Peer and Faculty Mentoring for Students Pursuing a PHD in Gerontology

The Graduate Center for Gerontology at the University of Kentucky incorporates three levels of mentoring in its PhD program. This project assessed satisfaction with peer and faculty mentoring and explored their perceived benefits and purposes. Core and affiliate faculty and current and graduated students were surveyed. Participants seemed satisfied with the mentoring they were giving and receiving, although all groups discussed limitations. Peer mentors were seen as social support and advice givers, while faculty mentors were viewed as responsible for direction and skill-building. These results can contribute to the development of new mentorship programs and the modification of existing ones.     

Gestures and conceptual integration in mathematical talk

Spontaneous gesture produced in conjunction with speech is considered as both a source of data about mathematical thinking, and as an integral modality in communication and cognition. The analysis draws on a corpus of more than 200 gestures collected during 3 h of interviews with prospective elementary school teachers on the topic of fractions. The analysis examines how gestures express meaning, utilizing the framework of cognitive linguistics to argue that gestures are both composed of, and provide inputs to, conceptual blends for mathematical ideas, and a standard typology drawn from gesture studies is extended to address the function of gestures within mathematics more appropriately. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of the original article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Investigating Teachers' Mathematics Teaching Understanding: A Case for Coordinating Perspectives

This paper provides a microanalysis of one Algebra I teacher's instruction to explore the advantages that are afforded us by coordinating two perspectives to document and account for the teacher's mathematical understandings. We use constructs associated with Stein, Grover and Henningsen's domain of mathematical didactics and Realistic Mathematics Education's instructional design theory to infer what the teacher might understand to effectively implement her instructional goals and, more importantly, support student learning. By coordinating these perspectives, we developed a working framework for analyzing the teacher's classroom practice retrospectively. For example, we illustrate how the mathematical possibilities related to one student's question might inform the teacher's decisions as she initiates shifts in students' self-generated models. Additionally, we illustrate how the teacher's decision to capitalize on particular students' models contributes in part to the kinds of mathematical ideas that can be explored and the connections students can make among those ideas. More generally, we explore the utility of coordinating these two perspectives to understand the landscape of ideas that teachers might traverse to align their practices with reform recommendations in the United States.     

Participants’ evaluation of consultation: implications for training in school psychology

Evaluation of graduate students’ consultation skills is essential to competent practice in school settings. Congruence of evaluation of the consultation experience has been shown as an important factor in the development of competent consultants in other, related disciplines. The current study analysed student consultant and teacher consultee perspectives on several dimensions, including school system entry, knowledge gaps, territorial concerns, role ambivalence, and problems inherent in student–staff member interaction. Results of tests for congruence of ratings of providers and recipients of consultation services suggest a number of concerns regarding the preparation of graduate student consultants for successful practise in school settings, including inadequate preparation for systems entry, conflict over shared problem solving and the need to balance expertise with collaboration, and graduate student’s lack of knowledge of instructional practices. Implications for training graduate students in school-based consultation are discussed.     

In practice: Community service scholarship programs provide meaningful engagement for low‐income students

The University of Wisconsin‐Milwaukee offers financial incentives to low‐income students to perform community service. Laurie Marks explains why.     

Item-Level Comparative Analysis of Online and Paper Administrations of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills

This article describes a comparative study conducted at the item level for paper and online administrations of a statewide high stakes assessment. The goal was to identify characteristics of items that may have contributed to mode effects. Item-level analyses compared two modes of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) for up to four subjects at two grade levels. The analyses included significance tests of p-value differences, DIF, and response distributions for each item. Additional analyses investigated item position effects and objective-level mode differences. No evidence of item position effects emerged, but significant differences were found for several items and objectives in all subjects at grade 8 and in mathematics and English language arts (ELA) at grade 11. Differences generally favored the paper group. ELA items that were longer in passage length and math items that required graphing and geometric manipulations or involved scrolling in the online administration tended to be the items showing mode differences.