The Effect of Visual‐Chunking‐Representation Accommodation on Geometry Testing for Students with Math Disabilities

Students who struggle with learning mathematics often have difficulties with geometry problem solving, which requires strong visual imagery skills. These difficulties have been correlated with deficiencies in visual working memory. Cognitive psychology has shown that chunking of visual items accommodates students’ working memory deficits. This study investigated the effects of visual‐chunking representation as a testing accommodation for improving students’ geometry problem‐solving performance. Participants were four third‐graders with difficulties in mathematics. An adapted reversal design was employed to examine the students’ performance changes during standard testing conditions and accommodated testing conditions. During the accommodated condition, students were presented with visual‐chunking images. Results suggested that the visual‐chunking representation accommodation improved students’ performance on geometry problem‐solving tasks, and an interview confirmed students’ preference for the visual‐chunking representation approach.     

Teaching learning disabled adolescents to think critically using a problem‐solving schema

Abstract

In this study we describe and examine the effectiveness of an instructional program designed to teach learning disabled adolescents to make better personal decisions. We presented problems in short narratives based on the types of problems these students must solve in their own lives. The program, conducted as part of the students' regular resource room curriculum, incorporated schema‐general questions for problem solving coupled with practice in generating problem‐specific questions to reach an appropriate decision. Participants were 70 resource room students in two large, urban high schools. We employed a pretest‐posttest comparison group design. On the posttest, instructed students performed significantly better on (1) identifying a general schema for making a personal decision and (2) applying the schema to reach appropriate decisions concerning novel problem narratives. The results support the view that application of a general schema to specific problems can be an effective instructional method to improve critical thinking and decision making.     

The Combined Effects of Instructor Communicative Behaviors,Instructor Credibility,and Student Personality Traits on Incivility in the College Classroom

This study investigated the combined role of instructor communication variables (nonverbal immediacy and self-disclosure), instructor credibility (competence, caring, and trustworthiness), and student personality traits (extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness) in predicting students’ uncivil behaviors in class. A total of 406 students completed online questionnaires regarding the instructor of the class they attended prior to the one in which the study was administered. Personality and instructor behavior variables contributed approximately equally to explaining variance in student incivility. Students’ conscientiousness and agreeableness had direct negative relationships with incivility, whereas instructors’ amount and negativity of self-disclosure had direct positive relationships with incivility.     

IMPROVING OUTCOMES IN MATHEMATICS IN NEW ZEALAND: A DYNAMIC APPROACH TO THE POLICY PROCESS

Intervention at scale with the aim of improving student participation, engagement and outcomes in mathematics education is a challenge for educational policy makers and reformers. This article argues that an iterative annual cycle of policy formulation, implementation and evaluation enabled ongoing adjustments to the strategic focus, the professional development model and the system infrastructure as the New Zealand Numeracy Development Project was taken to scale. The analysis draws on the project’s evaluation data over a 6-year period to demonstrate how adjustments were made over time to the pedagogical tools and to the professional development processes. The ongoing development of knowledge supported the management of strategic risks in taking the project to scale: the ongoing appropriation of adequate levels of resourcing to support the school-based professional development model and the availability of system-wide expertise for effective implementation. The analysis suggests that conceptualising implementation as an interdependent and interrelated component of an iterative policy process and as an opportunity for knowledge building ensured a continuing focus on student outcomes. The dynamic approach to the policy process appeared central to building this intervention’s effectiveness and feasibility at scale.     

Religious discrimination discourse in the mono-cultural school: the case of Poland

The article forms an analysis of the religious discrimination discourse in Polish public schools, with special attention paid to the culturally specific, Polish understanding of the notion of religious discrimination. The introductory part presents the concept of religious discrimination as present in anti-discriminatory policies. The following part outlines the Polish system of religious education and its relation to the religious discrimination. Studies on religious discrimination in Poland are presented and discussed. Important context is supplied by a presentation of two recent cases of religious discrimination in Polish public schools, and the actions undertaken by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Authors of the article point out the important influence of cultural context on the perception of religious discrimination. The attention is drawn to the seemingly homogenous environment of the Polish school and of the discriminative discourse used in political and social debates. The analysis shows that the presence of religion as a subject in Polish schools remains a cause of conflict between the religious and atheist citizens, a conflict in which concepts of religious discrimination and religious freedom are used as arguments by both sides.     

Beyond chip monks and paper tigers: towards a new culture of archival format specialists

The emergence of the new format of electronic/digital records provides the opportunity for archivists to reconsider the presumed format-neutrality of professional practice. As research in electronic records has served to re-emphasise, without an understanding of the needs and forms of material, then the work of archivists can have a profound impact on the evidential value and long-term research potential of the material. This paper attempts to broaden the debate about the requirements of all archival formats, and to build a new regime of 21st-century format specialists.

Examining the impact of four teaching development programmes for engineering teaching assistants*

As current graduate instructors of labs and class discussions, teaching assistants (TAs) play a critical role in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) undergraduate education, especially as some graduate students may choose a faculty career in the future. Because of the importance of TAs and their development as scholars and instructors, we sought to determine the most effective methods of preparing engineering TAs at two research universities. We compare the impact of a teaching orientation with one of four teaching development programmes (Pedagogy Course, Advanced Practice Teaching, Workshop Attendance with Written Reflection, or Mid-Semester Student Feedback with Written Reflection) on engineering TAs’ teaching efficacy and definitions of active learning. Results indicated that the Pedagogy Course consistently increased TAs’ teaching efficacy and attitudes toward teaching compared with the other programmes. We also found that stand-alone Mid-Semester Student Feedback with Written Reflection enhanced TAs’ efficacy for reflection and beliefs about teaching. We discuss implications for providing teaching development for graduate students and directions for future research.     

Planned Hindsight

By the early 1980s, many life scientists had begun to maintain small collections of cryopreserved tissues for their own specific research purposes. It became apparent that these materials could be successfully reused as new techniques and research questions emerged. This realization led several American leaders in the field of systematic taxonomy (the science of biological classification) and conservation genetics to argue for the need to take stock of and coordinate these heterogeneous collections. Their strategy, which they called ‘planned hindsight,’ was meant to organize the present in a way that appeared to anticipate the needs of future scientists. In this paper I examine how the seemingly paradoxical strategy of ‘planned hindsight’ has functioned as a strategy for choreographing life, time, and value at two centralized biospecimen collections: The Frozen Zoo in Escondido, CA, USA, and the Ambrose Monell Cryo Collection at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. I conclude that, in practice, ‘planned hindsight’ not only contributes to the endurance of frozen tissues but also preserves widely divergent speculative visions of the many different individuals involved with their creation, maintenance, and re-use.