Education Interest Group Research Articles

Prime: Inaugural Years & Impact of a Resident-Led Medical Education Interest Group (Platform Presentation)

Teaching is a vital skill for all residents; yet, resident teaching curricula are highly variable. In 2014, we conducted a needs assessment on the teaching curriculum of the Children‘s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC (pediatric residency program. All responders (100%) agreed that learning to be an effective teacher was important; however, less than 30% agreed that the current teaching curriculum met their educational needs.

米国オバマ政権の教育政策実施手法の分析 : 教育利益団体との連携関係の構築に焦点を当てて(IV 投稿論文)

米国オバマ政権の教育政策実施手法の分析 : 教育利益団体との連携関係の構築に焦点を当てて(IV 投稿論文)

MedTalks: developing teaching abilities and experience in undergraduate medical students

ABSTRACTObjectives: According to the CanMEDS’ Scholar competency, physicians are expected to facilitate the learning of colleagues, patients and other health professionals. However, most medical students are not provided with formal opportunities to gain teaching experience with objective feedback.Methods: To address this, the University’s Medical Education Interest Group (MEIG) created a pilot teaching program in January 2015 entitled ‘MedTalks’. Four 3-hour sessions were held at the University Faculty of Medicine, where first and second year medical students taught clinically oriented topics to undergraduate university students. Each extracurricular session included three 30-minute content lectures, and a 90-minute small group session on physical examination skills. Each medical student-teacher received formal feedback from undergraduate students and from faculty educators regarding teaching style, communication abilities, and professionalism. In addition, medical student-teachers self-evaluated their own teaching experience.Results: Over 50 medical students from the University participated as medical student-teachers. Based on quantitative and qualitative evaluation surveys, 100% of medical students agreed that MedTalks was a useful way to develop teaching skills and 92% gained a greater confidence in individual teaching capabilities, based largely on the opportunity to gain experience (with feedback) in teaching roles.Conclusions: A program designed to give medical students multi-source teaching experience (lecture- and small group-based) and feedback on their teaching (from learners and Faculty observers, in addition to their own self-reflection) can improve medical student confidence and enthusiasm towards teaching. Future studies will clarify if medical student self-perceived enhancements in teaching ability can be corroborated by independent (Faculty, learner) observations of future teaching activity.

The Impact of Gold Open Access Journals in Aggregators and Abstracting/Indexing Services

ABSTRACTGold open access (OA) journals are multiplying at a high rate across many disciplines as major publishers launch new titles to complement their traditional subscription-based titles. This is on top of the many independent Gold OA titles which are being produced by higher education, societies, and many other special interest groups. The number of Gold OA journals covered in abstracting and indexing (A&I) and aggregator databases has shown substantial penetration in these services. This coverage varies widely by discipline but the inclusion of OA content into traditional library services means that quality OA content can be more easily found using the products and services licensed and promoted by libraries and consortia.

Interest Groups, the Courts, and Educational Equality

In Vergara v. California (2014), a trial-level court ruled that California laws governing teacher tenure and dismissal were unconstitutional. This study analyzes Vergara in light of the shifting use of the courts to promote equal educational opportunities and the changing power bases of educational interest groups, including educational advocacy groups and teacher unions. This study particularly uses policy regimes theory to analyze the relationship between political interests, ideas, and institutions and highlights how the case represents an inversion of how educational interest groups have traditionally used the courts as vehicles for effecting education reform. Grounded in this analysis, this study explores legal and policy implications for both courts and reformers acting in this new context.

Local charter school service delivery: The explanatory power of interest groups

The primary goal of this study is to examine whether educational interest groups’ roles explain local charter school service delivery in Colorado. Many scholars have found that interest groups affect educational policy outcomes and performance at national, state, and local levels. However, it is not clear whether interest groups’ roles are still important in local charter school service delivery. This article seeks to address this lack of knowledge by analyzing the variation of charter school service delivery in Colorado school districts. The present study tests seven hypotheses, using multiple ordinary least square (OLS) regression analysis. The final statistical results demonstrate that a school district with more pro-school choice movement interest groups, minority students, and residents who earn a bachelor's degree or above is more likely to deliver charter school services to its residents.

Why we ‘knead’ theory

This article reports on a seminar by the Critical Educational Policy and Leadership Research Interest Group in June 2012. The article reports on the papers and our engagement with the need to use theory to develop descriptions and understandings.

Professional Knowledge and Practice in Health, Welfare and Educational Agencies in England in Relation to Children being Educated at Home: An Exploratory Review

Discourses of child development hold that the experience a child gains from being at school is crucial to the child's development and well-being. The option of home education challenges such discourse. There is little practice-related literature specific to home-educated children. This article first describes a context and then reviews aspects of practice by professionals in health, welfare and educational agencies in relation to home education. Within the constituent parts of the United Kingdom there are variations in the legal context, and this article concentrates on the position in England. The nature and extent of home education are described and the significance of home education interest groups is acknowledged. There follows a review of the implications for home education of recent developments in childcare policy. The law relating to home education remains much as it was in the nineteenth century, but in the face of divided political opinion recent proposals to change the law have not been enacted. English local education authorities (LEAs) have expressed concern about their limited powers and duties under the current law. Evidence is presented that practitioners in health and welfare services may nevertheless hold exaggerated, falsely reassuring beliefs about the extent of LEA powers and knowledge relating to home-educated children. Debate about child protection in the context of home education has tended to be distorted by perspectives from entrenched positions. The article identifies some specific potentially harmful patterns of parental behaviour that may be particularly relevant in the context of home education. A debate is indicated about whether the risks inherent in the exemption of some children from the surveillance of universal health and educational services is an acceptable or even unavoidable price to be paid for maintaining parents’ rights of choice in relation to their child's education.

Playing to Learn Science: Exploring Contexts and Concepts

Children, Youth and Environments 21(2), 2011 Playing to Learn Science: Exploring Contexts and Concepts Jennifer D. Adams Brooklyn College School of Education David E. Kanter Sara Lee Schupf Family Center for Play, Science, and Technology Learning (SciPlay) New York Hall of Science Citation: Adams, Jennifer D. and David E. Kanter (2011). “Playing to Learn Science: Exploring Contexts and Concepts.” Children, Youth and Environments 21(2): 204-211. Introduction This article introduces this special section of Children, Youth, and Environments that focuses on designing environments to promote play-based science learning. Research articles and notes from the field from around the globe describe and elucidate how playful experiences can mediate children’s science learning. Authors in this special section include researchers and practitioners who explore and describe theoretical frameworks, research and evaluation methods, and design conventions aimed at learning and creating fun experiences for children to learn science. The call for abstracts went out to a number of science education and informal science education listservs and interest groups. It generated a broad global response from researchers and practitioners in out-of-school environments (museums, zoos, community-based programs, summer camps, nature centers) and from researchers based in universities who design and/or study science learning. We received many quality abstracts, many of which we could not include due to space limitations. This indicates the great interest in this intersection of play and science learning. We ultimately selected a series of articles that we believe represent the range and scope of research and practice in designing play-based experiences for science learning. We believe that this special section will not only add to the body of literature on play-based science learning and out-of-school science education, but will also generate new questions and ideas to explore. Focusing on Play and Science Learning With increasing acknowledgement that much of the science that people learn occurs in out-of-school settings (Falk and Dierking 2010), it is becoming more important to© 2011 Children, Youth and Environments Playing to Learn Science: Exploring Contexts and Concepts 205 understand the role that designed spaces can perform in fostering science learning in settings outside of school. Learning is a highly complex activity that occurs throughout a lifetime. It is highly social, culturally embedded and is the means by which people make sense of their world (Stetsenko 2008). The recent National Research Council (NRC) report, Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places, and Pursuits (National Research Council 2009) recognizes that science learning occurs in a myriad of contexts across a lifetime; in fact, much of it happens outside of formal schooling in the kinds of out-of-school settings we focus on in this special section. The NRC report presents six strands of science learning that are relevant to out-of-school science learning contexts: Strand 1: Developing interest in science Strand 2: Understanding science knowledge Strand 3: Engaging in scientific reasoning Strand 4: Reflecting on science Strand 5: Engaging in scientific practice Strand 6: Identifying with the scientific enterprise These strands are not meant to be linear, but rather they are interrelated and “describe what participants do cognitively, socially, developmentally, and emotionally in these settings” (NRC 2009, 4). These strands, while theoretically based, are concrete categories of learning outcomes that happen in out-of-school settings and should be used to guide evaluations and assessments of learning in these settings. Theoretical frameworks that describe learning in out-of-school settings often use an ecological approach, examining the “relations between individuals and their physical and social environments with particular attention to relations that support learning” (NRC 2009, 31). One of the seminal frameworks on learning in out-of-school settings, the Contextual Model of Learning, describes learning as a “complex phenomena situated within a series of contexts” (Falk and Storksdeick 2005, 745)— namely, physical, personal and socio-cultural contexts—all ranging over a person’s lifetime. Although there are many definitions of play, and many professionals agree that play is necessary for healthy childhood development, there is a long history of efforts to harness children’s intrinsic motivation during play to educative ends. Anthropological perspectives describe play as a low-stakes way for children to learn...

Pipeline to Preparation to Advancement: Graduates’ Experiences In, Through, and Beyond Leadership Preparation

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to describe the nature of preparation among a nonpurposeful sample of 17 leadership preparation programs and to investigate the relationship of their participants’ characteristics, program experiences, leadership learning, and initial career outcomes. The study was guided by prior research on innovative programs (Darling Hammond, Meyerson, La Pointe, & Orr, 2009; Leithwood, Jantzi, Coffin, & Wilson, 1996). Data Collection and Analysis: Faculty members from 13 institutions (two with multiple programs) surveyed their graduates between 2004 and 2007 using a common survey instrument developed by the University Continuing Education Association Learning and Teaching in Educational Leadership Special Interest Group Taskforce on Evaluating Leadership Preparation Programs. Of these, 471 had completed their program from 0 to three years prior; their responses were aggregated by program and analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlational analyses. Findings: The results show that programs had many recommended innovative program features, varied somewhat on content focus, challenge, coherence, use of active student-centered instructional practices, and internship length and quality. These were positively associated with the extent of graduates’ learning in five areas of leadership, their satisfaction with the program, and their beliefs about the principalship. Conclusions: The results confirm prior research that how aspiring school leaders are prepared influences what they learn and their career intentions. The results validate the survey measures in discriminating among programs, and identifying areas for improvement.

Political action committees at the state level: Contributions to education

This paper examines campaign contributions from educational political action committees (PACs). Using a new and unique data set of political activity of the educational PACs across the fifty states and throughout the decade of the nineties, the authors describe the contributions' patterns of these groups. The authors argue that teachers occupy a low cost position for organizing. Approximately 90 percent of educational PAC spending is on behalf of teachers' organizations. Generalized least squares analysis of the state-year variance in contributions indicate that competition between teachers' groups and other education interest groups is a significant factor that influences the educational PACs expenditures.

Rural Teens and Communities Confront the Roots of Adolescent Pregnancy: The Promise of Project Reach

Though many might forget the origins of the now familiar lament, "Babies having Babies," it was the refrain that Bill Clinton used to legitimize and champion parts of the welfare reform act of 1996. "Liberal" democrats, conservative republicans, health and educational interest groups, and media pundits pinned poverty on poor women's and particularly, teen sexuality.

Troubling the Contours of Arts-Based Educational Research

The author writes in response to the article presented by his friends and colleagues in arts-based educational research, Maria Piantanida, Patricia L. McMahon, and Noreen B. Garman. Maria, Pat, Noreen, and the author share a commitment to substantive qualitative educational research, particularly as this research is conducted using the arts, autoethnography, and other emerging arts-based methodologies. They have all worked closely together at the American Educational Research Association in the creation and expansion of the Arts-Based Educational Research Special Interest Group. They also were instrumental in the development of a new conference for arts-based research, initially in Albuquerque in February 2000, then in Austin in October 2000, and Victoria, Canada, in 2001.

How Should Higher Education be Funded?

During the 2001 election campaign support for extra higher education funding came not just from the predictable higher education interest groups, but also from Rupert Murdoch and the Business Council of Australia’s President, John Schubert. Including universities in their arguments about education spending, the two business leaders made similar points, with Mr Murdoch saying that ‘the brains, skills and entrepreneurial spirit of its citizens are a country’s most precious and powerful asset’ (Murdoch, 2001:2) and Dr Schubert that ‘the skills, ingenuity and know-how of our people will be the primary determinant of social, political and economic success’ (Schubert, 2001:5). Added educational investment is needed to ensure we achieve these human capital goals. While, as will be explained, a good case can be made for additional expenditure, both men missed several steps of the argument. In education as in other investments, more inputs do not lead inexorably to commensurately greater outputs. We need to consider questions of allocative efficiency. Even if more money became available, are we able to direct the right levels of investment, to the right people, at the right time and in the right place? The reasons why the answer to these questions is ‘no’ are outlined in this article. There is evidence that the current system both systematically underinvests in higher education and mis-invests too much of the capital it does possess. Replacing the current system of centralised control with improved market mechanisms would enhance Australia’s higher education performance. The Status Quo At present, we have a top-down approach to spending on higher education. The Commonwealth sets the total number of Australian undergraduate student places it will fund, and divides these places between the existing universities, except for Bond, which enrols only private full-fee paying undergraduate students. The main factor driving the total number of places is the Commonwealth’s budget situation, and the main factor driving the division of places between universities is history, though political factors, unmet demand, and tendering have also played a role over recent years. The Commonwealth lets universities enrol extra students above the number it sets, either as Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) students or as full-fee paying students. However, this does not dramatically affect total student numbers, as the ‘over-enrolled’ HECS students are financed at only about Andrew Norton is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies, and was Higher Education Adviser to Dr David Kemp when he was the federal Minister for Education.

Beyond Self-Interest: Educational Interest Groups and Congressional Influence

Most research on interest groups has focused on theoretical perspectives concerning why members join these groups. Missing from this work is any connection between theories of organizational maintenance (i.e., how an organization forms) and research on influence activity (i.e., what an organization does).This article argues that a connection exists between organizational maintenance and the participation of their members in the organization's influence activities. Relying on a two-stage study of educational interest groups and the U.S. Congress, this article maintains that rational choice theories of interest group maintenance cannot account for the presence and perseverance of Washington-based education interest groups. A theory acknowledging levels of ideological commitment may be a more appropriate model for understanding educational interest groups at the national level.

Micropolitical Dynamics of Education Interests: A View From Within

Using concepts and frameworks from political science and organizational theory, this article examines a set of defining micropolitical issues associated with education interest groups: the politics of group formation and maintenance, the politics of group governance, role and subunit politics, and the politics of ideology. Little conceptual and empirical research on the micropolitical dynamics of education interest groups can be found in the politics of education literature. This article provides a context for understanding the micropolitical dynamics of educational interests and seeks to encourage research in this area.

Introduction: Interest Groups in United States Education

This article provides an overview to this special issue on interest groups and the politics of education. It first maps out the conceptual terrain by discussing educational interest groups and defining interest groups in American politics. This article then concludes with a brief discussion of the issues to be explored in greater depth in the individual pieces.

Interest groups and the State in contemporary Spanish education policy

This paper analyses the role of educational interest groups in the context of current educational policy in Spain. The paper focuses on the historical and structural factors that are the basis for understanding the constitution of educational interests. It argues that the historical educational dualism and the political opposition between public and private education explains not only the emergence and political position of each educational actor, but also the dynamics of interaction between them and their strategies to influence policy making and implementation. The final section of the paper analyses the relationship between interest groups and the State. It argues that the diverse and heterogeneous educational demands lead to a specific form of educational politics and explain the conditioned relative autonomy of the Spanish State in education policy making.

Educational Change in Alberta, Canada

Alberta, Canada, is the site of large-scale educational change initiatives legislated by the provincial government. The mandates have sparked heated public debate over the appropriateness, wisdom, and utility of the reforms. This article summarizes the views of representatives of several educational interest groups and offers suggestions for making change more meaningful and successful.

U.S. educational policy interest groups: institutional profiles

Preface Introduction U.S. Educational Interest Groups Appendix A: Questionnaire Appendix B: List of Organizations Under Study Appendix C: Primary Government Bodies Dealing with Education Policy Appendix D: Legislative Hearings in Education, 1987-1992 Bibliography Index