“You Have to Know Why”: The Influence of Different Curricula on Nursing Students' Perceptions of Nursing

The need in modern healthcare for professionals who are self‐directed and autonomous has increased in recent decades. Problem‐based learning is spreading in nursing education as one strategy for meeting these demands. This article deals with the relationship between the design and execution of nursing education curricula and students' understanding of nursing. The aim of the study was to examine nursing students' perceptions of nursing, comparing a problem‐based curriculum to a conventional curriculum. Students were asked to write narratives about nursing. Forty‐three narratives were analyzed using the phenomenological hermeneutic method. Differences between the two groups were found in terms of both structure and content. Problem‐based learning students stressed more the theoretical aspects of nursing. The study shows that educational design might be of great importance to how students understand nursing. Extensive research is needed to further explore the findings, especially related to clinical practice following graduation.     

Making ‘us’ visible: Using membership categorisation analysis to explore young people's accomplishment of collective identity-in-interaction in relation to digital technology

This article examines young people's sense of self and collective identity in relation to their use of specific digital tools available at their school. We use membership categorisation analysis (MCA) to explore how a group of young people produce a collective identity-in-interaction as captured in concrete relational speech acts. Fine-grained MCA analysis of group interview talk reveals participant students operating as a collectivity to accomplish a sense of shared identity in relation to the iPad. This focus on the ways in which young people's identities are intertwined with digital technology distinguishes this article from the technicist and operational perspectives that dominate the field of educational technology research and demonstrates MCA's potential for illuminating the relationship that young people have with technology. The article contributes to a growing body of research that engages with more nuanced ways of understanding contemporary, technology-mediated learning as a process of producing not only knowledge and skills, but also selfhood—both private and shared.     

Work in Mathematics Classes: The Context of Students' Thinking During Instruction

The research program described in this article has focused on the work students do in classrooms and how that work influences students' thinking about content. The research is based on the premise that the tasks teachers assign determines how students come to understand a curriculum domain. Tasks serve, in other words, as a context for students' thinking during and after instruction. The first section of this article contains an overview of the task model that guided research. The second section provides a summary of findings concerning the properties of students' work in classrooms, with special attention to work in mathematics classes. I conclude with a brief discussion of implications of this research for understanding classroom processes and their effects.     

An analysis of student teachers' understanding of integration of science and technology activities

Abstract

The research reported on in this article was conducted to determine if student teachers enrolled in a Bachelor of Education programme at a South African University are able to integrate science and technology in their teaching. The participants were a cohort of students registered for a course aimed at preparing them to teach grades 4 to 6 in the primary school. The theoretical framework applied in the study is Rogan's Zone of feasible Innovation (ZFI) which uses the analogy that curriculum strategies are good when they proceed just ahead of current practice. Students' understanding of integration of two learning areas was compared to their knowledge base. The findings suggest that students who have very little knowledge of science and/or technology have difficulty in understanding what the scientific and technological processes mean and without this understanding are unable to integrate science and technology effectively in their teaching. It is recommended that the B.Ed programme at this university focuses more on providing opportunities for students to acquire sound knowledge of the two disciplines before attempting any form of integration.     

Connecting girls and science: A feminist teacher research study of a high school prenatal testing unit

In this article, I explore how a dozen high-school sophomore girls expressed their relationship to and understanding of prenatal testing, and its possible place in their lives and in the lives of others, in the context of a short unit on prenatal testing during a semester-long course in human genetics. The data come from an assignment designed to help students bring their understanding of prenatal testing into the realm of personal choice, as well as practice applying the science of chromosomal inheritance. Difference feminism is used to develop themes evident in these girls' talk about prenatal testing. The instructional choices made were based on difference feminism, which implies that girls would be interested in science that connects to human bodies, children, and traditional women's responsibilities. This claim is elaborated on and applied by this study, in which I concentrate on the question: How can difference feminism help us better to hear and comprehend high school girls' relationships with reproductive technology, their own bodies, and their own lives? I propose that focusing on girls' lives and knowledge is a way to consider alternatives in curricular content, in addition to helping us learn how to help more girls connect with science. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 877–896, 1998.     

护理专业男生心理健康与专业思想现状调查

运用症状自评量表(SCL-90)和自编问卷,对某高校2012级200(护理男生100,护理女生100)名新生进行调查,结果表明:男护生心理健康总体水平偏低;男护生在强迫因子、人际因子和抑郁因子上的得分显著高于女护生的得分(P0.05或P0.01);护理专业男生普遍对护理专业不满意,担心个人发展和前景,专业思想不稳定现象严重。在此基础上得出结论:护理专业男生心理健康水平偏低,专业思想不够稳定,建议采取相关措施促进其心理健康水平的提高,增强其专业思想的稳定性。     

Beyond Access: Considering gender deficits in science education

ABSTRACT Despite striking increases in female enrolments in many undergraduate science programmes, women continue to be dramatically underrepresented in graduate training and careers in science. Although there is substantial evidence of differences in male and female students' experiences in university science courses, we know little about how young women interpret and respond to these differences. This article explores the accounts that female science students construct of their aspirations, educational experiences, achievements, and opportunities as they move through their undergraduate education at a large, urban university in Canada. Based on in-depth, longitudinal interviews ( n = 91), the focus is on the processes through which they make sense of their educational and career options and choices. The findings point to the importance of understanding how meanings and subjectivities are produced, understood, and acted upon. What is evident from this study is that women in science confront a complex web of competing and contradictory realities and discourses as they negotiate their career identities. Thus, to stem the progressive and cumulative loss of female students as they move up through the levels of higher education, universities must address the problems they confront in their pursuit of science training before, during, and after their undergraduate education.     

Teaching portfolios,community, and pre-service teachers’ professional development

This article describes the findings of a qualitative study examining the extent to which participation in a portfolio-focused teacher learning community impacts pre-service teachers’ understanding and development of a teaching portfolio. Additionally, the author was interested in understanding how, whether, and in what ways the group's participants attribute their own professional development to the portfolio's construction. Findings indicate that most students found the process of selecting artifacts, reflecting on coursework and fieldwork experiences while constructing their teaching portfolios contributed to their growth and development. Students also reported the dialogic and collaborative nature of the teacher learning community enhanced their growth and development as well as their overall understanding of the portfolio requirement.     

Genetically modified food in perspective: an inquiry‐based curriculum to help middle school students make sense of tradeoffs

To understand how students learn about science controversy, this study examines students' reasoning about tradeoffs in the context of a technology‐enhanced curriculum about genetically modified food. The curriculum was designed and refined based on the Scaffolded Knowledge Integration Framework to help students sort and integrate their initial ideas and those presented in the curriculum. Pre‐test and post‐test scores from 190 students show that students made significant (p?<?0.0001) gains in their understanding of the genetically modified food controversy. Analyses of students' final papers, in which they took and defended a position on what type of agricultural practice should be used in their geographical region, showed that students were able to provide evidence both for and against their positions, but were less explicit about how they weighed these tradeoffs. These results provide important insights into students' thinking and have implications for curricular design.     

Teaching Women's Studies: The effects of 'race' and gender

This article aims to explore the relationship between gender and 'race' when teaching a course on 'race', class and gender to women's studies students at a university. It will explore how the racial background and gender of the lecturer may affect the relationship she has with the students and how they see her role as a teacher of 'race' and gender. It will examine how teaching can be and is related to our personal subjective experiences such as our gender, 'race', class, sexuality and age. Whilst most students welcomed the opportunity to discuss issues around 'race' and racism, for some (mostly Black and Asian students) this was often seen as a painful experience based on past experiences. For others (mostly white women) the opportunity to discuss and hear about the experiences of Black and Asian women was something they valued. The article goes on to argue that teaching students about sensitive subjects such as 'race' can be affected not only by the personal experiences of the lecturer, but also by their racial identity and their gender. Indeed, such identities can also affect how students feel about such subjects and how they, in turn, experience their learning.     

No Man's Land: Caring and male student primary teachers

Sixteen male student primary teachers on a primary Initial Teacher Education course were interviewed and their understanding of 'care' explored. Analysis of the data suggests that male student primary teachers have specific gendered understandings of 'care'. Teacher educators need to take account of this in primary Initial Teacher Education courses and to provide students with opportunities to reflect on their understanding of 'care' in relation to their work as primary teachers, and the part gender plays in shaping that understanding.     

Preparing Elementary Pre-Service Teachers from a Non-Traditional Student Population to Teach with Technology

This article documents the development of a two-stage curriculum intended to improve elementary teacher candidates’ understanding of technology integration. Most students in the program came from low-income districts and lacked technology experience. The first stage of the curriculum consisted of a prerequisite basic technology skills course offered by the Computer Science Department. This was then followed by an online educational technology course offered by the College of Education. The objectives of the authors in this article are twofold. The first is to describe the rationale, procedures, and design of a two-stage curriculum, as a pedagogical model for teaching elementary teacher candidates to teach with technology, with the goal of preparing a new generation of teachers who are capable and comfortable applying a broad range of advanced technologies to meet the learning needs of their students. The second objective is to share the authors' findings from the evaluation, which employed mixed methodologies, after the students completed the online educational technology course. The results showed that an online educational technology course contributed to the candidates’ development of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge and improved their attitudes and beliefs on their technology integration practices.     

Competence and Connection: Gender and generation in boys' narratives

ABSTRACT Writing an autobiography is one way of understanding one's history. In this article fictional stories of a future life are used as a key to understanding young people's conceptions of family relationships and of their own positions in a gender and power system. One hundred and forty-one pupils, aged 13-14, were asked to write and make drawings on the theme 'My future family'. The stories and drawings made by the 58 boys are the subject of my discussion here. The pupils were assigned the task as part of their schoolwork and the project was carried out in collaboration with their teachers. The future lives depicted in the pupils' scenarios do not always reflect traditional family life. Instead, many of the stories are concerned with power relations and dependency, with caring for other people, and in some instances they are manifestations of independence. The narratives are analysed in relation to how the boys describe relationships and how they use 'I' and 'we' in the narratives. It is argued that the narratives reflect the boys' ways of exploring a male identity.     

Using a Self‐Advocacy Intervention on African American College Students’ Ability to Request Academic Accommodations

Due to an increase in enrollment of African American students with disabilities in postsecondary education, there is a need to identify strategies that may lead to improved transition and self‐advocacy skills for these students. These strategies include teaching students to request academic accommodations and to have an understanding of how their disability affects their academic learning. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide an in‐depth explanation of a self‐advocacy strategy that was used to teach three African American male college students how to request their academic accommodations. Results indicated this strategy may be a promising intervention for African American college students with disabilities.     

The role of submicroscopic and symbolic representations in chemical explanations

Chemistry is commonly portrayed at three different levels of representation – macroscopic, submicroscopic and symbolic – that combine to enrich the explanations of chemical concepts. In this article, we examine the use of submicroscopic and symbolic representations in chemical explanations and ascertain how they provide meaning. Of specific interest is the development of students' levels of understanding, conceived as instrumental (knowing how) and relational (knowing why) understanding, as a result of regular Grade 11 chemistry lessons using analogical, anthropomorphic, relational, problem‐based, and model‐based explanations. Examples of both teachers' and students' dialogue are used to illustrate how submicroscopic and symbolic representations are manifested in their explanations of observed chemical phenomena. The data in this research indicated that effective learning at a relational level of understanding requires simultaneous use of submicroscopic and symbolic representations in chemical explanations. Representations are used to help the learner learn; however, the research findings showed that students do not always understand the role of the representation that is assumed by the teacher.     

‘They have different information about what is going on’: emotion in the transition to university

Most new students experience school to university transition as challenging. Students from backgrounds with little or no experience of higher education are most vulnerable in this transition, and most at risk of academic failure. Emotion appears implicated in the differential way in which first-generation students and students with family familiarity of university experience the transition. This article draws on the voices of first-year dental and oral hygiene students at a South African dental faculty regarding university transition experiences. It draws on the construct of capital and Archer's [(2002). Realism and the problem of agency. Journal of Critical Realism Alethia, 5(1), 11–20] understanding of ‘competing concerns’ to examine how emotion shapes students' experiences of university transition and how they position themselves with regard to these experiences. The article explicates the ways in which emotional commentary and classed locations intersect, exploring the extent to which this intersection shapes young people's framing of their concerns of ‘being a student’ and ‘becoming a dentist’. The article identifies aspects of the university's material and cultural environments which shape students' emotional responses and which consequently are implicated in the perpetuation of class-based differential life chances.     

Developing exploratory language in the classroom: moving beyond teacher as expert

In this article the author describes the collaborative research undertaken by a group of high school teachers and an English adviser. The teachers were keen to find ways of breaking the teacher-dominated discourse pattern within their classrooms. They wanted to see whether, when offered a variety of teacher audiences beyond that of ‘expert-examiner’, students would engage in the kind of exploratory talk, described by the National Curriculum Council (1987-93), as a feature of investigative learning. Teachers' belief that discourse patterns are affected by students' understanding of contextual conditions is examined. The author illustrates the importance of students' shared understanding of collaborative discourse, and discusses how their conception of learning contexts is influenced by the kinds of audiences teachers project     

Time,Third Space,and Counternarratives of Achievement for Young Mothers in High School

This article shares alternative conceptions of time in a qualitative study about the schooling experiences of teenage mothers. The counternarratives of three women of color are presented as alternatives for understanding temporally restricted discourses of achievement in high school. Using third space theory as a lens for understanding the participants' experiences, this article illustrates how each participant's school story creates room for thinking about school success differently. This understanding of participants' experiences provokes a deliberate reconsideration of time as it relates to student success and achievement in school. This article concludes with an analysis of the participants' counternarratives and implications for future work. This work is useful for practitioners and researchers in reconceptualizing difference among students and in creating room for school structures that support diversity in classrooms and schools.     

Creating a Science E-book with Fifth Grade Students

This article explains how one teacher used iBooks Author, a free digital textbook creation tool that makes iBooks for iPads, in an upper elementary classroom to improve students’ expository writing skills and understanding of science content. The classroom teacher taught students pre-requisite writing and technology skills for two weeks, and then helped these students design, develop, and publish their own iBook. Students planned and developed content using Thinking Maps, storyboards, Google Docs, iMovie and other technology tools to create their iBook. A comparison of students’ work in the iBook to previous written work revealed an improvement in expository writing in multiple ways: better organization and connection of ideas; increased use of academic vocabulary; and an increased use of clarifying details and analogies. Students also gained a deeper understanding of science concepts as reported through their comments after the project was finished. Students became more proficient users of the technology, and also reported an increased sense of self-efficacy and confidence because they published a book in the iBookstore