The significance of conflicting discourses in a professional degree: assessment in undergraduate fine art practice

This paper expands on empirical research which revealed that, whether or not an institution's interpretative community was explicitly informed by outcomes-based assessment, the more powerful and implicit discourses that emerged in assessment practices were those of their professional practice and academic traditions. Tensions, between the emerging dominant discourses, had their roots in academic perspectives and traditions; professional practice(s) and ways of being; and the more recent educational development discourses. The significance of these tensions for the discursive positioning of staff and students is discussed, with suggestions made for possible ways to negotiate these problematics more purposefully     

Constructing a Universal Scale of High School Course Difficulty

This study examined the usefulness of applying the Rasch rating scale model (Andrich, 1978) to high school grade data. ACT Assessment test scores (English, Mathematics, Reading, and Science Reasoning) were used as "common items" to adjust for different grading standards in individual high school courses both within and across schools. This scaling approach yielded an ACT Assessment-adjusted high school grade point average (AA-HSGPA) on a common scale across high schools and cohorts within a large public university. AA-HSGPA was a better predictor of first-year college grade point average (CGPA) than the regular high school grade point average. The best model for predicting CGPA included both the ACT composite score and AA-HSGPA.     

Cognitive conflict and intuitive rules

This paper is a part of an extensive project on the role of intuitive rules in science and mathematics education. First, we described the effects of two intuitive rules ‐‐ ‘Everything comes to an end’ and ‘Everything can be divided’ ‐‐ on seventh to twelfth grade students’ responses to successive division tasks related to mathematical and physical objects. Then, we studied the effect of an intervention, which provided students with two contradictory statements, one in line with students’ intuitive response, the other contradicting it, on their responses to various successive division tasks. It was found that this conflict‐based intervention did not improve students’ ability to differentiate between successive division processes related to mathematical objects and those related to material ones. These results reconfirmed that intuitive rules are stable and resistant to change. Finally, this paper raised the need for additional research related to the relationship between intuitive rules and formal knowledge.     

Progress and Backlash in the Wake of Obergefell: Reaching Conservative Southern Teachers Through the Power of Literature

This paper uses a mixed narrative and quantitative analysis to examine how a graduate class of predominantly politically and religiously conservative (self-identified), elementary teachers in the South made discursive sense of gender and sexually diverse (GSD) young adult and children's literature in the context of concurrent, relevant national events, especially the U.S. Supreme Court's legalization of gay marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. Using narrative data, supplemented with quantitative pre- and postsurveys, this study provides fruitful insights into conservative professionals' attitudes and practices regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth and adults. Our findings suggest effective ways to help prepare conservative professionals to sensitively address GSD issues in elementary school settings.     

Causal Attribution Profiles as a Function of Reading Skills,Hyperactivity, and Inattention

ABSTRACT

The causes that individuals attribute to reading outcomes shape future behaviors, including engagement or persistence with learning tasks. Although previous reading motivation research has examined differences between typical and struggling readers, there may be unique dynamics related to varying levels of reading and attention skills. Using latent profile analysis, we found 4 groups informed by internal attributions to ability and effort. Reading skills, inattention, and hyperactivity/impulsivity were investigated as functional correlates of attribution profiles. Participants were 1,312 youth (8–15 years of age) of predominantly African American and Hispanic racial/ethnic heritage. More adaptive attribution profiles had greater reading performance and lower inattention. The reverse was found for the least adaptive profile with associations to greater reading and attention difficulties. Distinct attribution profiles also existed across similar-achieving groups. Understanding reading-related attributions may inform instructional efforts in reading. Promoting adaptive attributions may foster engagement with texts despite learning difficulties and, in turn, support reading achievement.     

Foreign Communications

The Media: Contexts of Study (114 pp.---$6.30)

The Study of Culture 1 (152 pp---$7.65)

The Study of Culture 2 (144 pp.---$7.65)

The Audience (104 pp.---$6.16)

Media Organization 1 (106 pp.---$6.l6)

Media Organization 2 (60 pp.---$5.31)

Media and Society 1 (92 pp.---$6.16)

Media and Society 2 (53 pp.---$4.25)

Secrecy and the Right to Know, by Dina Goren (Ramat Gan, Israel: Turtledove Publishing, 1978---no price given)

Newspapers: The Power and the Money, by Simon Jenkins (London: Faber & Faber, 1978---E1.95, paper)

The Abuse of Power, by James Margach (London: W.H. Allen, 1978---95 p, paperback)

The Spanish Media Since Franco, by William Chislett (London: Writers and Scholars Educational Trust, 1978---£3.00)

T.J. Allard's Straight Up: Private Broadcasting in Canada 1918-1958 (Canadian Communications Foundation, 165 Sparks St., Ottawa, Ontario KiP 5S2---$10.95 1 paper including mailing)

Oswald H. Ganley's The Role of Communications and Information Resources in Canada (Program on Information Resources Policy, 200 Aiken, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 02138---$10.90, paper--ask for Working Paper W79-1)

Anthony Smith's The Newspaper: An International History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979 ---$14.95)     

Examining Reading Development and Reading Disability in English Language Learners: Potential Contributions from Functional Neuroimaging

Neuroimaging studies have suggested that across different written languages, skilled reading behavior is supported by similar, largely left hemisphere (LH), networks. In addition, recent studies of reading disability (RD) in monolingual readers, conducted in several languages, suggest a common neurobiological signature for this syndrome (disruption of LH posterior regions that support fluent reading). Thus, at the neurobiological level of analysis, reading and its disorders appear to be more similar than dissimilar across languages. In this article, we consider the neurobiology of reading development and RD in English language learners (ELL). There is some evidence suggesting that fluent bilingual readers tend to engage primarily overlapping circuits for both L1 and L2. There is, however, a paucity of neurobiological research on both reading development and RD in this population. Using the existing research on RD as a starting point, we consider in this article how developmental neuroimaging techniques might be applied to (1) help identify RD readers in the ELL populations, and (2) provide neurobiological outcome measures to help evaluate the efficacy of different approaches to the teaching of reading in English.     

Alone in Berlin? Israeli media and the German resistance to Nazism

The commercially successful Hebrew translation of Alone in Berlin (Fallada, 2010) stirred a conversation regarding the German resistance to Nazism, until then a rarely discussed phenomenon in Israel. The analysis of media items dealing with the book revealed that different memory frameworks shaped the discussion about it. Thus, this study contributes to contemporary discussion about the role of “old” and “new” media in the reconstruction of society’s memory.     

Subdivision processes in mathematics and science

In the course of a research project now in progress, three successive division problems were presented to students in Grades 7–12. The first problem concerned a geometrical line segment, while the other two dealt with material substances (copper wire and water). All three problems involved the same process: successive division. Two of the problems (line segment and copper wire) were also figurally similar. Our data indicate that the similarity in the process had a profound effect on students' responses. The effect of the similarity in process suggests that the repeated process of division has a coercive effect, imposing itself on students' responses and encouraging then to view successive division processes as finite or infinite regardless of the content of the problem. It is possible to trace out, step by step, a more or less parallel process of development for the ideas of points and continuity and those dealing with atoms and physical objects in the child's conception of the ideal world. The only difference between these two processes is that to the child's way of thinking physical points or atoms still possess surface and volume, whereas mathematical points tend to lose all extension (though during the stages of development which concerns us here, this remains only a tendency.) (Piaget & Inhelder, 1948, pp. 126). Our first naive impression of nature and matter is that of continuity. Be it a piece of matter or a volume of liquid we invariably conceive it as divisible into infinity, and even so small a part of it appears to us to possess the same properties as the whole. (Hilbert, 1925, pp. 162).     

Altmetrics of Papers From Scientific Periphery Reflect Global Trends: A Case Study of Publications by Zagreb University School of Medicine

This study aims to investigate the altmetric activity of papers published by the University of Zagreb School of Medicine in internationally visible journals and to identify differences in altmetric activity between the papers published in international and local journals and between those published in English and Croatian. We also investigated changes in altmetric activity over time and the characteristics of papers with the highest Twitter and Mendeley activity.The sample included 390 papers collected from the bibliographic database Scopus. Their altmetric and citation activities were measured at three time points: in July 2014, 2015, and 2016.The findings generally correspond to those observed in the large-scale studies of medical papers. Papers in renowned journals, and papers reporting clinical guidelines and multicentric studies had the most intense altmetric activity. In contrast, papers published in local, Croatian journals showed minimal altmetric activity, especially the papers published in Croatian. These results indicate that the local publishing community has not yet recognised social media as a tool for promoting research and that non-English language publications have minimal chances to receive attention, even in social media.The evaluative potential of altmetric indicators has to be further explored in a broader context.