Representations of nature of science in U.S. science standards: A historical account with contemporary implications

This study evaluated the representations of nature of science (NOS) in U.S. state science standards, and examined the changes in these representations from documents advanced in the 1980s through 2016. Drawing from the consensus perspective on NOS and prior studies focusing on the analysis of textual content, documents were inspected for 10 target NOS aspects: the empirical, tentative, inferential, creative, theory-driven, and social NOS, in addition to the myth of “The Scientific Method,” the nature of scientific theories and laws, and the social and cultural embeddedness of science. Ninety-eight state documents from 48 states were analyzed and multiple editions were collected from 34 states. Additionally, relevant materials from the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were assessed for their coverage of the same NOS aspects. Collected materials were scored as whole documents, including over 11,000 pages of text in total, on each target aspect, which reflected the treatment (naïve vs. informed) of NOS in text and the manner of presentation (explicit vs. implicit). Overall, surprisingly, state standards documents have improved very little with respect to their NOS coverage over the last 30 years. NOS standards documents remain silent on a majority of key aspects of NOS, and the number of aspects showing explicit, informed representations has held constant. The NGSS performed well compared to many contemporary documents, but they failed to address all target NOS aspects in a desirable manner. Further analysis raised concerns with the degree that states fully adopt and disseminate standards in manner consistent with the NGSS despite stated intentions, which may negatively impact NOS coverage in instructional resources and classroom enactments. To improve NOS representations in standards, recognizing the role these documents play in shaping instructional materials and teaching in the science classroom, exemplars from analyzed materials were highlighted with informed and explicit representations of multiple aspects.     

Perturbation solutions of the Carson–Cambi equation

The periodic differential equation (1+ε cos t)y&#x030B; + py = 0, hereby termed the Carson–Cambi equation, is the simplest second-order differential equation having a periodic coefficient associated with the second derivative. Provided |ε|<1, which is the case we examine, then the differential equation is a Hill's equation and thus possesses regions of stability and instability in the p–ε plane. Ordinary perturbation theory is employed to obtain the stable (periodic) solutions to ε³. Two-timing theory is employed to obtain solutions for values of k near the critical points k = ±$\text{1}\text{2}$, ±$\text{3}\text{2}$, ±$\text{5}\text{2}$. Three-timing is employed to extend the solution near k = ±$\text{1}\text{2}$. The solutions of the Carson–Cambi equation are compared with the solutions of the corresponding Mathieu equation.     

An exploration of Illinois students' attitudes toward science using multivariate multilevel modeling with a cross-sectional sample of responses from grades 5 through 10

The present study examined students' attitudes toward science and associated constructs, based on the theories of reasoned action and planned behavior, and explored relationships between individual and school-related variables common to the research literature. Responses from 1,291 students in Grades 5 through 10 were collected using the 30-item Behaviors, Related Attitudes, and Intentions toward Science (BRAINS) Survey along with background information questions. Additional self-report data were collected from teachers (n = 56; 82.4%) in participating schools (n = 68) to obtain information about their education and experience, characteristics and practices, as well as other classroom variables, which could influence students' outlook. Student information, teacher data collected, and other data compiled about participating schools, were used to explore patterns in students' attitudes, beliefs, and intentions. These variables were used to generate multivariate multilevel models through a forward construction process. The final model presented favors individual variables to explain differences in students' responses on all five of the BRAINS subscales, more than group-level variables captured. Of the predictor variables explored, students' perceived science ability and frequency of talk with family were influential on all subscales, and increasing these variables had a positive effect on the estimated mean scores according to the final model presented. Findings from this study also include commonly observed relationships, such as the decline in attitudes over time, but these were found to be less pervasive in this sample. The paper concludes with a discussion about the comparative ineffectiveness of teacher and school-related variables in explaining students' attitudes toward science in this study, in light of design decisions and limitations, to guide future investigations.     

Production and consumption of university Linked Data

Linked Data increases the value of an organisation's data over the web by introducing explicit and machine processable links at the data level. We have adopted this new stream of data representation to produce and expose existing data within The Open University (OU) as Linked Data. We present in this paper our approach for producing the data, based on well-defined workflows at the organisation as well as the technical levels. We also discuss the data already available to consume, and show the potential improvements that Linked Data brings by presenting three applications: (1) the OU Expert Search system for finding experts at the OU based on a specified topic of interest, (2) the Social Study application to identify potential courses for students based on their Facebook profile information, and (3) the Linked OpenLearn application that helps students identify related media and courses to OpenLearn units at the OU. Before concluding the paper, we show the potential benefits and an approach towards interlinking data beyond The Open University with other universities, using a common categorisation scheme.     

The Influence of Metacognitive Training on Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Conceptions of Nature of Science

This study assessed the influence of training in, and use of, metacognitive strategies on the development of prospective elementary teachers’ views of nature of science (NOS). Participants were 49 students (92% female) enrolled in two sections of an elementary science methods course. The sections were randomly assigned to an intervention group and a comparison group. Students in both groups were engaged with explicit‐reflective NOS instruction, which focused on the empirical, tentative, theory‐driven, inferential, and creative NOS. Additionally, students in the intervention group received instruction in, and used, three metacognitive strategies during their engagement with thinking about NOS. The Views of Nature of Science Questionnaire—Form C and the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory were respectively used to assess participants’ views of NOS and metacognitive awareness at the beginning and conclusion of the study. Data analyses indicated that significantly more students in the intervention group explicated more informed views of the target aspects of NOS. Moreover, these substantial changes were coupled with significantly increased Metacognitive Awareness Inventory scores for the intervention group participants. The results point to a relationship between improved metacognitive awareness and the development of informed understandings of NOS.     

What do you mean by learning lab?

Education and Information Technologies - Digital and innovation competencies are nowadays highly required for students and faculty members in higher education institutions. We therefore need...     

Children's query types and reformulations in Google search

We investigated the searching behaviors of twenty-four children in grades 6, 7, and 8 (ages 11–13) in finding information on three types of search tasks in Google. Children conducted 72 search sessions and issued 150 queries. Children's phrase- and question-like queries combined were much more prevalent than keyword queries (70% vs. 30%, respectively). Fifty two percent of the queries were reformulations (33 sessions). We classified children's query reformulation types into five classes based on the taxonomy by Liu et al. (2010). We found that most query reformulations were by Substitution and Specialization, and that children hardly repeated queries. We categorized children's queries by task facets and examined the way they expressed these facets in their query formulations and reformulations. Oldest children tended to target the general topic of search tasks in their queries most frequently, whereas younger children expressed one of the two facets more often. We assessed children's achieved task outcomes using the search task outcomes measure we developed. Children were mostly more successful on the fact-finding and fully self-generated task and partially successful on the research-oriented task. Query type, reformulation type, achieved task outcomes, and expressing task facets varied by task type and grade level. There was no significant effect of query length in words or of the number of queries issued on search task outcomes. The study findings have implications for human intervention, digital literacy, search task literacy, as well as for system intervention to support children's query formulation and reformulation during interaction with Google.     

Scaled consensus design for multiagent systems under DoS attacks and communication-delays

This paper aims to solve scaled consensus problem for general linear multiagent systems under denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Firstly, we propose a new scaled disagreement vector and investigate its properties under switching and undirected graphs. Secondly, we establish sufficient conditions in terms of linear matrix inequalities in order to guarantee that the multiagent system achieves scaled consensus under DoS attacks. Contrary to most existing studies where DoS attacks on all the channels are same, in this note, we formulate the problem such that the adversary compromises each agent independently. Moreover, the distributed consensus protocol is investigated for networks with time-varying delay. Finally, two simulation examples are given to demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed design methodologies.