Understanding Quantum Numbers in General Chemistry Textbooks

Quantum numbers and electron configurations form an important part of the general chemistry curriculum and textbooks. The objectives of this study are: (1) Elaboration of a framework based on the following aspects: (a) Origin of the quantum hypothesis, (b) Alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics, (c) Differentiation between an orbital and electron density, (d) Differentiation and comparison between classical and quantum mechanics, and (e) Introduction of quantum numbers based on electron density; (2) Formulation of five criteria based on the different aspects (a, b, c, d, and e), and (3) Evaluation of 55 freshman college‐level general chemistry textbooks. Results obtained show: Criterion 1, none of the textbooks described satisfactorily that Planck’s role in the origin of the quantum hypothesis was more at the level of an empirical adjustment, whereas Einstein provided the physical significance of the quantum hypothesis; Criterion 2, few textbooks (two satisfactory and four mentioned) included alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics (e.g., Bohm) and thus ignored that most theories are underdetermined by experimental evidence; Criterion 3, none of the textbooks described satisfactorily that orbitals are mathematical constructs and the shapes of the orbitals (s, p, d, f) are not derived from quantum mechanics but instead from electron density measurements; Criterion 4, although, quantum mechanics approaches classical mechanics as a limiting case, none of the textbooks presented a framework to facilitate transition in student understanding from classical to quantum mechanics (28 textbooks made a simple mention); and Criterion 5, few textbooks (one satisfactory, five mentioned) facilitated the introduction of quantum numbers based on experimental determination of electron density (photoelectron spectrum). It is concluded that the inclusion of these criteria in textbooks can facilitate students’ conceptual understanding of quantum numbers and electron configurations.     

Classical rhetoric and the teaching of technical writing

Classical rhetoric's ability to inform and empower the teaching of technical writing has been for the most part ignored in technical writing textbooks. This absence is curious, given the enormous body of scholarly material affirming classical rhetoric's usefulness for that purpose. While teachers wait for textbooks with explicitly classical roots, three key concepts can provide the basic framework for incorporating classical rhetorical theory into contemporary technical writing studies.     

The coming of a classical world

Quantum theory’s unusual predictions stem from its basic formalism which involves concepts like the wavefunction or probabilityamplitudes instead of probabilities. Many serious doubts have been raised about quantum theory’s connection with perceived classical dynamics. How does quantum mechanics, with all its strange ideas, unfold to give us the ‘reality’ of the familiar physical world? What is the connection between theclassical and thequantum! If quantum mechanics is, indeed, the fundamental theory of nature, as is widely accepted, then how does it explainclassicality! In the following, some of the fascinating conceptual problems of quantum mechanics are highlighted. The ‘environment-induceddecoherence’ approach is then discussed as one practical attempt at explaining the emergence of a classical world from an underlying quantum substrate     

Young children's explorations of average through informal inferential reasoning

This study situates children's early notions of average within an inquiry classroom to investigate the rich inferential reasoning that young children drew on to make sense of the questions: Is there a typical height for a student in year 3? If so, what is it? Based on their deliberations over several lessons, students' ideas about average and typicality evolved as meaning reasonable, contrary to atypical, most common (value or interval), middle, normative, and representative of the population. The case study reported here documents a new direction for the development of children's conceptions of average in a classroom designed to elicit their informal inferential reasoning about data.     

The Treatment of the Motion of a Simple Pendulum in some Early 18th Century Newtonian Textbooks

The treatment of pendulum motion in early 18th century Newtonian textbooks is quite different to what we find in today's physics textbooks and is based on presuppositions and mathematical techniques which are not widely used today. In spite of a desire to present Newton's new philosophy of nature as found in his Principia 18th century textbook analysis of pendulum motion appears to owe more to Galileo's insights than to those of Newton. The following case study outlines this analysis and identifies some of its distinctive features as a resource for teachers wishing to refer to this period in the history of science.     

Discursive construction of Pakistan's national identity through curriculum textbook discourses in a Pakistani school in Dubai,the United Arab Emirates

This study investigates Pakistan's secondary school children's constructions of their national identity in a Pakistani school in Dubai by drawing on data collected from students and teachers from the case school and analysing national curriculum textbooks used in the school. Informed by Foucault's concepts, the article problematises how the curriculum textbooks are employed as a technology of power for inculcating national consciousness in the students. The findings suggest that Pakistan's national curriculum textbooks deploy a specific version of Islam as a major technology, which then influences other national identity signifiers in the textbooks for shaping students' national identity. The school affords a crucial space for the complex interplay of these technologies, which construct students' ethnocentric national identities, encouraging social polarisation. This has implications for Pakistan's national social cohesion as well as the potential for subverting international peaceful coexistence and working relationships, particularly in the selected overseas study context.     

Pendulums,Pedagogy, and Matter: Lessons from the Editing of Newton's Principia

Teaching Newtonian physics involves the replacementof students' ideas about physical situations with precise conceptsappropriate for mathematical applications. This paper focuses on theconcepts of `matter' and `mass'. We suggest that students, likesome pre-Newtonian scientists we examine, use these terms in a waythat conflicts with their Newtonian meaning. Specifically, `matter'and `mass' indicate to them the sorts of things that are tangible,bulky, and take up space. In Newtonian mechanics, however, the termsare defined by Newton's Second Law: `mass' is simply a measure ofthe acceleration generated by an impressed force. We examine therelationship between these conceptions as it was discussed by Newtonand his editor, Roger Cotes, when analyzing a series of pendulumexperiments. We suggest that these experiments, as well as moresophisticated computer simulations, can be used in the classroom tosufficiently differentiate the colloquial and precise meaning of theseterms.     

Language,literacy, attentional behaviors,and instructional quality predictors of written composition for first graders

We had two primary purposes in the present study: (1) to examine unique child-level predictors of written composition which included language skills, literacy skills (e.g., reading and spelling), and attentiveness and (2) to examine whether instructional quality (quality in responsiveness and individualization, and quality in spelling and writing instruction) is uniquely related to written composition for first-grade children (N = 527). Children's written composition was evaluated on substantive quality (ideas, organization, word choice, and sentence flow) and writing conventions (spelling, mechanics, and handwriting). Results revealed that for the substantive quality of writing, children's grammatical knowledge, reading comprehension, letter writing automaticity, and attentiveness were uniquely related. Teachers’ responsiveness was also uniquely related to the substantive quality of written composition after accounting for child predictors and other instructional quality variables. For the writing conventions outcome, children's spelling and attentiveness were uniquely related, but instructional quality was not. These results suggest the importance of paying attention to multiple component skills such as language, literacy, and behavioral factors as well as teachers’ responsiveness for writing development.     

‘Brown Paper Packages’? A Sociocultural Perspective on Young Children's Ideas in Science

How do we see young children's thinking in science? Is it, as much previous research has led us to believe, that their ideas can be neatly boxed like “brown paper packages tied up with strings” – as the song from The Sound of Music goes? Or are their ideas like “wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings” (Sound of Music): fluid, complex, rich.?.?.? Drawing on the author's research into young children's ideas about natural phenomena such as the rain and clouds, and on Rogoff's three foci of analysis (personal, interpersonal and contextual), this paper illustrates how a consideration of sociocultural theory can be useful in framing research with young children, and allow us to see beyond the boxes. Emphasis is placed on recognising that children's thinking in science is embedded within particular sociocultural contexts, is guided by others and integrated with their use of certain mental and physical cultural tools. Thus, the article aims to present an alternative method for the generation of data on young children's thinking. Specific analysis of this data will, it is intended, be presented in a subsequent article.     

Propagating Dynamical Science in the Periphery of German Naturphilosophie: H. C. Ørsted’s Textbooks and Didactics

This paper explores the relationship between H. C. Ørsted’s research and teaching programme in order to uncover the way he attempted to sustain a dynamical approach to science through his lectures and textbooks. The main focus is the relation between Ørsted’s didactics as presented in his textbooks and other documents, his pedagogic activity, and his theoretical ideas in natural philosophy.¹ The paper further provides evidence of how Ørsted’s students appropriated his dynamical system, epistemology, and pedagogy.     

Multicultural education: Raj's story using a curricular conceptual lens of the particular

In this study, we employ a curricular conceptual lens of the particular to explore the experience of multicultural education from the perspective of an immigrant student, Raj. Using a school-based narrative inquiry approach, we learn about Raj's experiences at the intersections of immigration and settlement, adaptation and assimilation, English-language acquisition, unemployment, poverty, family violence, and family relocation. We employ Dewey's [(1938). Experience and education. New York: Simon & Schuster] theory of experience, Connelly and Clandinin's [(1988). Teachers as curriculum planners: Narratives of experience. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia] understanding of curriculum as experience, and Schwab's [(1969). The practical: A language for curriculum. School Review, 78, 1–23] theory of the particular as theoretical frameworks upon which to examine and analyze interactions and events.     

Friedrich Eberhard von Rochow's Education of_the Children in Rural Communities and its Impact on Urban Educational Reforms in the Eighteenth Century*

Friedrich Eberhard von Rochow (1734-1805) - squire, educational reformer, writer of textbooks and agricultural innovator - tried in the true spirit of Enlightenment to impart the concept of reason to the people, especially countryfolk. In Rochow's view, the rural population's situation had to be improved materially as well as intellectually in order to alleviate the misery of wide sections of the population and thus to achieve an improvement of public welfare. His Enlightenment interest was primarily aimed at pedagogical reforms in order to teach children in the rural communities "how to think" and - influenced through a moral-philosophical thinking at that time - to lay the foundations for moral judgement in their minds. The article deals with the question of what influence Rochow's pedagogical thoughts and school reforms had on other school projects of the Enlightenment. Taking the development of the School of Industry (1788-1811) in Hamburg as an example, I shall take a closer look at the transfer to urban areas of the educational ideas that originally related to the rural space. The development of the School of Industry highlighted the fact that Rochow's pedagogical thoughts could not simply be transferred to the urban space, even though the problem of poverty and a new work ethic had initiated the reform projects in both areas. The different life worlds of city and countryside and, especially, the specific situation and living conditions of the urban underclasses had to be considered for the institutional, organisational and curricular formation of the school project in the city.     

New directions in the moral education curriculum in Chinese primary schools

An analysis is presented of the problems that have existed for over 20 years in the moral education curriculum in primary schools of China. These include the separation of moral education from children's lives, the moralizing and memorization used as the basic methods of teaching and learning, and the overlaps between courses on society and ideological moral character. The paper then introduces the main innovations in the contemporary reform of the primary moral education curriculum, including lifelong moral education as its theoretical foundation and making the development of children's morality relate to life, with ‘real’ everyday life events as source materials for textbooks. Embodied in the textbooks are some new ideas behind the revised educational objectives, such as putting oneself in another's position, ecological interdependence, ‘win‐win’, dialogue, sharing and diversity. As the curriculum is child centred so the textbooks use a dialogical pedagogy. In conclusion the paper considers ongoing and new challenges for moral education in primary schools to be faced by the curriculum reform.     

Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Ideas About Scientific Practices

With the goal of producing scientifically literate citizens who are able to make informed decisions and reason critically when science intersects with their everyday lives, the National Research Council (NRC) has produced two recent documents that call for a new approach to K-12 science education that is based on scientific practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. These documents will potentially influence future state standards and K-12 curricula. Teachers will need support in order to teach science using a practices based approach, particularly if they do not have strong science backgrounds, which is often the case with elementary teachers. This study investigates one cohort (n = 19) of preservice elementary teachers’ ideas about scientific practices, as developed in a one-semester elementary science teaching methods course. The course focused on eight particular scientific practices, as defined by the National Research Council’s A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas (2012). Participants’ written reflections, lesson plans and annotated teaching videos were analyzed in fine detail to better understand their ideas about what it means to engage in each of the practices. The findings suggest that preservice elementary teachers hold promising ideas about scientific practices (such as an emphasis on argumentation and communication between scientists, critical thinking, and answering and asking questions as the goal of science) as well as problematic ideas (including confusion over the purpose of modeling and the process of analysis, and conflating argumentation and explanation building). These results highlight the strengths and limitations of using the Framework (NRC 2012) as an instructional text and the difficulties of differentiating between preservice teachers’ content knowledge about doing the practices and their pedagogical knowledge about teaching the practices.     

Race in biology and anthropology: A study of college texts and professors

Information about social issues is underemphasized in college science education. This article takes the race concept as an example of this neglect. We review the history of the race concept and report the current status of the concept in textbooks and among professors. Responses to surveys of faculty at Ph.D.-granting departments indicate that 67% of biologists accept the concept of biological races in the species Homo sapiens, while only 50% of physical anthropologists do so. Content analysis of college textbooks indicates a significant degree of change over time (1936–1984) in physical anthropology but a lesser degree in biology. We suggest several reasons for the dissimilarity in the two disciplines. We propose continued use of the concept for some infrahuman species, while abandoning its application to Homo sapiens. For those biologists and anthropologists who continue to use the concept, scientific accuracy can be achieved by the presentation in lecture and text of the following ideas: first, consensus among scientists on the race concept's utility and accuracy does not exist; second, there is more variation within than between so-called races; third, discordant gradations due to natural selection, drift, and interbreeding make consistent racial boundary lines impossible to identify; fourth, past use of the race concept has had harmful consequences; fifth, the most precise study of human hereditary variation maps one trait at a time; and sixth, racial labels are misleading, especially as most populations have a cultural designation.     

“Just another emperor”: Understanding action in the past

This paper reports part of an investigation of children's ideas about explanation and enquiry in history carried out by project CHATA in 3 primary and 6 secondary schools in England. Three sets of tasks were administered on three separate occasions to children aged from 7 to 14 years of age (N=320). Responses to one task exploring children's ideas about the explanation of action in history are discussed. Almost all children (including the 7 year olds) could offer plausible reasons for individual action in history, and there was a progression from emphasis on personal desires to an awareness of the need to explain action by relating purposes to the agent's situation.     

Teaching evolution and natural selection: a look at textbooks and teachers

As a part of a larger study on the learning of natural selection by secondary school students in Spain, data were gathered about how textbooks deal with this topic, and about the ability of teachers to explore pupils' ideas related to it. These data were contrasted with an approach seeking to develop the pupils' capacity to explain biological change using the model of natural selection. Textbooks were analyzed with respect to the following characteristics: the way key ideas in the model were handled, the attention paid to pupils' ideas, and the type of activities used in the instruction. The study involved evaluating the above factors in a sample of 17 books used in Spain, as well as the approaches that teachers used. Results show that in most cases the approach is characterized by superficial handling of key ideas, lack of attention paid to alternative ideas, and little variety in activities. Relation between this approach and the difficulties that pupils show in the use of the model are discussed herein. Mark what Jacob did When Laban and himself were compromis'd, That all the eanlings which were streak' d and pied, Should fall as Jacob's hire, the ewes, being rank, In end of autumn turned to the rams: and when the work of generation was Between these woolly breeders in the act. The skillful shepherd peel'd me certain wands, and, in the doing of the deed of kind, He stuck them up before the fulsome ewes, Who, then conceiving, did in earning time Fall party-colour''d lambs, and those were Jacob's.