Programmed materials in seventh-grade open-ended laboratory experiences

A carefully designed exploration of programmed materials used in conjunction with open-ended laboratory exercises.     

Reviews

The Development of Scientific Thinking Skills. Deanna Kuhn, Eric Amsel, and Michael O'Loughlin, Academic Press, 1988. 249 pp.

Understanding the Representational Mind, Josef Perner, MIT Press, 1991. 348 pp.

Literacy as Involvement: The Acts of Writers and Readers, and Texts. Deborah Brandt. Carbondaie: Southern Illinois, 1990. 159 pp.

Dialogue, Dialectic, and Conversation: A Social Perspective on the Function of Writing. Gregory Clark. Carbondale: Southern Illinois, 1990. 93 pp.

Hypermedia and Literary Studies. Ed. Paul Delany and George P. Landow. Cambridge: MIT P, 1991. 352 pp.

Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Jay David Bolter. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991. 258 pp. Also from Erlbaum, Writing Space: A Hypertext for Macintosh.

Writing and Speaking in Business. Gretchen N. Vik, Clyde W. Wilkinson, and Dorothy C. Wilkinson. 10th ed. Homewood: Irwin, 1990. 636 pp.

Communication for Management and Business. Norman B. Sigband and Arthur H. Bell. 5th ed. Glenview: Scott, 1989. 783 pp.

Business Communication Today. Courtland L. Bovee and John V. Thill. 2nd ed. New York: Random, 1989. 680 pp.

Guidelines for Preparing Proposals: A Manual on How to Organize Winning Proposals. Roy Meador. Chelsea: Lewis, 1985. 116 pp.     

An Examination of Black Science Teacher Educators’ Experiences with Multicultural Education, Equity, and Social Justice

Diversity, multicultural education, equity, and social justice are dominant themes in cultural studies (Hall in Cultural dialogues in cultural studies. Routledge, New York, pp 261–274, 1996; Wallace 1994). Zeichner (Studying teacher education: The report of the AERA panel on research and teacher education. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, pp 737–759, 2005) called for research studies of teacher educators because little research exists on teacher educators since the late 1980s. Thomson et al. (2001) identified essential elements needed in order for critical multiculturalism to be infused in teacher education programs. However, little is known about the commitment and experiences of science teacher educators infusing multicultural education, equity, and social justice into science teacher education programs. This paper examines twenty (20) Black science teacher educators’ teaching experiences as a result of their Blackness and the inclusion of multicultural education, equity, and social justice in their teaching. This qualitative case study of 20 Black science teacher educators found that some of them have attempted and stopped due to student evaluations and the need to gain promotion and tenure. Other participants were able to integrate diversity, multicultural education, equity and social justice in their courses because their colleagues were supportive. Still others continue to struggle with this infusion without the support of their colleagues, and others have stopped The investigators suggest that if science teacher educators are going to prepare science teachers for the twenty first century, then teacher candidates must be challenged to grapple with racial, ethnic, cultural, instructional, and curricular issues and what that must mean to teach science to US students in rural, urban, and suburban school contexts.     

Personal inquiry learning trajectories in geography: technological support across contexts

Student engagement in the design and implementation of inquiries is an effective way for them to learn about the inquiry process and the domain being studied. However, inquiry learning in geography can be challenging for teachers and students due to the complexity of scientific inquiry and the diversity of pupils' and teachers' knowledge and abilities. To address this, the Personal Inquiry project has designed a tool kit that includes nQuire, a Web-based tool to support students through the inquiry process. Here, we identify when, across five lessons comprising an inquiry into microclimates, nQuire was used by a teacher and a case study group of her 12 to 13-year-old students, and the ways in which they adopted nQuire as a tool to facilitate the creation of a coherent and cumulative inquiry learning experience over time. We found that students' use of nQuire supported them in capturing and representing their evolving understanding of inquiry, in defining and supporting their progression through the process of inquiry and in resourcing their cognitive engagement in data interpretation and representation. nQuire supported the students in accumulating and integrating new understandings across contexts and over time. In this way, nQuire successfully resourced and supported the students' learning journeys or trajectories. We conclude that nQuire can be an effective tool for supporting teachers' and students' understanding of the nature of inquiry and how to design and implement inquiries of their own.     

Pupillary and Attentional Responses to Infant Facial Expressions in Mothers Across Socioeconomic Variations

Maternal responses to infant facial expressions were examined in two socioeconomically diverse samples of South African mothers (Study I, N = 111; and Study II, N = 214; age: 17–44 years) using pupil and gaze tracking. Study I showed increased pupil response to infant distress expressions in groups recruited from private as compared to public maternity clinics, possibly reflecting underlying differences in socioeconomic status (SES) across the groups. Study II, sampling uniformly low-SES neighborhoods, found increased pupil dilation and faster orientation to expressions of infant distress, but only in the highest income group. These results are consistent with maternal physiological and attentional sensitivity to infant distress cues but challenge the universality of this sensitivity across socioeconomic diversity.     

PDAs as lifelong learning tools: an activity theory based analysis

This paper describes the use of an activity theory (AT) framework to analyze the ways that distance part time learners and mobile workers adapted and appropriated mobile devices for their activities and in turn how their use of these new tools changed the ways that they carried out their learning or their work. It is argued that there are two key strengths in using an activity theory framework in this context. The first strength is the emphasis activity theory places on tools, including computer artefacts, as mediators of activity. This emphasis focuses attention on the activity itself rather than, for example, simply the interaction between the human and the computer. The focus is on the learner or user’s objectives and activities and the computer is the tool through which the user achieves her objectives. The second strength was referred to briefly above. The AT perspective also enabled analysis of an interactive dynamic process of users or learners and their tools—in this case personal digital assistants (PDAs). It revealed a two way process in which the user adapts the tools they use according to their everyday practice and preferences in order to carry out their activities; and how, in turn, the tools themselves also modify the activities that the user is engaged in. Three case studies illustrate these processes. The first case study is of distance learners’ use of e‐books on PDAs, to supplement their access to other static media such as books and computers. The second case study investigated how mobile workers in the energy industry used mobile devices to access information when away from the office. The third and final case study investigated the use of mobile devices in an art gallery. The paper concludes with a discussion of the information access needs that are apparent in each of these learning contexts, and highlights the pertinent issues in the use of mobile technologies to support lifelong learners’ information needs.