Survey of classroom use of representations: development,field test and multilevel analysis

Because of the multimodal nature of learning, doing and reporting science, it is important that students learn how to interpret, construct, relate and translate scientific representations or, in other words, to develop representational competence. Explicit instruction about multimodal representations is needed to foster students’ representational competence in the classroom. However, only a handful studies have surveyed how representations are actually used in science classes. This might be because of the fact that economical instruments for assessing the use of representations in classrooms are not available. To bridge that gap, an instrument was developed, field-tested in biology classes with 175 and 931 students, respectively, and analysed using exploratory and (multilevel) confirmatory factor analyses. Results supported an instrument with six scales and 21 items at the individual and classroom levels covering the following dimensions: (1) interpretation of visual representations, (2) construction of visual representations, (3) use of scientific texts (verbal representations), (4) use of symbolic representations, (5) number of terms used in class, and (6) the extent to which active social construction of knowledge is possible in the class. The scales showed satisfactory discriminant validity and reliability at each level. Further applications of this instrument for researchers and teachers are discussed.     

Negative expertise: comparing differently tenured elder care nurses' negative knowledge

Negative expertise is conceptualised as the professional's ability to avoid errors during practice due to certain cognitive agencies. In this study, negative knowledge (i.e. knowledge about what is wrong in a certain context and situation) is conceptualised as one such agency. This study compares and investigates the negative knowledge of elder care nurses at three different levels of professional experience. Thereby, various forms of negative knowledge—declarative, procedural, self-reflective and vicarious—are investigated. Moreover, the specificity of negative knowledge is compared across different levels of professional experience. Verbal data was collected from a prompting task study of 37 elder care nurses. These were prompted 20 diagnoses of varying typicality for the professional field. The nurses were asked what was critical to pay attention to and what ought to be avoided in case of these diagnoses. The study's results reveal a significant superiority of highly tenured elder care nurses in vicarious negative knowledge, as well as in highly specified negative knowledge. Procedural and procedural negative knowledge (PNK)—which are the most important facets in quantitative terms—show an approximately parallel developmental pattern among the different groups. For declarative knowledge, a U-shaped intermediate effect was discovered. It is concluded that PNK has the most immediate error-preventive function. With regards to future research, the great specificity of highly tenured elder care nurses' negative knowledge discovered in this study is discussed here as one possible explanation as to why they are able to intentionally avoid errors (i.e. their negative expertise).     

Factors affecting teachers’ student-centered classroom computer use

The present study aims at investigating which factors are relevant to induce teachers’ student-centered classroom computer use. Survey data were collected from 361 teachers at comprehensive schools. Based on a systemic view of technology use in schools, different individual teacher characteristics and school contextual factors were examined. Results from a four-step hierarchical regression reveal that student-centered classroom computer use could be significantly predicted by certain contextual factors: the type of school (secondary modern and high school), the existence of an ICT school policy plan, as well as by the individual teacher characteristics of belief in constructivist pedagogy and their frequency of classroom computer use. The final regression model accounted for approximately 31% of the variance in the outcome measure for these factors.     

International trends in health science librarianship: Part 2--Northern Europe

This is the third in a series of articles exploring international trends in health science librarianship in the first decade of the 21st century. The invited authors were asked to reflect on developments in their country--viz. Austria, Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Future issues will track trends in the Nordic countries, Southern Europe and Latin America. JM.