Elite und Exzellenz aus der Perspektive von Jugendlichen und ihren Peers an exklusiven Schulen

Against the backdrop of the recent political discourse on elite and excellence in the German education system, this paper examines how such constructions manifest themselves in programmatic concepts of schools and in the orientations of their pupils and their peers. They are reconstructed on the basis of a qualitative research project on educational careers of young people. This paper focuses on pupils and their peers at an elite school of sports and an international school. Firstly, the state of research on those types of school as well as on educational careers of their pupils will be presented. Secondly, the theoretical reference points and the methodological design of the study will be introduced. At the core of the paper is the analysis of the education related orientations of selected cases of young people and their peers: How do they position themselves towards elite and excellence in their individual and collective orientations and how is this relevant for processes of distinction and coherence building in the groups? In the resuming part of the paper, the results will be summarised and related to the state of research and the scientific discourse on elite and excellence.     

Promoting Inquiry-Based Teaching in Laboratory Courses: Are We Meeting the Grade?

Over the past decade, repeated calls have been made to incorporate more active teaching and learning in undergraduate biology courses. The emphasis on inquiry-based teaching is especially important in laboratory courses, as these are the courses in which students are applying the process of science. To determine the current state of research on inquiry-based teaching in undergraduate biology laboratory courses, we reviewed the recent published literature on inquiry-based exercises. The majority of studies in our data set were in the subdisciplines of biochemistry, cell biology, developmental biology, genetics, and molecular biology. In addition, most exercises were guided inquiry, rather than open ended or research based. Almost 75% of the studies included assessment data, with two-thirds of these studies including multiple types of assessment data. However, few exercises were assessed in multiple courses or at multiple institutions. Furthermore, assessments were rarely based on published instruments. Although the results of the studies in our data set show a positive effect of inquiry-based teaching in biology laboratory courses on student learning gains, research that uses the same instrument across a range of courses and institutions is needed to determine whether these results can be generalized.     

Implementing web 2.0 tools in the classroom: Four teachers’ accounts

In this paper, four teachers shared their experiences using the following free Web 2.0 tools with their students: Jing, Wix, Google Sites, and Blogger. The teachers found that students reacted positively to lessons in which these tools were used, and also noted improvements they could make when using them in the future.     

Managing Patient-centered Communication across the Type 2 Diabetes Illness Trajectory: A Grounded Practical Theory of Interactional Sensitivity

This article uses the theoretical and methodological framework of Grounded Practical Theory (GPT) to provide a lens for analyzing and interpreting discourse as a situated form of social action in routine Type 2 diabetes visits. Drawing on a total data-set of 400 audio-recorded routine visits, we randomly selected 55 visits for qualitative analysis. In this article, we use Conversation Analysis to document communication techniques, which we in turn use as evidence to ground our claims within the GPT framework. We use two single cases of interaction to analyze communication techniques physicians use when recommending a change from oral medication to insulin. We argue treatment intensification is a key moment in health communication to reflect about patient centeredness because physicians can find themselves in an interactional dilemma: while insulin may effectively help control unstable disease, an insulin recommendation may simultaneously counter patient values and treatment preferences. Our analysis suggests that physicians use what we call interactional sensitivity to balance medical need and patient preferences when making medical decisions by tailoring their communication according to the local situation and the patient's larger illness trajectory. We propose that interactional sensitivity is a type of communication work and a quality of patient-centered communication characterized by the theoretical relationship between tailoring communication to the contingencies of the local interaction and the global illness trajectory. Overall, this article contributes to health communication scholarship by proposing a normative model for reflecting on how physicians negotiate challenging interactions with patients during routine chronic illness visits.     

The persuasiveness of persuasive discourse

This investigation explored why and how persuasion occurs. Toward this end, we examined the processing of two articles under conditions called for in the persuasion and conceptual change literatures. One unique aspect of the current study was the use of topic-specific measures of beliefs, knowledge (i.e., perceived and demonstrated), and interest. The performance of members of three educational communities (i.e., undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty) was compared, as was the knowledge and interest of more or less persuaded readers. One article argued that there are prenatal similarities among humans and other mammals, while the second presented a favorable view of same-sex marriages. Although both articles produced significant changes in readers’ beliefs, knowledge, and interest, there were performance differences by text, educational community, and persuasion group. Results showed that readers’ perceptions of their knowledge played a more significant role in persuasion outcomes than the knowledge they actually demonstrated. Outcomes suggest the need to look more closely at the relationship between knowledge and interest in subsequent studies of persuasion.