Putting Making into High School Computer Science Classrooms: Promoting Equity in Teaching and Learning with Electronic Textiles in Exploring Computer Science

Recent discussions of making have focused on developing out-of-school makerspaces and activities to provide more equitable and enriching learning opportunities for youth. Yet school classrooms present a unique opportunity to help broaden access, diversify representation, and deepen participation in making. In turning to classrooms, we want to understand the crucial practices that teachers employ in broadening and deepening access to making. In this article, we investigate two high school teachers' approaches in implementing a novel eight-week, electronic textiles unit within the Exploring Computer Science curriculum, where students designed wearable electronic textile projects with microcontrollers, sensors, and LEDs. We share teachers' emergent practices in transforming their classrooms into makerspaces, including valuing student expertise and promoting connections in personalized work. We discuss the ways these practices succeeded in broadening access to making while deepening participation in computing and establishing home-school connections.     

Lyman Spitzer: Life,times, and science

Lyman Spitzer was one of the major figures of twentieth century theoretical astrophysics. Over more than fifty years, he kept up sustained research of his own, on problems concerning the interstellar medium, star formation, and galaxies. In addition he was a major influence on observational programmes, and created a thriving school of theoretical astrophysics at Princeton University along with a strong plasma physics programme. This article brings out his contributions, placing them in context.     

Job satisfaction of University academics: Perspectives from Uganda

Although several studies in the affluent world have examined the job satisfaction and dissatisfaction of lecturers in higher education, little is known about academic job satisfaction in the low-resource countries. This study probes those factors contributing to academic satisfaction and dissatisfaction in higher education in the developing world. Using a sample of 182 respondents drawn from two universities in Uganda, this analysis reports that the factors most prevalent in the prediction of dons’ satisfaction relate to co-worker behaviour, supervision and intrinsic facets of teaching. Analogously, the stimuli that create academic dissatisfaction are largely extrinsic (contextual) factors with respect to facets of remuneration, governance, research, promotion, and working environment. This article discusses these findings in the light of Herzberg’s dichotomy and concludes that any given factor be it intrinsic or extrinsic can either evoke academic satisfaction or induce dissatisfaction. The present analysis finds that while age, rank, and tenure significantly predict academic job satisfaction, no evidence is adduced to support a gender influence on dons’ job satisfaction. Implications for Ugandan academics’ job satisfaction are formulated, recommendations made, and a further research agenda proposed.     

Learning To Read Each Other: Black Female Graduate Students Share Their Experiences at a White Research I Institution

This paper uses Black Feminist Thought to explain the lived experiences of three Black female graduate students at a White Research I institution. Through mentoring from Black female professors, the students received instrumental and psychosocial support that helped them to navigate through their graduate level work. Common themes of identity, community service missions, and empowerment provides a thread that ties the student’s narratives together. We close by offering some suggestions for further research on the Black graduate experience and mentoring Black graduate students. Meca R. Williams, Denise N. Brewley, R. Judith Reed and Dorothy Y. White are affiliated with University of Georgia. Rachel T. Davis-Haley is affiliated with University of New Orleans.     

Developing rigid constraint for the estimation of pose and structure from a single image

Pose and structure estimation from a single image is a fundamental problem in machine vision and multiple sensor fusion and integration.In this paper we propose using rigid constraints described in different coordinate frames to iteratively estimate structural and camera pose parameters.Using geometric properties of reflected correspondences we put forward a new concept,the reflected pole of a rigid transformation.The reflected pole represents a general analysis of transformations that can be applied to both 2D and 3D transformations.We demonstrate how the concept is applied to calibration by proposing an iterative method to estimate the structural parameters of objects.The method is based on a coarse-to-fine strategy in which initial estimation is obtained through a classical linear algorithm which is then refined by iteration.For a comparative study of performance,we also implemented an extended motion estimation algorithm(from 2D-2D to 3D-2D case)based on epipolar geometry.     

Training early childhood teachers for sustainability: towards a ‘learning experience of a different kind’

In this study, we discuss findings from a small-scale project evaluating an in-service teacher training programme focused on ‘perspective transformation’ in early childhood education and education for sustainability (EfS). A bespoke professional development programme was developed for Turkish early childhood teachers, based on a variety of Mezirowian-inspired adult education activities. Data were gathered using a mixed method research design, from 24 early childhood educators, through learning diaries, a Learning Activities Survey and follow-up interviews. Initial findings illustrate the range of transformations possible in the teachers’ perspectives during and after the training workshops. Influential factors in facilitating perspective transformation are shown to be the content, structure and sequencing of the training, and peer support. We conclude that transformative learning techniques offer a viable framework for engaging practicing early childhood teachers with EfS and also discuss implications for teacher preparation in both areas.     

Extraordinary Animals and Expository Writing: Zoo in the Classroom

A zoo outreach program led to placing animals in classrooms where those animals became foci for numerous learning activities such as writing, observing, and care. Systematic debriefings suggested uniqueness to learning outcomes connected to zoo animals. Subsequent analysis of student writing indicated that students responded to situational interest by recording more observations, made use of more science facts, and used more science vocabulary when writing about unique animals (albino hedgehog, legless lizard) than ‘ordinary’ animals (rabbit, dove). The results are interpreted in terms of motivation, creating situational interest, and the familiarity of the schema available to the students. Policy implications are discussed.     

Levels of phonological awareness in preliterate and literate Spanish-speaking children

Evidence of phonological awareness levels usually comes from English-speaking children. The evidence in Spanish is scarce. The present study examined the phonological awareness of syllables, onsets–rimes, and phonemes, extending the Treiman and Zukowski (1991) results to preliterate and literate Spanish-speaking children. The sample comprised preschoolers, kindergarteners and first-graders. Children found syllables easier than onset–rime units, and onset–rime units easier than phoneme units (Experiments 1 and 2). Preliterate children found ending units easier than beginning units. However, literate children were best at initial linguistic units, particularly initial syllables. Results on the phonological awareness task and on the masked priming lexical decision task support that the phonological awareness development is sensitive to the orthographic units used by children from the time they begin to read (Experiment 3). For all children, initial continuant consonants were easier than stop consonants.