The research reported in this article makes two distinctive contributions to the field of classroom environment research. First, because existing instruments are unsuitable for science laboratory classes, the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI) was developed and validated. Second, a new Personal form of the SLEI (involving a student's perceptions of his or her own role within the class) was developed and validated in conjunction with the conventional Class form (involving a student's perceptions of the class as a whole), and its usefulness was investigated. The instrument was cross‐nationally fieldtested with 5,447 students in 269 senior high school and university classes in six countries, and cross‐validated with 1,594 senior high school students in 92 classes in Australia. Each SLEI scale exhibited satisfactory internal consistency reliability, discriminant validity, and factorial validity, and differentiated between the perceptions of students in different classes. A variety of applications with the new instrument furnished evidence about its usefulness and revealed that science laboratory classes are dominated by closed‐ended activities; mean scores obtained on the Class form were consistently somewhat more favorable than on the corresponding Personal form; females generally held more favorable perceptions than males, but these differences were somewhat larger for the Personal form than the Class form; associations existed between attitudinal outcomes and laboratory environment dimensions; and the Class and Personal forms of the SLEI each accounted for unique variance in student outcomes which was independent of that accounted for by the other form.
The SOLEI (Science Outdoor Learning Environment Inventory) was developed and content‐validated in high schools in Israel. The instrument consists of seven scales (55 items). Five of the scales are based on the Science Laboratory Learning Environment Instrument (SLEI) developed in Australia. The other two scales are unique to the learning environment existing in outdoor activities. The instrument was found to be a sensitive measure that differentiates between different types of field trips conducted in the context of different subjects (biology, chemistry, and earth science). It is suggested that the instrument could be an important addition to the research tools available for studies conducted in informal settings in science education. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 81:161–171, 1997.
African American children are the proxy for what ails American education in general. And so, as we fashion solutions which help African American children, we fashion solutions which help all children.-Honorable Augustus F. Hawkins 1 This article is a discussion of significant incidents and issues that pertain to recent efforts to infuse Afrocentric content into the U.S. public school curriculum. 2 The focus here is on developments within the past decade, as highlighted by a case study of the School District of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Two distinct historical developments among African American people inform what can be called a movement for Afrocentric content infusion. The first is the late 1960s mass call by parents and community leaders for more control over their schools. The second development is the popularization of the Afrocentric idea and the embracing of African culture by African Americans. In addition, the seemingly increasing severity of social problems confronting African American youths is an alarming development that has lent urgency to this movement. Carpenter-Huffman, Hall, and Sumner (1974) provide a useful method by which any attempt to introduce a school reform can be evaluated. This method is used here applied to the Afrocentric curriculum movement. An examination of the efforts to infuse Afrocentric content into the curriculum of Philadelphia's public 462
A strong tradition in educational research has involved several widely-used instruments assessing student or teacher perceptions of characteristics of actual or preferred classroom psychosocial environment. Existing instruments, however, are unsuitable for one of the most important settings in science teaching, namely, the science laboratory class. Consequently, the present research aimed to develop and validate a new instrument, the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI), which is specifically suited to science laboratory environments at the higher education level. The SLEI assesses students' or teachers' perceptions of five dimensions of actual or preferred classroom environment, namely, Student Cohesiveness, Open-Endedness, Integration, Rule Clarity, and Material Environment. A distinctive feature of the design of the study was that the instrument was field tested and validated cross-nationally in six different countries, namely, the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Israel, and Nigeria. The total sample consisted of 1720 students in 71 university laboratory classes. Various item and factor analyses guided the evolution of a refined version, and attested to each SLEI scale's internal consistency reliability, discriminant validity, factorial validity, predictive validity (i.e., ability to predict student outcomes), and ability to differentiate between the perceptions of students in different classes. An important finding was that the SLEI is equally valid for use in its actual and preferred versions, and for the individual or the class mean as the unit of analysis. As well, separate within-country analyses confh-med the validity and usefulness of the SLEI in each of the six countries involved in the field testing. Overall, the study attested to the general advantages of employing cross-national designs in learning environment research.
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