Integrating Culture,Art, Geometry,and Coding to Enhance Computer Science Motivation Among Underrepresented Minoritized High School Students

The Urban Review - In response to the underrepresentation of minoritized groups employed in the computer science (CS) field, this study aims to enhance underrepresented minoritized (URM)...     

Supporting teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge of fractions through co-designing a virtual manipulative

This study explores the impact that co-designing a virtual manipulative, Fractions Lab, had on teachers’ professional development. Tapping into an existing community of practice of mathematics specialist teachers, the study identifies how a cooperative enquiry approach utilising workshops and school-based visits challenged 23 competent primary school teachers’ technological, pedagogical and content knowledge of fraction equivalence, addition and subtraction. Verbal and written data from the workshops alongside observations and interviews from the school visits were analysed using the technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) framework. The findings show that the assumptions of even experienced teachers were challenged when Fractions Lab was shared as an artefact on which they were asked to co-design and subsequently interact with, using it in subsequent phases of the cooperative inquiry process. Two original aspects of successful co-design of virtual manipulatives through communities of practice are identified and offered to others: (1) careful bootstrapping of the first design iteration that gathers intelligence about the content area and the technological affordances and constraints available; and (2) involvement of highly motivated teachers who perceive themselves as agents of change in the domain area.     

Race in biology and anthropology: A study of college texts and professors

Information about social issues is underemphasized in college science education. This article takes the race concept as an example of this neglect. We review the history of the race concept and report the current status of the concept in textbooks and among professors. Responses to surveys of faculty at Ph.D.-granting departments indicate that 67% of biologists accept the concept of biological races in the species Homo sapiens, while only 50% of physical anthropologists do so. Content analysis of college textbooks indicates a significant degree of change over time (1936–1984) in physical anthropology but a lesser degree in biology. We suggest several reasons for the dissimilarity in the two disciplines. We propose continued use of the concept for some infrahuman species, while abandoning its application to Homo sapiens. For those biologists and anthropologists who continue to use the concept, scientific accuracy can be achieved by the presentation in lecture and text of the following ideas: first, consensus among scientists on the race concept's utility and accuracy does not exist; second, there is more variation within than between so-called races; third, discordant gradations due to natural selection, drift, and interbreeding make consistent racial boundary lines impossible to identify; fourth, past use of the race concept has had harmful consequences; fifth, the most precise study of human hereditary variation maps one trait at a time; and sixth, racial labels are misleading, especially as most populations have a cultural designation.     

A Room of Our Own: Rodinsky,Street Haunting and the Creative Mind

Drawing on Virginia Woolf's 'Street Haunting', Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair's Rodinsky's Room and on autobiography, this essay explores place, memory and artistic vision. Just as a room of her own provided Woolf with the solitude necessary to write, rambling through the streets of London fed her imagination. In Rodinsky's Room , Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair explore both these creative spaces. Their book gives testimony to the creative mind and to the role that memory, history and place play in creating story, mythology and identity. The author also discusses her personal and family history in relation to place.     

Student Orientations to Independent Learning

Sixty‐six students completed two questionnaires to describe their approaches to study and the relationship to their personal preference for either the conventional lecture (CL) or self‐learning package (SLP) as methods of instruction. The students were randomly assigned to either an SLP and a CL group and received instruction on the same topic. Then, six weeks after the lecture all students were given a 30‐minute test to examine their level of understanding. Ten students, chosen at random, were interviewed further to assess their attitude towards learning. The inference drawn from the results is that more students preferred CL to SLP, however there was no correlation between students’ study approach and their preference for different teaching methods, nor did the study demonstrate that either method of instruction was superior when measured by test performance, suggesting a need to review independent study packages to better match student needs. Interview analysis showed that the students were highly dependent on reassurance from their lecturers, emphasising the negotiated nature of learning.     

Ritual, Habit, and Perfectionism: The Prevalence and Development of Compulsive-like Behavior in Normal Young Children

Young children engage in a significant amount of rutualitic, repetitive, and compulsive-like activity that appears to be part of their Normal behavioral repertoire. Empirically, little is known about the onset, prevalence, and developmental trajectory of these phenomena. A parent-report questionnaire, the Childhood Routines Inventory (CRI), was developed to assess compulsive-like behavior in young children, and was administered to 1,492 parents with children between the ages of 8 and 72 months. The CRI has strong overall internal consistency and a distinct two-factor structure. The frequency of compulsive-like behaviors changes with age: Two-, 3- and 4-year-olds engaged in more compulsive behavior than children younger than 1 year of age and older than 4 years of age. Results are discussed from a development psychopathology framework and for their implications for future research in this area.