Patterns of student writing in a critical thinking course: A quantitative analysis

Two studies assessed student writing in a critical thinking course. The first study examined initial and final versions of a term paper. Linguistic inquiry and word count (LIWC) analyses of essays revealed significant differences in linguistic variables and some differences in cognitive variables. The second study examined student essays at the beginning and end of the semester. Taken together, the studies indicate that students express themselves with less tentativeness at the end of the semester, and are consistent with the suggestion that students move from relativism to commitment during the course of a semester. In addition, the results indicate that the LIWC may detect differences between different writing genres.     

Making sense of student mathematical thinking: the role of teacher mathematical thinking

Educational Studies in Mathematics - In mathematical whole-class discussions, teachers can build on various student ideas and develop these ideas toward mathematical goals. This requires teachers...     

科学创造性思维分析

科学创造性思维是思维结果具有新奇性、独创性、目的性和价值性的科学思维活动 ,主要包括重新安排、组合已有的科学知识 ,创造出新的知识和形象 ,以及突破已有的科学知识 ,提出崭新的见解、设想、思路、观点等两个方面 ;科学创造性思维具有新颖性、灵活性和综合性三个特点 ;发散思维和集中思维的辨证统一 ,是科学创造性思维的基本方式。     

An analysis of student characteristics within the student decision making process

ABSTRACT Young peoples' decision making when considering extending their education, obtaining training or deciding on their careers is a complex interactive process. Interests and choices can change due to the information available, which may also be modified by influential parties such as peers, teachers, careers officers, parents and other significant adults. They may also be affected by their own life experiences, either within or outside the class. By examining the selection of a university as a decision making process, much can be learnt which will provide recruitment personnel with a means of choosing more functional tools in achieving their enrolment goals. Many researchers (particularly from North America) have focused on higher education (HE) decision making itself and the information that adolescents require when arriving at their decisions, but there has been very little work performed within the UK. The aim of this article is to report research findings from a large-scale survey (n=674), incorporating a variety of further education institutions (sixth form departments, schools and colleges) within the north west of England, whose pupils were planning on entering HE within the next 12 months. The institutions (some of which were in affluent areas or deprived areas, some of which contained highly academic pupils whilst others did not, some of which were single-sex institutions) were selected using a convenience-based sampling method so that a variety of pupil characteristics were captured. The survey asked questions concerning the early period of who first stimulated the pupils to apply to university (problem recognition), how and when this occurred, through to the final decision of where to attend and why (evaluation of alternatives). Results showed that in the problem recognition phase, boys were more likely to be introduced to HE by their parents than were girls, and those pupils who made their minds up earlier to enter HE (more academic pupils) were less likely to rely upon teachers but more upon parents. In the information search phase, the prospectus was the most important source of information and the majority spent at least three months searching, although females took longer to gather their data than did males. With the evaluation of alternatives phase, course content was more important to females, whereas reputation was more important to males and the most critical factor in causing apprehension was that of grade expectations (particularly by the less academic pupils), with females being less confident than males in achieving the necessary entry qualifications. Another reason to cause one to change one's mind was the 'social atmosphere', as obtained on an open day visit. Also, females were more anxious about moving away from home than were males.     

郑观应"商为国本"思想浅析

“商为国本”思想是郑观应经济思想中重要的组成部分，具有浓厚的重商主义色彩，他主张国家要重视商业，提高商人的政治地位，同时也要大力发展工农业。其思想是以发展中国的对外贸易、抵制外国资本主义商品入侵为立足点的，具有鲜明的时代特色。     

试析物理创造性思维的结构

本文以现有心理学、教育学理论为指导,通过对中学物理教师和中学生进行的调查问卷,结合中学物理教学实践,论述了中学生物理创造性思维的金字塔结构.     

Representations of student performance data in local education policy

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - The use of data for governance purposes has been widely recognised as a way for national authorities to coordinate their activities across...     

大学生就业难的营销学思考

大学生就业难是高等教育进入大众化阶段的必然产物。从营销学角度分析，化解大学生就业难题需要大学生降低期望值；需要大学生借鉴“STP营销”理论进行合理的职业规划；需要高校以市场为导向，生产满足社会需求的“产品”；需要开展“共生营销”，帮助大学生成功就业。     

Representations of childcare in the Australian print media: An exploratory corpus-assisted discourse analysis

While an increasing body of Australian and international research has explored the relationship between media and education, few studies have examined this relationship in the context of early childhood education. This paper contributes to this research gap by reporting on a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of how childcare is represented in 801 newspaper texts from six Australian newspapers. As a foundational paper of a broader study investigating public and political influences on parents’ childcare choices, the paper details the use and utility of corpus linguistic tools for exploring the discourse construction of childcare in a large corpus of media texts. It also highlights the value of analysing media corpora via media ownership, focusing on the two dominant Australian media organisations, Fairfax and News Corp. Analyses reveal similarities but also key differences in the representation of childcare in Fairfax and News Corp newspapers. In Australia, print media still sets the daily media agenda and reflects the dominant discourse constructions surrounding major public issues. Accordingly, the beliefs, practices and decision-making of current and potential parent users of formal childcare may be differentially influenced depending not just on their (direct or indirect) access to print media, but by the format (tabloid or broadsheet) and thus ownership (Fairfax or News Corp).     

Discerning student thinking: a practical theoretical framework for recognising or informally assessing different ways of thinking

We expect our students to learn different ways of thinking, such as historical empathy or scientific reasoning, reflection, critical analysis, or clinical reasoning. But how do we discern if they have learned these ways of thinking when thinking is often abstract, tacit and seemingly invisible? In this conceptual and theoretical article, I argue that we can discern any kind of thinking, however we define it, if we focus on the observable actions or thinking behaviours associated with that thinking. Based on this argument, I then offer a theoretical framework for teachers so they might recognise and informally assess the particular kind of student thinking they want to cultivate. This framework synthesises several important theories about how we learn to think, and distinguishes six general features a teacher might look for to be more discerning about any kind of thinking: visibility, complexity, frequency, flexibility, independence, and application of the thinking behaviours.     

Teacher self-efficacy,instructional quality,and student motivational beliefs: An analysis using multilevel structural equation modeling

Teacher self-efficacy (TSE) is one of the most salient motivational characteristics that is assumed to affect teachers’ instructional quality and student motivational beliefs. However, discussions of these associations have primarily been often primarily conceptual and/or based on empirical research that has suffered from methodological shortcomings. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the relationships between TSE, instructional quality (i.e., classroom management, cognitive activation, and supportive climate) and student motivational beliefs (i.e., self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation) by using responses from both teachers and students and implementing a sophisticated doubly latent multilevel structural equation modeling approach. A total of 94 high school teachers and their 2087 students participated in the study. The results demonstrated that, at the class level, TSE was positively related to the three dimensions of instructional quality but not to student motivational beliefs. As expected, instructional quality was positively related to student motivational beliefs.     

Chemical rationales: another triplet for chemical thinking

ABSTRACT

One of the central goals of modern science and chemistry education is to develop students’ abilities to understand complex phenomena, and productively engage in explanation, justification, and argumentation. To accomplish this goal, we should better characterise the types of reasoning that we expect students to master in the different scientific disciplines. This analysis is needed to support the design of instructional tasks, teaching strategies, and assessments that foster those ways of thinking. This essay contributes in this direction by characterising the major types of rationales built and applied by experts when analysing chemical systems and processes. The term ‘chemical rationale’ is used to refer to any product of reasoning that uses chemical knowledge to build explanations, justifications or arguments. Three main types of rationales are identified and discussed: Phenomenological, Mechanical, and Structural. Difficulties associated with learning how to build each type of rationale are highlighted, and implications for research and practice of this other chemistry ‘triplet’ are discussed.     

Predicting student evaluations of teaching using decision tree analysis

Abstract

This study uses decision tree analysis to determine the most important variables that predict high overall teaching and course scores on a student evaluation of teaching (SET) instrument at a large public research university in the United States. Decision tree analysis is a more robust and intuitive approach for analysing and interpreting SET scores compared to more common parametric statistical approaches. Variables in this analysis included individual items on the SET instrument, self-reported student characteristics, course characteristics and instructor characteristics. The results show that items on the SET instrument that most directly address fundamental issues of teaching and learning, such as helping the student to better understand the course material, are most predictive of high overall teaching and course scores. SET items less directly related to student learning, such as those related to course grading policies, have little importance in predicting high overall teaching and course scores. Variables irrelevant to the construct, such as an instructor’s gender and race/ethnicity, were not predictive of high overall teaching and course scores. These findings provide evidence of criterion and discriminant validity, and show that high SET scores do not reflect student biases against an instructor’s gender or race/ethnicity.     

Beyond item analysis: Connecting student behaviour and performance using e-assessment logs

Traditional item analyses such as classical test theory (CTT) use exam-taker responses to assessment items to approximate their difficulty and discrimination. The increased adoption by educational institutions of electronic assessment platforms (EAPs) provides new avenues for assessment analytics by capturing detailed logs of an exam-taker's journey through their exam. This paper explores how logs created by EAPs can be employed alongside exam-taker responses and CTT to gain deeper insights into exam items. In particular, we propose an approach for deriving features from exam logs for approximating item difficulty and discrimination based on exam-taker behaviour during an exam. Items for which difficulty and discrimination differ significantly between CTT analysis and our approach are flagged through outlier detection for independent academic review. We demonstrate our approach by analysing de-identified exam logs and responses to assessment items of 463 medical students enrolled in a first-year biomedical sciences course. The analysis shows that the number of times an exam-taker visits an item before selecting a final response is a strong indicator of an item's difficulty and discrimination. Scrutiny by the course instructor of the seven items identified as outliers suggests our log-based analysis can provide insights beyond what is captured by traditional item analyses.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Traditional item analysis is based on exam-taker responses to the items using mathematical and statistical models from classical test theory (CTT). The difficulty and discrimination indices thus calculated can be used to determine the effectiveness of each item and consequently the reliability of the entire exam.

What this paper adds

• Data extracted from exam logs can be used to identify exam-taker behaviours which complement classical test theory in approximating the difficulty and discrimination of an item and identifying items that may require instructor review.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Identifying the behaviours of successful exam-takers may allow us to develop effective exam-taking strategies and personal recommendations for students.
• Analysing exam logs may also provide an additional tool for identifying struggling students and items in need of revision.

     

生物教学中提高学生思考力水平的对策

1 思考力的含义 思考力是指个体为完成某种活动或任务时对各种要素进行分析、重组、整合的各种思维能力基本单元的总和，是后天学习引发产生的一种素质。思考力水平是衡量思维能力大小的重要标志，思维能力由思考力水平和先天智力决定，思维能力的提高取决于思考力水平的层次递进，思考力层次提高，思维能力则增强。不同的人，其思考力层次不同。思考力层次的高低受有效训练的多少、自主探索建构和反思频率等因素的影响。[第一段]     

Incommensurability and Multiple Models: Representations of the Structure of Matter in Undergraduate Chemistry Students

The notion of incommensurability has provided a rationality criterion for the development of scientific theories, as well as some insight into theories developed by students while learning science. However, the relationship between the multiple models held by students and incommensurability requires further discussion. We present the results of empirical work that investigated the multiple models of the structure of the matter held by university students and we analyze these results using the notion of incommensurability. We also point out implications in the construction of students’ scientific models as they move forward in their careers.     

Fostering and assessing student critical thinking: From theory to teaching practice

In an age of innovation and digitalisation, critical thinking has become one of the most valued skills in the labour market. This paper shows how teachers can empower students to develop their students' critical thinking. After recalling why critical thinking matters for democracy and the economy, a definition of critical thinking is outlined. Next, a demonstration is given of how the concept critical thinking can be translated and simplified using teacher-friendly rubrics that can support the design or redesign of lesson plans, teacher observations and formative assessment—as well as standardised assessments. In conclusion, the paper argues that critical thinking should be mainstreamed in all subjects in school curricula, and that it leads to deeper understanding of subject matter content.     

Characterizing teacher attention to student thinking: A role for epistemological messages

Although research and policy suggest science and mathematics teachers should attend to their student's thinking during instruction, our field has inadequately defined what that means in relation to our ultimate goals for the practice. Here I present a theoretical argument that, in making their definitions, researchers should leverage the ways students understand such attention by characterizing teacher attention based on the epistemological messages it sends students about the nature of knowledge and learning in the classroom. Using data collected from high school science and mathematics teachers with a new video‐capture methodology, I present an analysis of variability in epistemological messages of teacher attention to illustrate work could unfold if we as researchers took up the theoretical claims made in this work. In doing so, I endeavor to draw the construct of epistemological messages into our collective conversations about teacher attention, and provide a starting point for our field to begin debating the most productive ways to study and unpack the epistemological messages we value in that teacher attention. I conclude by demonstrating the feasibility of using these messages to distinguish the types of teacher attention our field wants to develop and encourage in teacher education. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 55: 94–120, 2018