Undergraduate Research or Research-Based Courses: Which Is Most Beneficial for Science Students?

Research in Science Education - Over the last 25 years, both research literature and practice-oriented reports have claimed the need for improving the quality of undergraduate science...     

Is There a Role for Executive Functions in the Development of Mathematics Ability?

ABSTRACT— This article examines the role of working memory, attention shifting, and inhibitory control executive cognitive functions in the development of mathematics knowledge and ability in children. It suggests that an examination of the executive cognitive demand of mathematical thinking can complement procedural and conceptual knowledge-based approaches to understanding the ways in which children become proficient in mathematics. Task analysis indicates that executive cognitive functions likely operate in concert with procedural and conceptual knowledge and in some instances might act as a unique influence on mathematics problem-solving ability. It is concluded that consideration of the executive cognitive demand of mathematics can contribute to research on best practices in mathematics education.     

Is ‘Learning' Science Enough? – A Cultural Model of Religious Students of Science in an Australian Government School

This paper investigates the cognitive experiences of four religious students studying evolutionary biology in an inner city government secondary school in Melbourne, Australia. The participants in the study were identified using the Religious Background and Behaviours questionnaire (Connors, Tonigan, & Miller, 1996 Connors, G. J., Tonigan, J. S., & Miller, W. R. (1996). A measure of religious background and behaviour for use in behaviour change research. Psychology of Addictive Behaviours, 10, 90–96. doi:10.1037/0893-164X.10.2.90[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Participants were interviewed and asked to respond to questions about their cognitive experiences of studying evolutionary biology. Students' responses were analysed using cultural analysis of discourse to construct a cultural model of religious students of science. This cultural model suggests that these students employ a human schema and a non-human schema, which assert that humans are fundamentally different from non-humans in terms of origins and that humans have a transcendental purpose in life. For these students, these maxims seem to be challenged by their belief that evolutionary biology is dictated by metaphysical naturalism. The model suggests that because the existential foundation of these students is challenged, they employ a believing schema to classify their religious explanations and a learning schema to classify evolutionary biology. These schemas are then hierarchically arranged with the learning schema being made subordinate to the believing schema. Importantly, these students are thus able to maintain their existential foundation while fulfilling the requirements of school science. However, the quality of this “learning” is questionable.     

Development of an Instrument for Assessing Undergraduate Science Students’ Perceptions: The Problem-Based Learning Environment Inventory

This study aimed to develop and validate a problem-based learning environment inventory which would help teachers and researchers to better understand student views on problem-based learning environments. The development of the inventory included the following four steps: Item Formulation; Content Validation; Construct Validation; Reliability Calculation. It has 23 items allocated to four scales: (1) Student Interaction and Collaboration; (2) Teacher Support; (3) Student Responsibility; (4) Quality of Problem. Each learning environment item had a factor loading of at least 0.40 with its own scale, and less than 0.40 with all other scales. The results of the factor analysis revealed that the four scales accounted for the 53.72% of the total variance. The alpha reliability coefficient for the four scales ranged from 0.80 to 0.92. According to these findings, the Problem-based Learning Environment Inventory is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used in the field of education.     

Who Coaches the Coaches? The Development of a Coaching Model for Experiential Learning

Innovative Higher Education - This study explores a case of coaching deployed in experiential, interdisciplinary, and project-based courses. This study follows coaching in two courses that operated...     

Is It the Intervention or the Students? Using Linear Regression to Control for Student Characteristics in Undergraduate STEM Education Research

Although researchers in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education are currently using several methods to analyze learning gains from pre- and posttest data, the most commonly used approaches have significant shortcomings. Chief among these is the inability to distinguish whether differences in learning gains are due to the effect of an instructional intervention or to differences in student characteristics when students cannot be assigned to control and treatment groups at random. Using pre- and posttest scores from an introductory biology course, we illustrate how the methods currently in wide use can lead to erroneous conclusions, and how multiple linear regression offers an effective framework for distinguishing the impact of an instructional intervention from the impact of student characteristics on test score gains. In general, we recommend that researchers always use student-level regression models that control for possible differences in student ability and preparation to estimate the effect of any nonrandomized instructional intervention on student performance.     

The Relationship Between Students’ Casual Interest in Science and Their Perceptions of the Undergraduate Laboratory Environment

Research in Science Education - Science instructors assume that they have created their laboratory curriculum in such a way as to reflect an ideal science instructional laboratory, but students may...     

Will Special-Contracted Teachers Promote the Development of Rural Students? From the Perspective of the New Human Capital Theory

The Special-Contracted Teacher Scheme, a supplement to the traditional mode of teacher supply, has been implemented for 17 years and the teaching quality of those teachers has gained a lot of attention. Using data of teachers and students from the sample counties in four central and western provincial-level administrative units, this paper studies how special-contracted teachers have affected students’ academic performance and non-cognitive ability according to the student development framework of the new human capital theory, and how those effects vary among different teacher groups. Results show that while special-contracted teachers have helped improve the academic performance of rural students, their role is limited in improving students’ non-cognitive ability. At the same time, female special-contracted teachers and those without a normal major play an obviously bigger role in raising students’ academic performance. The conclusion is that special-contracted teachers can to some extent help narrow the urban-rural gap in academic performance, but more research needs to be done to better understand their effects on students’ non-cognitive ability.     

Development of an Attitude Scale to Measure the Undergraduate Students’ Attitudes Towards Nanobiotechnology

Nanobiotechnology, which resulted from the convergence of biotechnology and nanotechnology, is a new field of research, and it has an increasing impact on peoples’ everyday lives. Thus, it is important to measure peoples’ attitudes towards nanobiotechnology, in particular, those who are specifically involved in biology and science education. However, despite the existence of an adequate number of instruments on biotechnology or nanotechnology, for nanobiotechnology, there is no instrument that has been rigorously validated. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop a nanobiotechnology scale for assessing the undergraduate students’ attitudes. The data were gathered from 236 student teachers enrolled in the departments of biology education and elementary science education. The findings from exploratory factor analysis (EFA) provided evidence for the validity and reliability of the final form of the scale. At total of 36 items were identified and contained within the following four factors, nanobiotechnology awareness, interest in nanobiotechnology, nanobiotechnology education, and the applications of nanobiotechnology. The total variance was 53.021%, and the Cronbach’s alpha for the overall scale was 0.93. The scale was later given to 203 student teachers, the results of which were presented in this study. The results indicated significant differences in gender and department in some of the subscales of the scale. As a result, it is believed that the instrument will be a valuable tool for both instructors and researchers in science education to assess the student teachers’ attitudes about nanobiotechnology.     

The Relationship Between Students’ Perceptions of “Good Practices for Undergraduate Education” and the Paradigmatic Development of Disciplines in Course-Taking Behavior

Our study uses data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education to interrogate the affinity disciplines hypothesis through students’ perceptions of faculty use of six of Chickering and Gamson’s (AAHE Bull 39(7):3–7, 1987) principles of good practice for undergraduate education. We created a proportional scale based on Biglan’s (J Appl Psychol 57(3):195–203, 1973) classification of paradigmatic development (with higher scores on the scale corresponding to students taking a higher proportion of courses in ‘hard’ fields compared to ‘soft’ fields), our study tests differences by the paradigmatic development of the disciplines or fields in which students take their courses within the first year of college. Our findings suggest that as paradigmatic development increases (toward a higher proportion of courses taken in hard disciplines), student perceptions of both faculty use of prompt feedback and faculty use of high expectations/academic challenge decrease, while student perceptions of cooperative learning increase. Further, no statistically significant differences were found between the paradigmatic development of fields in which students’ take their courses and students’ perceptions of faculty use of student-faculty contact, active and collaborative learning, or teaching clarity and organization. This study replicates the findings from Braxton et al. (Res High Educ 39(3):299–318, 1998) using student-level rather than faculty-level reports of faculty use of good teaching practices.     

‘Learning Experience’ Provided by Science Teaching Practice in a Classroom and the Development of Students’ Competences

According to the literature, there is a very important corpus of knowledge that allows for the investigation of some dimensions of ‘learning experience’ provided to students, in relation to epistemic, pedagogical and meta-cognitive practices. However, in the literature, there is little investigation into the invariance (or not) of the characteristics of students’ learning experience while being taught a scientific subject by the same teacher. This paper suggests that the relationship between the learning experience provided and the competences developed is not properly highlighted. This paper analyses the learning experience provided to students in epistemic, pedagogical and meta-cognitive terms. The students were taught the proprieties and applications of light by one teacher, in three classes, over 7 weeks. We analysed the data in each referred learning experience, using a pre-defined category system. The students’ competences were evaluated by a competence test. The epistemic demand of each item and the students’ performances were also analysed. Our findings point to the non invariance of learning experiences provided to students and the influence of some dimensions of learning experiences provided in the development of certain competences. These findings and their implications are contextualized and discussed.     

Undergraduate Social Work Students’ Perceptions of a Team-Based Learning Approach to Exploring Adult Development

ABSTRACT

Social work educators are challenged to adopt innovative instructional methods and pedagogies to prepare students to meet the contemporary needs of diverse client populations. A team-based learning (TBL) approach is a pedagogical strategy that utilizes cooperative and collaborative learning principles to inspire academic, professional, and interpersonal growth for students. This study explores perspectives of 93 undergraduate social work students regarding the benefits and challenges of using a TBL approach to research adult development. Despite identifying several benefits of this method, including in-depth learning and enhanced relationships, students also experienced significant challenges to working in teams.     

Assessing the Life Science Knowledge of Students and Teachers Represented by the K–8 National Science Standards

We report on the development of an item test bank and associated instruments based on the National Research Council (NRC) K–8 life sciences content standards. Utilizing hundreds of studies in the science education research literature on student misconceptions, we constructed 476 unique multiple-choice items that measure the degree to which test takers hold either a misconception or an accepted scientific view. Tested nationally with 30,594 students, following their study of life science, and their 353 teachers, these items reveal a range of interesting results, particularly student difficulties in mastering the NRC standards. Teachers also answered test items and demonstrated a high level of subject matter knowledge reflecting the standards of the grade level at which they teach, but exhibiting few misconceptions of their own. In addition, teachers predicted the difficulty of each item for their students and which of the wrong answers would be the most popular. Teachers were found to generally overestimate their own students’ performance and to have a high level of awareness of the particular misconceptions that their students hold on the K–4 standards, but a low level of awareness of misconceptions related to the 5–8 standards.     

How Do University Students Perceive the Nature of Science?

Science & Education - The paper presents an empirical study on university students’ perceptions of nature of science (NOS). NOS is framed in terms of the cognitive, epistemic, and...     

Students’ Understanding of the Special Theory of Relativity and Design for a Guided Visit to a Science Museum

The present paper describes the design of teaching materials that are used as learning tools in school visits to a science museum. An exhibition on ‘A century of the Special Theory of Relativity’, in the Kutxaespacio Science Museum, in San Sebastian, Spain, was used to design a visit for first‐year engineering students at the university and assess the learning that was achieved. The first part of the paper presents the teaching sequence that was designed to build a bridge between formal teaching and the exhibition visit. The second part analyses the potential of the exhibition and the aforementioned teaching sequence to influence the students’ knowledge of three aspects of the Special Theory of Relativity. The results obtained show that the design of the visit, with both pre‐visit and follow‐up activities, was effective as a means of increasing students’ understanding and stimulating their ability to argue scientifically.     

Review on the Development of Human Resource Accounting in China

A review through the origination,development and prospect of Human resource accounting(HPA) is presented based on the study of plentiful literatures about if.HRA is defined as an accounting procedure and method to discriminate and meaure the data of human resources,aiming to provide information which is concerned with the change of human resources for the outside people to serve human resource management,It is experiencing a nearly frozen period following its hot time in 1970s after its origination in America in 1960s.The theoretic foundation of HRA is classical plutonomy dated back to 17th century,There were two preeminent persons in the higtory of HRA,One was Theodore Schultz who established his human capital theory relating education that improves the human capital value with economy;the other was Eric G.Flamholtz who enriched the concept,research methods and application of HRA,In China,the research on HRA started i 1980s beginning with introducing overseas achievements.Multiple views coexist i the academy on whether human resources should be taken as accounting assets and on where to put the HRA information in financial statements.The application of HRA is constrained by the absence of ull-blown theories and methodological systems about it as well as difficulties in evaluating human resources and the obstacle of conventional understandings,However,with the coming of intellective economy,the globalization of competition and the entry of China into WTO.The day of HRA will surely come.     

But Who Is it for? The History of School Science in England

Science & Education -     

Development and Validation of an Online Dynamic Assessment for Raising Students’ Comprehension of Science Text

This article reports on the development of an online dynamic approach for assessing and improving students’ reading comprehension of science texts—the dynamic assessment for reading comprehension of science text (DARCST). The DARCST blended assessment and response-specific instruction into a holistic learning task for grades 5 and 6 students. The DARCST, a layer-cake approach (interspersed responses and feedback) to assessment as learning, takes a graduated-prompts perspective on the criteria for reading comprehension of science text. The item response theory (IRT) analysis and analysis of variance (ANOVA) over an instructional period indicated that the DARCST was applicable for most students with a wide range of reading abilities. Based on the acceptable psychometrics, the DARCST appears to be appropriate for use in middle-years science programs where enhanced science reading is a goal.