Predicting Engineering Student Attrition Risk Using a Probabilistic Neural Network and Comparing Results with a Backpropagation Neural Network and Logistic Regression

As the need for engineers continues to increase, a growing focus has been placed on recruiting students into the field of engineering and retaining the students who select engineering as their field of study. As a result of this concentration on student retention, numerous studies have been conducted to identify, understand, and confirm relationships between student attributes and attrition. Methods of prediction have also been evaluated and compared. Utilizing the attributes found in previous studies to have correlation with student attrition, this study considers the results of three different prediction methods—logistic regression, a multi-layer perceptron artificial neural network, and a probabilistic neural network (PNN)—to predict engineering student retention at a case study university. The purpose of this study was to introduce the PNN to the study of engineering student retention prediction and compare the results of the PNN to other commonly used methods in this field of study. The accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and overall results for each method are reported, compared, and discussed as the major contribution of this paper.     

Writing and conceptual change. What changes?

This study was focused on elementary school students'processes of scientific understanding within aclassroom environment characterized as a community ofdiscourse. In particular, it explored the role ofwritten discourse both on the plane of knowledgedevelopment and the conceptualization and evaluationof the writing activity itself. The purposes of thestudy were: (a) to see whether students could use writingas a means to express and compare ideas, reason andreflect on them in the process of scientificunderstanding; (b) to see whether writing in the serviceof learning facilitated the understanding of the newtopic through conceptual change; (c) to see whetherwriting affected the conceptualization of the writingactivity itself. Thirty-six fourth graders divided intwo groups, experimental (writing) and control(no-writing), were involved in the implementation ofcurriculum units on plants, whose target concept wasphotosynthesis. The findings show that in theexperimental group the students reached a betterconceptual understanding of the target concept andmore advanced metaconceptual awareness of the changesin their own knowledge structures. Moreover, theconceptualization of the writing activity seemed tochange as well to some extent as writing in aconceptual change process affected the ways learnersviewed some functions of it.     

Storying a Social Drama: How Discourse and Practice Prevent Transformation Through Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

In a sociohistorical moment during which racism has become more widely accepted as a social fact, U.S. scholars and practitioners of education continue to struggle with how schooling might participate in its eradication. In suburban, elite, Midwestern Pioneer City Public Schools, a series of initiatives I refer to as “the transformation” aimed to eliminate racial predictability in standardized test scores through efforts (a) to redistribute children from a racially and economically isolated elementary school across the district's four elementary schools, and (b) to train all district staff in a particular brand of culturally relevant pedagogy. In this article, I argue that Pioneer City School District was unable to address the transformative goals of culturally relevant pedagogy—in part because of irresolvable tensions between an explicitly anti-racist theory and the authoritative discourses suggesting that racism is a thing of the past.     

Children's rights in education

Conclusions The key to the development of any nation is through the educating of its people. No civilized, humane or progressive society can ignore that right to schooling and education of its citizens, particularly its children. Therefore, to implement the right of the child to a development-oriented education is a fundamental condition for improving the child's quality of life, including spiritual and moral dimensions, and his/her ability to function fully as a constructive member of society. The child needs supportive conditions, not only to survive, but also to develop into a responsible human adult. Education must make the present and future well-being of the young generation as its ultimate goal, of which one of the most important conditions is to ensure the full realization of its rights as stipulated by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, for education in the broadest sense continues beyond school and throughout life in a myriad of social contexts. Original language: English Sandra Prunella Mason (Barbados) Chairperson, United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. She received her legal education at Sir Hugh Wooding Law School. First a private practice lawyer, she became a judge in 1978 and from then until 1992 was in charge of Barbados' Juvenile and Family Courts. She was Barbados' Ambassador to Venezuela, Chile, Colombia and Brazil from 1993 to 1994. She was appointed Chief Magistrate of Barbados in 1995 and Registrar of the Barbados Supreme Court in 1997. She has been a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child from its inception in 1991, its Vice Chairperson 1993–95 and Chairperson since 1997.     

Bringing competency analysis into the 21st century

Current business and educational environments are mandating the identification, building, and assessment of specific critical competencies for the workforce. However, traditional approaches to competency analysis are often slow, expensive, and backward looking. This article presents several new computer‐aided approaches to competency analysis and provides examples of their use, including a detailed case study analyzing curricula and skills for professionals who provide benefits and work incentives planning and assistance to persons with disabilities.     

Differences in problem solving by nonscience majors in introductory chemistry on paired algorithmic-conceptual problems

The purpose of this investigation was to identify and describe the differences in the methods used by faculty teaching introductory chemistry and students enrolled in an introductory chemistry course at the university level to solve paired algorithmic and conceptual problems. Of the 180 students involved, the problem-solving schemas of 20 selected students and 2 professors were evaluated using a graphical method to dissect their think-aloud interviews into episodes indicative of solutions to paired problems on density, stoichiometry, bonding, and gas laws. The interviewed students were classified into four different problem-solving categories (i.e., high algorithmic/high conceptual, high algorithmic/low conceptual, low algorithmic/high conceptual, and low algorithmic/low conceptual), and composite graphs of their problem-solving schemas were compared to those representative of members of the faculty experts' category. Results of these comparisons indicated that as the students' ability to solve both algorithmic and conceptual problems improved, less time and fewer transitions between episodes of the problem-solving schemas were required to complete the problems. Regardless of the students' problem-solving ability, algorithmic-mode problems always required more time and a greater number of transitions for completion than did the paired conceptual-mode problems. However, regardless of topic, all students more frequently correctly solved the algorithmic-mode problems than the corresponding paired conceptual-mode problems. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 34: 905–923, 1997.     

Enabling Teachers to be Real Teachers: Necessary Levels of Awareness and Structure of Attention

Awareness is a complex concept comprising both conscious and unconscious powers and sensitivities which enable people to act freshly and creatively in the moment. In the case of mathematics teachers, and teachers of those becoming mathematics teachers, it is possible to lead students mechanically through a sequence of ritualised tasks by means of trained and habitualised reactions. But the result is that even though student attention is indeed directed, their behaviour trained, and their awareness educated to some extent, the students have not been taught in the fullest sense of that word. I argue that to be a real teacher involves the refinement and development of a complex of awarenesses on three levels, and that this is manifested in alterations to the structure of attention. The problematic nature of what students are attending to when a teacher is teaching them, led to the conjecture that each technical term in mathematics and in mathematics education signals a shift in the structure of attention of people using that term, and that a corresponding shift is required for students to appreciate that term. Investigations of attention led to the development of Gattegno's very general but rather subtle notion of awareness into a three-layer structure which applies both to mathematics and to teaching, and so demonstrates why becoming a teacher is such a complex matter. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.