Ways of Knowing beyond Facts and Laws of Science: An Ethnographic Investigation of Student Engagement in Scientific Practices

In this study, an anthropological perspective informed by sociolinguistic discourse analysis was used to examine how teachers, students, and scientists constructed ways of investigating and knowing in science. Events in a combined fourth‐ and fifth‐grade elementary class were studied to document how the participating teacher provided opportunities for students to diverge from the intended curriculum to pursue their questions concerning the behavior of sea animals in a marine science observation tank. Analysis of the classroom discourse identified ways that particular teaching strategies provided opportunities for student engagement in scientific practices. Implications of this study for the teaching of science in elementary classrooms include the value of student‐initiated science explorations under the conditions of uncertainty and for topics in which the teacher lacked relevant disciplinary knowledge. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 237–258, 2000.     

Impulse control or selective attention: Remedial programs for hyperactivity

The purpose of the present study was to compare various cognitive treatment approaches for ameliorating the difficulties of hyperactive children on tasks requiring sustained vigilance and accuracy. Differential training techniques comparing training in attention to inhibitory control indicated that a combination of attentional and inhibitory control strategies was most efficacious in enhancing cognitive performance of these children. The findings from the present research further were interpreted to support the hypothesis suggesting that problems with impulse control and attention occur concurrently in hyperkinetic children, although remediation in attentional deploying strategies is necessary for enhancing cognitive performance of these children. The results from this study further indicated that training hyperkinetic children solely in inhibitory control simply is not sufficient for enhancing cognitive performance.     

“You're going to want to find out which and prove it”: collective argumentation in a mathematics classroom

One of the proposals of the North American educational reform movement is that teachers should stress scientific argumentation more than the manipulation of symbols and algorithms in their mathematics instruction. The aim of this article is to apply some theoretical concepts, drawn from the fields of sociolinguistics and rhetoric, to the analysis of argumentation in a lesson conducted in an urban middle school classroom. Our analysis focuses on the implementation of the classroom teacher's instructional goals during a lesson on area measurement. As a result of our analyses, we found that she achieved her instructional goals of being nondirective in her teaching and getting students actively involved in arguing about mathematical concepts. The teacher was able to orchestrate discussion by recruiting attention and participation from her class, aligning students with argumentative positions through reported speech, highlighting positions through repetition, and pointing out important aspects of their arguments through expansion. In addition, we also found that her students differed in the way they framed the mathematical content of the lesson in terms of the facts or grounds, algorithms or warrants, premises or backings, as well as solutions or claims. Their arguments also varied in terms of explicitness and ability to integrate their classmates' arguments. In conclusion, we feel that discourse analysis, based on sociolinguistic and rhetorical theoretical frameworks, can be a valuable tool for the evaluation of educational reform in mathematics.     

Right ventricular function in elite male athletes meeting the structural echocardiographic task force criteria for arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy

Athlete pre-participation screening is focused on detecting pathological conditions like arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC). The diagnosis of ARVC is established by applying the revised 2010 ARVC Task Force Criteria (TFC) that assesses RV structure and function. Some athletes may meet structural TFC without having ARVC but we do not know the consequences for RV function. This study compared RV structural and functional indices in male athletes that meet the structural TFC (MTFC) for ARVC and those that do not (NMTFC). We recruited 214 male elite athletes. All participants underwent 2D, Doppler, tissue Doppler and strain (ε) echocardiography with a focused and comprehensive assessment of the right heart. Athletes were grouped on RV structural data: MTFC n = 34; NMTFC n = 180. Functional data were compared between groups. By selection, MTFC had larger absolute and scaled RV outflow tract (RVOT) diameter compared to NMTFC (P ?0.05) but these athletes did not develop a proportional increase in the RV inflow dimensions. There was no difference in global conventional RV systolic function between both groups however, there was significantly lower global RV ε in athletes that MTFC which can be explained, in part, by the RVOT dimension.