Bilingualism in measurement: the coming of the metric system

1973 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 397-399
Author(s):  
George W. Bright
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Elementary School ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Elementary School Teachers ◽  
Measurement System ◽  
The United States ◽  
School Teachers

At such time as the metric system is adopted as the measurement system in the United States, every American will develop some degree of bilingualism in the English and metric languages of measurement. The burden of encouraging this development will fall to a large extent on elementary school teachers, for they will have to confront the confusion of young children. But there are advantages that will accrue for those who learn to use the metric system. As teachers recognize these advantages and begin to exploit them, acceptance of the metric system will increase.

scholarly journals Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement

2010 ◽  
Vol 107 (5) ◽  
pp. 1860-1863 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sian L. Beilock ◽  
Elizabeth A. Gunderson ◽  
Gerardo Ramirez ◽  
Susan C. Levine
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Elementary School Teachers ◽  
Math Achievement ◽  
Math Anxiety ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Elementary ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
Female Teachers ◽  
School Year ◽  
Early Elementary School

People’s fear and anxiety about doing math—over and above actual math ability—can be an impediment to their math achievement. We show that when the math-anxious individuals are female elementary school teachers, their math anxiety carries negative consequences for the math achievement of their female students. Early elementary school teachers in the United States are almost exclusively female (>90%), and we provide evidence that these female teachers’ anxieties relate to girls’ math achievement via girls’ beliefs about who is good at math. First- and second-grade female teachers completed measures of math anxiety. The math achievement of the students in these teachers’ classrooms was also assessed. There was no relation between a teacher’s math anxiety and her students’ math achievement at the beginning of the school year. By the school year’s end, however, the more anxious teachers were about math, the more likely girls (but not boys) were to endorse the commonly held stereotype that “boys are good at math, and girls are good at reading” and the lower these girls’ math achievement. Indeed, by the end of the school year, girls who endorsed this stereotype had significantly worse math achievement than girls who did not and than boys overall. In early elementary school, where the teachers are almost all female, teachers’ math anxiety carries consequences for girls’ math achievement by influencing girls’ beliefs about who is good at math.

Exploring the Perceptions of Male Teachers About the Shortage of Male Elementary School Teachers: A Q Methodology

2021 ◽  
pp. 002205742199624
Author(s):  
Kurt Meader ◽  
Karen H. Larwin
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Data Analysis ◽  
Elementary School Teachers ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Q Methodology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Male Teachers ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
Social Barriers ◽  
Research Questions

There is a shortage of male elementary school teachers in the United States. Men who choose careers as elementary school teachers must be confident and ignore social barriers that keep other men from considering the profession. The current investigation seeks to understand the viewpoints of men who teach elementary school, a career predominated by women. This was the first known investigation on the topic using Q methodology. Data analysis extracted three distinct viewpoints: the Fixers, the Mentees, and the Aspirants. This study provides the results of data analysis, responds to research questions, and makes recommendations for policy. The findings of this study indicated that men who teach are proud to be role models and make a difference for students, and they believe that they are equally suitable to teach as women. Many participants seemed to be unaware of recruitment efforts in their field. The information gleaned from this study may help universities and school districts to seek new ways to attract quality male teachers.

scholarly journals The Effects of Mindfulness Training on Wisdom in Elementary School Teachers

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Ngoc Boulware ◽  
Brenda Huskey ◽  
Heather Harden Mangelsdorf ◽  
Howard C. Nusbaum
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Elementary School ◽  
Classroom Management ◽  
Elementary School Teachers ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Problem Solving ◽  
Mindfulness Training ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
Public Elementary School

Aims: School teachers have hundreds of spontaneous interactions with students each hour, requiring frequent decision-making. Often these interactions require social understanding and emotional self-regulation, two constructs often identified with wisdom and mindfulness.  Increasing mindfulness could aid wiser management of classroom demands. The present study evaluated effects of an online mindfulness course on measured wisdom in a sample of public elementary school teachers. Study Design: This study used a pretest posttest design using data collected immediately before taking the online mindfulness course and after completion of the course. End of the school year follow-up data was analyzed for all teachers. Place and Duration of Study: Participants were enrolled from multiple cities across the United States including Boston, Columbus, Chicago, Milwaukee, Seattle, and San Diego between June 2014 and June 2015. Data were collected online and analyzed at the University of Chicago. Methodology: Public elementary school teachers (n = 12) were assigned to a mindfulness training or a matched wait-list condition (11 female, 1 male; age range 26 – 57 years). Teachers had a range of teaching experiences from 1 to 36 years (median =18 years) and taught grades K-4 at schools with 30% - 50% Caucasian students with 40%-60% students receiving free and reduced-price lunches. We used standardized measures for mindfulness, wisdom, emotion regulation, compassion, theory of mind, state/trait anxiety, stress, burnout, and efficacy. Results: Online mindfulness training produced a significant increase in mindful awareness and changes in cognitive wisdom implying increased understanding of inter/intrapersonal concerns. There was a significant increase in mindful attention in those who completed both pre- and post-class online evaluations (n = 10) solicited by Mindful Schools (t (9) = 2.738, p = .02) from 54.3 to 59.9 following training (ΔM= 5.6, SD = 6.5). Wisdom, measured with Ardelt’s Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale (n =12), demonstrated a significant change increase in the cognitive dimension of wisdom (t(11) = 2.39, p =.03) with a non-significant increase in the affective dimension (t(11) =1.38, p =.19) and a non-significant reduction in the reflective dimension of wisdom (t(11) =.96, p = .35) following mindfulness training. Conclusion:  Online mindfulness training may help develop wise decision making as a skill for teachers to aid classroom management and social problem solving.

Selective Memory: California Mission History and the Problem of Historical Violence in Elementary School Textbooks

2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (8) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Harper B. Keenan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Elementary School ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Fourth Grade ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
School History ◽  
Spanish Colonization

Background/Context Across the nation, people living in the United States are embroiled in conflict over the meaning of its past. Many of the most fervent conflicts relate to acts of historical violence: war, enslavement, conquest, and colonization among them. Elementary school students commonly study the early colonization of the land now known as the United States, the nation's Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and other periods of history that historians describe as rife with violence. In the field of California colonial history, there is virtual consensus among historians that the Spanish mission system was a period of violence and devastation, most especially for California Indians, but school history curricula have been criticized for avoiding this history of violence. This raises questions about the role of intellectual honesty in teaching elementary-aged students about U.S. history. Though a small body of scholarship engages with questions of whether and how to talk with young children about human atrocity, few studies have empirically examined what state-recommended elementary school curriculum actually say about historical violence in the formation of the United States. Research Questions/Focus of Study This study examines the representation of violence in state-recommended elementary school history textbooks on the topic of the Spanish colonization of California. Specifically, the study responds to the following questions: How do the textbooks’ content address the topic of violence? Are California Indian and Spanish acts of violence represented differently? If so, how? Research Design Data were derived from a content analysis of fourth grade-level history textbooks recommended by the California State Department of Education in public use at the time of the study. Data Collection and Analysis Using qualitative coding software, chapters on California colonial mission history in each of the four state-recommended textbooks were coded and analyzed at the level of the sentence (n = 1,601). Coding and analysis took place in two stages. First, each sentence was coded for references to violence and ethnic group(s), which allowed for analysis of the number of references to acts of violence and ethnic groups throughout the entirety of the text. The second stage more closely examined the set of sentences that referred specifically to violence, allowing for comparison of the representation of violence according to the ethnic group with which it was associated. Findings/Results The study shows that violence is only minimally addressed in California fourth-grade history textbook content on the topic of Spanish colonization. Although generally underrepresented throughout the text, California Indian people are disproportionately over-represented as perpetrators of violence in the early colonization of California, a framing that is drastically out of alignment with the historical record as it is agreed upon by historians. Conclusions/Recommendations This study makes two key conclusions. First, the article argues that, in this case, elementary school history curriculum presents a distorted vision of violence in the colonial past. Second, the article complicates the issue of when young children are old enough to learn about violent histories in school by revealing that they are already learning about violence in the past, although such representation is both minimal and problematic. The article concludes by recommending the design of learning activities that engage in preparatory version of a more intellectually honest investigation of the historical record, as well as its relationship to the present.

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