Learning from Self-Diagnosis Activities when Contrasting Students’ Own Solutions with Worked Examples: the Case of 10th Graders Studying Geometric Optics

Research in Science Education - Self-diagnosis activities require students to self-diagnose their solutions to problems they solved on their own by detecting and explaining their errors. Worked...     

Ramadan Fasting and the Propensity for Learning: Is There a Cause for Concern?

The literature indicates that glucose deprivation, dehydration, decreased sleep quality and quantity, and mood changes, independently and adversely can influence cognitive functions and therefore learning. The Ramadan fast is an annual religious act undertaken by Muslims where individuals refrain from consuming food and fluid during daylight hours, daily over 30 days. Alteration in eating times and sleep–wake cycles lead to a disruption in the body's daily circadian rhythm resulting in sleep perturbations and mood swings. Consequently, Ramadan fasting is linked to daytime lower glucose concentration, dehydration, decreased sleep quality and quantity, mood swings and elevated subjective feelings of fatigue and malaise. This review highlights how Ramadan fasting potentially poses learning difficulties as a result of the independent and/or combined effects of these factors.     

Investigating importance and key factors for information governance implementation in Nigerian Universities

Education and Information Technologies - Information governance (IG) embraces underlying necessities to organize information using consistent method for meeting organizational needs. This demand...     

The doctorate unbound: relationality in doctoral literacy research

What do literacy events look and feel like for doctoral students, and how do these events overlap intertextually, materially and relationally? The last three decades have seen a rapid diversification in doctoral education where new opportunities for study, combined with an increasingly competitive landscape, have disrupted what it means to undertake a doctorate, as well as reshaping the literacy practices that comprise doctoral experiences in new ways that have not been fully explored. To understand literacies in new ways, we put to work the construct of literacy-as-event, and engage ideas from assemblage theory, to theorise the relationality of literacy practices. Crucially, our study seeks to examine how literacies are emergent and entangled within a wider network of relations. This article draws on data from interviews involving critical incidents with 12 doctoral students, in order to unpack the literacy moments, beyond the thesis, that comprise students' experiences. Our data suggest that we can understand doctoral literacies, not as bounded occurrences, but as assemblages of practices. We contend that thinking with concepts of assemblage and of event offers new insights into the evolving experiences of doctoral students, as well as offering an enriched understanding of literacies and literacy research.     

Fundamentalism or pluralism: Iranian youth’s orientation

Islamic fundamentalism is an extreme perception of Islam that views ‘the “Other” as the enemy demonized’ against the ‘West’, which also views the Muslim ‘enemy within’. In contrast, pluralism perceives ‘others’ as different people, with different values from us. While the fundamentalist seeks to engage in war with the enemy/other, pluralism tolerates difference/conflict with others in peace and in the spirit of mutual acceptance. This article spells out the potential contributions to research regarding fundamentalism stemming from different approaches in Iran. Drawing on data collected from 31 individual in-depth interviews with Tehranian high school students and 206 questionnaires that were filled in by students who were randomly selected from 4 of 19 zones of Education in Tehran, their perceptions about pluralism and fundamentalism will be presented. The aim is to help move debate about fundamentalism beyond the pejorative labelling and to explore the concept of fundamentalism and pluralism in an Iranian context. As a case study, Tehranian pre-university students’ point of view about fundamentalism and pluralism will be discussed, in order to comprehend attitudes to fundamentalism and pluralism on the part of Iranian young people.     

The effects of teaching self-determination skills on the externalizing behaviors of students with emotional behavioral disorders

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of teaching self- determination skills on the externalizing behaviors of students with emotional and behavioral disorders. The Research method was quasi experimental with pre and post- test and control group. To achieve our goals, thirty students who received high scores in the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) were selected and randomly assigned to either the experimental group (N = 15) or the control group (N = 15). Students in the experimental group participated in 16 sessions (1 session per week) receiving Self determination curriculum (Field and Hoffman’s model) intervention, and the control group did not receive any training. The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) by participants was completed before and after intervention. MANOVA was used for data analysis. The findings showed that the effects of teaching self- determination skills on decreasing the externalizing behaviors of students with emotional and behavioral disorders was significant. The emerged finding can have clinical applications in prevention and treatment of student’s behavioral disorders. Implications and future directions for research and practice are discussed.     

Quadrupole ion traps

During the last two decades there has been tremendous progress in the technique of trapping and cooling ions using quadrupole ion traps. Using these trapping techniques one can have charged particles of a single species confined near the trap centre, which enables to carry out studies of these ions in a well-controlled environment. The long storage times of the ions, possible in these traps, results in the elimination of transit-time broadening making it possible to do precision spectroscopic measurements on these ions. Several important experiments with single electron or ion have been undertaken to address problems related to basic physics, such as the measurement of the electron radius, precision measurements of fundamental parameters and tests of the predictions of quantum mechanics.     

Teaching and learning about science practices: insights and challenges in professional development

The purpose of this study was to determine if science teachers showed a change in their ability to design and implement science lessons that integrate twenty-first century science practices as a result of their participation in a subject-specific professional development program. A qualitative design utilizing inductive analysis was used to investigate teachers’ ability to design inquiry-oriented lessons and implement them in the classroom. Eight science teachers participated in the study. Findings showed that teachers have benefited from their participation in the program and were able to plan and implement their inquiry-oriented lesson plans and implement them in the classroom. The analysis also showed that teachers were not able to demonstrate their ability in two dimensions of inquiry (asking scientifically oriented questions and designing and carrying out investigations). Finally, several suggestions were presented to modify the program’s training materials to focus more on these two dimensions of inquiry.     

BEYOND THE MILITARY SPHERE

The article discusses the political and public debates in Israel over the appropriateness of a military radio station in a democratic state. The Israeli station was established in 1950 to assist the defense forces in absorbing and educating new Jewish immigrants, but later developed to become one of Israel's major media outlets. Previously unstudied documents reveal that the initiative to launch the station was met with criticism from its early stages; concerns about letting the army run a radio station without public oversight have been raised repeatedly ever since. This research project illustrates the benefits of media historiography as an effective prism for studying wider aspects of societies in which various media organizations operate. It adds, as well, to the historiography of military radio stations around the world.