Science games and the development of scientific possible selves

Serious scientific games, especially those that include a virtual apprenticeship component, provide players with realistic experiences in science. This article discusses how science games can influence learning about science and the development of science-oriented possible selves through repeated practice in professional play and through social influences (e.g., peer groups). We first review the theory of possible selves (Markus and Nurius 1986) and discuss the potential of serious scientific games for influencing the development of scientific possible selves. As part of our review, we present a forensic game that inspired our work. Next we present a measure of scientific possible selves and assess its reliability and validity with a sample of middle-school students (N?=?374). We conclude by discussing the promise of science games and the development of scientific possible selves on both the individual and group levels as a means of inspiring STEM careers among adolescents.     

论严肃音乐在科学发现中的作用和价值

严肃音乐在科学发现中起的作用和价值一向被人所忽视。而以人文精神为价值取向的严肃音乐对科学发现的价值及对科学发展的推动作用又是不言而喻的。严肃音乐和科学既有很强的互补互动性,又具有共同价值追求;二者均需要丰富的创造力和想象力,又都是对永无终点的和谐世界的执着追求。如贝多芬所言,音乐是比一切智慧、一切哲学更高的启示,严肃音乐由此所表现出的至高审美性最终成为激发科学家灵感、做出伟大发现的摇篮。     

Gendered transitions,career identities and possible selves: the case of engineering graduates

This article, drawing upon the Paired Peers project, a longitudinal qualitative study (n = 90), examines how seven UK engineering graduates, four women and three men, construct their career identities during the transitionary period from university to work. It explores how gender and the occupational cultures that reside within the sector, and the wider sociocultural context, affect women’s careers identities, choices and trajectories. The longitudinal design, characteristics of the cohort and the theoretical framework of possible selves contribute to the originality of this empirical research. In this paper, we show how female graduates gradually adapted their occupational aspirations and career identities to fit with socio-cultural expectations and how they struggled to construct viable ‘engineering’ selves in the vital career identity development phase of their first years of employment when most female STEM graduates change careers.     

Classroom community and possible selves: implications for midcareer teacher seminars

Much research examines professional learning for pre-service and beginning teachers. However, in midcareer, teaching satisfaction and effectiveness are challenged by decreased recognition and support and increasing stressors including isolation, accountability demands, mentorship roles, and personal/family responsibilities. Often, midcareer teachers (MTs) pursue graduate degrees to advance skills, licenses held, and achieve recognition. This qualitative exploratory study examined classroom community (CC) development across three graduate seminars for MTs. Increased CC was connected to course structures and instructor actions which supported teachers’ reflection upon practice and envisioning of possible selves. Personal/family selves, teaching selves, and academic selves emerged. The model developed connects CC, motivators, and enacted classroom practices to each set of possible selves. Findings suggest increased attention to campus-based graduate seminars as avenues for the development of trust, open dialog, reflection, strategy building, and improved classroom practice among MTs.     

Rewards of reading: Toward the development of possible selves and identities

Children's voluntary reading positively correlates with school grades, vocabulary growth, reading comprehension, verbal fluency, general information, and attitudes towards reading. Drawing on qualitative interviews collected alongside six waves of longitudinal survey data in an urban setting in eastern USA, We argue that voluntary reading by adolescents also provides learning opportunities that scaffold identity formation, afford ‘spaces’ where youth rehearse and relationally enact gender roles, ethnic/racial identification, and fashion educational aspirations. The interviews with African American and European American youth were conducted in five visits and spanned 3 years through senior high school and 1 year post-high school. Methods of inductive and narrative analysis identified patterns of benefits and potential drawbacks of voluntary reading. Amount of voluntary reading was affected by school, family, and social and work commitment pressures, and fulfilled a number of broad roles. What and how youth were reading was as important as the amount. Significantly, reading allowed adolescents to explore possible selves—an interest in historical figures helped one African American male to develop values resisting stereotypes of male or African American, just as an African American female came to resist conforming to gender and racial stereotypes in dress and occupational ambitions. Relationships between voluntary reading habits, family context and educational aspirations were identifiable for a number of the interviewees.     

Religion, nature, science education and the epistemology of dialectics

In his article Scientists at Play in a Field of the Lord, David Long (2010) rightly challenges our presumptions of what science is and brings forth some of the disjunctures between science and deeply held American religious beliefs. Reading his narrative of the conflicts that he experienced on the opening day of the Creation Museum, I cannot help but reconsider what the epistemology of science is and science learning ought to be. Rather than science being taught as a prescribed, deterministic system of beliefs and procedures as it is often done, I suggest instead that it would be more appropriate to teach science as a way of thinking and making sense of dialectical processes in nature. Not as set of ultimate “truths”, but as understandings of processes themselves in the process of simultaneously becoming and being transformed.     

An Australian study of possible selves perceived by undergraduate engineering students

In this study, we worked with second-year engineering students at an Australian university to examine previously identified threshold concepts within the theoretical framework of Possible Selves. Using workshops as the context for intensive work with students, students were encouraged to consider their future lives and work, including their engineering fears, expectations, and aspirations. The findings revealed many students to have a poor understanding of the realities of engineering work. Moreover, perceived gaps between self-efficacy and the requirements of engineering work appeared to be motivating if students deemed it possible to reduce the gap, but demotivating if they identified a characteristic over which there was perceived to be no control. The study suggests that these engineering students needed more opportunities to explore both the roles of engineers and their own possible selves. Overall, the findings indicate that higher education students may need encouragement and support to explore potential future roles, and they strengthen calls for further research in this area.     

儿童社会戏剧性游戏的研究

莎拉·斯米兰斯基是以色列儿童游戏研究的著名学者，尤以社会戏剧游戏研究著称。我曾在一次国际性会议上与她相遇，之后，又读过一些有关她的游戏方面的论著，感到其对如何研究儿童游戏很有帮助。现将她对社会戏剧游戏的部分论述和研究作一简单介绍。关于社会戏剧游戏的内涵戏剧游戏（dramaticplay）是由儿童扮演别人的角色而形成，在游戏中儿童模仿人们的活动和言语形式，利用真实的或想像的道具和自己的经验（这些第一或第二手的经验是在各种熟悉的情景获得和个别模仿而来）而展开。当这种活动有两个或两个以上儿童合作，并且游戏者以他们…     

Emancipatory and critical language education: a plea for translingual possible selves and worlds

Language is the main resource for meaningful action, including the very formation of selves and psychosocial identities, shaped by practical norms, beliefs, and values. Thus, language education constitutes one of the most powerful means for both social reproduction and social production and ideological maintenance and utopian innovation. In this paper, we attempt to emphasise the invaluable psychosocial, political, economic, and cultural function of language education in order to propose a critical view of the current transition from the monolingual to a multilingual paradigm. We maintain that multilingual approaches tend to serve the neoliberal framework and reproduce its systemic inequalities. Therefore, we argue in favour of emancipatory multilingual practices that could embody a translingual pedagogy capable of promoting the development of capabilities, the recognition of otherness, and the cultivation of diversity. Rooted in critical theory, namely in Foucault’s notion of subjectification and Freire’s view of conscientisation, an emancipatory translingual pedagogy would enable and empower every learner to synthesise a contextually creative field of new semantic and pragmatic relationships. Critical language education would enhance the ethos of biophilia that fosters what we term the poetics of communality and selfhood, that is to say, the proactive commitment to expanding symbolic and existential novelty.     

The particulate nature of matter in science education and in science

This article addresses ideas about the particulate nature of matter that are considered to be correct or acceptable in science education and studies of children's misconceptions. It argues that science teachers and educators use educational as well as scientific criteria for correctness, and that these criteria do not always coincide. Relations between the particulate nature of matter in science and science education are analyzed in an attempt to make more intelligible children's inclination to attribute all kinds of macroscopic properties to particles. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Schools, science, social justice, and the role of violence

This article is a response to Carolina Castano??s article ??Extending the purposes of science education.?? Drawing on personal memories of life in Bogotá, I raise questions about the nature of violence in Colombia broadly, and ask how the intervention Castano proposes changes the ecology of violence in that country. It also ponders the relationship between schools, science, and violence. In conclusion it urges that science educators follow Castano??s recommendation to make science education responsive to local community needs rather than standardized visions of education.     

The influence of explicit nature of science and argumentation instruction on preservice primary teachers' views of nature of science

There exists a general consensus in the science education literature around the goal of enhancing learners' views of nature of science (NOS). An extensive body of research in the field has highlighted the effectiveness of explicit NOS instructional approaches in improving learners' NOS views. Emerging research has suggested that engaging learners in argumentation may aid in the development of their NOS views, although this claim lacks empirical support. This study assessed the influence of a science content course incorporating explicit NOS and argumentation instruction on five preservice primary teachers' views of NOS using multiple sources of data including questionnaires and surveys, interviews, audio‐ and video‐taped class sessions, and written artifacts. Results indicated that the science content course was effective in enabling four of the five participants' views of NOS to be improved. A critical analysis of the effectiveness of the various course components led to the identification of three factors that mediated the development of participants' NOS views during the intervention: (a) contextual factors (context of argumentation, mode of argumentation), (b) task‐specific factors (argumentation scaffolds, epistemological probes, consideration of alternative data and explanations), and (c) personal factors (perceived previous knowledge about NOS, appreciation of the importance and utility value of NOS, durability and persistence of pre‐existing beliefs). The results of this study provide evidence to support the inclusion of explicit NOS and argumentation instruction as a context for learning about NOS, and promote consideration of this instructional approach in future studies which aim to enhance learners' views of NOS. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47: 1137–1164, 2010     

Integrating health communication pedagogy,social science,and health interventions

Three studies exemplify how health communication research concepts can be integrated pedagogically with health interventions in undergraduate courses. The academic structure for creating and conducting applied community health communication research using current theoretical frameworks is explained. Three empirical projects, increasing community seatbelt use, examining conscientiousness and campus safety behaviors, and increasing cervical cancer screening among college women, are described in detail. Student outcomes for the class demonstrate high learning and satisfaction.

Suggestions for future interventions integrated with general health communication classes are explored. But the overarching outcome is that even with low financial resource significant change can be achieved in health related outcomes, while simultaneously introducing students to health communication and social science procedures.     

Habitus, social fields, and circuits in rural science education

Schooling and science education are embedded within larger socio-cultural, political and economic contexts, influenced by global flows of capital, labor, ideas, and images. In this article we consider the ways in which ethnography traces the web of interactions (circuits), in a rural community and the ways that science inquiry was associated with character education. Our discussion examines the relationship between social fields, habitus, and meritocracy under new and ever-changing neoliberal conditions. These macro-level forces play out in everyday practices in the community and reveal schools, as well as science education, as sites for struggle.