An international collaborative investigation of beginning seventh grade students' understandings of scientific inquiry: Establishing a baseline

Although understandings of scientific inquiry (as opposed to conducting inquiry) are included in science education reform documents around the world, little is known about what students have learned about inquiry during their elementary school years. This is partially due to the lack of any assessment instrument to measure understandings about scientific inquiry. However, a valid and reliable assessment has recently been developed and published, Views About Scientific Inquiry (VASI; Lederman et al. [2014], Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51, 65–83). The purpose of this large-scale international project was to collect the first baseline data on what beginning middle school students have learned about scientific inquiry during their elementary school years. Eighteen countries/regions spanning six continents including 2,634 students participated in the study. The participating countries/regions were: Australia, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Mainland China, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States. In many countries, science is not formally taught until middle school, which is the rationale for choosing seventh grade students for this investigation. This baseline data will simultaneously provide information on what, if anything, students learn about inquiry in elementary school, as well as their beginning knowledge as they enter secondary school. It is important to note that collecting data from all of the approximately 200 countries globally was not humanly possible, and it was also not possible to collect data from every region of each country. The results overwhelmingly show that students around the world at the beginning of grade seven have very little understandings about scientific inquiry. Some countries do show reasonable understandings in certain aspects but the overall picture of understandings of scientific inquiry is not what is hoped for after completing 6 years of elementary education in any country.     

Investigating Gender Differences in Mathematics and Science: Results from the 2011 Trends in Mathematics and Science Survey

Research in Science Education - The underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-related fields remains a concern for educators and the scientific...     

Research and scholarship: Perceptions of senior academic administrators

This paper reports selected findings from the first stage of a study on the research role within academic work in Australian universities. These findings come from the interview component of the study and discuss the perceptions that senior academic administrators hold on research and scholarship. The analysis of the interviews indicates that research covers a wide and varied range of activities across the disciplines found in a university and therefore needs to be defined broadly. However, research has three major attributes: new knowledge, enquiry and publication of results and views. Scholarship was perceived to be part of the research process, providing the context for good research by adding the element of breadth to the depth of research. In addition, scholarship describes the manner of pursuing a serious, sustained line of enquiry as well as the dissemination process.     

Determinants of faculty salary in prestigious versus less-prestigious departments: A comparative study of academic disciplines

This study examines the role of research performance and seniority in determining faculty salary in university graduate departments. Four fields were studied: chemistry, physics, political science, and sociology. Seniority was found to be positively related to the pay structure in most of these fields and in most of the prestige levels, though slightly more so in the social sciences. Overall, research performance dimensions were found to be the major predictors of salary. Articles are most effective in predicting salary in the physical sciences and least effective in the social sciences. The reverse is true regarding published books.The applicability of these findings to university administration is discussed and potential changes in the reward systems are elaborated.     

Beyond English language proficiency scores: understanding the academic performance of international undergraduate students during the first year of study

ABSTRACT

Past research into the relationship between English proficiency test (EPT) scores and score profiles, such as the IELTS and the TOEFL, has shown that there is not always a clear relationship between those scores and students’ subsequent academic achievement. Information about students’ academic self-concept (ASC) may provide additional information that helps predict future academic success. Research has consistently shown a positive relationship between students’ ASC and subsequent academic achievement and educational attainment in both school and higher education settings. The purpose of the current study was to examine the relationship between the academic performance of international students and their language proficiency and academic self-concept as well as other characteristics related to academic success. The study focused on first year international students in undergraduate business programs at an English-medium university in Canada. The following information was collected about the student participants: grades in degree program courses, annual GPA, and EPT scores (including subscores). In addition, students completed an academic self-concept scale. To obtain additional information about success in first-year business courses, instructors in two required courses were interviewed about the academic and language requirements in their courses and the profile of successful students. Correlations between the students’ course grades, GPA, EPT scores, and ASC score were calculated. The instructor interviews were analyzed using a content analysis procedure. The findings from all data sources were triangulated and show that language ability, ASC, and other factors impact academic success during the first year in a business program. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Sleep disturbances in adolescents with symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

We evaluated 32 nonmedicated male adolescents diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in childhood, 35 male adolescents similarly diagnosed who were receiving methylphenidate (MPH), and 77 control boys. Both ADHD groups completed self-report questionnaires assessing sleep disturbances; weekday and holiday sleep duration; and symptoms of ADHD, anxiety, and depression. Parents and teachers rated the severity of the participants' ADHD. The control group completed self-report questionnaires assessing sleep disturbances. We found that nonmedicated participants and controls did not differ in the severity of sleep disturbance. In contrast, the medicated participants demonstrated a significantly greater severity of sleep disturbance compared with the nonmedicated participants and reported elevated levels of symptoms of ADHD, anxiety, and depression. Specific analyses showed that depressive symptoms contributed significantly to the degree of sleep disturbance when controlling for ADHD diagnosis and MPH treatment. These findings suggest that among adolescents with ADHD symptoms, the severity of symptoms of depression may contribute to the degree of sleep disturbance in addition to the effect of their primary disorder and MPH treatment.     

The effect of format on performance: Editing text in print versus digital formats

In light of the present‐day proliferation of digital texts and the increase in situations that require active digital text reading in learning, it is becoming increasingly important to shed light on the comparison between print and digital reading under active reading conditions. In this study, the active reading abilities of 93 university students (83% females) were examined. Participants were asked to read, edit, recognize errors and improve the quality of short papers (600 words each) on the topic of environmental awareness, in both print and in digital formats. Surprisingly, and in contrast to many recent reports about print versus digital reading, no significant differences were found between the performances of participants in the two formats. Similarly, no significant differences were found for all categories of text errors as well as for gender. It was found that the digital readers completed their tasks faster than the print readers but their performance was not lower. Results of this study have important implications for the current debate in higher education concerning the use of digital text for learning and for designing, reviewing and editing academic works.     

Epigenetic Vestiges of Early Developmental Adversity: Childhood Stress Exposure and DNA Methylation in Adolescence

Fifteen‐year‐old adolescents (N = 109) in a longitudinal study of child development were recruited to examine differences in DNA methylation in relation to parent reports of adversity during the adolescents’ infancy and preschool periods. Microarray technology applied to 28,000 cytosine–guanine dinucleotide sites within DNA derived from buccal epithelial cells showed differential methylation among adolescents whose parents reported high levels of stress during their children’s early lives. Maternal stressors in infancy and paternal stressors in the preschool years were most strongly predictive of differential methylation, and the patterning of such epigenetic marks varied by children’s gender. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first report of prospective associations between adversities in early childhood and the epigenetic conformation of adolescents’ genomic DNA.     

Kurt lewin at the tavistock institute

Notions of action research and of integrating object relations and field psychologies have exerted a steady influence on both the initial formation of The Tavistock Institute in London and on the subsequent 60 years of its professional identity and approach to work. These notions can be tied directly to early scientific contact with Kurt Lewin, and indirectly through the Lewinian philosophy that staff incorporated into an overall ‘house style’. From 1990, however, changes in the Institute's funding environment undermined this historical source of integrity. Recent developments to reclaim and update the roots of Kurt Lewin at The Tavistock Institute.