J. of Teacher Education editors interview Linda Darling-Hammond and David Labaree

Dr's Odell and Spalding just did an interview with these prominent Stanford educators for the Journal of Teacher Education. Check it out!
http://www.aacte.org/index.php?/New-Media/Podcasts/a-journal-of-teacher-education-podcast.html

AAUP publishes online journal on academic freedom

This appears to be a new open access journal. The inaugural issue of Journal of Academic Freedom can be found here. The rationale (from the journal's web site) is:

"With this issue we introduce a new online project—the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom. Scholarship on academic freedom—and on its relation to shared governance, tenure, and collective bargaining—is typically scattered across a wide range of disciplines. There has been no single journal devoted to the subject. Now there is. It is published by the
organization most responsible for defining academic freedom."

Education, not fear, found effective in reducing plagiarism

Inside Higher Ed had an article on a randomized control group study which looked at the impact of a tutorial focused on educating students about academic integrity. The students did not know they were part of a study, but those who viewed the tutorial evidenced less plagiarism in papers; however the "treated" students did not report a higher level of concern about committing or being caught for plagiarizing than did the control group, suggesting that fear was not a motivating factor. The full article is here. The "Plagiarism Resource Site" was created jointly by Colby, Bates and Bowdoin .

Evaluation of primary grade math programs

The What Works Clearinghouse rarely finds that research meets their evidence standards and even when they do, there are seldom significant results, so this seemed worth passing along.

"This quick review looks at a study that examined the relative effectiveness of four widely used early elementary school math curricula: Investigations in Number, Data and Space; Math Expressions; Saxon Math; and Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics. The study authors reported that first graders attending schools assigned to the Math Expressions and Saxon Math curricula scored significantly higher on math assessments than students attending schools assigned to the Investigations in Number, Data and Space or the Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics. The WWC's assessment of this study determined that the research described in this report is consistent with WWC evidence standards. The study is a well-implemented randomized controlled trial.To view the full report please visit:http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/quickreviews/QRReport.aspx?QRID=117

6 Technologies to watch for in education

From the January 14, 2010 issue of Wired Campus...
"The Horizon Report," an annual guide to tech trends... And it’s predicting a new technology king: open content.After failing to make last year's “Technologies to Watch” list, the open-content movement now joins mobile computing as the two trends most likely to enter mainstream learning in the next year, says the report, from the New Media Consortium and Educause.

National data on historic declines in support for higher ed

An article in Inside Higher Ed today includes a table with 1, 2, and 5 year figures for changes in levels of state funding (with and without stimulus monies) for all states.

Call for expanded access to federally funded research--gaining traction

This Quick Take from Inside Higher Education today:

"A panel of librarians, library scientists, publishers and university leaders on Tuesday issued a report calling on federal agencies that fund research to create policies that provide free public access to the results of the research they fund "as soon as possible after those results have been published in a peer-reviewed journal." The Scholarly Publishing Roundtable was convened by the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, in collaboration with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The report urged parties to move beyond "the too-often acrimonious" debate over access issues toward a framework in which federal agencies build "an interdependent system of scholarly publishing that expands public access and enhances the broad, intelligent use of the results of federally funded research."

Links to the full text of the report and recommendations, panel membership, and press releases are all linked from AAUP's page.

I'm all for accountability...

but you have to give people the skills, knowledge and resources to succeed. Governor Gibbons new proposal for education requires accountability but doesn't provide support. If teachers' retention, salary, etc. are based solely on student performance, how will we ever get good teachers to work in the schools most in need of help? There was a good article in Education Week on turning around poorly performing schools in Chicago by helping the teachers focus on shared learning outcomes. They worked with the Strategic Learning Initiatives organization which also provided a report on this work.