Coding Classroom Interactions for Collective and Individual Engagement

This article characterizes “engagement in science learning” from a sociocultural perspective and offers a mixed method approach to measuring engagement that combines critical discourse analysis (CDA) and social network analysis (SNA). Conceptualizing engagement from a sociocultural perspective, the article discusses the advantages of a mixed methodological approach, and specifically how mixed methods can expand and enrich our understanding of engagement in certain science learning situations. Through this sociocultural viewpoint, engagement is defined as meaningful changes in disciplinary discourse practice, which captures the dialectical relationship between the individual and collective. The combined use of CDA and SNA integrates an individual's relative position in a group with her situated language use.     

Do innovation measures actually measure innovation? Obliteration,symbolic adoption,and other finicky challenges in tracking innovation diffusion

Although innovation diffusion is a central topic in policy and strategy, its measurement remains difficult – particularly in cases where the innovation is a complex and possibly ambiguous practice. In this paper, we develop four theoretical mechanisms that may bias diffusion markers by leading to the understatement and/or overstatement of diffusion at different points in time. Employing the case of “green chemistry,” we then compare three different diffusion markers – keywords, database index terms, and domain expert assessments – and we demonstrate how they lead to differing conclusions about the magnitude and timing of diffusion, organizational demography, publication outlets, and collaboration. We also provide suggestive evidence of extensive “greenwashing” by particular organization types and in particular countries. Building on these findings, we point to potential challenges with existing diffusion studies, and we make a case for the incorporation of practitioners in construct measurement and for the integration of comparative metrics in diffusion studies.     

Emergent pedagogy: learning to enjoy the uncontrollable—and make it productive

This essay reflects the shared experiences of four college faculty members (a biologist, a psychologist, a computer scientist, and a feminist literary scholar) working together with K-12 teachers to explore a new perspective on educational practice. It offers a novel rationale for independent thinking and learning, one that derives from rapidly developing interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary inquiries in the sciences and social sciences into what are known as “complex” or “emergent” systems. Using emergent systems as a model of teaching and learning makes at least three significant contributions to our thinking bout teaching, in three very different dimensions. It invites us into an awareness that the brains of individual students and teachers operate as emergent systems that are neither possible nor desirable to control fully. It invites us to appreciate as well that the activities and benefits of a classroom are not all individual interactions between teacher and student. Interactions among students and teachers are collectively contributing to a somewhat unpredictable project with an insistently social dimension, which is in turn crucial to the individual achievements of all involved. Finally, emergent pedagogy encourages us to consider more carefully the relations between the individual classroom and the larger educational community of which it is a component, including a challenge to rethink the matter of assessment.     

The shuffling of mathematics problems improves learning

In most mathematics textbooks, each set of practice problems is comprised almost entirely of problems corresponding to the immediately previous lesson. By contrast, in a small number of textbooks, the practice problems are systematically shuffled so that each practice set includes a variety of problems drawn from many previous lessons. The standard and shuffled formats differ in two critical ways, and each was the focus of an experiment reported here. In Experiment 1, college students learned to solve one kind of problem, and subsequent practice problems were either massed in a single session (as in the standard format) or spaced across multiple sessions (as in the shuffled format). When tested 1 week later, performance was much greater after spaced practice. In Experiment 2, students first learned to solve multiple types of problems, and practice problems were either blocked by type (as in the standard format) or randomly mixed (as in the shuffled format). When tested 1 week later, performance was vastly superior after mixed practice. Thus, the results of both experiments favored the shuffled format over the standard format.     

Increasing Interaction in a Flipped Online Classroom through Video Conferencing

Interactive learning is vital to schooled learning because it encourages and enables the exploration and application of knowledge. The difficulty of providing for this learning-based interaction among students who never meet in person has been a continuing concern in online education. This paper describes six different interactive structures (whole group discussions, break-out groups, show-and-tell, independent small groups, online conferences, and virtual poster sessions) developed to allow students in online courses to interact virtually face-to-face using free video conferencing programs and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each. Student response to these video conferencing structures in 18 fully online classes was overwhelmingly positive, based on data from anonymous end-of-course evaluations. Student comments emphasized increased engagement and enjoyment from being able to see and talk with each other in both large and small groups, and the value of the relationships and learning community they believed such interaction fostered.     

An Evaluation of Three Interdisciplinary Social Science Events Outside of the College Classroom

This article describes three interdisciplinary events held outside of the classroom to examine social psychological concepts in the criminal justice system, with undergraduate students enrolled in criminal justice and psychology courses. These events can most accurately be described as using a synthetic interdisciplinary approach, in which the disciplines of psychology and criminal justice remain clearly identifiable in looking at phenomena like occurrences of bystander apathy, while enabling a holistic view of these phenomena. First, 75 students celebrated the life of Kitty Genovese, a famous victim of bystander apathy. Later in the semester, the same students competed in a game-show-like review session. Finally, 45 students explored the intersection of the mental health and criminal justice systems with professionals from various fields. Overall, students enjoyed the social interaction with their peers across the majors, as well as with their professors and professionals in the field. Students also indicated that the interactive learning techniques enhanced their new understanding of the intersection of the disciplines. Future research should investigate the offering of interdisciplinary events to students within and across academic divisions to build community and enhance students' understanding of their educational and career opportunities.     

An analysis of the relationship between the linear hammer speed and the thrower applied forces during the hammer throw for male and female throwers

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the cable force and linear hammer speed in the hammer throw and to identify how the magnitude and direction of the cable force affects the fluctuations in linear hammer speed. Five male (height: 1.88 ± 0.06 m; body mass: 106.23 ± 4.83 kg) and five female (height: 1.69 ± 0.05 m; body mass: 101.60 ± 20.92 kg) throwers participated and were required to perform 10 throws each. The hammer's linear velocity and the cable force and its tangential component were calculated via hammer head positional data. As expected, a strong correlation was observed between decreases in the linear hammer speed and decreases in the cable force (normalised for hammer weight). A strong correlation was also found to exist between the angle by which the cable force lags the radius of rotation at its maximum (when tangential force is at its most negative) and the size of the decreases in hammer speed. These findings indicate that the most effective way to minimise the effect of the negative tangential force is to reduce the size of the lag angle.     

Interleaving Helps Students Distinguish among Similar Concepts

When students encounter a set of concepts (or terms or principles) that are similar in some way, they often confuse one with another. For instance, they might mistake one word for another word with a similar spelling (e.g., allusion instead of illusion) or choose the wrong strategy for a mathematics problem because it resembles a different kind of problem. By one proposition explored in this review, these kinds of errors occur more frequently when all exposures to one of the concepts are grouped together. For instance, in most middle school science texts, the questions in each assignment are devoted to the same concept, and this blocking of exposures ensures that students need not learn to distinguish between two similar concepts. In an alternative approach described in this review, exposures to each concept are interleaved with exposures to other concepts, so that a question on one concept is followed by a question on a different concept. In a number of experiments that have compared interleaving and blocking, interleaving produced better scores on final tests of learning. The evidence is limited, though, and ecologically valid studies are needed. Still, a prudent reading of the data suggests that at least a portion of the exposures should be interleaved.