Relationship between teacher intentions and their classroom use of Superscience

Using the conceptual model of reasoned action, one would expect that what teachers do with instructional materials would be influenced by their internal beliefs and their external constraints. In this two-year study with elementary teachers, using a supplemental science instructional resource,Superscience, it was found that teachers' internal beliefs about what will benefit their students are linked to the external constraints of their students' interests and the expected curriculum. Even if the teachers believed that the content of the resource would be helpful, they were not likely to use it if they believed it did not fit the expected curriculum.     

Public funds and local biotechnology firm creation

A long stream of academic literature has established that public funding towards research and development matters for economic growth because it relates to increases in innovation, productivity and the like. The impact of public funding on the creation of new firms has received less attention in this literature despite theoretical constructs that support such association. In the present paper we study whether indeed there is a relationship between public research funds and local firm births in the context of the U.S. biotechnology industry. In doing so, we introduce a number of changes that strengthen the robustness of our findings when compared with existing literature. These changes include a direct measure of research expenditures and a considerably lengthier longitudinal dataset which allows us to capture a structural relationship and not a chance event. We empirically demonstrate that increases in the level of research funding from the National Institutes of Health towards biotechnology associate with increases in the number of biotechnology firm births at the Metropolitan Statistical Area level. Further, we reveal that public funds towards established firms associate with local firm births considerably more strongly when compared with funds towards universities and research institutes/hospitals. We conclude the paper with academic and policy implications of the present work that highlight the complexity of factors that underlie the creation of local firms in high technology industries.     

Sustainability of a Scale-Up Intervention in Early Mathematics: A Longitudinal Evaluation of Implementation Fidelity

Research Findings: We evaluated the fidelity of implementation and the sustainability of effects of a research-based model for scaling up educational interventions. The model was implemented by 64 teachers in 26 schools in 2 distal city districts serving low-resource communities, with schools randomly assigned to condition. Practice or Policy: Although a logical expectation would be that, after the cessation of external support and professional development provided by the intervention, teachers would show a pattern of decreasing levels of fidelity, these teachers actually demonstrated increasing levels of fidelity, continuing to demonstrate high levels of sustained fidelity in their implementation of the underlying curriculum 2 years past exposure. Different profiles of variables predicted separate aspects of sustainability.     

Is Word-Problem Solving a Form of Text Comprehension?

This study’s hypotheses were that (a) word-problem (WP) solving is a form of text comprehension that involves language comprehension processes, working memory, and reasoning, but (b) WP solving differs from other forms of text comprehension by requiring WP-specific language comprehension as well as general language comprehension. At the start of the 2nd grade, children (n = 206; on average, 7 years, 6 months) were assessed on general language comprehension, working memory, nonlinguistic reasoning, processing speed (a control variable), and foundational skill (arithmetic for WPs; word reading for text comprehension). In spring, they were assessed on WP-specific language comprehension, WPs, and text comprehension. Path analytic mediation analysis indicated that effects of general language comprehension on text comprehension were entirely direct, whereas effects of general language comprehension on WPs were partially mediated by WP-specific language. By contrast, effects of working memory and reasoning operated in parallel ways for both outcomes.     

Psychological Allostatic Load: the Cost of Persistence in STEM Disciplines

Research in Science Education - The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of persistence within STEM learning environments as a function of cumulative stress and latent trauma. The...     

YouTube-based course orientation videos delivered prior to matriculation fail to alleviate medical student anxiety about anatomy

Gross anatomy is a source of anxiety for matriculating medical students due to the large volume of information presented in a truncated timeline, and because it may be their first exposure to human cadavers. This study aimed to assess if video-based resources would affect matriculating medical students' anatomy state anxiety levels. Videos were designed to be short, YouTube-based units that served to provide orientation information about the anatomy course, dissection facilities, and available study resources to dispel anxiety around beginning their anatomy studies. To evaluate the impact of the videos, students in two consecutive matriculating years (2018 and 2019) completed the validated State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and a demographic questionnaire. The 2019 cohort (n = 118) served as the experimental group with access to the videos; while the 2018 cohort (n = 120) without video access served as a historical control. Analyses revealed that the groups were equivalent in terms of trait anxiety (P = 0.854) and anatomy state anxiety even when student video exposure was controlled (P = 0.495). Anatomy state anxiety was only significantly lower in students with prior formal anatomy exposure (P = 0.006). Further inquiry into students' prior anatomy experience identified that individuals with post-secondary dissection experience were significantly less anxious than those without formal anatomical experience (P = 0.023). These results may serve as a cautionary tale to educators; while preference for video-based instructional materials is prevalent in the literature, videos delivered on public social media platforms fail to prepare students for the psychological impact of studying human anatomy.     

Learning to See with Different Eyes: A Nietzschean Challenge to Multicultural Dialogue

Empathy is a necessity in our multicultural world. Modern democratic societies are home to communities with the most diverse religious, political, and moral convictions, and these convictions often directly, even perilously, contradict one another. Educational theorists differ on how empathy can be taught in the face of these contradictions. Does proper pedagogical action entail an attempt to teach students to understand the other, to see their world through the eyes of the other? Or is such an attempt doomed to fail, a vain and presumptuous striving to surpass the epistemologically preordained limits of subjectivity? While theorists who promote mutual understanding traditionally look to some form of dialogue to establish their empathic pedagogies, those who doubt the possibility of mutual understanding formulate critical, often monological pedagogies in which students are encouraged to “talk back” to their others about their idiosyncratic perspectives. Theorists have thus had choose: dialogue or relativism? Using the robust educational philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, Douglas Yacek demonstrates that this is a most unsatisfactory choice, one that ignores the pedagogical complexity needed to teach students genuine empathy. He argues that Nietzsche's educational writings yield a tripartite empathic pedagogy founded on self‐knowledge, foreign language learning, and experimentalism. Upon these three pedagogical pillars, Yacek problematizes Megan Laverty's recent attempt to formulate an empathic pedagogy as dialogical philosophical inquiry. Although Nietzsche would endorse much of Laverty's pedagogy, Yacek concludes that Nietzsche's pedagogy requires engagement with perspectives across the democratic curriculum and, indeed, beyond.     

Recasting Border Crossing Politics and Pedagogies to Combat Educational Inequity: Experiences,Identities, and Perceptions of Latino/a Immigrant Youth

Educational borderlands are the physical and/or conceptual landscapes where one must negotiate notions of cultural difference as she or he lives and learns—landscapes that envelop an array of pedagogical and cultural spaces, yet are typically guarded by exclusionary tactics. In this article, we examine how US immigrant youth navigate three educational borderlands: the geopolitical, institutional, and home community. We also discuss how educators’ biased ideologies and actions towards these youth solidify borders and increase inequity. Data from studies of California and North Carolina school communities allow us to extend border crossing theories and address how many immigrant youth confront and resist inequities, negotiate their cultural identities, and enact agency. While emphasizing that borderlands are sites of risk and transformation, we also suggest how educators can draw upon their relative power and privilege to cross borders too, advocate for immigrant youth, and ultimately improve education.