Exploring Bilingual Uyghur-Chinese Students’Social Use of Language inside and out of Classroom

This paper examines language use inside and out of classroom of Uyghur students from the middle schools for both Han and ethnic minorities in Urumqi, Xinjiang, China. A total of 341 Uyghur students between 12 and 15 years of age, attending 3 middle schools for both Han and ethnic minorities in Urumqi, responded to questionnaires requesting information about their language backgrounds, their use of language at school (inside and out of classroom) and in the wider community, their self-perceptions about their linguistic competence in Uyghur and in Chinese and their attitudes towards Uyghur, Chinese and towards bilingualism. The results, in general, demonstrated a positive attitude towards bilingualism, and there was a trend towards favoring the use of Chinese both inside and outside classroom. The implications of the findings for language policy and planning in education are discussed.     

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...     

Understanding Students’ Perceptions of the Nature of Science in the Context of Their Gender and Their Parents’ Occupation

Science & Education - A thorough understanding of the concept of the nature of science (NOS) is essential to the development of scientific literacy among students, as it provides the students...     

The Relation Between Language Variation and the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language

Language is a means of communication.Without language,it would beimpossible for people to communicate,and the society would break down.However,language is not a simple,single code used in the same manner byall people in all situations, It is a very complicated social phenomenon. It isthe most characteristically human of all human activities. It enters naturallyand essentially into virtually everything we do, from greeting an acquaintanceto making a trip on the moon.Therefore, a careful study of the languagevariation might help us to understand the relationship betweem language andsociety better.     

Understanding the Influence of Learners’ Forethought on Their Use of Science Study Strategies in Postsecondary Science Learning

Understanding self-regulation in science learning is important for theorists and practitioners alike. However, very little has been done to explore and understand students’ self-regulatory processes in postsecondary science courses. In this study, the influence of science efficacy, learning value, and goal orientation on the perceived use of science study strategies was explored using structural equation modeling. In addition, the study served to validate the first two stages of Zimmerman's cyclical model of self-regulation and to address the common methodological weakness in self-regulation research in which data are all collected at one point after the learning cycle is complete. Thus, data were collected across the learning cycle rather than asking students to reflect upon each construct after the learning cycle was complete. The findings supported the hypothesized model in which it was predicted that self-efficacy would significantly and positively influence students’ perceived science strategy use, and the influence of students’ valuation of science learning on science study strategies would be mediated by their learning goal orientation. The findings of the study are discussed and implications for undergraduate science instructors are proposed.     

Do Science Teachers Distinguish Between Their own Learning and the Learning of Their Students?

Learning beliefs influence learning and teaching. For this reason, teachers and teacher educators need to be aware of them. To support students’ knowledge construction, teachers must develop appropriate learning and teaching beliefs. Teachers appear to have difficulties when analysing students’ learning. This seems to be due to the inability to differentiate the beliefs about their students’ learning from those about their own learning. Both types of beliefs seem to be intertwined. This study focuses on whether pre-service teachers’ beliefs about their own learning are identical to those about their students’ learning. Using a sample of pre-service teachers, we measured general beliefs about “constructivist” and “transmissive” learning and science-specific beliefs about “connectivity” and “taking pre-concepts into account”. We also analysed the development of these four beliefs during teacher professionalisation by comparing beginning and advanced pre-service teachers. Our results show that although pre-service teachers make the distinction between their own learning and the learning of their students for the general tenets of constructivist and transmissive learning, there is no significant difference for science-specific beliefs. The beliefs pre-service teachers hold about their students’ science learning remain closely tied to their own.     

Language in Science Classrooms: An Analysis of Physics Teachers’ Use of and Beliefs About Language

The world over, secondary school science is viewed mainly as a practical subject. This may be one reason why effectiveness of teaching approaches in science education has often been judged on the kinds of practical activity with which teachers and students engage. In addition to practical work, language??often written (as in science texts) or oral (as in the form of teacher and student talk)??is unavoidable in effective teaching and learning of science. Generally however, the role of (instructional) language in quality of learning of school science has remained out of focus in science education research. This has been in spite of findings in empirical research on difficulties science students encounter with words of the instructional language used in science. The findings have suggested that use of (instructional) language in science texts and classrooms can be a major influence on the level of students?? understandings and retention of science concepts. This article reports and discusses findings in an investigation of physics teachers?? approaches to use of and their beliefs about classroom instructional language. Direct classroom observations of, interviews with, as well as content analyses of the participant teachers?? verbatim classroom talk, were used as the methods of data collection. Evidence is presented of participant physics teachers?? lack of explicit awareness of the difficulty, nature, and functional value of different categories of words in the instructional language. In conclusion, the implications of this lack of explicit awareness on the general education (initial and in-service) of school physics teachers are considered.     

An Exploratory Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Multi‐modal Representations of Concepts in Primary Science

As part of a long‐term research study to enhance science learning, this paper reports on an exploratory study aimed at identifying initial beliefs and practices of a group of teachers and students (Years 4–6) in Australia when the students engaged with multiple representations of the same science concepts. There is growing recognition in science education research that students need to understand and link different representational modes, such as graphic and verbal modes, in learning to think and act scientifically. This exploratory study used a multi‐site case‐study approach employing qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings indicated that while teachers used various modes to engage students and assess learning, they were not systematic in their focus on student integration and translation across modes. The study found that various factors affected students’ understanding of different modes, and that students who recognised relationships between modes demonstrated better conceptual understandings than students who lacked this knowledge.     

Understanding the Relationship Between Latino Students’ Preferred Learning Styles and Their Language Spoken at Home

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between Latino students’ learning styles and their language spoken at home. Results of the study indicated that students who spoke Spanish at home had higher means in the Active Experimentation modality of learning (M = 31.38, SD = 5.70) than students who spoke English (M = 28.08, SD = 5.36) or both languages (M = 30.79, SD = 5.93) at home. Students in all 3 groups—students who spoke Spanish, English, and both languages at home—had similar means and standard deviations in the Reflective Observation modality of learning.     

High-School Students’ Epistemic Knowledge of Science and Its Relation to Learner Factors in Science Learning

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate an online contextualized test for assessing students’ understanding of epistemic knowledge of science. In addition, how students’ understanding of epistemic knowledge of science interacts with learner factors, including time spent on science learning, interest, self-efficacy, and gender, was also explored. The participants were 489 senior high school students (244 males and 245 females) from eight different schools in Taiwan. Based on the result of an extensive literature review, we first identified six factors of epistemic knowledge of science, such as status of scientific knowledge, the nature of scientific enterprise, measurement in science, and so on. An online test was then created for assessing students’ understanding of the epistemic knowledge of science. Also, a learner-factor survey was developed by adopting previous PISA survey items to measure the abovementioned learner factors. The results of this study show that; (1) by factor analysis, the six factors of epistemic knowledge of science could be grouped into two dimensions which reflect the nature of scientific knowledge and knowing in science, respectively; (2) there was a gender difference in the participants’ understanding of the epistemic knowledge of science; and (3) students’ interest in science learning and the time spent on science learning were positively correlated to their understanding of the epistemic knowledge of science.     

English-Plus Multilingualism as the New Linguistic Capital? Implications of University Students’ Attitudes Towards Languages of Instruction in a Multilingual Environment

This article investigates university students’ attitudes and perceptions about language in a multilingual country where most instruction is in English and annual national literacy results have been declining for at least 15 years. Despite this decline, English seems to be entrenched as the language of instruction, and at university it seems a foregone conclusion that instruction will occur in English. Bourdieu’s concept of linguistic capital is offered as an explanation for the preponderance of English, but the question is posed: Is the dominance of English as simple as desiring linguistic capital? Do students really regard English as critical to success, and if so, is it to the exclusion of their home languages? The results show that students invest considerable effort in learning English, but not to the exclusion of their home language and with little desire to assimilate with the English culture. The results also provide interesting and sometimes contrasting insights into students’ desired language of instruction.     

Children’s Expressive Language Skills and Their Impact on the Relation Between First- and Second-Language Phonological Awareness Skills

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the cross-language relations between the phonological awareness (PA) skills of preschool children learning more than one language are dependent upon their first- and second-language oral language skills. Four hundred sixty-six Spanish-speaking language minority children participated in this study. Results indicated that the relation between children’s first- and second-language PA skills varied as a function of their first- and second-language oral language skills. This effect was language specific such that only oral language skills in the same language as the PA outcome moderated the relations between children’s first- and second-language PA skills. This study helps extend findings from prior research on the cross-language transfer of PA.     

Subgroups of Assessor and Assessee: the Relationship Between Students’ Peer Assessment Roles and Perceptions of MSCL in Science Education

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Recent research in collaborative learning has indicated that peer assessment has a positive influence on students’ learning performance and...     

A Study of Code-Switching in Students’ Talk in College English Class

Code-switching between English and Chinese usually occurs in students’ talk when they are involved in taking communicative language activities in college English class. This paper studies the situations in which students are likely to use codeswitching and analyzes it from the perspective of the mental world in Verscheren’s Adaptation Theory. It shows that inadequate mastery of English language, cultural differences and the improper adjustment to context may lead to students’ using of codeswitching. It also shows that the use of code-switching in students’ talk adapts to students’ cognitive elements and emotive elements as well.     

A Study of Code-Switching in Students’Talk in College English Class

Code-switching between English and Chinese usually occurs in students’talk when they are involved in taking com?municative language activities in college English class. This paper studies the situation...     

Science and Language Teachers’ Assessment of Upper Secondary Students’ Socioscientific Argumentation

Researchers and policy-makers have recognized the importance of including and promoting socioscientific argumentation in science education worldwide. The Swedish curriculum focuses more than ever on socioscientific issues (SSI) as well. However, teaching socioscientific argumentation is not an easy task for science teachers and one of the more distinguished difficulties is the assessment of students’ performance. In this study, we investigate and compare how science and Swedish language teachers, participating in an SSI-driven project, assessed students’ written argumentation about global warming. Swedish language teachers have a long history of teaching and assessing argumentation and therefore it was of interest to identify possible gaps between the two groups of teachers’ assessment practices. The results showed that the science teachers focused on students’ content knowledge within their subjects, whereas the Swedish language teachers included students’ abilities to select and use content knowledge from reliable reference resources, the structure of the argumentation and the form of language used. Since the Swedish language teachers’ assessment correlated more with previous research about quality in socioscientific argumentation, we suggest that a closer co-operation between the two groups could be beneficial in terms of enhancing the quality of assessment. Moreover, SSI teaching and learning as well as assessment of socioscientific argumentation ought to be included in teacher training programs for both pre- and in-service science teachers.     

Secondary School Students’ Understanding of Science and Their Socioscientific Reasoning

Research in socioscientific issue (SSI)-based interventions is relatively new (Sadler in Journal of Research in Science Teaching 41:513–536, 2004; Zeidler et al. in Journal of Research in Science Teaching 46:74–101, 2009), and there is a need for understanding more about the effects of SSI-based learning environments (Sadler in Journal of Research in Science Teaching 41:513–536, 2004). Lee and Witz (International Journal of Science Education 31:931–960, 2009) highlighted the need for detailed case studies that would focus on how students respond to teachers’ practices of teaching SSI. This study presents case studies that investigated the development of secondary school students’ science understanding and their socioscientific reasoning within SSI-based learning environments. A multiple case study with embedded units of analysis was implemented for this research because of the contextual differences for each case. The findings of the study revealed that students’ understanding of science, including scientific method, social and cultural influences on science, and scientific bias, was strongly influenced by their experiences in SSI-based learning environments. Furthermore, multidimensional SSI-based science classes resulted in students having multiple reasoning modes, such as ethical and economic reasoning, compared to data-driven SSI-based science classes. In addition to portraying how participants presented complexity, perspectives, inquiry, and skepticism as aspects of socioscientific reasoning (Sadler et al. in Research in Science Education 37:371–391, 2007), this study proposes the inclusion of three additional aspects for the socioscientific reasoning theoretical construct: (1) identification of social domains affecting the SSI, (2) using cost and benefit analysis for evaluation of claims, and (3) understanding that SSIs and scientific studies around them are context-bound.     

Construction and Validation of an Instrument to Measure Taiwanese Elementary Students’ Attitudes toward Their Science Class

The main purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable instrument for measuring the attitudes toward science class of fourth‐ and fifth‐grade students in an Asian school culture. Specifically, the development focused on three science attitude constructs—science enjoyment, science confidence, and importance of science as related to science class experiences. A total of 265 elementary school students in Taiwan responded to the instrument developed. Data analysis indicated that the instrument exhibited satisfactory validity and reliability with the Taiwan population used. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.93 for the entire instrument indicating a satisfactory level of internal consistency. However, both principal component analysis and parallel analysis showed that the three attitude scales were not unique and should be combined and used as a general “attitudes toward science class” scale. The analysis also showed that there were no gender or grade‐level differences in students’ overall attitudes toward science class.