Erratum: Student affect and conceptual understanding in learning chemistry

In this article (Journal of Research in Science Teaching 2007;44(7):908–937. DOI 10.1002/tea.20169 © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.), part of the author's affiliation had been inadvertently omitted. The corrected affiliation appears above. For the reader's information, the acronym “OISE/UT” stands for “Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto.” The author regrets any inconvenience this may have caused.     

Using action research as a methodological tool: understanding teachers' understanding of science

A series of questions and answers between Jennifer Nias in her role as supervisor and Steve Waters-Adams as student explores the rationale for the inclusion of action research as a methodological tool within a wider PhD study. The study explored the effect of teachers' understanding of the nature of science on their teaching. In discussing the complexities of the research, Steve Waters-Adams suggests that action research provided a powerful means of gaining access to important tacit and dialectical aspects of teachers' practice. The discussion considers the process of action research, particularly with regard to the extent that its form and purpose may be defined, the importance of collaboration and the centrality of personal commitment. Steve Waters-Adams concludes that there is scope for subject-oriented research in education to make more use of action research as a methodological tool, given that the process engages with, and exposes for scrutiny, practitioners' values, aims and motives.     

Student affect and conceptual understanding in learning chemistry

This study explores the relationship between affective and cognitive variables in grade 9 chemistry students (n = 73). In particular, it explores how students' situational interest, their attitudes toward chemistry, and their chemistry‐specific self‐concept influence their understanding of chemistry concepts over the course of a school year. All affective variables were assessed at two time points: at the middle of the first semester of grade 9, and at the end of the second semester of grade 9, and then related to students' postinstructional understanding of chemical concepts. Results reveal that none of the affective variables measured at the earliest time point have a significant direct effect on postinstructional conceptual understanding. Looking at the different affective variables as intermediary constructs, however, reveals a pattern in which self‐concept and situational interest measured at the middle of grade 9 contribute to self‐concept measured at the end of grade 9, which in turn, has a positive, significant effect on students' postinstructional conceptual understanding. These results reveal the importance of a strong and positive self‐concept, the feeling of doing well in the chemistry class, for developing a meaningful understanding of scientific concepts. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 908–937, 2007     

Visualizing community: understanding narrative inquiry as action research

This article explores the experiences of students who used interactive learning material on handheld computers in a gallery to support their understanding and appreciation of artwork. The article considers the wider implications of using technology to change relationships between teacher, learners and subject matter, and attempts to offer positive and pragmatic recommendations about the implementation of new technology into established educational contexts. Research was undertaken as part of the ICT Test Bed Project, set up by the DfES (UK Department for Education and Science) and funded by Becta (British Education Communications Technology Agency). Initial findings from this project are likely to be of interest to those exploring how mobile technology can be used to support the Government’s wider agenda for educational reform and offer a practitioner’s critical perspective on the possibilities and challenges offered by their use.     

Changing histories: strengthening teacher agency and improving education through action research in Botswana

Music teachers in Botswana’s junior secondary schools could transform their students’ and their own experience of music education through understanding, using and establishing action research as part of their practice. Furthermore, they could significantly impact the education system, by challenging its current paradigm and ultimately shifting its focus towards more socially just values and outcomes. These changes are long overdue, long written about and anticipated, long mandated through policy and accompanied by numerous research studies observing and theorizing the absence of student-centred pedagogy. This article situates the proposed project in relation to other African research studies in education reform. The project seeks to change, improve, and eventually re-structure and reinvigorate the teachers’ personal, professional and political landscapes not only through the changes to their practice, but through coming to see the subject area, their role in its delivery and their agency in an entirely new way.     

Early understanding and production of graphic symbols

Young children's ability to understand and produce graphic symbols within an environment of social communication was investigated in two experiments. Children aged 2, 3, and 4 years produced graphic symbols of simple objects on their own, used them in a social communicative game, and responded to experimenter's symbols. In Experiment 1 (N = 48), 2-year-olds did not effectively produce symbols or use the experimenter's symbols in the choice task, whereas 3- and 4-year-olds improved their drawings following the game and performed above chance with the experimenter's symbols. Ability to produce an effective graphic symbol was correlated with success on a task that measured understanding of the experimenter's symbols, supporting the claim that children's ability to produce a graphic symbol rests on the understanding of the symbolic function of pictures. In Experiment 2, 32 children aged 3 and 4 years improved their third set of drawings when they received feedback that their drawings were not effective communications. The results suggest that production and understanding of graphic symbols can be facilitated by the same social factors that improve verbal symbolic abilities, thereby raising the question of domain specificity in symbolic development.     

Critical physics agency: further unraveling the intersections of subject matter knowledge, learning, and taking action

In this rejoinder to Bryan Brown and John Reveles, we highlight the facts that (a) sociocultural theories of learning do not go far enough because they fail to address a number of issues and (b) we require concepts such as power and positionality to understand science learning.

Children’s constructive climate change engagement: Empowering awareness,agency, and action

Abstract

This mixed-methods study examined how ten- to twelve-year-old children experienced and made sense of their growing climate change awareness through an after-school program that used participatory methods to facilitate children’s informed climate change action. The fifteen-week program combined hands-on educational activities with digital photography and culminated in youth-led action projects focused on individual (i.e. daily habits) and collaborative change (i.e. community projects). After the program, children knew significantly more about the scientific and social dimensions of climate change than before, and more than the average U.S. teen or adult. Survey and focus group analyses showed that, in addition to learning, children were inspired and motivated by their growing climate change awareness. Children felt empowered by their knowledge and eager to learn more and take action to minimize harms. Towards theorizing children’s constructive climate change engagement, the importance of informal learning environments for children’s intergenerational and political influence is discussed.     

The contribution of pragmatism to understanding educational action research: value and consequences

This paper argues that action research finds a rationale in the pragmatic position that knowledge is provisional and generated through a transaction between agent and environment. Action research finds a further methodological rationale in the pragmatic view that knowledge is generated within indeterminate situations, requires habits of reflection and analysis, and is arrived at through open agreement. However, pragmatic action research is also distinctive: it has a particular concern for consensus and, through the work of Dewey, a focus on the pedagogical implications of problem solving. This paper discusses the value of the label ‘pragmatic’ and the strengths and weaknesses of the pragmatic approach.     

论律师特权

律师拒证权又称律师特权，是律师权利的重要构成。经过二十多年的改革开放，律师服务遍及各行各业，律师制度已成为司法制度不可或却的重要组成，尤其在刑诉领域律师的功绩更是不可磨灭。而且随着律师刑辩的飞速发展，为切实保障被告人的合法权利，保障律师权和律师制度的健康发展。迫切要求建立刑辩律师的拒证权。     

论沉默权制度

根据我国实际和国外实行沉默权制度的经验教训,我国不宜普遍实行明示沉默权制度,应删除《刑事诉讼法》第93条“如实陈述”义务,有限接受默示沉默,但对特殊罪案例外。     

The process of understanding the task: how is agency distributed between students, teachers and representations in technology-rich learning environments?

In this article, we explore how students’ agency relates to both highly structured and open-ended learning environments. This is done by analysing how students’ understanding of tasks evolves through their activities in relation to the representations inscribed in two technology-rich learning environments. Based on the sociocultural approach to thinking, reasoning and learning we argue that it is necessary to include activities, artefacts and aspects of the knowledge domain in order to understand how and what the students’ learn. We conclude by arguing that the process of understanding a task is often complex and ongoing through the activity.     

The role of motor experience in understanding action function: the case of the precision grasp

Recent evidence suggests adults and infants selectively attend to features of action, such as how a hand contacts an object. The current research investigated whether this bias stems from infants' processing of the functional consequences of grasps: understanding that different grasps afford different future actions. A habituation paradigm assessed 10-month-old infants' (N = 62) understanding of the functional consequences of precision and whole-hand grasps in others' actions, and infants' own precision grasping abilities were also assessed. The results indicate infants understood the functional consequences of another's grasp only if they could perform precision grasps themselves. These results highlight a previously unknown aspect of early action understanding, and deepen our understanding of the relation between motor experience and cognition.     

Partnership and recognition in action research: understanding the practices and practice architectures for participation and change

Abstract

This article is the first and introductory article of this special issue. The article gives a societist account of the principles of partnership and recognition as they are encountered and experienced in practices in action research. A societist account of practices requires a social theory for understanding practices. Therefore, the article utilises the resources of a contemporary form of practice theory, the theory of practice architectures and ecologies of practices, to lay down the foundation for conceptualising partnerships and recognition. Specifically, it introduces the theory as a foundation for the other articles in this special issue which, as a collective, examine the cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements that enable and constrain particular kinds of partnerships and recognition that exist or evolve in site-based education development. Additionally, the article presents theoretical considerations concerning the principles of partnership and recognition that emerge as enmeshments of one another which mutually form, reform and transform practices in action research.     

Programming effects on learning disabled children: Performance and affect

Negative effects of category labels on the attitudes of children as well as the expectations of teachers have been hypothesized but rarely substantiated with empirical data. Forty-five elementary school children identified according to state guidelines as learning disabled were rated by their classroom teachers on academic progress and personal-social adjustment using the Myklebust Pupil Rating Scale. Student attitude toward school was also assessed using the Describe Your School inventory. Learning disabled students receiving special programming were rated significantly better than students identified as learning disabled but not receiving special programming. No differences in attitude toward school were noted. Results suggest that negative effects of labels may be effectively counterbalanced by positive effects of special programming.     

Conflicting goals of educational action: a study of teacher agency from a transactional realism perspective

This study focuses on the different ways in which teachers relate their situational agency and professional assignment to the national curriculum content and curriculum dilemmas. It builds theoretically on transactional realism and empirically on analyses of interviews with teachers, exploring the nature of teacher agency during the enactment of a new Swedish curriculum reform. To uphold a dual perspective of teachers’ relation to the curriculum as both collectively and individually experienced and as both an ideal and realistic–practical relation, we term the future as ‘projective experiences’, the presence as ‘practical-evaluative experiences’ and the past ‘iterational experiences’ in relation to agency. Especially, we are interested in the ‘what’ in the curriculum – what the teachers find intriguing, important or impossible and what affects how they relate to the curriculum as part of the multidimensional structures influencing their agency. This approach reveals that the crucial issue of teacher agency is related to the policy discourse on knowledge and equity as standards and the uniformity of assessment and its pedagogical consequences.     

Youth science expertise,environmental identity,and agency in climate action filmmaking

Abstract

The Green Ninja Film Academy (GENIE) is an interdisciplinary curriculum development project that examines the efficacy of combining climate science concepts and practices with digital storytelling for middle school youth. We present findings from iterative enactments of this design-based research project in 2017 (N?=?296) and 2018 (N?=?539). On average, youth increased scores on assessments of science content and practices while demonstrating competencies in filmmaking and science explanations. Further, an inverse correlation was seen between initial identification with the environment and change in environmental identification throughout the unit. Results suggest that integration of creative filmmaking into a climate science curriculum aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards can increase engagement and science proficiency particularly for youth who initially show less engagement in environmental science.     

Remembering and understanding: the effects of changes in underlying knowledge on children's recollections

This study was designed to explore the influence of changes in children's knowledge on earlier constructed memories. Kindergartners' (N = 102) recall of a series of stories was examined as a function of their interpersonal knowledge about the main story character. Children's knowledge about the protagonist was manipulated prior to presentation of the stories, and the effects of their impressions on story recall were examined. A change in some of the children's impressions was then promoted, and the impact of this second knowledge manipulation on recall of previously heard stories was assessed. The results indicated that children's story recall was affected by their prior impressions. Moreover, following the second knowledge manipulation, children revised their story reports in ways that were consistent with their newly acquired impressions, which suggests that they had reconstructed their memories of previously heard stories. These findings provide evidence for both prospective and retrospective effects of knowledge on memory.     

Making agency matter: rethinking infant and toddler agency in educational discourse

This article engages critically with the concept of agency in infant and toddler educational discourse. It is argued that agency, when conceptualised with emphasis on individuality and the autonomous self, poses a conceptual ‘dead end’ for those who are not-yet-in-language, such as babies and toddlers. In considering agency as an aspect of becoming that is inherent in all matter, the article seeks to explore new pathways for conceptualising agency in infant and toddler education. Methodologically, the article aims to generate complex questions and, following Nigel Thrift's call, ‘wild ideas’, rather than solutions by addressing the relationship between discourse and matter to open up new spaces for thinking and doing ‘agency’ in education, for babies and toddlers and beyond.