Philosophical Review of Pragmatism as a Basis for Learning by Developing Pedagogy

This article discusses the use of a pragmatic approach as the philosophical foundation of pedagogy in Finnish universities of applied sciences. It is presented that the mission of the universities of applied sciences falls into the interpretive paradigm of social sciences. This view is used as a starting point for a discussion about pragmatism in higher education. The Learning by Developing (LbD) action model is introduced, analyzed and compared to pragmatism. The paper concludes that, at least in practice‐oriented academic subjects, a pragmatic approach to pedagogy, as well as the LbD action model, is effective and could be considered in several universities as the basis of philosophy of pedagogy.     

《广韵》各声类字的一个统计分析

文章首先对《广韵》中17537个字在调类、开合和等第的分布情况作了统计．其次对各个声类的出现频率、它们与开舍口以及与各个等的配合情况作了统计。统计结果显示各个声类的分布是不平衡的。它们与开合口和各个等的配合也具有倾向性。本文对这种分布不平衡的原因作了初步探讨。     

非言语学习困难青少年空间和非空间关系推理策略分析

目的:探讨非言语学习困难青少年二维空间和非空间关系推理策略。方法:从初中二年级选取三组被试:非言语学习困难组(简称NLD)、言语学习困难组(简称VLD)和一般组(简称C)。结果:(1)NLD组空间关系推理成绩显著低于一般组;(2)在空间关系推理中,两类单模题推理成绩显著高于双模题。在非空间关系推理中,有无关前提的题推理成绩显著高于没有无关前提的题;(3)一般组正确运用模型建构策略显著高于NLD和VLD组。结论:NLD青少年通过建构模型解决空间关系推理,但不能有效运用该策略,非空间关系推理则采用逻辑规则策略。     

Learning about assessment: the impact of two courses for higher education staff

This interview-based study investigated the impact of two academic development courses about assessment. Participants learnt concepts and terminology that enabled them to better understand and communicate about assessment. The courses also stimulated critical thinking about assessment practices and conceptual change, with ‘assessment for learning’ emerging as significant with the qualities of a threshold concept. Certain learning activities stood out as transformational as they supported the examination of assessment from different perspectives and the integration of implicit with explicit knowledge, but only if participants had sufficient workplace experience that they could link to the formal knowledge taught in the courses.     

概念获得之过渡性学习的研究综述及其启示

概念获得之过渡性学习是关于人类认知（尤其是人类学习）的起源及其发展规律的心理学研究领域。目前，国内外研究以儿童为对象，以守恒概念及其变式－数学等值概念为研究中介，系统探讨了概念获得之过渡性学习的认知特征。在此基础上，发现可资作为教育干预依据的心理机制和可行性思路，提出了数学教改的一些建议。     

Using Propensity Scores for Estimating Causal Effects: A Study in the Development of Moral Reasoning

The purpose of this study was to illustrate the use of propensity scores for creating comparison groups, partially controlling for pretreatment course selection bias, and estimating the treatment effects of selected courses on the development of moral reasoning in undergraduate students. Specifically, we used a sample of convenience for comparing differences in moral reasoning development scores among students enrolled in intergroup dialogue, service learning, psychology and philosophy courses with those of an introductory sociology course. Adopting a propensity score approach included reviewing the empirical literature for its guidance in substantiating the reasons for including pretreatment variables (i.e., pretreatment course-taking behaviors, race, sex, political identification, need for cognition, major, age, pretreatment moral reasoning scores) in our analysis, measuring these variables, and reducing them into a single composite propensity score for each student in our analytic sample. This score then served as the basis for creating a new comparison group and for allowing us to estimate unbiased (or less biased) course-related treatment effects on moral reasoning development. Implications for higher education researchers are discussed.

Learning about agriculture within the framework of education for sustainability

The last two decades have seen increased threats to agricultural landscapes in Israel. Key factors include population growth, strong pressure from construction entrepreneurs and possible profit to land owners who benefit from a legal conversion of farmland into lands allocated for construction. While each Israeli elementary school student used to participate in agriculture classes, most students no longer experience this and their overall exposure to farming in schools is limited. The main objective of this study was to explore the ways farming is presented and addressed in the national curriculum and in learning materials. Additionally, it examines the actual status of teaching about agriculture and explores how farming is addressed in teachers' pre‐service programmes. The main finding is that very little teaching about agriculture and land management is carried out at most school levels. Only one college prepares agriculture teachers and science education programmes rarely address agriculture as a course topic. The paper also outlines an education for sustainability framework for integrating science, agriculture and environmental education.     

Interdisciplinary Faculty Development Seminars: A Model for Learning Emerging Technologies While Developing Interdisciplinary Partnerships

A series of faculty development seminars at Haverford College has been designed to address the issue of keeping science faculty teaching and research up-to-date, while building bridges between departments. To ensure coverage of emerging areas of science, we have elected to train existing faculty in new methods using a series of workshops for which faculty receive either teaching release time or stipends. The goals of these seminars include developing faculty expertise in important new topics and methodologies, stimulating the inclusion of these skills into their research and the curriculum, and broadening the scope of teaching and research collaborations. The initial three workshops have been targeted at areas of particular concern: boosting faculty expertise in scientific computing, bioinformatics, and issues surrounding the relationship of science and society. The seminar format has been designed to foster dialogue between different departments, as well as individual faculty, by including time for informal conversations and shared workshops, and by requiring collaborative curricular projects. The initial focus on the natural sciences has broadened into topics of interest to faculty in the social sciences and humanities.     

The Use of Clinical Reasoning Skills in the Setting of Uncertainty: A Case of Trial Femoral Head Migration

Clinical skills and medical knowledge enable physicians to overcome the uncertainty of emergent and rare clinical scenarios. Recently, a growing emphasis on evidence-based medicine (EBM) has flooded medical curricula of universities across the globe with guideline-based material, and while it has given teachers and students new tools to improve medical education, clinical reasoning must be reaffirmed in its capacity to provide physicians with the ability to solve unexpected clinical scenarios. Anatomical education in medical school should have two main objectives: to acquire anatomical knowledge and to develop the skill of applying that knowledge in clinical scenarios. The authors present a clinical scenario in which an unexpected and rare complication occurred during a routine elective hip replacement surgery. The general surgeon presiding over the case, also an anatomy professor, solved the problem using clinical reasoning and anatomical knowledge. It was a clear example of how clinical reasoning is key in approaching unprecedented, rare, or unknown complications. The intention of this scenario is to remind colleagues and medical schools that, although EBM is the standard, educators must uphold sound clinical reasoning to best prepare health care providers for their careers.     

多学科视角下对德育本质的反思

德育本质问题是德育理论研究中一个非常重要的问题。可是长期以来, 我国德育理论界对德育本质的认识一直是比较混乱的,甚至是错误的。不少学者把“质”与“本质”相混淆,有的甚至把现象当本质。从哲学、逻辑学、词源学、语义学乃至教育学等多学科视角对德育的概念进行严谨的分析,才能深刻地揭示德育的本质。     

A Scaled F Distribution as an Approximation to the Distribution of Test Statistics in Covariance Structure Analysis

When the assumption of multivariate normality is violated or when a discrepancy function other than (normal theory) maximum likelihood is used in structural equation models, the null distribution of the test statistic may not be χ² distributed. Most existing methods to approximate this distribution only match up to 2 moments. In this article, we propose 2 additional approximation methods: a scaled F distribution that matches 3 moments simultaneously and a direct Monte Carlo–based weighted sum of i.i.d. χ² variates. We also conduct comprehensive simulation studies to compare the new and existing methods for both maximum likelihood and nonmaximum likelihood discrepancy functions and to separately evaluate the effect of sampling uncertainty in the estimated weights of the weighted sum on the performance of the approximation methods.     

"家教热"现象的社会学分析

“家教热”的产生有其深刻的社会原因:高等教育供求关系的失衡;社会转型期,民众价值观、人才观的偏移;人们渴望向上流动的社会心理;相对剥夺感的存在。因而给社会、家庭以至于学生个人带来了很多不良影响:教育的不公平;学生的过度依赖性及身心的片面发展;教学质量的降低;增加了学生和家长的负担。在分析其因果关系的基础上,提出了相应的对策。     

The Use of Criteria in Argumentation and the Construction of Environmental Concepts: A university case study

We have analysed the processes of argumentation of three university student groups (A: six students, C: five students, and J: seven students) while making a decision about an environmental problem (selection of a heating system). The discussions took place in three 1½‐hour sessions that were audio‐taped and transcribed. For the analysis of the oral discussions, on the one hand, we have taken into account some of the dimensions characterising the quality of this decision‐making process, including the number and variety of criteria utilised, whether criteria, which did not favour the selected option, were considered and whether priorities were established among criteria, and, on the other hand, the use of environmental concepts such as renewable and sustainability as well as the meanings that were constructed for both concepts. We have determined that the students in this study proposed and utilised, both explicitly and implicitly, a high number and great variety of criteria to support their choices, although they were rarely able to consider contradictory evidence; that is, those that demonstrated disadvantages of the option selected. In terms of the construction of knowledge, we observed that in some groups the proposed task favoured the construction of a concept of sustainability that took the future into consideration and which was utilised as the most important justification in their selection. In terms of the concept of renewable, we found that they did not relate depletion of resources to economic consequences. We discuss the implications for the educational competence development.     

Mathematics as the Metaphysics of Education: A Misplaced Foundation

The notion of learnings, which has assumed a currency in educational discourse over the last decade, appears to be based in a scientific materialist world-view. By transforming processes of learning into material entities in this semantic turn, it is possible to advance a discourse about the results of schooling without considering what the processes of learning and educating are. The transfer of learning to entities serves the current ideologies of quantification and the language of mathematics in education. By using Alfred North Whitehead's notion of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, this paper reviews how the notions of "learnings" and the quantification of education are a function of high-level abstractions that do not reflect the immediacies of learning.     

社区教育课程开发的概念、问题及策略选择

文章从社区教育课程开发内涵出发,对课程开发的主客体问题、社区课程开发的特殊性问题加以界定,并对马鞍山市社区教育课程开发存在的主要问题及策略选择进行分析,以期对探索区域特色的社区教育课程开发体系提供理论依据。     

Distribution of public education spending for the poor: The case of yemen

This paper explores the issue of how a country for which the prioritization of public spending towards poverty reduction is a key policy concern can monitor the distributional effects of public spending. Employing standard benefit-incidence analysis, this paper empirically examines how public education spending is currently distributed in Yemen. It also considers the extent to which the distributional benefit to the poor should and can be improved, focusing on possible changes in cost sharing for higher education and on associated changes in budget allocations. The findings support the government’s decision to increase cost sharing while maintaining a high overall level of public education spending and provide a benchmark from which to monitor the impact of this and other education spending decisions on the poor.     

基于资源学习的专门用途英语网络教育探讨——以《旅游英语》课程为例

网络环境下的专门用途英语外语教学发生了巨大的变化。如何有效利用网络学习资源开展专门用途英语教学,如何整合资源架构有效的知识平台成为语言学者及外语教师关注的问题。     

Making Social Work Count: A Curriculum Innovation to Teach Quantitative Research Methods and Statistical Analysis to Undergraduate Social Work Students in the United Kingdom

Students in the United Kingdom (UK) are found to lack knowledge and skills in quantitative research methods. To address this gap, a quantitative research method and statistical analysis curriculum comprising 10 individual lessons was developed, piloted, and evaluated at two universities The evaluation found that BSW students’ (N = 81) self-efficacy improved significantly from pre- to posttest, but statistical knowledge improved only slightly and the improvement was not statistically significant. The findings point to recommendations for social work educators in the UK and beyond to consider when integrating the 10-input quantitative method curriculum and when teaching research methods and statistics to undergraduate social work students.