The Impact of a Death Row Exoneration Testimonial on Social Work Students: A Teaching Note

Criminal-justice-involved clients often are a complicated population for students to consider through a lens of oppression. Nevertheless, it is critical that they do so given that many will serve clients with criminal records during their careers. An attempt to challenge students’ prejudice toward criminal-justice-involved people was deployed using a teaching technique derived from intergroup contact theory. The authors invited Juan Melendez to share his story of incarceration on death row for more than 17 years for a crime he did not commit. This article is an examination of the impact of Mr. Melendez’s story and the application of intergroup contact theory.     

Preparing Students for Social Action in a Social Justice Education Course: What Works?

The purpose of this study was to explore students’ perceptions of how the curriculum and teaching strategies in a social justice education course prepared them for social action engagement. Past studies using a similar approach to teaching about social justice issues did not include student interviews. Students’ perspectives can shed light on how experiences in a social justice education course prepared them to challenge social oppression and work toward equity in their daily lives. Six students were interviewed one semester after they completed a social justice education course. Findings indicated teaching strategies (e.g., experiential activities) that included students’ lived experiences also increased their personal awareness, empathy, confidence, and knowledge about tools for social action. These teaching strategies were identified more often than content as key in preparing students to take action. Classroom implications are discussed.     

When and Why Are the Values of Physical Quantities Expressed with Uncertainties? A Case Study of a Physics Undergraduate Laboratory Course

The understanding of measurement is related to the understanding of the nature of science—one of the main goals of current international science teaching at all levels of education. This case study explores how a first-year university physics course deals with measurement uncertainties in the light of an epistemological analysis of measurement. The data consist of the course documents, interviews with senior instructors, and laboratory instructors’ responses to an online questionnaire. During laboratory work, uncertainties are expressed in the large majority of the measurements made by the students but only in less than half of their calculation results. The instructors’ expectations are that students systematically estimate uncertainties so that they become aware that measurements and calculations are never exact. However, since uncertainties are not specified for the values given in the laboratory guides, uncertainties are often missing from the results of students’ calculations. The potential side effects of students’ measurement understanding are discussed and suggestions for improvements are proposed.     

Science education and affect

Thought experiments are tools often used by physicists. Learning authentic physics then also means that students need to develop a familiarity with the reasoning processes of thought experiments. This study examines the nature of learning processes that involve communication about image‐based micro‐worlds in optics. The results of this study show that students’ investigations often have the structure of thought experiments. Thought experiments that use computer‐based microworlds are powerful because they capitalize on the human capability for imagery that allow learners to ‘see’ the physical processes and construct qualitative understandings. In this study, the structure of students’ activities as thought experiments arose from their collective efforts which started with the construction of an optics simulation. In the course of the activities, students’ understanding evolved from fragmented views of optical situations to system views that included multiple components. Collaborative thought experiments are therefore emergent phenomena, triggered by the events as a whole rather than being pre‐designed. In the course of the activities, students who participated in collective problem solving gradually adopted shared graphical representations and meanings.     

Unmasking moral dichotomies: can feminist pedagogy overcome student resistance?

Scholarship on feminist pedagogy suggests that challenges to traditional forms of knowledge help university students overcome resistance to discussions about oppression. Because students assume that ‘truth’ is objective, they are unwilling to consider alternative voices from the ‘margins’. This paper theoretically argues and empirically examines whether feminist pedagogy expands students' morally dichotomous frameworks and, thus, decreases students' avoidance, denial, and resentment towards critical analysis. I showed students in three Women, Gender and Society classes videos I created that depicted a lecturer and three students negotiating gendered‐conflict in the classroom. My goal was to see if exposure to feminist pedagogy throughout the semester reduced the likelihood that students used morally, dichotomous frameworks to resist engaging in analysis about oppression, inequality and difference.     

Globalizing whiteness? Visually re/presenting students in global university rankings websites

ABSTRACT

Amid debates about the role and impact of global university rankings (GURs), very few have closely examined how GURs media outlets construct meanings of higher education (HE) in their visual representations. We critically examine publicly available visual media of students in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and US News and World Report websites. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s heuristics of representation and attending to visual grammars, we argue whiteness maintains its racial hegemony in GURs’ student imagery through its flexibility and in/visbility. Furthermore, whiteness is entangled with other systems of oppression, particularly patriarchy, homonormativity, and heterosexuality. We suggest that GURs rankings media are not simply constructing and informing us about the quality and excellence of HE, but simultaneously teaching us how to view students, often reproducing oppressive racialized and gendered ideologies. We end with methodological implications of visual cultural studies in comparative education.     

Students’ Perspectives on LGBTQ-Inclusive Curriculum

Implementing curriculum that is inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) people has the potential to create an equitable learning environment. In order to learn more about students’ experiences of LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum, 26 high school students with diverse racial/ethnic, sexual, and gender identities were recruited from the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) Network in California. Students participated in focus groups conducted by telephone by GSA staff, sharing their experiences of LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum in school. Qualitative coding methods, including grounded theory, were used to identify themes and interpret students’ responses. Data revealed that LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum was most often taught in social sciences and humanities courses as stand-alone lessons. LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum rarely met standards of social justice education, though opportunities for critical conversations about systemic oppression regularly emerged. For instance, teachers often failed to intervene in LGBTQ bullying and missed teachable moments conducive to inclusive curriculum. Some students learned positive LGBTQ lessons and highlighted the ways such curriculum reflected their identities and created a supportive school climate. Implications for equitable education are discussed.     

Enculturation and Understanding: some differences between sixth formers’ and graduates’ conceptions of understanding in History and Science

Abstract

Understanding is often a highly valued learning outcome in higher education. If new students’ conceptions of understanding are inappropriate or are different to the conceptions of those who teach them, the quality of the students’ learning may suffer. This study compared aspects of sixth formers’ and graduates’ conceptions of understanding in History and Science. It was found that some new students are likely to begin higher education with conceptions that could point them towards a kind of learning that is not what is expected. For instance, in both history and science, there may be a tendency to emphasise the acquisition of factual information. Perhaps less obvious would be students who tend to over‐simplify events in History and those who undervalue simplification and idealisation of a situation in Science. Aspects of the conceptions of understanding that such new students may bring to their courses are described. Some strategies for developing students’ subject‐specific conceptions are also outlined.     

数值模拟结果演示推进岩石力学课堂教学

岩石力学课程的理论性比较强,单靠书面的讲解,学生难以深刻领会,需要丰富授课资料。通过对课程中的相关问题进行数值模拟并将结果演示于教学中,有助于课程教学效果的提升,使学生了解到更多岩石力学领域的知识和信息,进一步加深了对岩石力学概念和相关知识点的认识和理解;通过数值模拟结果演示资料的补充,极大改善了课程内容难懂、难以深入和授课资料不丰富、不直观、不全面等问题,极大地激发了学生学习和投身科研的兴趣,使学生理论水平和创新思维大幅提高,并开阔学生的视野;数值模拟也是岩石力学实验教学的有益补充,为实验教学打下良好的基础。     

数学理解的三种基本形态及教学启示

数学理解包括三种基本形态,即:记忆性理解、解释性理解和探究性理解,这三种数学理解分别对应着“记得、晓得和明得”三种不同的状态。三种数学理解对数学学习都是有价值的,但仅有记忆性和解释性理解是不够的,探究性理解才是数学教学的最终目标。实践中,不少水平不高的教师常常只能让学生达到记忆性理解,有一定水平的教师能让学生达到解释性理解,真正让学生达到探究性理解的教师并不是很多。教师要不失时机地促进学生数学理解层级的迭代升级,促使学生最终达到探究性理解,吴文俊院士数学学习的经验对把握数学理解的三种基本形态有借鉴和启迪意义。在课堂教学中引导学生从事生动活泼的数学探索性活动常常是一个相当艰难的过程,对教师的数学探究素质提出了较高的要求,教师应努力引导学生去探求数学知识的意义和发现的过程,促使学生数学探究性理解方式的养成。     

Students’ Independent Use of Screencasts and Simulations to Construct Understanding of Solubility Concepts

As students increasingly use online chemistry animations and simulations, it is becoming more important to understand how students independently engage with such materials and to develop a set of best practices for students’ use of these resources outside of the classroom. Most of the literature examining students’ use of animations and simulations has focused on classroom use with some studies suggesting that better outcomes are obtained when students use simulations with minimal guidance while others indicate the need for appropriate scaffolding. This study examined differences with respect to (1) student understanding of the concept of dissolution of ionic and covalent compounds in water and (2) student use of electronic resources when students were asked to complete an assignment either by manipulating a simulation on their own or by watching a screencast in which an expert manipulated the same simulation. Comparison of students’ pre- and posttest scores, answers to assignment questions, near-transfer follow-up questions, and eye-tracking analysis suggested that students who viewed the screencast gained a better understanding of the dissolving process, including interactions with water at the particulate level, particularly for covalent compounds. Additionally, the eye tracking indicated that there were significant differences in the ways that the different treatment groups (screencast or simulation) used the electronic resources.     

A Vygotskian approach to promote and formatively assess academic concept learning

Promoting students’ conceptual understanding and academic language development is a primary goal of instructors in all subject areas. These goals, however, are sometimes hindered by the way students’ learning is assessed. In many college-level courses, knowledge-level tests that assess concrete thinking associated with superficial approaches to teaching are frequently used. Rubrics used to grade short open-ended responses often have vague criteria subjectively applied to a rating scale. To address these issues, this paper uses a new lens, shaped from the ideas of Vygotsky, a cultural-historical theorist, for understanding the development of academic language use (in Vygotskian terms, thinking that demonstrates conceptual understanding) and its assessment. Vygotsky’s stages of concept learning are applied to form criteria on a short-answer response rubric. Examples of students’ academic language use according to developmental level are provided. Recommendations for the adaptation of this type of classroom assessment for use in other courses are made, along with suggestions for future research.     

Making the invisible visible: enhancing students’ conceptual understanding by introducing representations of abstract objects in a simulation

This study aimed to identify if complementing representations of concrete objects with representations of abstract objects improves students’ conceptual understanding as they use a simulation to experiment in the domain of Light and Color. Moreover, we investigated whether students’ prior knowledge is a factor that must be considered in deciding when to use representations of abstract objects. A pre-post comparison study design was used, involving 69 participants assigned to two conditions. The first condition consisted of 36 students who had access to a simulation with representations of concrete objects, whereas the second condition consisted of 33 students who had access to a simulation with representations of both concrete and abstract objects. Both conditions used the same inquiry-oriented curriculum materials, consisting of three sections that included physical phenomena with increasingly complex underlying mechanisms, so that the third section’s mechanisms were more complex in nature than those in the first two sections. Tests were administered to assess students’ conceptual understanding before and after the presentation of the curricular material as a whole, as well as before and after each of its three sections. Results revealed that the presence of representations of abstract objects was helpful for the first two sections, but only for students with low prior knowledge. On the third, most complex section, also the students with higher prior knowledge profited from the presence of abstract objects. From these findings, we conjecture that for physical phenomena with a lower level of complexity, students with high prior knowledge are able to mentally construct the necessary abstract concepts on their own, whereas for higher levels of complexity they need an explicit representation of the abstract objects in the learning environment.     

Youth Oppression as a Technology of Colonialism: Conceptual Frameworks and Possibilities for Social Justice Education Praxis

In this article, we conceptualize youth oppression as a social justice issue using SJE frameworks including Adams’ levels of oppression, Bell's defining features of oppression, Hardiman et. al.'s matrix of oppression, Young's Five Faces, and Love's internalized oppression. We examine youth as a social identity group, and youth oppression as a mechanism through which the roles of dominant and subordinate are installed on all humans, and through which we are socialized to participate in the maintenance and perpetuation of other forms of oppression.

This conceptualization of youth oppression is rooted in examination of discourses that create childhood as a subordinate social status in relation to adults, and parallels with certain discourses of colonialism. Examination of parallels between discourses that create childhood and some of the discourses of colonialism illuminate youth oppression as a technology of colonialism. Colonialism, a complex oppressive system operating on multiple levels, maintains unequal, hierarchical relationships. Examining colonialism provides a lens through which to view the broader systemic and global connections that formulate oppression. The relationships within which youth oppression occurs often obscures these systemic, multi-level global connections.

We propose youth oppression as a generative theme in social justice praxis. Implications include transforming how we conceptualize, contextualize, and strategize SJE praxis, and changing how we think about the oppression of humans and possibilities for liberation.     

Students’ Perceptions of Learning in an Online Multiround Business Simulation Game: What Can We Learn from Them?

Multiround business simulation games have been gaining popularity in higher education. However, certain aspects of experiential learning of individual students in the game remain unaddressed in research literature. Team assessments, such as team papers, appear a common, “natural” choice given the team‐based nature of the games but may potentially mask individual learning outcomes. In this study we use a qualitative method to glean from individual students’ papers a deeper understanding of the process of learning of individual students in a team‐based, multiround business simulation game. Our findings indicate that individual and timely assessments are necessary to identify cases of not meeting the expected individual learning outcomes for the instructor's corrective intervention. This study contributes to the understanding of the process and outcomes of student learning in a multiround business simulation game, methods of teaching a supply chain and operations class with a simulation, and methods for better aligning course goals and assessments.     

Critical Consciousness-Based HIV Prevention Interventions for Black Gay and Bisexual Male Youth

Black gay/bisexual male youth are one of the groups most affected by HIV in the United States, but few behavioral interventions have been created specifically to address this health inequity. Oppression related to these youths’ multiple social identities—including racism, heterosexism, and HIV stigma—contribute to increased health risks. Primary and secondary HIV prevention interventions created specifically for Black gay/bisexual male youth that address the negative impact of oppression are urgently needed. We present empowerment as a framework for understanding how oppression affects health, and critical consciousness as a tool to be utilized in behavioral interventions. This approach helps to move Black gay/bisexual male youth from a place of oppression and powerlessness that leads to elevated health risks to a position of empowerment that promotes feelings of control and participation in healthy behaviors. Finally, we present a case example of our own critical consciousness-based secondary HIV prevention intervention created specifically for Black gay/bisexual male youth.     

无刷直流电动机闭环调速系统虚拟实验平台设计

利用Matlab图形用户界面开发工具GUI设计无刷直流电动机单、双闭环调速系统的虚拟仿真实验平台。采用Simulink仿真技术搭建后台无刷直流电动机单、双闭环调速系统仿真模型。针对无刷直流电动机参考转速变化、负载转矩变化等情形,在虚拟仿真实验平台进行无刷直流电动机单、双闭环调速系统虚拟仿真实验,实验结果验证了所建立仿真模型的正确性和虚拟实验平台的实用性。通过仿真实验教学,加深学生对所学内容的理解,激发学生的学习兴趣,加强学生创新思维和创新能力的培养。     

营造阅读情境培养学生语文核心素养刍探

在语文阅读教学中,教师要积极营造阅读情境,促使学生提升语文核心素养。教师可以通过猜读法展开追问,提高学生的语言建构和运用能力;通过模拟法促进学生审美鉴赏和创造能力的发展;通过比较法提高学生的思维能力;通过联想法展开人物心理的揣摩,提高学生的思想境界,提升学生的文化传承和理解能力。     

Isolated learners: young mature-age students,university culture,and desire for academic sociality

The differentiated experiences of young mature-age students are under-researched and often unacknowledged in higher education literature and university policy. This article contends that, due to their age (early 20s to early 30s), many younger mature-age students feel ‘out of the loop’ and ‘alienated’ from university culture. The sample is drawn from a large first-year subject and analyses students’ written ethnographic reflections on their identities as students within university culture. Using interpretive theory and NVivo coding software to analyse the written assignments, the experience of isolation amongst the young mature-age demographic was a prominent and unanticipated finding. Students in this age range want academic-based sociality but do not identify as either school leaver or ‘mature-age’. They feel like isolated learners. We argue young mature-age students’ experiences of social isolation pose a significant barrier to full participation, negatively impacting their identities as students and their university transition. In Australia and internationally, governments and universities have increased their enrolments of young mature-age students, but their capacity to structure learning environments to suit them are limited without greater knowledge of their diverse experiences. Taking a cultural, socially situated view of learning allows insights into students’ experiences and suggests opportunities for understanding and supporting them.