Secondary science students’ beliefs about class discussions: a case study comparing and contrasting academic tracks     

Diane Silva Pimentel  Katherine L. McNeill 《International Journal of Science Education》2016,38(12):2047-2068

The dialogue that occurs in science classrooms has been the subject of research for many decades. Most studies have focused on the actual discourse that occurs and the role of the teacher in guiding the discourse. This case study explored the neglected perspective of secondary science students and their beliefs about their role in class discussions. The study participants (N?=?45) were students in one of the three differentially tracked chemistry classes taught by the same teacher. Findings about the differences that exist among students from different academic tracks are reported. While it seems that epistemological beliefs focusing on content are common for the students in this study, the students' social framing in the different tracks is important to consider when teachers attempt to transition to more dialogic forms of discourse. Some key findings of this study are (a) students’ beliefs that science is a body of facts to be learned influenced the factors they deemed important for whole-class discussion, (b) students from the lower-level track who typically were associated with lower socioeconomic status were more likely to view their role as passive, and (c) students’ comfort level with the members of the class seemed to influence their decisions to participate in class discussions.  相似文献   

AILEM Programme: a long‐term intervention to promote literacy learning in low‐performing primary schools in Chile     

Malva Villalón Bravo Corresponding author  Margarita Silva  Tonia Razmilic  Stanley L. Swartz 《Early Years: An International Journal of Research and Development》2005,25(2):97-111

After one year of implementation, this paper describes a programme designed to support literacy learning in low performing schools from poor sectors in Santiago, Chile. School‐based intensive training on theory and practice of a literacy learning framework for classroom instruction and long‐term support were used to impact the achievement of students from disadvantaged families in 16 kindergarten classrooms and 16 1st‐grade classrooms in nine primary schools. Preliminary results showed an improvement in learning achievement positively related to level of implementation of the literacy instruction framework in the classrooms and teachers' perception of an improvement in their knowledge and classroom practices. Although findings from this study cannot support definite conclusions, because of the lack of experimental conditions, they provide relevant information for future experimental studies on how to meet the literacy learning needs of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.  相似文献   

Peer Review in Education: Promoting Collaboration, Written Expression, Critical Thinking, and Professional Responsibility     

Vinícius Medina Kern  Luciana Martins Saraiva  Roberto Carlos dos Santos Pacheco 《Education and Information Technologies》2003,8(1):37-46

This article discusses the application of the peer review process as a pedagogical instrument for the promotion of written expression, collaborative work, critical thinking, and professional responsibility among Informatics and Engineering majors. The approach is introduced with a motivation, followed by a discussion about common principles of current learning paradigms and the peer review process. This work is being conducted in Brazil, where we intend to promote a learning paradigm shift through the application of peer review in education. A framework for this application is outlined, together with an account of results from experiences and a discussion about the skills that this approach exercises, especially with regard to widely accepted curricula and codes of ethics and professional conduct. Further research and development efforts are conjectured.  相似文献   

Gender bias in IQ-discrepancy and post-discrepancy definitions of reading disability     

Share DL  Silva PA 《Journal of learning disabilities》2003,36(1):4-14

The present study investigated the hypothesis that the higher prevalence of reading disability (RD) often observed among boys is partly an artifact of gender bias in the prediction of reading from IQ. The relevant regression statistics derived from a sample of more than 900 children revealed a statistically significant intercept bias. Predicted reading scores for boys were systematically overestimated, thereby inflating IQ-reading discrepancies; the converse was found for girls. When defined separately for girls and boys, severe underachievement in reading was found to be equally prevalent in both genders and, furthermore, was associated with qualitatively and quantitatively similar patterns of deficits. Because the bias arose from general differences between boys and girls in reading score distributions (a lower mean and greater variance for boys) rather than from differences in IQ scores, gender bias poses a potential threat not only to traditional IQ-discrepancy definitions but also to post-discrepancy definitions that are based solely on reading score cutoffs. Future classification criteria for RD need to take heed of the possibility that when the distributions of reading scores for boys and girls are not identical, performance cutoffs designating low achievement that are based on data pooled from both genders are likely to result in the overidentification of boys with RD and the underidentification of girls with RD.  相似文献   

The organization and temporal properties of appetitive behavior in rats     

Kathleen M. Silva  William Timberlake 《Learning & behavior》1998,26(2):182-195

In the presence and absence of an externalinterfood clock stimulus (a sequence of flashing lights), rats showed a multimodal behavior pattern during successive quarters of interfood intervals (IFI) ranging from 12 to 192 sec. Responses near the feeder peaked before and just after food presentations, whereas locomotion remote from the feeder peaked toward the middle of the IFI. The temporal patterns of nosing in the feeder and remote locomotion were scalar (the time at which a response peaked in the IFI was proportional to the IFI length), whereas the patterns of postfood feeder-directed behavior, rearing, and pawgrooming were time bound (peaking at a fixed time after food, regardless of IFI length). Responses varied in their control by the external clock stimulus. During the last half of the IFI, rats nosed in the feeder more with an external clock, but only at intermediate IFIs. During the first quarter of the IFI, rats pawgroomed more with an external clock, but only at the longest IFI. The general sequence of responses during the interfood clock was consistent with the view that food delivery engages an organized sequence of search states that are expressed through a variety of responses.  相似文献   

Child and adolescent mental health and counselling in Mugello, Italy     

Massimo Papini  Roberto Leonetti  Maurizio Timpanelli  Luca Mercatali  Gavino Maciocco 《International journal for the advancement of counseling》1999,21(3):221-230

This report deals with a program to train the General Practitionners and Pediatricians (P&;P) in child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) counselling, undertaken by the Community Service child neuropsychiatrists (CNs) in the Mugello, a mountain region near Florence (Italy) of approx. 500 square miles, with about 58,000 residents of which 9,000 under eighteen years of age. The program began in 1996 and, after an organizational phase, the P&;P's professional interests and needs dealing with CAMH were tested (review phase). The remarkable P&;P's interest and motivations in CAMH were confirmed by the significant percentage (about 50%) of voluntary attendance and the high percentage (about 91%) of active participation in the meetings and by the 50% increment of first referrals to specialists during a test-period lasting two month (February--March 1997/96). A close-ended questionnaire investigated the most frequent CAMH problems faced by the P&;P, which prevalently turned out to be ordinary events. The high rate (about 54%) of missing responses to questions about the P&;P's possibility to aknowledge their own sources of knowledge on such problems and the high positive response rate (about 70%) indicating a non professional source of knowledge reveal the P&;P's awareness of professional insecurity in CAMH, and this was the cause of their difficulties in distinguishing between ordinary events and psychopathology. The P&;P replied positively in 93% of the cases to the question “do you think it is useful for your professional self-confidence to examine these problem areas in depth?” The method that they preferred proved to be “continuing training courses” (35%). These results provided the basis for the implementation phase with a continuing professional training program. The P&;P's awareness of professional insecurity and the admission of their need for training and information in CAMH motivate their requests for CNs Counselling reference in order to deal with psychiatric cases, while the P&;P's humane approach with patients, revealed during the meetings and in the questionnaire, simplifies the task of training the P&;P to become counsellors in CAMH problems which are less severe.  相似文献   

Reduction of water evaporation in polymerase chain reaction microfluidic devices based on oscillating-flow   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Alessandro Polini  Elisa Mele  Anna Giovanna Sciancalepore  Salvatore Girardo  Adriana Biasco  Andrea Camposeo  Roberto Cingolani  David A. Weitz    Dario Pisignano 《Biomicrofluidics》2010,4(3)

Producing polymeric or hybrid microfluidic devices operating at high temperatures with reduced or no water evaporation is a challenge for many on-chip applications including polymerase chain reaction (PCR). We study sample evaporation in polymeric and hybrid devices, realized by glass microchannels for avoiding water diffusion toward the elastomer used for chip fabrication. The method dramatically reduces water evaporation in PCR devices that are found to exhibit optimal stability and effective operation under oscillating-flow. This approach maintains the flexibility, ease of fabrication, and low cost of disposable chips, and can be extended to other high-temperature microfluidic biochemical reactors.  相似文献   

Landing techniques in volleyball     

Lobietti R  Coleman S  Pizzichillo E  Merni F 《Journal of sports sciences》2010,28(13):1469-1476

Knee injuries such as anterior cruciate ligament lesions and patellar tendonitis are very frequent in volleyball, and are often attributed to micro traumas that occur during the landing phase of airborne actions. The aim of the present study was to compare different jumping activities during official men's and women's volleyball games. Twelve top-level matches from the Italian men's and women's professional leagues were analysed. The jumps performed during the games were classified according to the landing technique used by the player (left or right foot or both feet together), court position, and ball trajectory. Chi-square analyses were performed to detect differences in landing techniques between the sexes, court positions, and trajectories when serving, attacking, blocking, and setting. Significant differences (P?相似文献   

Exploring features for the automatic identification of user goals in web search     

Mauro Rojas Herrera  Edleno Silva de Moura  Marco Cristo  Thomaz Philippe Silva  Altigran Soares da Silva 《Information processing & management》2010

Queries submitted to search engines can be classified according to the user goals into three distinct categories: navigational, informational, and transactional. Such classification may be useful, for instance, as additional information for advertisement selection algorithms and for search engine ranking functions, among other possible applications. This paper presents a study about the impact of using several features extracted from the document collection and query logs on the task of automatically identifying the users’ goals behind their queries. We propose the use of new features not previously reported in literature and study their impact on the quality of the query classification task. Further, we study the impact of each feature on different web collections, showing that the choice of the best set of features may change according to the target collection.  相似文献   

A continuous improvement approach: Closing the loop in an engineering,procurement, and construction management environment     

Roberto Santana 《Performance Improvement》2010,49(7):25-32

Continuous improvement initiatives are of increasing importance due to the high operating risks of engineering, procurement, and construction management (EPCM) firms in the oil and gas sector ($188 billion worth of oil and gas projects in 2008). This article describes a continuous improvement framework that translates performance problems into an action plan and helps to prevent their recurrence.  相似文献