Would increasing engineering literacies enable untapped opportunities for STEM education?

The main focus here is to examine the benefits of defining and developing an engineering curriculum for elementary schools. Like many other international educational systems, Australian educational settings have been seeking to effectively implement science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. However, current assumptions and expectations of STEM education are broad, poorly defined and intangible. This article deliberates on possible contributions and impediments that are preventing teachers from achieving engineering education in their classrooms. Using positioning theory, this article offers possible ways that the specific literacies of engineering can be better realized in teacher practices. A closer alignment will be necessary between the visions and expectations of STEM education, as perceived by governments, business, industry, and schools, to ensure a realization of the potential of STEM education. Engineering education in elementary school settings warrants the investment of time to understand what it proffers, and to enable teachers to identity and refine their practices to optimize the many benefits afforded.     

Interstimulus interval determines whether ethanol produces conditioned place preference or aversion in mice

DBA/2J mice were exposed to a distinctive floor stimulus (CS+) and ethanol (2 g/kg) in a place conditioning paradigm. A different floor stimulus (CS?) was presented with saline. Mice injected just before or 30 min before CS exposure (Groups 0, ?30) showed conditioned place preference, whereas mice injected right after exposure to the CS (Group 5) displayed place aversion (Experiment 1). None of the other groups (?120, ?60, 15, 60) showed place conditioning. Handling and saline injection given just before or after CS exposure were unable to produce place conditioning (Experiment 2). However, there was a positive relationship between ethanol concentration (10% vs. 20%) and test performance, suggesting that peritoneal irritation influences place conditioning (Experiment 3). Overall, these findings support the suggestion that intraperitoneal injection of ethanol produces an initial short-duration aversive effect that is followed by a longer lasting positive motivational effect.     

The future direction of schooling

This chapter provides a cross-societal discussion of the findings of the Schooling for the future study, the case studies. It examines why senior educators and policy leaders in each of the six case study societies believe that bureaucratic school systems are the most likely scenario for future even though these are not the most desired. It examines some of the key factors that account for senior educators and policy leaders’ views, and the changes they argue are needed to achieve the desired scenario for the future. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the contribution and the implications of the study for the usefulness of the OECD scenarios as policy tools.     

Responding to the challenges of student-staff partnership: the reflections of participants at an international summer institute

This article contributes to the growing scholarly literature about students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education by describing an initiative designed to support partnership and a study investigating international staff and student perspectives. The initiative – an international summer institute – is a four-day, professional development experience that brought together students and staff from seven countries to learn about partnership and develop specific partnership projects. Participants in the institute were invited to contribute to a qualitative study exploring their experiences of students as partners work and their perceptions of the institute’s capacity to support it. Given that much existing research on this topic tends to be celebratory, we focus here on the challenges participants ascribed to student-staff partnership, and on the features of the summer institute they thought particularly useful in helping them to navigate these difficulties. Looking beyond the summer institute, we consider the implications of these findings for those looking to support partnership more broadly.     

Extending research on the interspersal procedure to perceptions of continuous reading assignments: Applied and theoretical implications of a failure to replicate

Researchers have shown that students' perceptions of mathematics assignments could be improved by interspersing additional briefer, easier problems (e.g., Logan and Skinner, 1998). The current study was designed to extend this research to reading tasks. Seventh‐grade students read out loud both a control passage and a similar experimental passage that contained additional interspersed brief (i.e., 16 words), easy (i.e., first‐grade reading level) paragraphs. Students then selected the passage that would require the least effort to read and the least time to read. Students also indicated the passage they liked most (preference) and the passage that they would like to read again (choice). Significantly more students selected the control passage as requiring less time to read, but no differences were found for preference, choice, or effort selections. The results failed to confirm earlier research on the interspersal procedure, thus our findings have applied and theoretical implications regarding causal variables that may account for the effectiveness of the interspersal procedure. Specifically, the current study suggests that the interspersal procedure may improve assignment perception only when the procedure increases discrete task‐completion rates. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

‘Just turn to us’: the persuasive features of contract cheating websites

Academic integrity is important to universities and students must abide by codes of academic conduct around assessment. Students are, however, subject to multiple pressures around assessment, some of which can push them to cheat. Modern contract cheating websites are the fronts for sophisticated, commercial operations that offer individually written assessment items for a fee; to combat their use we need a better understanding of the tools they use to persuade students to become customers. In this study we examined the persuasive features of 11 highly-visible contract cheating websites and mapped these features to a previously used persuasiveness framework. We find that contract-cheating websites use a variety of credibility, interactive and informative features designed to persuade students to use their services. In addition, the sites offer low-cost, customisable products available in very short timeframes. We suggest ways in which educators can encourage academic integrity by talking with their students about how the websites promulgate their ‘just turn to us’ message.     

What about the tertiary climate? Reflecting on five decades of class climate research

Learning Environments Research - Although studies on, and reviews of, class climate have flourished in the past decade, little is known about how student perceptions of the learning environment are...