The nature of students’ informal science conceptions

Case studies have been constructed of primary school children's developing explanations of a range of air pressure phenomena. A range of conceptions relating to air pressure have been identified, and insights gained concerning the way these interrelate over time and over context. It was found that children are naturally generative in their construction of explanations, but that they use conceptions in quite complex and fluid ways. It is argued that naive conceptions maintain a valuable function as intuitive recognition elements that feed more sophisticated conceptions, and that generating a satisfying explanation for a phenomenon can involve having access to a range of interrelated conceptions. A range of contextual factors were identified, which influence the construction of explanations, and can act as barriers to the application of scientific conceptions.     

Students’ conceptions: culturing conceptions

This commentary on Roth, Lee, and Hwang’s paper aims at analysing their theoretical approach in terms of its object of study, and the aspects that are brought to the fore, like the cultural activity of conversation, and those that are overshadowed, like the role of the material world and its perception on learning. This analysis, developed on the basis of a pragmatic approach that combines theoretical frameworks, leads to a debate about the relevant components of teaching–learning situations according to the theoretical approaches, and the extent to which, due to the complexity of the studied phenomena, some theoretical frameworks are complementary or concurrent.

The ‘secrets’ of Chinese students’ academic success: academic resilience among students from highly competitive academic environments

Abstract

Given Chinese students often perform well academically despite the challenges of their competitive academic environments, it is important to explore what enables the academic resilience of these students. Moreover, because the extant resilience literature is biased towards Western accounts of resilience, it is crucial that non-Western perspectives be added to this literature. In this study, three factors from family and school settings were examined: namely, parental supervision, school involvement and recognition, and school expectation of behaviour. We did so among 693 11th grade Chinese students from two of the largest provinces participating in the competitive college entrance examination in China. Participants completed a questionnaire comprising a series of individual, family, and school variables that were complemented by academic achievement data drawn from school records. Results showed that Chinese parents’ supervision and school involvement and recognition are significantly and negatively associated with low school commitment and individual conflict attitude, which are important protective factors in reducing adolescents’ risk of problem behaviours and promoting academic resilience. This study highlights the importance of taking a multidimensional approach to building academic resilience among those from highly competitive settings in China.     

University students’ epistemic profiles,conceptions of learning,and academic performance

Higher Education - University students’ epistemic beliefs may have practical consequences for studying and success in higher education. Such beliefs constitute epistemic theories that may...     

Confucius’ Junzi (君子): The conceptions of self in Confucian

Confucius reinvented the concept of Junzi （君子）, an idea of personhood which invites continual assessment whether the concerns people were once devoted to are worthy of ongoing devotion, and how they make a place in the world—a place where they hope they can exercise some governance in their lives. Junzi （君子）is a agent, and has the properties and powers to monitor their lives, and to contribute to societal transformation. Cultivating a person is centrally involved in the politics of subjectivity, in forming and constituting the self because self always reflects the bounds and conventions of its history. The term Junzi （君子）is harnessed to make the individual a significant element for the state through the exercise of a form of power. So this kind of self-mastery incorporates notions of governmentality, freedom and the historical–social context to understandings of the self. So if we understand that the essence of civil society consists in agency-building self-transformation, there is ample evidence that Confucius was committed to reconstructing moral agency and civil society in a way that would be characteristically Confucian. Junzi (君子) is the case in point.     

Teachers’work: Beginning teachers’ conceptions of competence

Worldwide, teachers’ work continues to be the subject of discussion and debate, especially in terms of teacher competence and its appropriate appraisal. Available literature offers a number of perspectives of beginning teacher competence, yet the voices of beginning teachers themselves are not represented. This paper outlines the findings of a phenomenographic study that sought to uncover the conceptions of competence held by beginning teachers. The results of this study suggest that beginning teachers believe that teaching competence requires demonstration of thorough preparation, a sound knowledge base, effective classroom management, professional communication with a range of stakeholders, and an accurate sense of self-awareness in the role of teacher. These conceptions will be compared to a selection of the available literature about teacher competence and associated teaching standards.     

Students’ conceptions of biology

The argument in this paper has two parallel strands. One describes students’ conceptions of biology; the other uses Habermas’ epistemological framework as a way of suggesting alternative curricular questions. The two strands are brought together, since the research methodology is the situational‐interpretive curriculum orientation, and the findings are considered from this orientation. Thus, the data from the first strand is examined from the second strand, and consequently, new questions arise.

With traditional knowing, science education researchers “know” how students conceive of the science they are learning by having students react to statements of the researcher's conception of science. This way of knowing has been criticized because it depends upon the researcher's set of ways of looking at students’ conceptions. As such, it does not treat students’ knowledge as a first‐order phenomena; knowing is, rather, a second‐order phenomena since it is filtered through another person's conceptions. In this study the Habermasian framework is used as an alternative perspective of knowledge which allows students’ conceptions to be examined at the level at which the conceptions were constructed.

The study suggests that students conceptualize biology from three distinct philosophical positions; but when these positions are considered from the Habermasian framework, they all are examples of the empirical‐analytic tradition. As such, the students’ conceptions have not gone beyond explanatory knowledge, and this raises questions about the curriculum.     

The ongoing education of engineering practitioners: how do they perceive the usefulness of academic research?

This study explores the usefulness of academic research to engineering practitioners. Issues such as knowledge transfer, the research-practice gap and the changing social/political environment are discussed. An empirical survey of practitioners is analysed to better understand the engineering professions use of academic material, such as research journals, with the medical profession acting as the benchmark. The study also examines the future role for academia from the perspective of practitioners, with areas such as engagement, relevance, dissemination and education highlighted. While the study found there was a reasonable level of utilisation of academic material, there are still some significant gaps. The study brings to the fore the issue of relevance in applied research fields and highlights the need to evaluate the usefulness of our research to practitioners and the betterment of society.     

Parental migration and children’s academic engagement: The case of China

In the context of China’s increasing rural-urban migration, few studies have investigated how parental migration affects children’s experience in school. The high cost of schooling, taken together with the institutional barriers in destination cities, have compelled many rural parents in China to migrate without their children, leaving them in the care of their spouses, grandparents, relatives or other caregivers. Still other parents migrate with their children, many of whom then attend urban migrant schools in their destination city. Understanding the academic engagement of children of migrant workers is particularly salient because the poor qualities of migrant schools, a lack of parental support, and exposure to competing alternatives to schooling may render both migrant children in the cities and left-behind children in the rural villages vulnerable to disengagement, and ultimately school dropout. Using data collected in 2008 in the urban Haidian and Changping districts of Beijing and rural Henan and Shaanxi provinces, the authors of this paper investigate the association between parental migration status and two measures of academic engagement, academic aspirations and the odds of liking school, by comparing migrant children attending migrant schools and left-behind children with their rural counterparts who do not have migrant parents. The authors’ findings show that migrant children attending migrant schools have lower academic engagement compared to rural children of non-migrant parents. The correlation between academic engagement and parental migration status can be accounted for in part by the support children receive from family and teachers. The association between certain measures of family and school support and academic engagement also varies by parental migration status: for example, high teacher turnover rates significantly reduce migrant children’s odds of liking schools, but do not affect children of non-migrant parents.     

Students’ conceptions of assessment: Links to outcomes

Students conceive of assessment in at least four major ways (i.e., assessment makes students accountable; assessment is irrelevant because it is bad or unfair; assessment improves the quality of learning; and assessment is enjoyable). A study in New Zealand of 3469 secondary school students’ conceptions of assessment used a self‐report inventory and scores from a standardised curriculum‐based assessment of reading comprehension. Four inter‐correlated conceptions based on 11 items were found with good psychometric properties. A path‐model linking the four correlated conceptions with student achievement in reading, while taking into account student ethnicity, student sex, and student year, had good psychometric properties. The conception that assessment makes students accountable loaded positively on achievement while the three other conceptions (i.e., assessment makes schools accountable, assessment is enjoyable, and assessment is ignored) had negative loadings on achievement. These findings are consistent with self‐regulation and formative assessment theories, such that students who conceive of assessment as a means of taking responsibility for their learning (i.e., assessment makes me accountable) will demonstrate increased educational outcomes.     

The effect of high-stakes examination systems on teacher beliefs: Egyptian teachers’ conceptions of assessment

Egypt is currently attempting to introduce a greater formative use of assessment while maintaining a public examination system. This study investigates teacher beliefs about the purposes of assessment in Egypt, using the Teachers’ Conceptions of Assessment (TCoA) inventory. The TCoA inventory elicits responses about four main factors: Improvement, School Accountability, Student Accountability and Irrelevance. A large sample of (n?=?507) Egyptian pre-service and in-service teachers completed an Arabic version of the TCoA inventory. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the Egyptian teachers’ responses against the pre-existing New Zealand model, which was found to be inadmissible. Consequently, an ecologically rational three-factor model was found. The model yielded a strong positive relationship between Improvement and Student Accountability, consistent with previous studies. It is argued that greater changes to the examination system are required if teacher beliefs are expected to be more positive about the priority of formative, improvement-oriented uses of assessment.     

Drawing space: mathematicians’ kinetic conceptions of eigenvectors

This paper explores how mathematicians build meaning through communicative activity involving talk, gesture and diagram. In the course of describing mathematical concepts, mathematicians use these semiotic resources in ways that blur the distinction between the mathematical and physical world. We shall argue that mathematical meaning of eigenvectors depends strongly on both time and motion—hence, on physical interpretations of mathematical abstractions—which are dimensions of thinking that are typically deliberately absent from formal, written definition of the concept. We shall also show how gesture and talk contribute differently and uniquely to mathematical conceptualisation and further elaborate the claim that diagrams provide an essential mediating role between the two.     

Tongan secondary students’ conceptions of schooling in New Zealand relative to their academic achievement

This study examines the relationship between Tongan students’ attitudes and beliefs towards their school experiences and their academic achievement on the high-stakes National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) assessments in English and mathematics. Data were obtained from using previously published self-reported inventories on a sample of Tongan senior students in New Zealand secondary schools. Confirmatory factor analysis of students’ conceptions found good fit measurement models for each domain (teaching, learning, and assessment). Structural equation modelling was used to identify the effect of the various beliefs upon students’ total score in each subject and upon internal and externally assessed performance. It was noted that different beliefs became statistically significant predictors of performance, depending on the subject and type of assessment. Nonetheless, all three constructs played some role in at least one subject. A small-to-moderate proportion of variance in NCEA performance could be attributed to student beliefs, suggesting that efforts to help students adopt adaptive beliefs will have beneficial consequences for those students.     

The persistence of students’ academic effort: The unique and combined effects of conscientiousness and individual interest

The present study was designed to test the CONscientiousness × Interest Compensation (CONIC) model in a longitudinal setting (four time points; N = 3,880 students). For this purpose, we first examined the power of conscientiousness (measured with student and parent reports) and interest in predicting perceived academic effort in three school subjects (Math, German, and English). In a second step, we investigated whether conscientiousness and interest interacted in a compensatory pattern as predicted by the CONIC model. Results showed that conscientiousness and interest significantly and positively predicted future perceived academic effort. In addition, conscientiousness and interest interacted in a compensatory manner, such that interest was less important for perceived academic effort in students who were high in conscientiousness (and vice versa).     

Understanding students’ conceptions of sustainability

There has recently been significant emphasis placed on environmental education through, for example, the UN’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. Despite this, there is still considerable debate within the literature as to how the aims of environmental education can be achieved within schools. It seems likely that if there is a lack of agreement as to what education for sustainable development should include, then this will impact students’ understanding of sustainable development. This paper presents findings from research investigating how one class of 12‐ to 13‐year‐old geography students in the UK understands the concept of sustainability. The research used concept‐mapping and semi‐structured interviews to explore the students’ understandings of sustainability, within a case study framework. The substantive findings of this research suggest that there is a wide variety of understanding of sustainability among the students, but that generally they allude to three: the nature, purpose and timescale of sustainability. The paper also considers the impact of method on researching students’ subject understandings, in particular the use of context when considering abstract concepts, such as sustainability, and the different results obtained when conducting interviews versus concept maps.     

The role of academic developers in embedding high-impact undergraduate research and inquiry in mainstream higher education: twenty years’ reflection

Abstract

The focus of this article is on the role of academic developers in supporting and influencing undergraduate research and inquiry, a high-impact activity. We examine the levels at which academic developers can influence undergraduate research and inquiry practices by distinguishing between staff and student practices; disciplinary and departmental practices and policies; institutional practices and policies; and national and international practices and policies. Drawing on our experiences over the last 20 years, we discuss the widening of academic development practice and consider who are the academic developers when it comes to embedding undergraduate research and inquiry in mainstream higher education.     

First-year university students’ academic success: the importance of academic adjustment

Considering the pivotal role of academic adjustment for student success, it is important to gain insight into how several motivational and behavioural factors affect academic adjustment and the extent to which academic adjustment influences student success. This empirical study investigated how intrinsic motivation, academic self-efficacy, self-regulated study behaviour and satisfaction with the chosen degree programme influenced academic adjustment in university and how these variables and adjustment affected three important indicators of student success: grade point average (GPA), attained number of credits (ECTS) and intention to persist. The sample consisted of 243 first-year university students in the Netherlands. Structural equation modelling showed that academic adjustment was influenced by intrinsic motivation, self-regulated study behaviour and degree programme satisfaction, which together explained 72% of the variance in adjustment. Motivational and behavioural variables did not influence GPA and credits directly but through academic adjustment. Furthermore, only satisfaction with the degree programme predicted intention to persist. These results point to the importance of academic adjustment in predicting university GPA and credits and the pivotal role of satisfaction with the degree programme in predicting intention to persist. Universities could integrate the development of self-regulated study skills—the biggest contributor to academic adjustment—in the first-year programme. Moreover, looking at the importance of students’ satisfaction with the programme, communication and collaboration between secondary schools and universities should be enhanced in order to help students to choose a university degree programme that matches their abilities, interests and values.