Service and Philanthropy as College Student Activism for Fraternity and Sorority Members

College student activism is often thought of as a problem to be dealt with, focusing on the potentially damaging role that student protest can take on a campus. Activism, however, can be defined in a multitude of ways, including how students express themselves in their commitment to others. This notion of community service or service learning has taken on a major role on many college campuses, and can highlight the powerful and positive impact of student activism. This chapter explores the role of service and philanthropy as mechanisms for college students to express their beliefs and commitments to others. Specifically exploring those student behaviors in fraternities and sororities, activism among undergraduates can be a tremendous asset to an institution, to a community, and ultimately, to the students themselves.

Teachers’ visual processing of children’s off-task behaviors in class: A comparison between teachers and student teachers

As teachers are responsible for responding instantaneously to students’ statements and actions, the progress of the class, and their teaching purpose, they need to be able to engage in responsive teaching. Teachers obtain information about students’ learning by observing them in the classroom, and subsequently make instructional decisions based on this information. Teachers need to be sensitive to student behaviors and respond accordingly, because there are students who follow the teacher’s instructions and those who do not in every classroom. Skilled teachers may distribute their gaze over the entire class and discover off-task behaviors. So how does a teacher’s visual processing and noticing ability develop? It is important to clarify this process for both experienced teachers and student teachers. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether there is a difference in visual processing and the ability to notice off-task behaviors in class between teachers and student teachers through gaze analysis. Using an eye tracking device, 76 teachers and 147 student teachers were asked to watch a video, and gaze measurements were collected. In the video, students exhibiting off-task behaviors in class were prompted by their classroom teacher to participate in the lesson. After the video, the participants were asked if they could identify the students who had displayed off-task behaviors and whom the teachers had warned. The results showed that teachers gazed at students engaging in off-task behaviors in class more often and noticed them at a higher rate than student teachers did. These results may be attributed to differences in the experiences of visual processing of relevant information in the classroom between teachers and student teachers. Thus, the findings on teachers’ visual processing by direct measurement of gaze will be able to contribute to teachers’ development.

Using flexible grouping instruction to create culturally relevant PK-12 learning communities for culturally and linguistically diverse learners with exceptionalities

In this article, two instructional practices, Numbered Heads Together (NHT) and Carousel Brainstorming (CB), are discussed to guide instructors through the intentional practice of incorporating flexible groupings (CEC, HLP 17) in their daily instruction for the purpose of creating Culturally Relevant PK-12 Learning Communities for CLD Learners with Exceptionalities. Although NHT and CB are not the only approaches for implementing cooperative learning groups as an effective instructional tool, it is the authors’ premise that both practices successfully promote academic achievement and provide a positive, culturally relevant design for diverse learners, as well as a practitioner-friendly framework that is easily implemented. NHT and CB also serve as a means to provide students with a voice for their learning and to promote positive student behaviors. Regardless of the setting or identified disability, when facilitated with foresight and careful planning, evidence-based instructional best practices are supported, and inclusive course content is attained through the use of NHT and CB. Example lesson plans to intentionally incorporate both strategies are included within the article.

Jointly Modeling Heterogeneous Student Behaviors and Interactions among Multiple Prediction Tasks

Prediction tasks about students have practical significance for both student and college. Making multiple predictions about students is an important part of a smart campus. For instance, predicting whether a student will fail to graduate can alert the student affairs office to take predictive measures to help the student improve his/her academic performance. With the development of information technology in colleges, we can collect digital footprints that encode heterogeneous behaviors continuously. In this article, we focus on modeling heterogeneous behaviors and making multiple predictions together, since some prediction tasks are related and learning the model for a specific task may have the data sparsity problem. To this end, we propose a variant of Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) and a soft-attention mechanism. The proposed LSTM is able to learn the student profile-aware representation from heterogeneous behavior sequences. The proposed soft-attention mechanism can dynamically learn different importance degrees of different days for every student. In this way, heterogeneous behaviors can be well modeled. In order to model interactions among multiple prediction tasks, we propose a co-attention mechanism based unit. With the help of the stacked units, we can explicitly control the knowledge transfer among multiple tasks. We design three motivating behavior prediction tasks based on a real-world dataset collected from a college. Qualitative and quantitative experiments on the three prediction tasks have demonstrated the effectiveness of our model.

TEACHERS’ VIEWS ON STUDENT MISBEHAVIORS DURING ONLINE COURSES

Student misbehaviors in the classroom both disrupt students’ attention and affect negatively teaching and learning process. With the increase of online courses after Covid-19 pandemic, the type of student misbehaviors changed a lot. The aim of research was to examine student misbehaviors encountered during online courses, to identify the most common and disruptive student misbehaviors from teachers' perspective and to put forth teachers’ suggestions about proper behaviors. The research was a phenomenological study. Data were gathered from 71 teachers teaching different courses and working at various levels. For data collection, a semi-structured interview form developed by the researchers was used. It was assessed through descriptive analysis. According to findings, a list containing 27 different student misbehaviors was generated. Results showed that the most common misbehaviors were indifference to course, not attending course, turning off webcam and slanging. The most disruptive misbehaviors were making noise, absenteeism, and distractibility. Findings revealed that teachers had some ideas to overcome these misbehaviors such as taking attendance, getting family support, encouraging students to turn on webcam, creating intrinsic motivation and organizing parent meetings. It can be concluded that some unwanted student behaviors can be seen during online courses; however, it can be overcome with the help of some precautions taken by teachers. Keywords: classroom management, online courses, student misbehaviors, teachers’ views

GenBio-MAPS as a Case Study to Understand and Address the Effects of Test-Taking Motivation in Low-Stakes Program Assessments

The effects of test-taking motivation on student behaviors and performance on the GenBio-MAPS program assessment were analyzed. Filtering recommendations that GenBio-MAPS administrators can use to reduce construct-irrelevant variance in test scores associated with low test-taking motivation are offered.-

Examination of Physıcal Educatıon Teacher's Opinions on Effective Class Management

Background: In order for education and training to be successful, various factors in the educational environment must be known, regulated and well managed. Classroom management enables teachers to carry out their teaching tasks effectively. In order to manage the classroom, teachers must have classroom management skills. A teacher who does not have classroom management skills will have difficulty in classroom management and failure in education is inevitable. Aims: The aim of this study is to reveal the views of physical education teacher candidates on effective classroom management. The research is a qualitative study. The research group consists of 10 physical education teacher candidates and this study group was determined by the maximum diversity sampling method. Place & duration of study: In the research, face-to-face interview technique was used in accordance with the voluntary basis and studying at Iğdır University School of Physical Education and Sports. Method: In the research, using the interview method, which is one of the qualitative research methods, the data obtained were analyzed by the content analysis method. Results: As a result of the research, physical education teacher candidates stated that for an effective classroom management, teachers should be competent in their field and love their profession. The physical education teacher candidates participating in the research came to the forefront by endearing the lesson and the teacher. In addition, the research group; They stated that they would motivate students in classroom management by giving responsibility to the student, determining the classroom rules together with the student, and applying different teaching methods. In addition, in order for the student-teacher communication of the research group to be effective; They expressed their opinion that a democratic environment should be created and cooperation between the parties should be ensured. Conclusion: In addition, in terms of improving the classroom management skills of the research group; In addition to gaining professional skills and practice skills, while managing unwanted student behaviors in the classroom; They stated that it is necessary to give responsibility to the student and to plan the lesson together with the student. At the same time, for an effective classroom management; It has been concluded that an effective classroom management can be done by knowing the student well and establishing healthy communication with the student. Keywords: Physical Education, Teacher Candidate, Classroom Management

The Effects of Instructional Strategies on Preservice Teachers’ Math Anxiety and Achievement

The results reported herein represent the quantitative portion of a mixed method investigation that employed a non-equivalent control group design conducted to determine the effects of teaching methods on math anxiety and achievement among preservice elementary teachers enrolled in a mathematics course. Two teaching methods, inquiry-based learning (IBL) and direct instruction (DI), were compared. These results indicated that math anxiety decreased significantly for the IBL group while increasing for the DI group over the course of an academic semester. There was no difference in measured learning outcomes between the two groups. A significant negative correlation between math anxiety and student achievement, however, was found. Qualitative results, discussed in a companion article, contextualize these findings and reveal that the participants attributed varying levels of math anxiety to several factors including course content, teaching methods, assessments, and student behaviors.

Hurdles in the Transformation of Peace Process: Indicators for Universities in Pakistan

The present article represents the most operational and implacable indicators for the transformation of peace in the universities of Pakistan. The main objective of the study is to find out the major hurdles that educational institutions are facing in the way of the development peace culture. Furthermore, this study provides the highlights for the peace development in the universities. The qualitative analysis was used to collect the opinions of the respondents. For this purpose, a semi-structured interview was designed for the public university heads/chairman of different social sciences departments. Moreover, the data were analyzed with NVIVO that used for the in-depth thematic analysis and presents in the form of a word cloud (MADQDA 18). The study findings, however, show that the universities are facing different dimensions that are related to teacher competency, student behaviors, and social influences. The study further recommended, that according to the indicators there is a need to plan flexible and operational strategies to overcome the hurdles that are creating unrest in the educational institutions, there is space to work on teachers and students relationship, develop moral and valued based class environment and involve students in creative and productive activities for the peaceful setting in the present phenomena.