Now I’m Ready: The Impact of a Professional Development Initiative on Faculty Concerns with Program Assessment

This article examines the impact of a faculty professional development effort on the understanding, confidence, and attitudes of education faculty related to program assessment activities. We applied literature on the adoption of innovations, institutional effectiveness, and professional development to a case study of a series of workshops on assessment. The results suggest that faculty members had improved skills and knowledge, understanding, confidence, and attitudes regarding assessment following the workshops. The opportunity for faculty members to collaborate with colleagues on assessment and to develop an understanding of the kinds of supports in place for assessment work were important elements in the gains.     

Career motivation of secondary students in STEM: a cross-cultural study between Korea and Indonesia

The purpose of this study was to understand the career motivation of secondary students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by comparing Korean and Indonesian students. Effects of gender and educational level on students’ STEM career motivation were also examined. To test for differences, we used Rasch analysis, 3-way ANOVA, correlation analysis, and multiple group path analysis. STEM career motivation was found to be significantly affected by interactions between country, gender, and educational level. Overall, Indonesian students had more STEM career motivation than Korean students. Korean students showed larger gender differences in STEM career motivation than Indonesian students.     

Investigating the effect of school‐wide positive behavioral interventions and supports on student learning and behavioral problems in elementary and middle schools

Many states have scaled up School‐Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SW‐PBIS) with the goal of improving student behavior and academic outcomes. Although the effects of SW‐PBIS on behavioral and discipline outcomes have been promising, the findings for academic achievement have been inconclusive and are often limited to cross‐sectional data. This paper examined the longitudinal effect of SW‐PBIS on student behavioral problems and academic achievement growth in elementary and middle schools using propensity score matching. We found no statistically significant longitudinal effects of SW‐PBIS on either student behavior problems or academic achievement among elementary and middle schools in this quasi‐experimental design, even though the positive direction of longitudinal changes would be identified. The result raised questions about the efficacy of SW‐PBIS using a statewide achievement test when scaled up to a state level. Additional research is needed to better understand the impact of SW‐PBIS using rigorous scale‐up designs.     

Testing one premise of scientific inquiry in science classrooms: Examining students' scientific explanations and student learning

In this study, we analyzed the quality of students' written scientific explanations found in notebooks and explored the link between the quality of the explanations and students' learning. We propose an approach to systematically analyzing and scoring the quality of students' explanations based on three components: claim, evidence to support it, and a reasoning that justifies the link between the claim and the evidence. We collected students' science notebooks from eight science inquiry‐based middle‐school classrooms in five states. All classrooms implemented the same scientific‐inquiry based curriculum. The study focuses on one of the implemented investigations and the students' explanations that resulted from it. Nine students' notebooks were selected within each classroom. Therefore, a total of 72 students' notebooks were analyzed and scored using the proposed approach. Quality of students' explanations was linked with students' performance in different types of assessments administered as the end‐of‐unit test: multiple‐choice test, predict‐observe‐explain, performance assessment, and a short open‐ended question. Results indicated that: (a) Students' written explanations can be reliably scored with the proposed approach. (b) Constructing explanations were not widely implemented in the classrooms studied despite its significance in the context of inquiry‐based science instruction. (c) Overall, a low percentage of students (18%) provided explanations with the three expected components. The majority of the sample (40%) provided only claims without any supporting data or reasoning. And (d) the magnitude of the correlations between students' quality of explanations and their performance, were all positive but varied in magnitude according to the type of assessment. We concluded that engaging students in the construction of high quality explanations may be related to higher levels of student performance. The opportunities to construct explanations in science‐inquiry based classrooms, however, seem to be limited. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47: 583–608, 2010     

Destruction of hexafluoroethane in a dielectric-packed bed plasma reactor

The destruction of hexafluoroethane （C2F6）, also known as R- 116, was investigated in a nonthermal plasma reactor packed with dielectric pellets. The effects of the feed gas composition and the input power on the destruction of C2F6 were examined. The feed gas composition was varied by changing the oxygen content, the argon content and the initial C2F6 concentration. An increased input power led to increased C2F6 destruction as a result of promoting the electron-molecule collisions to dissociate C2F6 molecules. The addition of argon to the feed gas greatly improved the C2F6 destruction by reducing the energy losses due to vibrational excitation and dissociation of N2 molecules, while the increases in the oxygen content and the initial C2F6 concentration decreased the destruction efficiency. The byproducts including CO2, CO, COF2, CF4, SiF4, NO2, and N2O were identified, and the destruction mechanisms were elucidated, referring to these compounds. The most abundant byproduct was found to be carbonyl fluoride （COF2）, indicating that it serves as an important medium to convert C2F6 into CO2. The energy requirement for the C2F6 destruction was in the range of 8.2-45.3 MJ/g, depending on the initial concentration.     

Counting absolute numbers of items,from 1 to 8, in pigeons

Pigeons were trained in a forced choice task with four alternatives to categorize arrays consisting of 1, 3, 5, or 8 dots. Before the pigeons chose a comparison stimulus, they were required to peck each dot sequentially. A single peck to a dot, which was defined as an indicating response, changed the color of the dot so that it was differentiated from those that remained to be counted. The pigeons successfully learned to categorize the numerical arrays and then displayed transfer to novel arrays consisting of two, four, six, or seven dots, in a manner according to the order of 1 < 2 < 3 < 4 < 5 < 6 < 7 < 8. Subsequent tests revealed that the pigeons discriminated the stimuli by relying on the number of indicating responses. They also utilized multiple information (surface area, time, and other confounded events), but this was of minor significance, and after training, the pigeons were able to disregard these cues.     

Classifying higher education institutions in Korea: a performance-based approach

The purpose of this study was to classify higher education institutions according to institutional performance rather than predetermined benchmarks. Institutional performance was defined as research performance and classified using Hierarchical Cluster Analysis, a statistical method that classifies objects according to specified classification factors. In the analysis, 47 Korean universities with doctoral programs were classified as research universities (seven universities), research active universities (14 universities), and doctoral universities (26 universities). In the detailed discussions, profiles of each group were analyzed and discussed; and, disciplinary classifications were conducted in engineering, natural science, and social science and humanities. In addition, to validate the classifications, the research performances of these categories were compared with those of U.S. peers. In the comparisons, the research performance of Korean universities was similar to that of U.S. peers. From the analysis, the classification results emerging from the performance-based approach were shown to be equivalent to that of conventional classifications using predetermined benchmarks.

Growth of Social Competence During the Preschool Years: A 3‐Year Longitudinal Study

This study examined the stability and growth over a 3‐year period of individual differences in preschool children's social competence, which was assessed in three domains: social engagement/motivation, profiles of behavior and personality attributes characteristic of socially competent young children, and peer acceptance. A total of 255 children (126 girls and 129 boys) participated in this study. Growth curve analyses demonstrated both stability and change with regard to social competence over early childhood. Social competence measures and latent variables were invariant over this time period, individual differences in social competence were largely stable from year to year, and significant increases over time were observed for the domain most closely reflective of specific personal attributes skills.