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.     

The use of head-to-head records for breaking ties in round-robin soccer contests

Head-to-head records are often used in round-robin contests for breaking ties between athletes or teams that are equal on points or wins. In this paper, I argue, on the one hand, that tie-breaking systems of round-robin soccer contests should give more importance to overall goal difference than to head-to-head records. On the other hand, I also argue that even the mere inclusion of head-to-head records in the tie-breaking criteria of a round-robin soccer contest is problematic.     

Betterness,injustice and failed athletic contests

In this paper, I provide an account of failed athletic contests which consists of two ideals, the Athletic Superiority Ideal and the Just Results Ideal. Related to this, I argue that a sports contest can fail in terms of the Athletic Superiority Ideal without failing in terms of the Just Results Ideal and vice versa. In the process of doing the former, I argue that besides adjudicating errors, cheating, gamesmanship and (bad) luck, there are two other types of reasons because of which a sports contest can fail in terms of the Athletic Superiority Ideal. Finally, I argue that my account of failed athletic contests is more plausible than Mika Hämäläinen’s three-standard model of athletic superiority.     

Comparison of Peer,Teacher and Self-Assessments on Adolescent Direct and Indirect Aggression

This study examined the relationships between peer, teacher and self-assessments on adolescent direct and indirect aggressive behaviour taking place at school. Subjects, a total of 2002, numbered 725 early, 575 middle and 702 late adolescent girls and boys. Measures on direct aggression included bullying, fighting and arguing, and measures on indirect aggression focused on backbiting and intriguing. The results revealed that, as a rule, the correlation between the peers and the teachers was higher than the agreement between the teachers and the self, which, in turn, was higher than that between the peers and the self. Consistency was also found to be higher with direct than with indirect aggression. Regarding age differences, the teacher-peer agreement was higher for the early and middle adolescents than for the late adolescents, while the teacher-self and the peer-self consistencies showed curvilinear relationships. Examining gender-related variance revealed that the peer-teacher correlation on direct aggression was higher for boys than for girls. No gender differences were found in assessments of indirect aggression. The results suggest, firstly, that self-ratings are not well interchangeable with peer or teacher assessments, which, in turn, are in line with each other, and, secondly, that there is a higher concordance in assessing direct than indirect aggression.