Reaching a Consensus on the Definition of Genetic Literacy that Is Required from a Twenty-First-Century Citizen

To determine what knowledge of genetics is needed for decision-making on genetic-related issues, a consensus-reaching approach was used. An international group of 57 experts, involved in teaching, studying, or developing genetic education and communication or working with genetic applications in medicine, agriculture, or forensics, answered the questions: “What knowledge of genetics is relevant to those individuals not professionally involved in science?” and “Why is this knowledge relevant?” The answers were classified in different knowledge components following the PISA 2015 science framework. During a workshop with the participants, the results were discussed and applied to seven cases in which genetic knowledge is relevant for decision-making. The analysis of these discussions resulted in a revised framework consisting of nine conceptual knowledge components, three sociocultural components, and four epistemic components. The framework can be used in curricular decisions; its open character allows for including new technologies and applications and facilitates comparisons of different cases.     

Diagnosing Students’ Understanding of the Nature of Models

Students’ understanding of models in science has been subject to a number of investigations. The instruments the researchers used are suitable for educational research but, due to their complexity, cannot be employed directly by teachers. This article presents forced choice (FC) tasks, which, assembled as a diagnostic instrument, are supposed to measure students’ understanding of the nature of models efficiently, while being sensitive enough to detect differences between individuals. In order to evaluate if the diagnostic instrument is suitable for its intended use, we propose an approach that complies with the demand to integrate students’ responses to the tasks into the validation process. Evidence for validity was gathered based on relations to other variables and on students’ response processes. Students’ understanding of the nature of models was assessed using three methods: FC tasks, open-ended tasks and interviews (N?=?448). Furthermore, concurrent think-aloud protocols (N?=?30) were performed. The results suggest that the method and the age of the students have an effect on their understanding of the nature of models. A good understanding of the FC tasks as well as a convergence in the findings across the three methods was documented for grades eleven and twelve. This indicates that teachers can use the diagnostic instrument for an efficient and, at the same time, valid diagnosis for this group. Finally, the findings of this article may provide a possible explanation for alternative findings from previous studies as a result of specific methods that were used.     

The Future of Defunct Religious Buildings: Dutch Approaches to Their Adaptive Re-use

Across the Western world, membership in the established organized churches is on the decline with a concomitant reduction in the need for churches and church halls. As redundant and unused churches are the focus of vandalism and decay, owners and heritage managers are looking for options to adaptively re-use such buildings. This article reviews the literature on the re-use of churches in the Netherlands, which has long history of innovatively addressing the problems. The options available range from re-use for religious purposes by other denominations or faiths, to community use (multi-purpose, sport, music etc.), and private use, which can be either commercial or residential. The attitudes of the community and the original property owners play a major part in successful adaptive re-use. Because of its long history, the Dutch experience in adaptive re-use of religious buildings has much to offer heritage managers in other countries faced with this emergent management issue.     

Cognitive brain potentials in kindergarten children with subtyped risks of reading retardation

Cognition-related brain responses to meaningful and meaningless figures were registered in 5-year-old kindergarten children who either had been subtyped as being at-risk of developing an L- or P-type dyslexia (LAL versus LAP) or who were not at-risk. While identifying, naming, or categorizing pictures, event-related potentials (ERP) were registered. Three cognition-related components were found: the N460, the P780, and the Slow Wave (SW). LAP-children produced weak N460 activity across tasks, whereas LAL children, and to a lesser degree, non-risk children produced robust task-dependent activity. This finding may indicate that LAP-children lack semantic input while processing the figures. P780 latencies to frequently occurring figures were found hemisphere-dependent: LAP-children showed longer latencies in the right than in the left hemisphere, whereas the distribution was reversed in the LAL and non-risk children. It was also found that the right hemisphere is generally responsible for a lion's share of the processing of figures and therefore it seems that the right hemisphere of LAP-children invests ample time in doing so. Whereas LAP-children showed largest SW amplitude differences between frequent and infrequent stimuli at posterior locations, LAL children did so at frontal locations. Assuming that the SW represents working-memory processes, it may be that working-memory in LAP-children deals with figure-relevant visual-spatial information and with figure-derived concepts in LAL children. Overall, the findings suggest that LAL and LAP represent two different groups of kindergartners at risk of dyslexia and that these differences, to some degree, fit with the presumed etiology of L- and P-type dyslexia.     

How to evaluate rankings of academic entities using test data

In the field of scientometrics, impact indicators and ranking algorithms are frequently evaluated using unlabelled test data comprising relevant entities (e.g., papers, authors, or institutions) that are considered important. The rationale is that the higher some algorithm ranks these entities, the better its performance. To compute a performance score for an algorithm, an evaluation measure is required to translate the rank distribution of the relevant entities into a single-value performance score. Until recently, it was simply assumed that taking the average rank (of the relevant entities) is an appropriate evaluation measure when comparing ranking algorithms or fine-tuning algorithm parameters.With this paper we propose a framework for evaluating the evaluation measures themselves. Using this framework the following questions can now be answered: (1) which evaluation measure should be chosen for an experiment, and (2) given an evaluation measure and corresponding performance scores for the algorithms under investigation, how significant are the observed performance differences?Using two publication databases and four test data sets we demonstrate the functionality of the framework and analyse the stability and discriminative power of the most common information retrieval evaluation measures. We find that there is no clear winner and that the performance of the evaluation measures is highly dependent on the underlying data. Our results show that the average rank is indeed an adequate and stable measure. However, we also show that relatively large performance differences are required to confidently determine if one ranking algorithm is significantly superior to another. Lastly, we list alternative measures that also yield stable results and highlight measures that should not be used in this context.     

Known-item Searches Resulting in Zero Hits: Considerations for Discovery Systems

The goal of this article is to understand the reasons why known-item search queries entered in a discovery system return zero hits. We analyze a sample of 708 known-item queries and classify them into four categories of zero hits with regard to whether the item is held by the library and whether the query is formulated correctly: (1) item in stock, but query incorrect, (2) item not in stock, (3) item in stock, but incomplete or erroneous metadata, (4) query is ambiguous or not understandable. The main reasons for zero hits are caused by acquisition and erroneous search queries. We discuss possible solutions for known-item queries resulting in zero hits from the side of the system and show that 30% of zero hits could easily be avoided by applying automatic spelling correction. We argue that libraries can improve their discovery systems or online catalogs by applying strategies to avoid or cope with zero hits inspired by web search engines and commercial search web sites.     

Interaction sociale et acquisition de la conservation du volume

Numerous experiments have shown that social interaction often plays a positive role in the acquisition of new cognitive operations. However, some experiments do not show such effect. One possible reason for such a lack in specific interaction situations could be the absence or paucity of systematic confrontations between partners’ viewpoints. The present experiment (N: 141) on the acquisition of the notion of volume shows that when brought to systematically alternate their interventions in an interaction situation, subjects progress relatively more as compared to a control group (individual condition), than subjects who interact without obligation to alternate.     

Strengthening internal quality assurance processes: facilitating student evaluation committees to contribute

Student evaluation committees play a crucial role in internal quality assurance processes as representatives of the student body. However, the students on these committees sometimes experience difficulty in providing constructive and structured feedback to faculty in an environment characterised by a strong power differential between student and staff. This study aimed to evaluate a leadership and quality assurance training implemented for students involved in internal quality assurance. Furthermore, we explored how students give shape to their internal quality assurance role. Students from three health sciences programmes participated in a mixed methods study to evaluate the training and reflect on their internal quality assurance role. Overall, the students were very enthusiastic about the training. Qualitative data analysis indicated that in their internal quality assurance role, students: (1) harnessed the power of the entire student population; (2) tried to create focus and take charge; (3) searched for a common ground with staff, and (4) they explained how they dealt with the power differential. Providing training for students with internal quality assurance roles is a valuable endeavour. Future research needs to investigate further ways to help students to contribute to internal quality assurance processes in higher education.     

Professors as value agents: a typology of management academics’ value structures

The paper addresses the paradox of value-free science and the need for value-oriented management education. Taking the values discussion in the German management community as an example, we identify two stereotypes in management literature: an allegedly value-free scientist who limits responsibility to economic aims and a value-laden academic who accepts responsibilities for societal aims and who aims to influence students’ values. These stereotypes are then challenged against empirical data from a global survey of management academics. While the stereotypes are shown to be of only limited relevance, five clusters of management academics are identified based on their economic values, their social values and their intention to influence their students’ values. As determinants of cluster attribution, cultural environment and discipline prove the most influential on value differences in the global sample. Gender, in contrast, has no significant impact. Finally, implications for higher education institutions are derived that may help to cope with values more consciously and more professionally.