In this article, Michele Moses and Lauren Saenz explore a growing trend in education policymaking — the ballot initiative. Specifically, the authors question whether information presented to voters is sufficiently substantive to permit educated decisionmaking about influential policies. Their study, a content analysis of print news media related to the 2006 Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, shows that coverage of this initiative was largely superficial, documenting procedural or topical matters rather than addressing the deeper moral, practical, and historical issues involved. These results, they argue, highlight the important role that mass media should play in a direct democracy, currently an overlooked responsibility. Moses and Saenz end with an appeal to education researchers to monitor the media coverage of education policy debates and, upon finding insubstantial coverage, to present an alternative that is meaningful and accessible to the general public.

No abstract

This manuscript reports the results of a research study exploring the ways in which physical space and teacher pedagogy are related to preschoolers’ engagement with science and engineering practices while at play. Using the Science and Engineering Practices Observation Protocol (SciEPOP), researchers captured children’s engagement with the eight science and engineering practices identified in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This study explores relationships between specific playspaces, materials, and pedagogical strategies, and children’s patterns of engagement with particular science and engineering practices during free play. There are notable differences in the spaces, materials, and pedagogies children encounter across the four participating preschools, and these differences suggest significant gaps in children’s opportunities to engage in and deepen their enactment of science and engineering practices. The authors present evidence in support of adaptive, personalized strategies for deepening children’s engagement with science through play, and raise questions about equity in early science learning environments that have implications both nationally and internationally for science education research, practice, and policy.

No abstract