Systematic comparison of solved problems as a cooperative learning task

Problem-solving skills and understanding of domain, knowledge (e.g., fighting misconceptions) are important goals in both secondary and tertiary science education. A prototype of an instructional task is presented which aims at improved problem-solving skills based on understanding of domain knowledge. In this task, comparing carefully selected solved problems by groups of students is utilised as a learning activity for the acquisition of adequate problem schemata. The task is designed as a part of the so-called UBP-program (UBP=Understanding Based Problem solving) currently being developed, for education in science. The result of an evaluative study for the field of mechanics is presented. The UBP-task appears apt to improve problem-solving skills at a less advanced level of physics education (e.g., 10th grade), especially for students normally performing poorly—who are often girls.     

Here is something you can't understand: the suffocating whiteness of communication studies

ABSTRACT

The authors utilize a modernity-coloniality framework to highlight practices of whiteness and white dominance within the academy and the field of communication studies in particular. The article grounds its framework in personal experience and theories in the flesh to build comradery with feminist of color scholarly forebears and to share with those who struggle to create spaces of change within the academy today and in the future. The authors advocate for an active consciousness of “included exclusion” as the first step toward decolonization. Decolonizing discursive and embodied knowledges creates avenues for social justice and change within the academy and beyond.     

Qualifications and Skills of Subject Librarians in Selected African Countries

Although subject librarians are found in many academic libraries worldwide, not enough has been written about the profession on the African continent. A study was, therefore, conducted, with the aim of adding to the knowledge about subject librarianship as it is practised in selected southern African countries. This article reports on the findings related to one of the main objectives of the study, which was to determine the qualifications and skills of subject librarians. The survey method was used to collect data from study participants. Semi-structured questionnaires were sent to 279 subject/learning support librarians, and semi-structured telephonic interviews were conducted with selected library managers from selected institutions included in the survey. The study revealed that most respondents held degrees and/or postgraduate qualifications in library and information science, that more than half of them also held qualifications in other disciplines at various levels, and that many of them felt that they needed to acquire more information and communication technology skills.     

Inside Out: Head-Based Ontologies,Vision, and Temporality in the First Neuroturn

Since the early 1800s, mainstream Western discourses that entwined racializing and ableizing discourses have involved, among other things, particular notions of temporality and ways of privileging scopic regimes that presume surface-depth relations mediated by a theory of time and materiality. In this essay, Bernadette Baker analyzes the link between the production of visual surface-depth relations, the theorization of time, and the conception of matter in a high profile movement that today has been discredited. She takes as her case an instance of the first neuroturn (nineteenth century), specifically the physiognomy and phrenology in a textbook-style volume written by F. J. Gall. Translated and published in 1835, Gall's treatise discusses morality and the brain in relation to the shape of the head. The reconstitution of entitlement emerges through Gall's treatise via unexpected epistemological alliances that mark a shift in the architecture of medical perception and that build a bridge from the spirit to the flesh. While relatively humble in tone, Gall's content draws upon empirical and metaphysical reference points that have, in turn, become major legacies for the second neuroturn, education, and other social sciences to deal with. This essay thus examines pivotal horizons in the Gallian approach that, while discredited now as a pseudoscientific fad, raise many difficult questions that expose the link between seemingly oppositional political and intellectual commitments.     

Effekte videobasierter Trainings zur Förderung der Selbstwirksamkeitsüberzeugungen über Klassenführung im Grundschulunterricht

Self-efficacy in classroom management and knowledge on classroom management are important teacher resources regarding their health. Fostering student teachers in their self-efficacy in classroom management and situated knowledge on classroom management is a promising approach for reducing reality shock at the beginning of in-service teaching. Thus, the present quasi-experimental pre-post control group study investigates whether video-based and practice-oriented coursework in teacher education can promote self-efficacy in classroom management and the professional vision of classroom management. Analyzing own classroom videos as well as analyzing videos from other teachers lead to a significantly higher latent increase in self-efficacy and professional vision than that of a control group. This was only the case for professional vision in a course with own teaching elements but without video analysis.