Purpose: This study examined Grades 5 and 9 students’ views of uncertainty in their personal scientific research and the formal scientific research of professionals.
Sample: This study included 33 students in Grade 5 (n = 17) and Grade 9 (n = 16). The students were recruited from a charter school that emphasised inquiry instruction.
Design and methods: Data were collected through interviews. Students were asked their views of their inquiry-based projects and their views of professional science.
Results: Interview data and statistical analyses indicated that students recognized uncertainty in personal science, which varied across elements of the scientific process. Additionally, their views of uncertainty in formal science tended to change across grades and knowledge of uncertainty in personal and formal science were positively correlated.
Conclusion: These findings offer insights into the processes by which students come to understand uncertainty in science and point to ways of fostering such knowledge through teaching practices. 相似文献
Purpose: This study explores STEM students’ encounters with an interdisciplinary first year. Specifically, motivational patterns towards learning in two introductory courses followed by students from multiple study programmes are investigated.
Sample: 173 Danish undergraduate students enrolled in three science programmes: biomedicine; biochemistry and molecular biology; and physics.
Design and methods: Within the framework of Self-Determination Theory, a measure of autonomous and controlled motivation forms the basis for quantitative analyses (n = 173). A qualitative thematic analysis of students’ open responses further supplements and gives nuance to the findings.
Results: The motivational pattern of physics students is found to differ significantly from that of biochemistry and molecular biology (BMB) students and biomedicine students. The comments reveal that some students struggle to realise the relevance of the course content for their chosen study programme to an extent that makes them reconsider their study choice.
Conclusions: The study offers input to the discussion of how to present inter- and/or multidisciplinarity to students and points to implications on two levels: curriculum design and course content. The findings are of importance to educational planners, decision-makers and teachers dealing with the motivational range that exists within their courses. 相似文献
Objective: In this paper, we employ a novel approach called Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) to encourage students to think more about their software development processes.
Method: We conducted IPR sessions with five undergraduate programming students—we screen captured them working on programming assignments, and then used the screen captures to stimulate reflection. IPR is hallmarked by several key features, namely its developmental (rather than evaluative) focus, and the use of a facilitator to guide reflection in a structured way.
Findings: We found IPR was useful for both the teaching staff and the students, revealing incongruence between the value students placed on certain development processes and what they actually do in practice.
Implications: IPR is a novel approach for shining a light on student software development processes. We hope this paper encourages other practitioners to consider adding IPR to their toolbox of approaches for encouraging students to reflect on their software development processes. 相似文献
Purpose: The current study has two goals. (1) Applying the DAST at a university in South Africa, the study will add to the existing research literature through its Southern African context. (2) The study will also look more closely at the link between (stereotypical) images of scientists and science-related career choices.
Sample: The DAST was applied to first-year students (n = 445) across different faculties at a South African university. If the assumption that young people’s perceptions of scientists influence their career choice is correct, one would expect differences in the drawings made by students who have opted for different fields of study.
Design and methods: The DAST was administered during orientation week of the first-year students in January 2017. Students were provided with a prepared blank sheet of paper and asked to draw a scientist and to fill in further information on the back of the paper. A content analysis applying the DAST checklist was used to analyse the images.
Results: The findings show that South African students use about four stereotypical indicators when drawing a scientist, and social science students drew stereotypical attributes more frequently when compared to students from other faculties. A typical scientist – as depicted in this study – is a man of uncertain age, who wears eyeglasses and a lab coat, and is surrounded by laboratory equipment.
Conclusions: Findings are largely in line with the international research literature. To challenge gender stereotypes, more contact between students and female role models might be essential. If (stereotypical) images really affect science-related career choices deserves further attention in future research studies. 相似文献
Methodology: Relevance and knowledge levels were tested through a teaching competency questionnaire developed and run on 292 respondents fitting into administrator, faculty and student groups. Needs Assessment Model by Borich [1980. “A Needs Assessment Model for Conducting Follow-up Studies.” Journal of Teacher Education 31 (3): 39–42] is used to identify training needs.
Findings: Results indicate differences in perceptions among groups towards teaching competencies. Prioritized training needs were identified which provide the content and direction for the development of faculty in-service educational programmes.
Practical implications: Faculty of agricultural universities need periodic in-service training programmes in order to improve their teaching competencies so that they become effective and competent teachers in the present educational environment.
Theoretical implications: The statistically validated methodological framework provides for capturing the perception of all stakeholders on the teaching competencies among the faculty members of Agricultural Universities in India, and offers a scope for scaling up the study for similar educational setting in the region.
Originality/value: The perception of students and administrators was also considered along with the self-perception of faculty about the relevance and knowledge levels of teaching competencies. 相似文献
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the impact on overall educational performance as a result of engaging with technology subjects at post-primary level.
Sample: A five year cohort study was designed to gather longitudinal data from a total sample of 1761 pupils’ grades from the Irish Leaving Certificate examination. The sample was distributed across four schools.
Design and methods: Grades from the Irish Leaving Certificate were selected because the examination is considered high stakes as it serves as the country’s primary mechanism for matriculation into third-level education. Individual examinations are designed externally to schools by a government body ensuring the validity of each examination in capturing the holistic interpretation subject syllabi. Finally, a points system is used to score each examination facilitating comparisons between subjects.
Results: The results show that pupils who study the technology subjects are statistically significantly less likely to perform well overall in comparison to pupils who study science and mathematics subjects. They also show that for pupils who study the technology subjects, those subjects are statistically significantly likely to be their best performing subjects.
Conclusions: Due to the array of variables impacting subject selection, a definitive causal explanation cannot be deduced from the data for these results. However, it is possible to infer that the variance in knowledge types between the science and technology subjects has an impact on the results. A case is made that a compulsory technological component should be incorporated into educational curricula to provide a comprehensive and general education and to facilitate the holistic development of pupils. 相似文献
Design/Methodology: Teagasc, the public KT service provider in Ireland, experienced significant office closures (43%) and a reduction in advisers (38%) during the economic crisis, yet client numbers declined only slightly (4.5%). Administrative data are merged with a panel data set on farm-level performance to evaluate the impact through Random Effects estimation.
Findings: The results show that clients gained a 12.3% benefit to their margin per hectare over the period. However, there was a negative effect of 0.2% for each additional client assigned to the adviser which averaged at 9.6%.
Practical Implications: The quantitative findings provide a measure of impact that represents the value for money for the KT service. The key implication is that the client ratio for advisers should be considered when allocating resources and lower ratios would positively impact client margins.
Theoretical Implications: This article outlines the value of quantitative studies to estimate impact in a clear translatable manner which can aid the policy discussion around resource deployment.
Originality/Value: This study evaluates the impact of KT during a recessionary period when resources were constrained, and uses client ratios to examine the spatial effects. 相似文献
Purpose: In this study, we investigated how students’ mental models about one-dimensional expansion can be extended for purposes of running mental simulations about expansion along two dimensions.
Sample: To that end a pretest-posttest quasi-experiment has been conducted, with 100 students in the control group and 95 students in the experimental group.
Design and methods: Whereas control group students received traditional instruction with a focus on formal representations, in the experimental group the students were led to draw an analogy between heating of a straight rod and a circular rod of same length, whereby the internal structure of the rods was represented by springs.
Results: Eventually, it has been found that students from the experimental group were significantly more successful at predicting the effects of thermal expansion, especially within contexts of objects with holes.
Conclusion: Analogies and extreme case reasoning can be effectively used for helping the students to correctly transfer their mental models about one-dimensional expansion to situations that require reasoning about expansion along two dimensions. 相似文献
Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents a model of four reflective practice modules conceived as successive building blocks in the professional development of a reflective agricultural advisor and examines the model through the lens of theory and the lens of experience of the first cohort of students to complete the programme.
Findings: Experiential learning with structured critical reflection is shown to support the integration of knowledge gained into new professional identities as agricultural advisors.
Practical Implications: Curricula for higher education in agricultural extension need to be revitalised and refreshed to address the mismatch between the emphasis on the social dimensions of extension in the literature and the general lack of attention to this in the education and formation of agricultural advisors.
Theoretical Implications: The paper presents a model of reflective practice that draws on experiences in other professions that could be applied to early career and continuing professional development for agricultural advisors.
Originality/Value: By presenting a model for reflective practice, the author intends to stimulate a wider discussion on the importance of the different levels of reflection in agricultural extension higher education. 相似文献
Purpose: The purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate student perceptions in a Science Extended Curriculum Program (ECP) of both the traditional pen and paper method they used in 2016, and the new online resource method they used in 2017 to better prepare them for Physics laboratories, and to compare the two methods.
Sample: N = 51 students from a first-year Extended Curriculum Programme in physics at a South African university voluntarily participated in this study.
Design and methods: The research was conducted using two non-standardised structured questionnaires where the enrolled ECP students were asked both open-ended – and closed questions (using a Likert response scale). Google Forms using graphs assessed these responses. An additional source of data was iKamva/Sakai which is the University of Western Cape’s institutional Learning Management (LMS) system, which allowed for detailed information regarding online activities.
Results: Four main research questions focussing on preparedness, time spent, lab activities and online resources were identified. Findings from these suggest that an introduction of an online environment positively affected the students’ perceptions of the online environment for pre-laboratory preparation in comparison with using traditional pen and paper.
Conclusions: The present study has successfully managed to both reveal that the introduction of online environment for Physics laboratories brought about some positive benefits as perceived by the students, as well as fruitful avenues for future research. While more work is needed, in terms of research and continuing evaluation of eLearning in Physics education, there is reason to be positive in terms of renewed emphasis to add blended learning within the broader Physics learning and teaching communities. 相似文献
Purpose: To identify the evolution of students’ conceptions regarding the nature of sound and its properties (frequency, intensity and frequency spectrum) through a teaching-learning sequence (TLS) about sound phenomena in an authentic musical context. The described TLS consists of three activities aiming students to correlate the properties of sound waves (frequency, intensity and frequency spectrum) with its perceptive characteristics (pitch, loudness and timbre) via the use of smartphone applications.
Sample: Eight students, in the second year of their studies in the Department of Primary Education of the XXX University.
Design and methods: Students’ perspectives on sound and their progression are investigated through a teaching experiment design. Data are collected by recording students’ interviews. Due to the explorative nature of the research qualitative methods of content analysis are used.
Results: The results show that the students’ perspectives on sound evolved, as students managed to consolidate links between their everyday experience of sounds and the underlying science concepts as frequency, intensity and frequency spectrum. The authentic environment and the use of the smartphone’s applications were key factors for the success of the teaching experiment. The interaction with the activities shifted student’s conceptualizations closer to the scientific ones, by communicating every day sound experiences with their scientific interpretation. 相似文献