Parties,Lads, Friends,Love and Newcastle United: A study of young people's values

Traditional research into values has tended to dichotomise young people into categories of self and other orientations. In the present study values were explored within a contemporary context and analysed into more complex value sets. The sample comprised of 111 girls and 133 boys, aged 11-16 (mean = 13.2, SD = 1.14), who responded to four open-ended sentences designed to tap philosophies of life, fears and underlying values. The pleasures in life for girls tended to centre on relationships with family, friends and boys, whereas boys enjoyed activities such as sport. Many desired to win the National Lottery, although they also concurrently held humanistic values. The potential impact of these value sets on development during adolescence is discussed. For these young people, the best things in life are free but, like many adults, they dream of fame and fortune.     

美国高校图书馆的麦当劳化

美国社会学家乔治·里茨尔在其撰写的一部有关麦当劳化的力作中指出 快餐行业的方方面面正在逐渐渗透到社会的其它领域。本文旨在探讨里茨尔先生的观点是否适用于高校图书馆部门，并着重分析高校图书馆向麦当化方向发展的程度、以及社会麦当劳化对于高校图书馆的影响。此外，作者还分析了与麦当劳化相对应的其它可能做法及其对高校图书馆的影响。     

Group Work with Multimedia in Mathematics: The Role of the Technology and of the Teacher

This paper reports on a study involving the evaluation and use of the National Curriculum Council sponsored multimedia package World of Number. The project was carried out in a South Yorkshire comprehensive school during the Spring Term of 1994. The intended mode of use of the package was unclear from the initial evaluation and also from initial teacher feedback. In addition little attention seemed to have been given to the role of the teacher. Examples of episodes of classroom interaction between the teacher/researcher and a small group of pupils working at the multimedia system are presented and an interpretation, which takes account of the role of the technology and of the teacher from a Vygotskian perspective, is offered.     

Fostering Teacher Development to a Tetrahedral Orientation in the Teaching of Chemistry

This paper reports on the initial outcomes from the end of the fourth year of a 5 year research and professional development project to improve chemistry teaching among three cohorts of chemistry teachers in Manitoba, Canada. The project responds to a new curriculum introduction advocating a tetrahedral orientation (Mahaffy, Journal of Chemical Education 83(1), 49–55, 2006) to the teaching of chemistry. The project in its entirety is based upon several theoretical models in fostering chemistry teacher development (in particular Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological model). These models are described, as is the progress made by teachers based upon the use of a Chemistry Teacher Inventory and associated teacher responses. Overall, statistical analysis of perceptions of their own teaching and comments made by teachers suggests they are showing limited development towards a tetrahedral orientation, albeit in a manner consistent with the curriculum. Ongoing research-based activities in this project are also described.     

Negotiating the Inquiry Question: A Comparison of Whole Class and Small Group Strategies in Grade Five Science Classrooms

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of two strategies for negotiating the question for exploration during science inquiry on student achievement and teachers' perceptions. The study is set in the context of the Science Writing Heuristic. The first strategy (small group) consisted of each group of four students negotiating a question for inquiry with the teacher while the second strategy (whole class) consisted of the entire class negotiating a single question for inquiry with the teacher. The study utilized a mixed-method approach. A quasi-experimental repeated measures design was used to determine the effect of strategy on student achievement and semi-structured teacher interviews were used to probe the question of teacher perceptions of the two strategies. Teacher observations were conducted using the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) to check for variation in implementation of the two strategies. Iowa Test of Basic Skills Science (ITBSS) (2005 and 2006) and teacher/researcher developed unit exams (pre and post) were used as student achievement measures. No statistically significant differences were found among students in the two treatment groups on the ITBSS or unit exams. RTOP observations suggest that teacher implementation was consistent across the two treatment strategies. Teachers disclosed personal preferences for the two strategies, indicating the whole class treatment was easier to manage (at least at the beginning of the school year) as students gained experience with science inquiry and the associated increased responsibility. Possible mechanisms linking the two strategies, negotiated questions, and student outcomes are discussed.     

Concept Availability in the Causal Inferences of Children and Adults

What supplies the concepts in causal inferences in story comprehension? This question was examined in 5 experiments. Elementary school children and college students listened to stories containing a "premise" sentence describing a character's intent in initiating a series of actions, followed by an unexpected "outcome." After each story, the subjects were asked inference questions about the reason for the outcome (Experiments 1-4) or asked to explain the outcome (Experiment 5). In the various experiments, the availability of object concepts for an inference was manipulated by providing 0 or 2 clues preceding the outcome, additional filler information that diluted the clue information, a mention of an object in the premise or no mention, and an object title for each story or no title. The results suggested that the availability of an object concept in sentences prior to the outcome was a critical determinant of whether an object inference occurred, especially for children. Given availability, the thematic prominence of the object influences whether the object will be used in an inference.     

Working as partners for classroom reform

This paper discusses a partnership involving teachers and a teacher educator working together to develop teaching and learning practices in Pakistan. The partnership was established in response to the teachers’ need for support in developing their professional practices within the actual contexts and realities of their schools, after they had attended an in-service training course at a university. Providing case studies, the paper analyses the processes and outcomes of this co-learning partnership. The findings suggest that the collaborative process advances the understanding of teachers’ problems, resolves them on the spot, and provides teachers with the confidence and courage to transcend the constraints of their workplaces while developing professionally.     

Identifying Essential Epistemic Heuristics for Guiding Mechanistic Reasoning in Science Learning

Mechanistic reasoning, or reasoning systematically through underlying factors and relationships that give rise to phenomena, is a powerful thinking strategy that allows one to explain and make predictions about phenomena. This article synthesizes and builds on existing frameworks to identify essential characteristics of students’ mechanistic reasoning across scientific content areas. We argue that these characteristics can be represented as epistemic heuristics, or ideas about how to direct one’s intellectual work, that implicitly guide mechanistic reasoning. We use this framework to characterize middle school students’ written explanatory accounts of two phenomena in different science content areas using these heuristics. We demonstrate evidence of heuristics in students’ accounts and show that the use of the heuristics was related to but distinct from science content knowledge. We describe how the heuristics allowed us to characterize and compare the mechanistic sophistication of account construction across science content areas. This framework captures elements of a crosscutting practical epistemology that may support students in directing the construction of mechanistic accounts across content areas over time, and it allows us to characterize that progress.     

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SCIENCE WRITING HEURISTIC (SWH) APPROACH IN 8TH GRADE SCIENCE CLASSROOMS

Current initiatives in science education in Korea have emphasized science literacy as the most important purpose of science education; that is, science education needs to focus on helping each student to become a scientifically literate person who is able to make reasoned decisions. In attempting to address this focus concern about science literacy, the researchers of this study attempted to implement the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) approach and examined both the SWH and the control groups using the modified Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP). Students’ performance on a Summary Writing Test (SWT) was also examined. Participant students of this study were eighth grade students in three middle schools located in the second biggest city in Korea. Each of the three teachers from three schools taught both the SWH and the control classes. The results of this study showed significant differences between the SWH and the control groups on the SWT. There was a difference in the total RTOP scores between the SWH and the control groups. Differences among schools imply that higher level of teachers’ implementation of the SWH approach would appear to result in better student achievement.