A Research in the Practice of Autonomous and Cooperative Virtual Learning of University Students

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A Tentative Study of Foreign Language Attrition over the Period of Winter Vacation—A Survey of College Students in Yanshan University

This paper first presents a review of language attrition research with its defi nition and classifi cation. Then, through a survey of college students, the infl uence of shortterm language attrition over the learners' cognition and affection is identifi ed. To decrease the negative factors, some pedagogical implications and suggestions are discussed and provided in the end.     

On the Declining Interest in Physics among Students—From the perspective of teachers

This study examines physics teachers’ views on factors that contribute to the declining interest in physics among school students. A total of 190 physics teachers from 91 secondary schools and nine junior colleges in Singapore participated in this study, which used a survey instrument to seek their views. Rasch analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings showed that teachers are uncertain about the career prospects of physics graduates and are not very optimistic about the market demand for physics graduates. They feel that physics seems to be difficult and abstract to students. The perception that physics is for boys seems to be rooted in society. The teachers emphasized the importance of co‐curricular activities and laboratory work to enhance interest of students in learning physics. We provide several recommendations to arrest the declining interest in physics at the school level.     

A Longitudinal Study of Physics Students’ Conceptions of Force in Pre-service Training for High School Teachers

Do physics students in pre-service training to be high-school teachers hold the accepted scientific views that will eventually allow them to plan and implement instructional strategies, which, in turn, will lead their future students to achieve a scientific concept of feree? The results of a longitudinal study dealing with this issue will be discussed in this paper. The most important findings of this study can be summarised as follows. Physics students in pre-service training for high school teachers: (1) mostly do not succeed in abandoning their Aristotelian ‘impetus’ misconception; (2) have difficulties in recognising reaction as a force; (3) are rather ambivalent when referring to the necessity of the forces to be balanced in static situations; (4) hold, to a great extent, the concept that an initial force exerted on an object keeps it going and gradually lessens--the ‘fading-away’ concept; (5) hold, to a great extent, the concept that a force (inertia), resisting a push, acts on moving objects; (6) tend to return in 4th year in college to intuitive views of force, rather than holding the accepted scientific concept.     

Integration of Arab Female Students at a Technological University—Narratives of Identity in Figured Worlds

International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education - This study deals with the academic identities of 13 female Arab students upon their entrance to STEM studies in a university in Israel....     

Exploring Problems in Students＇ Evaluation of Teaching in Colleges and Universities and its Countermeasures ——A Case Analysis of A University

本文对A大学的学生评教工作进行了个案分析,指出了其在制度建设、量表设计、反馈改进以及评价结果运用4个方面存在的突出问题,之后提出了针对性的改进对策。本文的个案具有一定的代表性,研究结论对其他高校有一定的借鉴意义。     

Board Game in Physics Classes—a Proposal for a New Method of Student Assessment

Research in Science Education - The aim of this study was to examine the impact of assessing students’ achievements in a physics course in the form of a group board game. Research was...     

Na?ve Students’ Conceptual Development and Beliefs: The Need for Multiple Analyses to Determine what Contributes to Student Success in a University Introductory Physics Course

This research involved na?ve physics learners who were interested in majoring in science or engineering. In a semester-long quasi-experimental study, open-ended pretests and weekly interviews were used to analyse the progressive development of students’ conceptions relating to sound and wave motion. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted to elucidate: (1) how their conceptions developed from everyday conceptions to unclear scientific conceptions to scientific conceptions, and (2) their beliefs of physics knowledge. Despite efforts to enable these students to learn physics, the findings showed that only two out of ten students developed acceptable physics conceptions during the course that would enable them to pursue the subject to a higher level. Also, students’ conceptual development was found to be related to their cognitive understanding and to epistemological beliefs of physics. Therefore, to facilitate na?ve physics learners’ success in a general physics course, in addition to the acquisition of content knowledge, explicit emphasis needs to be placed on the nature of physics knowledge.     

Perspectives of Iranian University Students on Learning English: A Practical Need and/or an International Policy-push?

While English is embraced worldwide as a global means of communication, its teaching and learning is a contested arena of contacts between the so-called English native-speaker culture and local learner cultures. In this study, we investigate Iranian university students’ viewpoints on the necessity and justifications for learning English and their awareness of international policies of promoting this language. A group of 855 male and female students of different fields of study at six major universities of Tehran responded to a researcher-made questionnaire and 28 participants were interviewed for more in-depth explanations about their standpoints. The findings indicate that the participants are in absolute favour of learning the English language as an undeniable necessity as a multifaceted communicative instrument. Moreover, they seem to have limited sensitivity to the potential sociopolitical functioning of English and the policies and plans for promoting the teaching and learning of this language around the world.     

An Investigation of University Students’ Collaborative Inquiry Learning Behaviors in an Augmented Reality Simulation and a Traditional Simulation

The purpose of this study is to investigate and compare students’ collaborative inquiry learning behaviors and their behavior patterns in an augmented reality (AR) simulation system and a traditional 2D simulation system. Their inquiry and discussion processes were analyzed by content analysis and lag sequential analysis (LSA). Forty university students were divided into dyads and then randomly assigned into AR group and traditional 2D group to collaboratively conduct an inquiry task about elastic collision. The results of the content analysis and LSA indicated that both systems supported students’ collaborative inquiry learning. Particularly, students showed high frequencies on higher-level inquiry behaviors, such as interpreting experimental data or making conclusions, when using these two simulations. By comparing the behavioral patterns, similarities and differences between the two groups were revealed. The AR simulation engaged the students more thoroughly in the inquiry process. Moreover, students in both groups adopted the same approaches to design experiments. Due to the line of AR research is in its initial stage, suggestions for future studies were proposed.     

English-Plus Multilingualism as the New Linguistic Capital? Implications of University Students’ Attitudes Towards Languages of Instruction in a Multilingual Environment

This article investigates university students’ attitudes and perceptions about language in a multilingual country where most instruction is in English and annual national literacy results have been declining for at least 15 years. Despite this decline, English seems to be entrenched as the language of instruction, and at university it seems a foregone conclusion that instruction will occur in English. Bourdieu’s concept of linguistic capital is offered as an explanation for the preponderance of English, but the question is posed: Is the dominance of English as simple as desiring linguistic capital? Do students really regard English as critical to success, and if so, is it to the exclusion of their home languages? The results show that students invest considerable effort in learning English, but not to the exclusion of their home language and with little desire to assimilate with the English culture. The results also provide interesting and sometimes contrasting insights into students’ desired language of instruction.     

Deconstructing Doctoral Students’ Socialization from an Institutional Logics Perspective: A Qualitative Study of the Socialization of Chinese Doctoral Students in Finland

While socialization has become a major lens of research in doctoral education, this paper advances the theoretical foundation of the socialization process in doctoral education by using the institutional logics theory. Specifically, it proposes an analytical framework for understanding the socialization of doctoral students, where it is seen as a process of reconciling different or even competing institutional logics that drive students’ development in doctoral education. The framework has been applied in an empirical study of ten doctoral students in Finland who were funded by the China Scholarship Council (CSC). While proving the usefulness of the analytical framework, the study shows that CSC doctoral students mainly face the competing logics of profession and corporation during socialization. Influenced by a strong profession logic, the Chinese students have transformed themselves into novice professionals and knowledge producers. Corporation logic competed with profession logic in the management of doctoral students and has resulted in a lack of teaching experiences in doctoral training and a weak recognition of professional identity in the students’ host universities. The influence of family logic, inherited from CSC doctoral students’ cultural backgrounds, has been decoupled in the socialization process and has led to a strong sense of loss in handling the supervisory relationship between supervisors and students. Based on the findings of this study, the author provides several recommendations for host universities, supervisors, doctoral students, the CSC, and the Chinese Embassy in Finland to enable them to work together and help CSC doctoral students tackle the aforementioned challenges.     

Equity for Māori and Pasifika Students: The Objectives and Characteristics of Equity Committees in a New Zealand University

Approaches to achieving and managing equity for Māori ¹ 1. Indigenous people of Aotearoa/New Zealand. and Pasifika ² 2. Used collectively to refer to the people or students from the islands of the Pacific who have identified as coming from, or having their ethnicity originate from, there; used in Statistics New Zealand Census reports. tertiary students differ among the eight universities in Aotearoa ³ 3. Māori word for New Zealand. /New Zealand. Achieving equity in educational attainment for Māori and Pasifika tertiary students is stated as a key objective in nearly all of the universities’ mission statements or charters, and equity committees have been set up to ensure equitable outcomes. These committees are generally made up of junior academic or administrative staff members. In contrast, managing the university's equity plan is the role of those in senior academic positions within the university. This article investigates the perspectives of six equity leaders at an urban university in one of the country's largest cities on the objectives and characteristics of equity committees and the influence of the dominant paradigm in achieving equity.     

A New Two-Step Approach for Hands-On Teaching of Gene Technology: Effects on Students’ Activities During Experimentation in an Outreach Gene Technology Lab

Emphasis on improving higher level biology education continues. A new two-step approach to the experimental phases within an outreach gene technology lab, derived from cognitive load theory, is presented. We compared our approach using a quasi-experimental design with the conventional one-step mode. The difference consisted of additional focused discussions combined with students writing down their ideas (step one) prior to starting any experimental procedure (step two). We monitored students’ activities during the experimental phases by continuously videotaping 20 work groups within each approach (N = 131). Subsequent classification of students’ activities yielded 10 categories (with well-fitting intra- and inter-observer scores with respect to reliability). Based on the students’ individual time budgets, we evaluated students’ roles during experimentation from their prevalent activities (by independently using two cluster analysis methods). Independently of the approach, two common clusters emerged, which we labeled as ‘all-rounders’ and as ‘passive students’, and two clusters specific to each approach: ‘observers’ as well as ‘high-experimenters’ were identified only within the one-step approach whereas under the two-step conditions ‘managers’ and ‘scribes’ were identified. Potential changes in group-leadership style during experimentation are discussed, and conclusions for optimizing science teaching are drawn.     

Analysis on Application of Cohesive Devices in C-E Translation——A Case Study of English majors of Yulin University

This paper is an empirical study which investigated English-majored sophomores' use of cohesive devices in performing C-E translation tasks in Yulin University.Through experimental analysis,the author comes up with three major findings,which can facility students C-E Translation.     

The ‘Heisenberg’s Microscope’ as an Example of Using Thought Experiments in Teaching Physics Theories to Students of the Upper Secondary School

In this work an attempt is made to explore the possible value of using Thought Experiments (TEs) in teaching physics to upper secondary education students. Specifically, a qualitative research project is designed to investigate the extent to which the Thought Experiment (TE) called ‘Heisenberg’s Microscope’, as it has been transformed by Gamow for the public in his book Mr. Tompkins in Paperback, can function as a tool in the teaching of the ‘uncertainty principle’. The sample in the research consisted of 40 Greek students, in 11 groups of 3–4 students each. The findings of this study reveal that the use of this TE has positive results in teaching the uncertainty principle. Students, based on the TE, were able (i) to derive a formula of the uncertainty principle, (ii) to explain that the uncertainty principle is a general principle in nature and it is not a result of incompleteness of the experimental devices and (iii) to argue that it is impossible to determine the trajectory of a particle as a mathematical line.     

Is ‘Learning' Science Enough? – A Cultural Model of Religious Students of Science in an Australian Government School

This paper investigates the cognitive experiences of four religious students studying evolutionary biology in an inner city government secondary school in Melbourne, Australia. The participants in the study were identified using the Religious Background and Behaviours questionnaire (Connors, Tonigan, & Miller, 1996 Connors, G. J., Tonigan, J. S., & Miller, W. R. (1996). A measure of religious background and behaviour for use in behaviour change research. Psychology of Addictive Behaviours, 10, 90–96. doi:10.1037/0893-164X.10.2.90[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Participants were interviewed and asked to respond to questions about their cognitive experiences of studying evolutionary biology. Students' responses were analysed using cultural analysis of discourse to construct a cultural model of religious students of science. This cultural model suggests that these students employ a human schema and a non-human schema, which assert that humans are fundamentally different from non-humans in terms of origins and that humans have a transcendental purpose in life. For these students, these maxims seem to be challenged by their belief that evolutionary biology is dictated by metaphysical naturalism. The model suggests that because the existential foundation of these students is challenged, they employ a believing schema to classify their religious explanations and a learning schema to classify evolutionary biology. These schemas are then hierarchically arranged with the learning schema being made subordinate to the believing schema. Importantly, these students are thus able to maintain their existential foundation while fulfilling the requirements of school science. However, the quality of this “learning” is questionable.     

Total Quality Management in Engineering Education—A Case Study from University College Dublin (National University of Ireland-Dublin)

The last 3 years have seen extensive time and resources invested in quality assessment/quality improvement (QA/QI) within the Irish university sector. The introduction of a formalized QA/QI programme in the 1998/99 academic year at University College Dublin (UCD) of Ireland-Dublin, will mean that every department in College will have a direct and compulsory involvement in the quality assurance programme in the coming years. There is limited experience of formalized quality assessment in the higher education sector in Ireland, and several pilot projects have been running which represent a first step in establishing a methodology suited to conditions prevailing within the Irish context. The Universities Act 1997 in Ireland will drive the issue of quality assessment in the university sector and ensure that emphasis is placed on the attainment of the highest possible standards in teaching and research. The universities are responding to this new challenge by adopting a pro-active approach and implementing the QA/QI schemes as a matter of some urgency. This paper outlines details of key pilot projects undertaken in recent times.