respect to the effects between higher- and lower-level test questions. We found that both the share of focused information and the initial learning activities moderated the effects between higher- and lower-level test questions.     

The Politics of Dissertation Advising: How Early Career Women Faculty Negotiate Access and Participation

Dissertation committees are complex social arenas that underscore expertise, image, and peer relationships—all of which affect professional identity and advancement. This study presents a sampling of how early career women faculty members learn about and negotiate their participation on dissertation committees. Research questions focused on participants’ concerns about the social and political aspects of participation viz à viz peer relationships and faculty rewards. We analyzed interview data using both holistic and constant comparative methods, resulting in a working model of active participation across three domains: knowledge, access, and membership. We also identified developmental trends of dissertation committee engagement across the early career.     

Creating Quality Assurance in Curriculum: Theory and Practice at a Canadian Community College

Quality Assurance in Curriculum is a customized solution to the problems of assuring curricular quality in a dynamic community college environment. It was designed by Red River College, a large, comprehensive community college in Western Canada, to address academic cross-jurisdictional issues in establishing and verifying curriculum. It is a system based on current theory in educational quality, and it uses a three-stage methodology incorporating a variety of survey, planning, and consultation techniques. Benchmarked data figure prominently in assuring academic program curricular conformance is measured according to accepted college mission and accepted standards. Initiated in 2000, each stage of the Quality Assurance in Curriculum strategy has moved from initial concept to preliminary trials through acceptance to full implementation across all academic faculties of the community college.     

Differential effects of three professional development models on teacher knowledge and student achievement in elementary science

To identify links among professional development, teacher knowledge, practice, and student achievement, researchers have called for study designs that allow causal inferences and that examine relationships among features of interventions and multiple outcomes. In a randomized experiment implemented in six states with over 270 elementary teachers and 7,000 students, this project compared three related but systematically varied teacher interventions—Teaching Cases, Looking at Student Work, and Metacognitive Analysis—along with no‐treatment controls. The three courses contained identical science content components, but differed in the ways they incorporated analysis of learner thinking and of teaching, making it possible to measure effects of these features on teacher and student outcomes. Interventions were delivered by staff developers trained to lead the teacher courses in their regions. Each course improved teachers' and students' scores on selected‐response science tests well beyond those of controls, and effects were maintained a year later. Student achievement also improved significantly for English language learners in both the study year and follow‐up, and treatment effects did not differ based on sex or race/ethnicity. However, only Teaching Cases and Looking at Student Work courses improved the accuracy and completeness of students' written justifications of test answers in the follow‐up, and only Teaching Cases had sustained effects on teachers' written justifications. Thus, the content component in common across the three courses had powerful effects on teachers' and students' ability to choose correct test answers, but their ability to explain why answers were correct only improved when the professional development incorporated analysis of student conceptual understandings and implications for instruction; metacognitive analysis of teachers' own learning did not improve student justifications either year. Findings suggest investing in professional development that integrates content learning with analysis of student learning and teaching rather than advanced content or teacher metacognition alone. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 333–362, 2012     

Using the theory of successful intelligence as a framework for developing assessments in AP physics

A new test of Advanced Placement Physics, explicitly designed to balance both content and cognitive-processing skills, was developed using Sternberg’s theory of successful intelligence. The test was administered to 281 AP Physics students from 10 schools during the 2006–2007 school year. Six empirically distinguishable profiles of strengths and weaknesses emerged from an exploratory Q-type factor analysis across the four cognitive-skill areas assessed (i.e., memory, analytical, creative, and practical skills). These profiles replicated those found in previous research in the domains of AP Psychology and AP Statistics. Furthermore, achievement differences between ethnic groups on various cognitive subscales were reduced as compared with traditional estimates. The results provide evidence of the importance of integrating modern theories of cognitive processing into large-scale assessments.     

The use of public learning diaries in blended learning

Learning diaries—as we employ them—are students’ written reflections of their learning experiences and outcomes over the course of university seminars. The writing of such diaries is ‘tutored’ by a computer program: eHELp supports the writing of sophisticated learning diaries through a modelling and scaffolding of the phases of planning, production and revision. In addition, the learning diaries get published—by uploading them in a cooperation platform—so that the learners can read and discuss their peers’ diaries. The main function of such public learning diaries is to enrich traditional university courses (Blended Learning) with additional elaborative, organisational, critical reasoning, and metacognitive activities in order to foster a deeper processing and better retention of the contents to be learnt. We would like to present the educational rationale of our approach and report the findings of corresponding empirical studies.     

Benchlearning – an action research program for transforming leadership and school practices

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we investigate how a Benchlearning program for principals in Norway and Sweden supports changes in Norwegian principals’ leadership practices. The program design builds on principles for practical action research. The aim of the program was to inspire changes in the principals’ leadership practices that encourage innovative school practices. The program includes learning modes such as theoretical inputs, sharing experiences, school visits, training, and trialling of new leadership practices. Drawing on data from participants’ reflections on their learning and changes in their leadership practices, we identify transformations that have been realized and the ways in which the Benchlearning program has supported the transformations. The findings indicate that the program can be seen as a systematic and disciplined process, a ‘meta-practice’, that supports changes in the principals’ leadership practices, their understandings, and the conditions of their practice. More specifically, the findings show that the theoretical inputs and practical learning modes stimulated transformations of the principals’ thinking about leadership practices, what they do in practice and how they relate to others. In particular, the study suggests that the principals’ active participation in trialling new leadership practices in their own schools stimulated transformations.     

Teacher as Tragic Ironist

In this article Karl Hostetler portrays teachers as tragic ironists whose existence is prone to “playful disruptions of the soul,” when the meaning and value of ideas pertinent to teaching — including “teaching” itself — become puzzling, prompting a reassessment and reinvigoration of those ideas. In developing his concept of tragic irony, Hostetler draws particularly on Jonathan Lear's A Case for Irony and the Greek tragedies Oedipus Tyrannus and Medea. According to Lear, the aim of irony is “to inject a certain form of not‐knowing into polis life.” Relatedly, Hostetler observes, a frequent theme in classical Greek tragedy is the misery that can result from purporting to “know.” Tragedy and irony, he argues, can be particularly powerful and unsettling avenues for introducing uncertainty. He further contends that teachers as tragic ironists maintain a measure of uncertainty about their craft, not only recognizing that they do not know everything, but sometimes questioning whether they know anything. In a culture that tends to valorize certainty, Hostetler concludes, this is an essential attitude in the practice of and discourse about education.