DEVELOPMENT, EVALUATION, AND VALIDATION OF A PAPER-AND-PENCIL TEST FOR MEASURING TWO COMPONENTS OF BIOLOGY TEACHERS’ PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING THE “CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM”     

Stephan Schmelzing  Jan H. van Driel  Melanie Jüttner  Stefanie Brandenbusch  Angela Sandmann  Birgit J. Neuhaus 《International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education》2013,11(6):1369-1390

One main focus of teacher education research concentrates on teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). It has been shown that teachers’ PCK correlates with teaching effectiveness as well as with students’ achievement gains. Teachers’ PCK should be analyzed as one of the main important components to evaluate professional development programs. On this account, it is necessary to develop standardized measures of biology teachers’ topic-specific PCK that are labor-efficient. This paper presents a study on the development, evaluation, and validation of a paper-and-pencil test to measure biology teachers’ declarative PCK on the topic of blood and the human cardiovascular system. The development of the test was based, among other considerations, on a review of research literature on PCK and an analysis of 50 videotaped biology lessons. The final test instrument was comprised of 15 items distributed across 2 scales. The findings of the main study—with 93 preservice and in-service biology teachers and 12 biologists—confirmed that this measure of biology teachers’ declarative PCK was reliable, objective, and valid. In-service biology teachers scored higher on the test than preservice teachers (effect size Cohen’s d, 0.65) on one hand and, also, than biologists (Cohen’s d, 1.00) on the other hand. Future versions of this test should explore enlarging the scales and measuring procedural aspects of PCK.  相似文献   

Participants' Roles in the Context of a Video Club     

Elizabeth A. van Es 《学习科学杂志》2013,22(1):100-137

This study examines the nature of teacher participation in the context of a video club. Video clubs are professional development meetings in which teachers watch and discuss excerpts of video from their classrooms. In this study, I adopt a situative perspective to examine how teachers develop in their participation to accomplish the goals of the video club. In particular, I examine the roles participants play and explore teachers' participation in four roles that correspond with key goals of the video club. Analysis revealed that teachers' participation shifted in qualitatively different ways over time, with the teachers coming to prompt the group to discuss student mathematical thinking, to propose a variety of interpretations of student ideas, to build on one another's ideas, and to challenge one another's thinking in order to advance the group's conversations. This analysis suggests that the group learned how to participate in roles central to accomplishing the goals of the video club. Studying teacher learning through a lens of participation provides insight into the ways in which teachers coordinate themselves to engage with the goals of professional development and has implications for designing professional development that helps teachers develop practices for teaching mathematics for understanding.  相似文献   

Exploring the Potential of Smartphones and Tablets for Performance Support in Food Chemistry Laboratory Classes     

Koos van der Kolk  Rob Hartog  Gerrit Beldman  Harry Gruppen 《Journal of Science Education and Technology》2013,22(6):984-992

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Developing Service Area Indices for Community Colleges: California's Method and Experience     

Alice van Ommeren  Catharine Liddicoat  Willard Hom 《Community College Journal of Research & Practice》2013,37(7):463-479

The economic, educational and social environments of the students served by a community college are important factors in college performance accountability, policy analysis, program evaluation, and strategic planning. For example, previous research shows that income per county is a significant predictor of transfer rates for community colleges. However, conditions for the actual geographic area of the students served by a community college may differ, for various reasons, from the economic conditions for the county in which the college is located. This article describes the development of institutional or college-level indices as an enhancement to county-level data, their use as adjustment variables for California's Accountability Reporting for the Community Colleges (ARCC), and their applicability to other research and planning studies. The service area indices are created by combining the enrollment patterns of students by ZIP Code of residence with ZCTA (ZIP Code Tabulation Area) level economic and educational data from Census 2000.  相似文献   

Measurement Bias Detection Through Factor Analysis     

Willem E. Saris  Albert Satorra  William M. van der Veld 《Structural equation modeling》2013,20(4):561-582

Assessing the correctness of a structural equation model is essential to avoid drawing incorrect conclusions from empirical research. In the past, the chi-square test was recommended for assessing the correctness of the model but this test has been criticized because of its sensitivity to sample size. As a reaction, an abundance of fit indexes have been developed. The result of these developments is that structural equation modeling packages are now producing a large list of fit measures. One would think that this progression has led to a clear understanding of evaluating models with respect to model misspecifications. In this article we question the validity of approaches for model evaluation based on overall goodness-of-fit indexes. The argument against such usage is that they do not provide an adequate indication of the “size” of the model's misspecification. That is, they vary dramatically with the values of incidental parameters that are unrelated with the misspecification in the model. This is illustrated using simple but fundamental models. As an alternative method of model evaluation, we suggest using the expected parameter change in combination with the modification index (MI) and the power of the MI test.  相似文献   

Testing Inequality Constrained Hypotheses in SEM Models     

Rens van de Schoot  Herbert Hoijtink  Maja Deković 《Structural equation modeling》2013,20(3):443-463

Researchers often have expectations that can be expressed in the form of inequality constraints among the parameters of a structural equation model. It is currently not possible to test these so-called informative hypotheses in structural equation modeling software. We offer a solution to this problem using Mplus. The hypotheses are evaluated using plug-in p values with a calibrated alpha level. The method is introduced and its utility is illustrated by means of an example.  相似文献   

Modeling Ability Differentiation in the Second-Order Factor Model     

Dylan Molenaar  Conor V. Dolan  Han L.J. van der Maas 《Structural equation modeling》2013,20(4):578-594

In this article we present factor models to test for ability differentiation. Ability differentiation predicts that the size of IQ subtest correlations decreases as a function of the general intelligence factor. In the Schmid–Leiman decomposition of the second-order factor model, we model differentiation by introducing heteroscedastic residuals, nonlinear factor loadings, and a skew-normal second-order factor distribution. Using marginal maximum likelihood, we fit this model to Spanish standardization data of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (3rd ed.) to test the differentiation hypothesis.  相似文献   

Dutch Dyslexia in Adulthood: Core Features and Variety     

Judith Bekebrede  Aryan van der Leij  Anna Plakas  David Share  Eleni Morfidi 《Scientific Studies of Reading》2013,17(2):183-210

This study aimed to explore how alphabetic readers learn to read Chinese. First-year Chinese beginning learners who are skilled English readers were tested for their sensitivity to the visual-orthographic structures of Chinese characters. The study also explored the effect of the frequency of the characters in their curriculum on performance of a lexical decision and naming task. The students' linguistic knowledge about the characters was also tested. Results showed that the beginning learners were sensitive to the structural complexity of characters, they accepted simple characters more quickly and more accurately than compound characters, and they responded faster and more accurately to high-frequency than to low-frequency characters. Sensitivity to the structural composition of the character was also revealed: The learners rejected noncharacters containing illegal radical forms faster and more accurately than those containing legal radical forms in illegal positions, which in turn were rejected faster and more accurately than those containing legal radical forms in legal positions. A significant frequency effect was also found in the naming task, though the effect of structural complexity was not significant. These results suggest that perceptual learning plays an important role in early nonalphabetic learning by alphabetic readers. Both cross-writing system differences and second-language status may have an impact on such learning.  相似文献   

Modeling the Growth of Word-Decoding Skills: Evidence From Dutch     

Ludo Verhoeven  Jan van Leeuwe 《Scientific Studies of Reading》2013,17(3):205-223

This study investigated the growth of word-decoding skills throughout the elementary school years for a representative sample of 2,819 Dutch children. Children's decoding abilities for (a) regular consonant-vowel-consonant words, (b) complex monosyllabic words with consonant clusters in prevocalic and postvocalic position, and (c) polysyllabic words were assessed on two occasions in each school year (Grades 1–6). The growth of word-decoding skills was found to be largely a matter of increased speed. Growth curve analyses showed a gradual curvilinear model to be superior to a step-model for all word-decoding skills. Furthermore, the three measures of word decoding define a common factor and show strong longitudinal stability. Some unique variance for the three word-decoding skills also emerged suggesting that the development of fully proficient word-decoding skills requires the learning of orthographic complexities.  相似文献   

The Role of Linguistic Diversity in the Prediction of Early Reading Comprehension: A Quantile Regression Approach     

Liza J. van den Bosch  Eliane Segers  Ludo Verhoeven 《Scientific Studies of Reading》2013,17(3):203-219

ABSTRACT

Using classical and quantile regression analyses, we investigated whether predictor variables for early reading comprehension differed depending on language background and ability level in a mixed group of 161 monolingual (L1) and bilingual (L2) children in second grade (6–8 years). Although L2 readers scored lower on oral language skills and reading comprehension, the prediction of reading comprehension was similar for L1 and L2 readers. Classical regression identified decoding, vocabulary, and morphosyntactic knowledge as unique predictors with no interaction with language background. Quantile regression demonstrated that the prediction of reading comprehension differed across ability levels; decoding and morphosyntactic knowledge were consistently unique predictors, but vocabulary was uniquely related only for poor comprehenders and working memory only for good comprehenders. In both types of analysis, language background did not explain unique variance, indicating that individual differences in the predictor variables explained the L1–L2 performance gap in early reading comprehension across the ability range.  相似文献