Conceptual change or Conceptual Profile change?

In this paper I draw an overview of a new model to analyse conceptual evolution in the classroom, based on the notion of Conceptual Profile. This model differs from conceptual change models in suggesting that it is possible to use different ways of thinking in different domains and that a new concept does not necessarily replace previous and alternative ideas. According to this model, learning science is to change a conceptual profile and become conscious of the different zones of the profile, which includes commonsense and scientific ideas.To exemplify how the Conceptual Profile notion can help to understand the evolution of conceptions in the classroom I shall determine the different zones that constitute the epistemological and ontological profile of the concepts of the atom and of physical states of matter.     

Popularity versus respect: school structure,peer groups and Latino academic achievement

This article begins with a discussion of recent critiques of Fordham and Ogbu’s argument on the ‘burden of acting white’. These critiques point to the stereotypical and homogeneous characterization of the black peer group by Fordham and Ogbu, as well as their inattention to the ways in which schools relegate into the lower tracks those students who behave too ethnically and who do not demonstrate proficiency with dominant cultural attributes. The second half of the article presents data showing that academic achievement is related to peer‐group membership and that schools are largely responsible for which peer group students join. Based on an ethnographic study at a predominantly Latino urban high school, I argue that Latino high achievers do not necessarily experience the ‘burden of acting white’ as Fordham and Ogbu suggest. This was due to the institutional practices at Hernandez High School, which ensured that high achievers and low achievers occupied different academic and social spaces, resulting in little interaction between the groups, and to the very different culture that prescribed the ways in which members of each group could achieve status.     

A Lakatosian Framework to Analyze Situations of Cognitive Conflict and Controversy in Students' Understanding of Heat Energy and Temperature

The objective of this study is to analyze secondary school students' interactions (conflicts, controversies, and arguments) as they participate in an intact classroom activity designed to facilitate their understanding of heat energy and temperature. The study is based on 32 ninth-grade students in a public school in Londrina, Brazil. Results obtained show that the differentiation between heat energy and temperature constitutes considerable difficulties for the students, and can be considered as part of the hard-core of their understanding (Lakatos, 1970, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 91–196). Student interactions (video taped) were classified into an Alternative Model, Transitional Model, and Scientific Model, depending on the degree to which they reflected a progressive transition in their hard-core. Students generally resisted a change in their conceptual understanding. Some students were able to question the hard-core of their beliefs and construct a Transitory Model. Some students experienced a further progressive transition by constructing a Scientific Model, based on the understanding that Temperature only measures the energy of agitation. Methodology used also provided a glimpse of how a particular student grappled with the conflicts in order to facilitate progressive transition in understanding. It is concluded that given the opportunity to discuss, reflect, consider alternative/conflicting situations, students can construct models that increase progressively in their heuristic/explanatory power.     

Comparison of anxiety levels of students in introductory earth science and geology courses

Students in geology and earth science courses were not anxious about taking these courses as measured by the State-Triat Anxiety Inventory. Students in each course were split into two grade groups. It was shown that students whose grades were in the higher group had low anxiety, which continued to be reduced during the course. Students in the lower grade group had high anxiety, which increased during the course. There was no difference between anxiety scores of males and females. In general, students who planned to elect additional courses had lower state anxiety and higher grades than students who did not plan to elect additional courses in geology and earth science.     

A Complex Systems Network Approach to Quantifying Peer Effects: Evidence From Ghanaian Preprimary Classrooms

Research on classroom peer effects has focused nearly exclusively on high-income countries and on academic skills. Little is known about peer effects in low-income countries and whether effects differ under different educational environments (e.g., teacher-directed versus child-centered, conditions of concentrated advantage or disadvantage). Based on a data set of Ghanaian preprimary classrooms in the Greater Accra Region collected in the 2015–2016 school year, we use complex system networks with multilevel modeling to study the presence and magnitude of peer effects. Results corroborated small statistically significant effects on academic and nonacademic skills (d = .06–.10). Peer effects on literacy were larger for children in public schools, who are relatively more disadvantaged than their private school counterparts. Teacher-directivity intensity did not moderate peer effects.     

Special issue on computational models of classical conditioning guest editors’ introduction

In the present special issue, the performance of current computational models of classical conditioning was evaluated under three requirements: (1) Models were to be tested against a list of previously agreed-upon phenomena; (2) the parameters were fixed across simulations; and (3) the simulations used to test the models had to be made available. These requirements resulted in three major products: (a) a list of fundamental classical-conditioning results for which there is a consensus about their reliability; (b) the necessary information to evaluate each of the models on the basis of its ordinal successes in accounting for the experimental data; and (c) a repository of computational models ready to generate simulations. We believe that the contents of this issue represent the 2012 state of the art in computational modeling of classical conditioning and provide a way to find promising avenues for future model development.     

Growth in emotion understanding across early childhood: A cohort-sequential model of firstborn children across the transition to siblinghood

Emotion understanding develops rapidly in early childhood. Firstborn children (N = 231, 55% girls/45% boys, 86% White, 5% Black, 3% Asian, 4% Latinx, M_age = 29.92 months) were recruited into a longitudinal study from 2004 to 2008 in the United States and administered a series of tasks assessing eight components of young children's emotion understanding from ages 1 to 5. Cohort sequential analysis across three cohorts (1-, 2-, and 3-year-olds) demonstrated a progression of children's emotion understanding from basic emotion identification to an understanding of false-belief emotions, even after controlling for children's verbal ability. Emotion understanding scores were related to children's theory of mind and parent reports of empathy, but not emotional reactivity, providing evidence of both convergent and discriminant validity.     

Guidance and education,an analysis of young peoples’ discontinuous school pathways: the guidance-oriented approach of educational institutions

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance - This article presents results of an investigation that explored the school pathways of young Argentine unskilled workers without a...