The Average Expectable Environment Is Not Good Enough: A Response to Scarr

I take the position, contrary to Scarr's, that the details of socialization patterns are crucial to an understanding of normal and deviant development. Considerable evidence has accrued to justify the claim that what normal parents do or fail to do crucially affects their children's development. Research is cited to support the argument that better than "good enough" parenting optimizes the development of both normal and vulnerable children, and that parents' belief in their own effectiveness further enhances their caregiving, whereas causal attributions that assign responsibility for child outcomes to genetic factors that parents cannot change undermine parents' belief in their own effectiveness. The strong conclusions Scarr draws from heritability analyses to support her thesis that genotypes drive experiences overlook their inherent limitations.     

Understanding teacher design practices for digital inquiry–based science learning: the case of Go-Lab

Designing and implementing online or digital learning material is a demanding task for teachers. This is even more the case when this material is used for more engaged forms of learning, such as inquiry learning. In this article, we give an informed account of Go-Lab, an ecosystem that supports teachers in creating Inquiry Learning Spaces (ILSs). These ILSs are built around STEM–related online laboratories. Within the Go-Lab ecosystem, teachers can combine these online laboratories with multimedia material and learning apps, which are small applications that support learners in their inquiry learning process. The Go-Lab ecosystem offers teachers ready–made structures, such as a standard inquiry cycle, alternative scenarios or complete ILSs that can be used as they are, but it also allows teachers to configure these structures to create personalized ILSs. For this article, we analyzed data on the design process and structure of 2414 ILSs that were (co)created by teachers and that our usage data suggest have been used in classrooms. Our data show that teachers prefer to start their design from empty templates instead of more domain–related elements, that the makeup of the design team (a single teacher, a group of collaborating teachers, or a mix of teachers and project members) influences key design process characteristics such as time spent designing the ILS and number of actions involved, that the characteristics of the resulting ILSs also depend on the type of design team and that ILSs that are openly shared (i.e., published in a public repository) have different characteristics than those that are kept private.

     

Deciphering the dynamics of segregation: The role of schools in the housing choice process

This paper examines the ways in which segregation in schools contributes to the perpetuation of residential segregation, and the ways in which metropolitan-wide school desegregation supports housing integration. An empirical analysis of real estate advertising practices in fourteen American cities is outlined, and supplemented by a discussion of the character of real estate agent advice to homeseekers. Conclusions are drawn about the differences in the housing choice process in communities with segregated as opposed to desegregated schools. Finally, implications for urban policy are presented.The research reported here was supported by the National Institute of Education, Grant HEW-NIE G-78-0125/1.     

DNA sequence representation by trianders and determinative degree of nucleotides

INTRODUCTION Genomic DNA sequence analysis using wide range of statistical methods (Torney et al., 1999; Bulmer, 1987; Luo et al., 1998; Nieselt-Struwe, 1997; Fickett et al., 1992; Buldyrev et al., 1998; Azbel, 1995) and various symmetry investigations (Findley et al., 1982; Hornos and Hornos, 1993; Bashford et al., 1997; Bhry et al., 1998; Forger and Sachse, 1998; Frappat et al., 1998) is an extremely important tool for extracting hidden information on the dynamic process of evolu…     

The Interfacing of Preservice and Inservice Experiences of Reform-Based Teaching: A Longitudinal Study

This article contrasts four elementary teachers who were graduates of a teacher education program that incorporated a reform-based mathematics methods course. The report provides results from a four-year longitudinal study that extended from the time that the participants were preservice teachers until the end of their second year of teaching. The article provides background information of each teacher, vignettes from her teaching, excerpts from interviews, and an analysis of each teacher's case. Results from the case studies indicate that two of the four teachers sustained their cognitively-based conceptions about mathematics teaching and learning, and implemented these conceptions into practice. The analysis suggests that there were several factors that influenced the teachers' conceptions and the choices they made in their teaching: personal commitment, professional strength, curriculum, planning, assessment, beliefs, knowledge, and support from school administration. The article concludes with implications for teaching and questions about the nature of what might be required in the beginning years of teaching if new teachers are expected to implement reform-based mathematics teaching practices. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Influence of Education and Family Background on Women's Earnings in Midlife: evidence from a British national birth cohort study

Studies which have investigated the influence of education on adult earnings are almost exclusively concerned with men and take little account of family influences on either education or later earnings. Those studies which have information on women's earnings focus on gender differentials rather than differences between women in opportunities and outcomes. This paper which examines the influence of education and family background on the midlife earnings of a national cohort of British women born immediately after the Second World War is an attempt to redress this situation. It shows that the few women who were able to take full advantage of the expansion in educational opportunities and achieve high educational qualifications earned significantly more in adult life than less educated females. Family background played an important role, both through its effect on early educational achievement and attitude to school work, which in turn influenced the type of secondary school attended and the achievement of educational qualifications, and also by well‐educated mothers raising their daughter's career expectations or providing successful role models. In adult life, employment characteristics which indicated a long‐term commitment to full‐time work and the decision not to have children, or to delay childbearing, were also important predictors of later economic success in this cohort, but did not explain the prior effects of education and family background. Advanced educational qualifications were the key to economic success for women bom in the early post‐war period.     

Rapid bioparticle concentration and detection by combining a discharge driven vortex with surface enhanced Raman scattering

Rapid concentration and detection of bacteria in integrated chips and microfluidic devices is needed for the advancement of lab-on-a-chip devices because current detection methods require high concentrations of bacteria which render them impractical. We present a new chip-scale rapid bacteria concentration technique combined with surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) to enhance the detection of low bacteria count samples. This concentration technique relies on convection by a long-range converging vortex to concentrate the bacteria into a packed mound of 200 μm in diameter within 15 min. Concentration of bioparticle samples as low as 10⁴ colony forming units (CFU)∕ml are presented using batch volumes as large as 150 μl. Mixtures of silver nanoparticles with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Escherichia coli F-amp, and Bacillus subtilis produce distinct and noticeably different Raman spectra, illustrating that this technique can be used as a detection and identification tool.     

Preservice Secondary Science Teachers’ Teaching and Reflections During a Teacher Education Program

The 39 preservice teachers (PSTs) who participated in this study were enrolled in a masters program for secondary science teacher certification. Initially they held broad ideas about teaching and learning gleaned from their own experiences. Guided by the program course work, some PSTs embraced the pedagogical approaches introduced in the program, applied them in their teaching, and reflected on the outcomes. Their reflections showed that they were focused on keeping all of their students interested in science and on student participation in the process of meaning-making. Some PSTs embraced the program goals but struggled to achieve them in teaching. Others focused on transmission of content and did not attempt to develop an environment of student agency. There were nine career-changer PSTs and most of them remained teacher-centered throughout the program. The implications of student- and teacher-centered approaches adopted by the PSTs and the rationales provided by them are discussed in the paper.