The Impact of Teacher Classroom Practices on Student Achievement during the Implementation of a Reform‐based Chemistry Curriculum     

Gillian Roehrig  Shauna Garrow 《International Journal of Science Education》2013,35(14):1789-1811

Evidence of a gap in student understanding has been well documented in chemistry: the typical student holds an abundance of misconceptions. The current expectation is that educational reform will foster greater student achievement via inquiry teaching within classrooms. Using assessments involving both conceptual and algorithmic knowledge of gas behaviour, gas laws, and phase changes in chemistry, this study aims to determine the relationship between inquiry teaching and student achievement. The topics were tested in the context of a unit from a reform‐based curriculum that features inquiry, hands‐on activities, and cooperative learning. This curriculum provides step‐by‐step guidance for each lesson in the teacher materials, in order to promote quality inquiry teaching. Two schools were involved in this study, with two high school chemistry teachers from each school. Each teacher participated in professional development and implemented this curriculum with sufficient training and guidance to develop reform methods. Student achievement was found to positively correlate with the use of inquiry teaching about the assessed concepts, regardless of teacher experience or school context.  相似文献   

Listening to the Boys: English boys' views on the desirable characteristics of teachers of sex education     

Gillian L. S. Hilton 《Sex education》2013,13(1):33-45

This paper explores the preferences of boys regarding the characteristics of teachers of sex education. Sex education in English schools is delivered as a compulsory part of National Curriculum Science and in most schools is further explored in time given over to personal, social and health education. Research was carried out in a variety of schools from both the state and private sectors, by the use of focus group interviews and questionnaires. Due to the existing law in England and Wales regarding parents' right of withdrawal from classes, only boys of 16 or over were used in this research. Boys want teachers to be empathetic, non-judgemental and able to create a 'safe environment' in order to facilitate the discussion of difficult subjects. Most boys believed that the age and sex of the teacher had little bearing on whether they could deliver the subject well; more important was their ability to generate trust, keep control of classes and use relaxed and informal methods of delivery. Unanimously the boys believed that history and English teachers were more able to fulfil these requirements whereas science and mathematics teachers were considered to be unable to adapt to the relaxed styles required. There was a general belief that teachers should be specially trained in this area of the curriculum. Disagreement was found in areas such as the use of outsiders to deliver sex education. The implications of this research for teacher educators, teachers in training and schools are considerable. Unless boys work with teachers they respect and trust they will continue to have little time for this area of the curriculum, to the detriment of their future relationships.  相似文献   

What is an ‘Interesting Curriculum’ for Biotechnology Education? Students and Teachers Opposing Views     

Gillian Kidman 《Research in Science Education》2010,40(3):353-373

Of concern is an international trend of students’ increasing reluctance to choose science courses in both their final years of secondary school and tertiary levels of education. Research into the phenomenon indicates an influencing factor to be the ‘uninteresting curriculum’ (OECD 2006) of school science. This paper presents an exploration of what biotechnology key ideas students and teachers consider to be interesting. A survey was constructed and completed by 500 Australian students and their 35 teachers. Interviews were conducted with a sample of students and teachers. The Chi-square statistics revealed a significant difference between the student and teacher survey responses in four of the six a priori factors. A rank ordering of the key ideas, based on whole group mean scores, indicates only a small overlap in modern biotechnology key ideas of interest to both the students and teachers. The results suggest the key ideas teachers are interested in and incorporate into their curriculum, are not the key ideas students are interested in learning about. This mismatch is particularly prevalent and problematic in situations where curriculum choice is available within a mandated framework or syllabus, which is the case for these teachers and students. The study also found students withdrawing from biology courses in post compulsory settings due to lack of interest and perceived lack of relevance of the course.  相似文献   

ePortfolio use by university students in Australia: a review of the Australian ePortfolio Project     

Gillian Hallam  Tracy Creagh 《高等教育研究与发展》2010,29(2):179-193

In October 2008, the Australian Learning and Teaching Council released the final report for the commissioned project ‘ePortfolio use by university students in Australia: Informing excellence in policy and practice’. The Australian ePortfolio Project represented the first attempt to examine the breadth and depth of ePortfolio practice in the Australian higher education sector. The research activities included: surveys of stakeholder groups in learning and teaching, academic management and human resource management, with respondents representing all Australian universities; a series of focus groups and semi‐structured interviews that sought to explore key issues in greater depth; and surveys designed to capture students’ pre‐course expectations and their post‐course experiences of ePortfolio learning. Further qualitative data was collected through interviews with ‘mature users’ of ePortfolios. Project findings revealed that, while there was a high level of interest in the use of ePortfolios in terms of the potential to help students become reflective learners who were conscious of their personal and professional strengths and weaknesses, the state of play in Australian universities was very fragmented. The project investigation identified four individual, yet interrelated, contexts where strategies may be employed to support and foster effective ePortfolio practice in higher education: government policy; technical standards; academic policy; and learning and teaching. Four scenarios for the future were also presented with the goal of stimulating discussion about opportunities for stakeholder engagement. It is argued that the effective use of ePortfolios requires open dialogue and collaboration between the different stakeholders across this range of contexts.  相似文献   

Does Merit-Based Aid “Crowd Out” Need-Based Aid?     

William R. Doyle 《Research in higher education》2010,51(5):397-415

The advent of merit-based state financial aid programs has had several first order effects, such as changes in enrollment. However, these programs may also have second order effects, such as declining state support for need-based state financial aid programs. I hypothesize that the advent of merit-based state financial aid may be an example of Baumgartner and Jones’ punctuated equilibria. Results from estimation of models for dynamic panel data suggest instead that need-based aid has changed only incrementally in the states, without an observable effect of merit-based aid.  相似文献   

Executive function skills of 6–8 year olds: Brain and behavioral evidence and implications for school achievement     

Victoria J. Molfese  Peter J. Molfese  Dennis L. Molfese  Kathleen Moritz Rudasill  Natalie Armstrong  Gillian Starkey 《Contemporary educational psychology》2010

Academic and social success in school has been linked to children’s self-regulation. This study investigated the assessment of the executive function (EF) component of self-regulation using a low-cost, easily administered measure to determine whether scores obtained from the behavioral task would agree with those obtained using a laboratory-based neuropsychological measure of EF skills. The sample included 74 children (37 females; M = 86.2 months) who participated in two assessments of working memory and inhibitory control: Knock–Tap (NEPSY: Korkman, Kirk, & Kemp, 1998), and participated in event-related potential (ERP) testing that included the directional stroop test ( DST, Davidson, Cruess, Diamond, O’Craven, and Savoy (1999)). Three main findings emerged. First, children grouped as high vs. low performing on the NEPSY Knock–Tap Task were found to perform differently on the more difficult conditions of the DST (the Incongruent and Mixed Conditions), suggesting that the Knock–Tap Task as a low-cost and easy to administer assessment of EF skills may be one way for teachers to identify students with poor inhibitory control skills. Second, children’s performance on the DST was strongly related to their ERP responses, adding to evidence that differences in behavioral performance on the DST as a measure of EF skills reflect corresponding differences in brain processing. Finally, differences in brain processing on the DST task also were found when the children were grouped based on Knock–Tap performance. Simple screening procedures can enable teachers to identify children whose distractibility, inattentiveness, or poor attention spans may interfere with classroom learning.  相似文献   

A Review of “Collaborating at the Trowel's Edge: Teaching and Learning in Indigenous Archaeology”     

Shane Doyle  Michael Brody 《The Journal of environmental education》2013,44(1):69-71

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Fashions in children's fiction     

Gillian Avery 《Children‘s Literature in Education》1973,4(2-3):10-19

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Development of a Measure to Assess Youth Self-reported Experiences of Activity Settings (SEAS)     

Gillian King  Beata Batorowicz  Patty Rigby  Margot McMain-Klein  Laura Thompson  Madhu Pinto 《International Journal of Disability, Development & Education》2014,61(1):44-66

There is a need for psychometrically sound measures of youth experiences of community/home leisure activity settings. The 22-item Self-Reported Experiences of Activity Settings (SEAS) captures the following experiences of youth with a Grade 3 level of language comprehension or more: Personal Growth, Psychological Engagement, Social Belonging, Meaningful Interactions, and Choice & Control. Forty-five youth aged 14–23 years (10 with severe disabilities) completed the SEAS in 160 leisure activity settings. The SEAS has good to excellent internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha from 0.71 to 0.88) and moderate test–retest reliability (mean scale intra-class correlation coefficient = 0.68), as expected due to changes in activity settings over time. The SEAS was able to differentiate various types of activity settings and participation partners. The SEAS can be used to gain greater understanding of situation-specific experiences of youth participating in various types of recreation and leisure activity settings, including youth with different types of disabilities and those without disabilities.  相似文献   

Examiner practices and culturally inflected doctoral theses     

Gina Wisker  Gillian Robinson 《Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education》2014,35(2):190-205

Increase in numbers of postgraduate students worldwide represent an opportunity and necessity for nurturing and recognising the diversity of culturally inflected research topics, methodologies and expression. However, there are tensions in the definitions, encouragement and recognition of diversity in theses, and in balances of power in supervisor, student and examiner relationships involved in doctoral achievement. We consider such tensions and opportunities using small-scale qualitative research with experienced examiners. We explore ways in which examiners perceive they take culturally aware approaches to responding to, enabling and rewarding the quality of culturally inflected doctoral theses.  相似文献