Comparing children's and student teachers’ ideas about science concepts     

Karen Kerr  Jim Beggs  Colette Murphy 《Irish Educational Studies》2013,32(3):289-302

Children and teachers may not think in the same way about particular science concepts. Such parallel lines of thought can compound children's confusion and misunderstanding as they learn science at primary school. The situation could be more acute when student teachers are teaching science, because of their limited experience of considering children's ideas. This paper investigates children's and student teachers’ ideas about certain science concepts: ‘animal’, ‘flower’, ‘living’, ‘force’ and ‘energy’. The ideas and understandings of 96 children and 168 student teachers were explored. Results showed that the student teachers and children had similar ideas about ‘flower’ and ‘animal’, whereas they evidenced very different responses to ‘living’, ‘energy’ and ‘force’. Implications for classroom practice are considered.  相似文献   

TEACHING RESEARCH IN GERONTOLOGY: TOWARD A CUMULATIVE MODEL     

Dena Shenk  Graham D. Rowles  James R. Peacock  Jim Mitchell  Bradley J. Fisher  Krista S. Moore  Lyndall Hare 《Educational gerontology》2013,39(7):537-556

In this article, we consider different approaches to teaching research methods in gerontology across a continuum of educational program levels. Our goal is to offer a conceptual framework and stimulate productive discussion of key issues and challenges in teaching research in gerontology. It is our belief that education in gerontology should include some level of training in research methodologies across all levels of gerontology instruction. Therefore, we have sought to identify those components of research training most appropriate for each level of gerontological education. Thus, basic understanding of research methods is appropriate at the associate's degree level and introductory exposure to basic issues involved in conducting research with elders provides a necessary backdrop to undergraduate programs. More in-depth understanding of gerontological research methods, particularly those involved in applied research, is a component of quality master's level programs. Finally, in-depth knowledge and the ability to apply distinctively gerontological research methods are necessary for conducting advanced original research at the doctoral level.  相似文献   

Factores predictivos del éxito en el aprendizaje de la lectoescritura     

Juan Jiménez  Ceferino Artiles 《Infancia y Aprendizaje》2013,36(49):21-37

Resumen

Este estudio ha tenido como objetivo determinar los factores subyacentes a las pruebas de madurez y su valor predictivo para el éxito en el aprendizaje de la lectoescritura. Para ello, se llevó a cabo un estudio longitudinal, con una muestra de 60 escolares de distintos centros de E.G.B, de la Isla de Gran Canaria, que se iniciaban en el aprendizaje sistemático de la lectura y escritura. En un primer estudio, los factores madurativos hallados fueron cuatro: Lingüístico, Estructuración visomotriz, Organización conceptual y Memoria reproductiva. Al relacionar esta estructura factorial con los resultados obtenidos en lectoescritura, se demuestra que los factores Lingüístico y de Organización conceptual son los que mejor predicen el éxito en lectoescritura, frente al escaso valor predittivo mostrado por los factores de Estructuración visomotriz y Memoria reproductiva.  相似文献   

Metaconocimiento fonológico: estudio descriptivo sobre una muestra de niños prelectores en edad preescolar     

Juan E. Jiménez 《Infancia y Aprendizaje》2013,36(57):49-65

Resumen

Este estudio ha consistido en investigar en una muestra de niños prelectores de zona rural y bajo nivel socioeconómico el nivel de metaconocimiento fonológico que presentan al finalizar el periodo de preescolar. Para ello, se utilizó la Prueba de Segmentación Lingüística (Forma A) (Jiménez y Ortiz, en prensa) que comprende un conjunto de tareas metafonológicas donde los niños han de descubrir rimas, aislar, dividir, y omitir unidades mínimas del lenguaje. Los principales hallazgos del trabajo coinciden con los resultados obtenidos en otros estudios que se ban realizado en diferentes ámbitos lingüísticos. Concretamente, se demuestra que las habilidades de segmentación silábica se adquieren antes que las habilidades de análisis fonético de las palabras. También se relacionan estos resultados con la variable sexo y nivel de madurez o disposición para aprender a leer de los escolares según juicio del profesor. Por último, se describen las implicaciones educativas que se derivan de los hallazgos encontrados en la investigación.  相似文献   

Higher education policy in post-devolution UK: more convergence than divergence?     

Jim Gallacher  David Raffe 《教育政策杂志》2013,28(4):467-490

Many researchers studying the impact of parliamentary devolution conclude that education policies in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are diverging. They attribute this to five factors: the redistribution of formal powers associated with devolution; differences in values, ideologies and policy discourses across the four territories; the different composition, interests and policy styles of their policy communities; the different ‘situational logics’ of policy-making and the mutual independence of policy decisions in the different territories. This article reviews trends in higher education (HE) policy across the UK since parliamentary devolution. It focuses on policies for student fees and student support, for widening participation, for supporting research and for the HE contribution to economic development, skills and employability. On balance, it finds as much evidence of policy convergence, or at least of constraints on divergence, as of policy divergence. It argues that each of the five factors claimed to promote divergence can be associated with corresponding pressures for convergence.  相似文献   

The Effects of the Number of Scale Points and Non-Normality on the Generalizability Coefficient: A Monte Carlo Study     

Steven R. Shumate  James Surles  Robert L. Johnson  Jim Penny 《教育实用测度》2013,26(4):357-376

Increasingly, assessment practitioners use generalizability coefficients to estimate the reliability of scores from performance tasks. Little research, however, examines the relation between the estimation of generalizability coefficients and the number of rubric scale points and score distributions. The purpose of the present research is to inform assessment practitioners of (a) the optimum number of scale points necessary to achieve the best estimates of generalizability coefficients and (b) the possible biases of generalizability coefficients when the distribution of scores is non-normal. Results from this study indicate that the number of scale points substantially affects the generalizability estimates. Generalizability estimates increase as scale points increase, with little bias after scales reach 12 points. Score distributions had little effect on generalizability estimates.  相似文献   

Interpreting experimental data: the views of upper secondary school and university science students     

Jim Ryder  John Leach 《International Journal of Science Education》2013,35(10):1069-1084

In this paper we examine students' views about the interpretation of experimental data within a specified science context. A written survey was completed by 731 science students drawn from upper secondary schools and universities in five European countries. An additional 19 upper secondary science students were interviewed individually after they had completed the survey. A minority of students emphasized the role of models in the interpretation of the data, despite the emphasis placed on theoretical models within the survey text. A substantial proportion of respondents focused on the quantity and quality of the data to be interpreted. Post-survey interviews showed that many students had difficulty in articulating a view concerning the role of theoretical models. Our data support previous studies, typically involving younger respondents, which have found that science students tend not to recognize the role of theoretical models in the interpretation of data.  相似文献   

School Teachers’ Experiences of Science Curriculum Reform     

Jim Ryder  Indira Banner 《International Journal of Science Education》2013,35(3):490-514

We examine teachers’ experiences of a major reform of the school science curriculum for 14–16-year olds in England. This statutory reform enhances the range of available science courses and emphasises the teaching of socio-scientific issues and the nature of science, alongside the teaching of canonical science knowledge. This paper examines teachers’ experiences of the reform and the factors that condition these experiences. A designed sample of 22 teachers discussed their experiences of the reform within a semi-structured interview. Our analysis considers how the external and internal structures within which teachers work interact with the personal characteristics of teachers to condition their experiences of the curriculum reform. In many cases, personal/internal/external contexts of teachers’ work align, resulting in an overall working context that is supportive of teacher change. However, in other cases, tensions within these contexts result in barriers to change. We also explore cases in which external curriculum reform has stimulated the development of new contexts for teachers’ work. We argue that curriculum reformers need to recognise the inevitability of multiple teaching goals within a highly differentiated department and school workplace. We also show how experiences of curriculum reform can extend beyond the learning of new knowledge and associated pedagogies to involve challenges to teachers’ professional identities. We argue for the extended use of teacher role models within local communities of practice to support such ‘identity work’.  相似文献   

Using Rating Augmentation to Expand the Scale of an Analytic Rubric     

Jim Penny  Robert L. Johnson  Belita Gordon 《Journal of Experimental Education》2013,81(3):269-287

A method of expanding a rating scale 3-fold without the expense of defining additional benchmarks was studied. The authors used an analytic rubric representing 4 domains of writing and composed of 4-point scales to score 120 writing samples from Georgia's 11th-grade Writing Assessment. The raters augmented the scores of papers on which the proficiency levels appeared slightly higher or lower than the benchmark papers at the selected proficiency level by adding a “+” or a “?” to the score. The results of the study indicate that the use of this method of rating augmentation tends to improve most indices of interrater reliability, although the percentage of exact and adjacent agreement decreases because of the increased number of rating possibilities. In addition, there was evidence to suggest that the use of augmentation may produce domain-level scores with sufficient reliability for use with diagnostic feedback to teachers about the performance of students.  相似文献   

Becoming Data Driven: The Influence of Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy on Concerns Related to Data-Driven Decision Making     

Karee E. Dunn  Denise T. Airola  Wen-Juo Lo  Mickey Garrison 《Journal of Experimental Education》2013,81(2):222-241

Data-driven decision-making (DDDM) reform has proven to be an effective means for improving student learning. However, little DDDM reform has happened at the classroom level, and little research has explored variables that influence teacher adoption of DDDM. The authors propose a model in which teachers’ sense of efficacy for the skills that support classroom-level DDDM and DDDM anxiety significantly influenced teachers’ DDDM efficacy, which then influenced collaboration concerns that influenced refocusing concerns. The authors used structural equation modeling to analyze data on 537 teachers in order to validate this hypothesized model. Results supported this model and are discussed.  相似文献