Contextualizing Nature of Science Instruction in Socioscientific Issues

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of two learning contexts for explicit-reflective nature of science (NOS) instruction, socioscientific issues (SSI) driven and content driven, on student NOS conceptions. Four classes of 11th and 12th grade anatomy and physiology students participated. Two classes experienced a curricular sequence organized around SSI (the SSI group), and two classes experienced a content-based sequence (the Content group). An open-ended NOS questionnaire was administered to both groups at the beginning and end of the school year and analyzed to generate student profiles. Quantitative analyses were performed to compare pre-instruction NOS conceptions between groups as well as pre to post changes within groups and between groups. Both SSI and Content groups showed significant gains in most NOS themes, but between-group gains were not significantly different. Qualitative analysis of post-instruction responses, however, revealed that students in the SSI group tended to use examples to describe their views of the social/cultural NOS. The findings support SSI contexts as effective for promoting gains in students’ NOS understanding and suggest that these contexts facilitate nuanced conceptions that should be further explored.     

The Community of Inquiry framework meets the SOLO taxonomy: a process‐product model of online learning

This paper presents both a conceptual and empirical investigation of teaching and learning in online courses. Employing both the Community of Inquiry framework (CoI) and the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy, two complete online courses were examined for the quality of both collaborative learning processes and learning outcomes. The study examines evidence beyond learner reported satisfaction and learning, instead measuring both learning inputs and outcomes. Analysis of input includes quantitative content analysis of discussions using the CoI framework. Analysis of outcomes looks at both the quality of student learning artifacts such as case studies using the SOLO taxonomy as well as instructor‐assigned grades of specific related assignments. Results suggest that understanding of online instructional effort, processes, and learning outcomes can be improved through this more comprehensive, conceptually driven approach.     

Staging gender: the articulation of tacit gender dimensions in drama classes in a Swedish context

This article engages with gender, performance and embodiment in drama classes in a Swedish context. It presents a case study of how instructors at an academy of dramatic arts integrate theoretical knowledge on gender into their students’ creative and pedagogical practice, as well as an analysis of why this approach works. Visualisation of how the body is used on a concrete level offers a departure from traditional uses of theory as a way to challenge reality; instead the research describes how theory can be used in concrete didactic bodily movements, thus bringing the body, which is often overlooked in studies of pedagogy, into a discussion on knowledge acquisition.     

Implementing a new science National Curriculum for England: how trainee teachers see the How Science Works strand in schools

This article reports empirical work conducted by three university teacher education providers into how a major revision of the science curriculum in England, the How Science Works strand, has been translated into practice for 14–16 year olds in schools. Data were collected from pre-service teachers about their understanding, experiences, perceived challenges and resourcing of How Science Works during their final school experience. The results indicate that implementation of How Science Works in schools lies on a spectrum between two extremes referred to as creative implementation and restricted implementation; a recognition that success with this new approach requires a fuller engagement in higher order thinking skills; and that the importance of differentiation is paramount if all pupils are to connect with the new curriculum. The article concludes that support is needed for major transitions in pedagogy with both serving and trainee teachers. This needs to start with teacher education and encompass teacher development, with greater involvement both in school and university programmes.     

Smart screens and transformative ways of looking: Towards a therapeutics of desire

In this article, I set up a Heideggerian framework of research in order to investigate the phenomenon of looking at the smartphone screen, focusing especially on the desire to look, which I see as intricately connected with the desire to know and the desire to be. With a clear phenomenological disposition, supplemented by a deconstructive look via Giorgio Agamben and Bernard Stiegler, I turn to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and especially to his myth of Narcissus, and to Lacan’s theory of the formation of the I, concluding that desire necessitates the split of the self, the self’s misrecognition in an image or in a medium or in a screen, and the subsequent reorganisation of the body, which ultimately allows for the self’s metamorphosis. After this, I discuss specifically the phenomenon of looking at the smartphone screen, emphasising that in an age that the presence of screens and of technologically produced images increases exponentially, we cannot ignore this phenomenon’s implications for educational theories and practices. Rather, we need to orient our investigations towards the interconnectedness of looking, knowing, and desiring, underlining therefore the need for an educational focus on the ways we learn to see and on the ways we learn to desire.     

Professional Learning Community in Relation to School Effectiveness

This is a study of schools as professional learning communities, defined by nine characteristics and their relationship with the schools' level of effectiveness. The study was conducted within three schools in Iceland. It was designed as a mixed methods study, conducted in two phases: a correlational study of survey data on schools as professional learning communities and an experimental study, where effort was made to improve the level of the professional learning community and evaluate its effects on pupils' outcomes. In both phases relatively strong evidence was obtained on the relationship between a school's level of effectiveness and its level as a professional learning community. In the experimental school, interventions resulted in higher scores on national tests, especially in mathematics.     

Comprehension of written sentences as a core component of children's reading comprehension

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that sentence processing is an essential mediatory skill between word recognition and text comprehension in reading. In Experiment 1, a semantic similarity judgement task was used with children from Grade 2 to Grade 9. They had to say whether two written sentences had the same (or very similar) meanings or whether the meanings of the two sentences were very different. As expected, performance improved with age both on the high‐frequency words and with increasingly complex sentences. In Experiment 2 with children in Grade 3, scores in written sentence comprehension and vocabulary made the most important unique contribution to the reading comprehension of an expository text. The results are discussed first, in the light of a general framework in which sentence‐level skill is at the core of reading comprehension and second, with reference to the issue of reading assessment.     

Commercialising comparison: Pearson puts the TLC in soft capitalism

Abstract

This paper provides a critical policy analysis of The Learning Curve (TLC) (2012), an initiative developed by the multinational edu-business, Pearson, in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit. TLC exemplifies the commercialising of comparison and the efforts of edu-businesses to strategically position themselves in education policy processes globally. In analysing TLC, our account seeks to proffer a critical analysis of this emerging policy genre, and the way it functions as part of the new ‘soft capitalism’. We analyse TLC in relation to Pearson’s new business strategy, which emphasises corporate social responsibility and accountability to consumers for the efficacy of its products and services. We argue that Pearson is now generating and appropriating various data to legitimise its products and services according to a ‘neo-social’ mode of accountability. Network ethnography is employed to document the global networks of both people and data associated with TLC and we reflect on the emergence of Pearson as a potential education policy actor.     

Sixth‐Form Colleges and Incorporation: some evidence from case studies in the north of England

There are some important ambiguities in discussions about the implications of ‘evidence‐based practice’, both for educational research and for the work of teachers. In this paper we explore several of these through examining the Evidence‐based Practice in Science Education (EPSE) study—part of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP), a major UK research initiative that is explicitly committed to improving the contribution of educational research to policymaking and practice. The field of science education is in some ways a critical case, given that the notion of evidence‐based practice treats scientific research as a privileged source of evidence. We examine the assumptions built into the EPSE study, and how these relate to the classical medical model of evidence‐based practice, and to some other approaches to educational research that are concerned with closing the gap with practice.