Brief Research Report: Agreement Between Teacher and Student Reports on Students’ Acceptance and Rejection

Student-reported peer nominations are typically used to obtain information on the social status (i.e., acceptance and rejection) of students in their classrooms. However, under certain circumstances this assessment method cannot be used, for example for logistical reasons or with students with intellectual disabilities (ID) who are not always able to fill out peer nominations. In such instances, teacher reports on students’ expected nominations may serve as a proxy. As part of a larger study on students with ID, we evaluated the agreement between teachers’ and students’ peer reports regarding individual students’ acceptance and rejection using unlimited nomination procedures in Grades 4–6 mainstream classrooms. As many students with ID cannot fill out peer nominations, this evaluation study used a sample of typically developing students without ID. Teachers (n = 27, Mage = 34.24 years, SD = 10.85; 85.2% female) nominated all peers from the classroom who they believed individual students would report as “liked” and “not liked”. For direct comparison, students (n = 441, Mage = 11.36 years, SD = 0.89; 46.8% female) themselves were also asked to report their “liked” and “not liked” nominations. Students received both more “liked” and more “not liked” nominations from their peers than from their teachers. Students’ social status as calculated from teacher reports showed only partial agreement with social status as calculated from student reports, suggesting that in mainstream classrooms student reports cannot be easily replaced by teacher reports. Perspectives on the application of teacher-reported peer nominations in special needs settings are discussed.

Development of an instrument to measure opportunities for imagination, creativity, and innovation (ICI) in schools

This article describes the development of an instrument for examining schools as institutions where teaching practices and school structures provide opportunities and support for student imagination, creativity, and innovation, as well as initial comparisons using the instrument, using a sample of n = 5020 students and n = 268 teachers ( n = 161 classes of students nested within teachers). The three five-item subscales show acceptable reliability across groups (.73–.90). Paired sample t tests indicate that, on average, students reported significantly more opportunities for creativity as compared to imagination or innovation. There were also significant differences between actual student reports and teachers’ predictions only for creativity and innovation. Students reported more opportunities for creativity and innovation than their teachers predicted. However, students reported significantly less opportunity for imagination, creativity, and innovation than their teachers’ ideals. Implications for subsequent research and practice are also discussed.

Teaching Quality in Higher Education: Agreement Between Teacher Self-reports and Student Evaluations

Teaching quality is a crucial factor within higher education. Research on this topic often requires assessing teaching quality as a global construct through self-reports. However, such instruments are criticized due to the lack of alignment between teacher and student reports of instructional practices. We argue that while teachers might over- or under-estimate specific dimensions of teaching quality, their aggregation in the form of overall teaching quality reflects differences in teaching quality between teachers well. Accordingly, we test a ten-item measure that allows faculty to self-report their overall teaching quality based on the aspects distinguished in the SEEQ (Marsh, 1982, 2007). Using 17,508 student assessments of teaching quality in 889 sessions taught by 97 faculty members, we conducted Doubly Latent Multi Level Modelling while considering bias and unfairness variables to model overall teaching quality assessed by students, and simultaneously corrected for measurement error and potential distortions through the assessment situation. This global factor of teaching quality was strongly associated with teacher self-reported teaching quality (ρ = .74), which we interpret as evidence that global teacher reports of teaching quality can serve as sensible indicators of overall teaching quality for nomothetic research in higher education.

Addressing diversity and gender issues in a cornerstone design course

In the cornerstone engineering design course for Mechanical and Industrial Engineering undergraduates at Ryerson University, students’ design approaches were being negatively affected by gender and other biases. Therefore, the course was modified to encourage students to explore these biases, with an initial emphasis on gender so that they may design with a fuller sense of women’s issues. This novel endeavour aimed to change the course’s culture via awareness, and by connecting equity, diversity, and inclusion to an engineering context. Qualitative analysis of student reports before and after these modifications showed that the intervention led to user groups that more closely matched actual demographics and included a higher number of women, LGBTQ, and elderly Personas than before. Furthermore, the qualitative descriptions showed less of a skewed tendency to attribute positive characteristics to men and negative characteristics to women after the course modifications were implemented. Student surveys indicated that there was a potential cultural shift within the course, and a broadening of student focus to include equity, diversity, and inclusion when undertaking an engineering design project.

Addressing diversity and gender issues in a cornerstone design course

In the cornerstone engineering design course for Mechanical and Industrial Engineering undergraduates at Ryerson University, students’ design approaches were being negatively affected by gender and other biases. Therefore, the course was modified to encourage students to explore these biases, with an initial emphasis on gender so that they may design with a fuller sense of women’s issues. This novel endeavour aimed to change the course’s culture via awareness, and by connecting equity, diversity, and inclusion to an engineering context. Qualitative analysis of student reports before and after these modifications showed that the intervention led to user groups that more closely matched actual demographics and included a higher number of women, LGBTQ, and elderly Personas than before. Furthermore, the qualitative descriptions showed less of a skewed tendency to attribute positive characteristics to men and negative characteristics to women after the course modifications were implemented. Student surveys indicated that there was a potential cultural shift within the course, and a broadening of student focus to include equity, diversity, and inclusion when undertaking an engineering design project.

"How do we do this at a distance?!" A descriptive study of remote undergraduate research programs during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic shut down undergraduate research programs across the U.S. Twenty-three sites offered remote undergraduate research programs in the life sciences during summer 2020. Given the unprecedented offering of remote research experiences, we carried out a study to describe and evaluate these programs. Using structured templates, we documented how programs were designed and implemented, including who participated. Through focus groups and surveys, we identified programmatic strengths and shortcomings as well as recommendations for improvements from the perspectives of participating students. Strengths included the quality of mentorship, opportunities for learning and professional development, and development of a sense of community. Weaknesses included limited cohort building, challenges with insufficient structure, and issues with technology. Although all programs had one or more activities related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, these topics were largely absent from student reports even though programs coincided with a peak in national consciousness about racial inequities and structural racism. Our results provide evidence for designing remote REUs that are experienced favorably by students. Our results also indicate that remote REUs are sufficiently positive to further investigate their affordances and constraints, including the potential to scale up offerings, with minimal concern about disenfranchising students.

APLIKASI TASIBAR (PENDAFTARAN SISWA BARU) PADA SD NEGERI CIKAMPEK SELATAN I-KARAWANG

The era of global competition in education is required to develop rapidly, actively and dynamically.We face the challenges needed fundamental changes in the world of education itself so that the humanresources generated will become human resources that are able to adapt to the times. Realizing that,SD Negeri Cikampek Selatan I as primary school felt the need to implement a new computerizedstudent enrollment system as part of the change that replaced the new student registration system(conventional), because the computerized system can accelerate and simplify the process andminimize the mistakes that there, for that the author designed the New Student EnrollmentApplication Program on State Elementary School Cikampek Selatan I-Karawang, so that theprogram is made in accordance with the needs of the new student registration system that alreadyexist, the authors make the design of this program ranging from input documents containing theprocess of filling the form of prospective students, the process of entering student data, the processof entering the data Parents, the process of entering user data and output documents containing newstudent cards and student reports.