Gender ‘matters’ in the primary classroom: Pupils' and teachers' perspectives

A recent project involving Year 3 (seven–eight year‐old) pupils and their teachers revealed that ‘gender matters’ differently to boys and girls, and teachers. The study sought to elicit whether pupils and their teachers felt the gender of a teacher mattered to their experiences of schooling. Pupils were concerned about how effective teachers were in carrying out their professional functions and a teacher's gender was subsumed within this. For these pupils, ‘gender mattered’ in terms of the construction of their own gender identities. In contrast, teachers were aware of and attentive to the gender of pupils in managing and organising classroom interactions. The variety of differing views expressed and positions adopted towards the place of gender in teacher–pupil interactions demonstrates the complexity of developing ‘one size fits all’ approaches to tackling gender equity in the classroom.     

Neonatal Stepping in Relation to Terrestrial Optic Flow

This experiment examined whether newborn stepping, a primitive form of bipedal locomotion, could be modulated by optical flow. Forty-eight 3-day-old infants were exposed to optical flows that were projected onto a horizontal surface above which the infants were suspended. Significantly more air steps were elicited by exposure to a terrestrial optical flow specifying forward translation than by a rotating optical flow or a static optical pattern. Thus, a rudimentary coupling between optical flow and stepping is present at birth, suggesting a precocious capacity in the newborn to perceive and utilize visual information specifying self-motion. The findings may help the early diagnosis of infants with visual or visual-motor deficits and the development of visually based interventions for disabled infants.     

On linear generalized neutral differential delay systems

In this paper, the class of linear generalized neutral differential delay systems with time-invariant coefficients is studied. These kinds of systems are inherent in many physical and engineering phenomena. Using the matrix pencil theory, we decompose it into five subsystems, whose solutions are obtained. Moreover, the form of the initial function is given, so the corresponding initial value problem is uniquely solvable.     

Evaluation of oxidative stress and antioxidant status of pregnant women suffering from malaria in Cameroon

Oxidative stress is thought to be involved in the pathophysiology of malaria, especially in pregnancy where natural resistance is markedly reduced. In the present study we investigated oxidative stress in 315 pregnant women out of which 159 had Plasmodium falciparum malaria and 154 controls. We evaluated the level of lipid peroxidation products (MDA level) in the plasma, the activity of erythrocyte antioxidant defense enzymes, superoxide dismutase (SOD, EC: 1.15.1.1) and catalase (Cat, EC: 1.11.1.6) as well as the ability to resist oxidative stress by the FRAP (Ferric Reducing Ability of Plasma) assay. Total erythrocyte protein levels were also examined. For the two groups of patients, several differences between the biochemical parameters tested were found. Median parasitaemia in women with malaria was 25,392 parasites/μl of blood (Range1200–82000), while in controls we had no parasites found in thin and thick smears. Levels of lipid peroxidation products (MDA) were significantly higher in patients with parasitemia than in healthy asymptomatic volunteers (mean: 0.844 ± 0.290 and 0.384 ± 0.129 respectively, p<0.001). This MDA level was higher in primigravidea and also correlates well with parasite density (p<0.001). Catalase activity in erythrocytes of women with malaria did not differ statistically from that of controls. In contrast, SOD activity of patients with malaria was found to be significantly higher than that of controls (mean: 0.7899 ± 0.2777 and 0.4263 ± 0.2629 respectively, p<0.05). FRAP values declined, from parasitemic patients (1.4619 ± 0.6565) compare to controls (2.4396 ± 0.8883, p<0.05), particularly in the first and third trimester of gestation (p<0.05 and p<0.01 respectively). Finally, total erythrocyte protein concentrations of women with malaria did not differ from that of the controls. Our results suggest an imbalance between oxidants and antioxidants in pregnant women suffering from malaria, a situation which could lead to severe damage for either the mother or the fetus. Therefore, further research should be done to assess the potential benefits of antioxidant supplementation for the pregnant women suffering from malaria.     

Scapular kinematics during scaption in competitive swimmers

This study aimed (1) to describe and compare scapular kinematics between three groups of swimmers of different levels and a group of non-swimmers, and (2) to assess whether swimming practice alters the asymmetries in scapular kinematics between the dominant and non-dominant sides, both during unilateral arm raising and lowering in the scapular plane. Scapular kinematics were assessed bilaterally during arm raising and lowering in the scapular plane using an electromagnetic system in 42 healthy males, which were split into four groups: control (n?=?11), adolescent elite swimmers (n?=?11), adult elite swimmers (n?=?10), and club-level adult swimmers (n?=?10). One-Way ANOVA SPM(t) on two repeated measures showed that the three groups of swimmers had more protracted shoulder between 30° and 90° of arm raising and lowering (p?p?p?≤?.02), who presented similar scapular positioning in internal rotation. In conclusion, the findings of the study pointed out that swimming practice generated protracted shoulders and removed bilateral differences in scapular upward rotation during scaption, while accumulation of swimming practice at elite level enlarged scapular internal rotation.     

Providing an expert information environment for the practical monitoring of innovative structures

The content of the information structure in Russia and its difficulties and problems are discussed. The features of individualization of expert and analyst work, as well as the weaknesses and disadvantages of the provision of qualimetric data are considered. Special attention is paid to the nanoindustry and nanomaterials program.     

Bridging the Information Literacy Gap with Clickers

A Class Performance System (CPS) is applied as an assessment tool to assist in determining the level of information literacy knowledge already possessed by adult students enrolled in a graduate Educational Leadership and Technology program. The CPS data collected reveals that students possess varying degrees of technology expertise and information literacy skills. Study results suggest that clickers facilitate differentiated information literacy pedagogy and increase engagement for graduate students.     

Alignment, cohesion, and change: Examining mathematics teachers’ belief structures and their influence on instructional practices

This collective case study reports on an investigation into the relationship between mathematics teachers’ beliefs and their classroom practices, namely, how they organized their classroom activities, interacted with their students, and assessed their students’ learning. Additionally, the study examined the pervasiveness of their beliefs in the face of efforts to incorporate reform-oriented classroom materials and instructional strategies. The participants were five high school teachers of ninth-grade algebra at different stages in their teaching career. The qualitative analysis of the data revealed that in general beliefs were very influential on the teachers’ daily pedagogical decisions and that their beliefs about the nature of mathematics served as a primary source of their beliefs about pedagogy and student learning. Findings from the analysis concur with previous studies in this area that reveal a clear relationship between these constructs. In addition, the results provide useful insights for the mathematics education community as it shows the diversity among the inservice teachers’ beliefs (presented as hypothesized belief models), the role and influence of beliefs about the nature of mathematics on the belief structure and how the teachers designed their instructional practices to reflect these beliefs. The article concludes with a discussion of implications of teacher education.     

Instructor fluency leads to higher confidence in learning,but not better learning

Students’ judgements of their own learning often exceed their knowledge on a given topic. One source of this pervasive overconfidence is fluency, the perceived ease with which information is acquired. Though effects of fluency on metacognitive judgments have been explored by manipulating relatively simple stimuli such as font style, few studies have explored the effects of fluency on more complex forms of learning encountered in educational settings, such as learning from lectures. The present study manipulated the fluency of a 31-min video-recorded lecture, and measured its effects on both perceived and actual learning. In the fluent condition, the instructor used non-verbal gestures, voice dynamics, mobility about the space, and appropriate pauses. In the disfluent condition, the same instructor read directly from notes, hunched over a podium, rarely made eye contact, used few non-verbal gestures, spoke in monotone pitch, and took irregular and awkward pauses. Though participants rated the fluent instructor significantly higher than the disfluent instructor on measures of teaching effectiveness and estimated that they had learned more of the material, actual learning between the two groups did not differ as assessed by a memory test over the lecture contents given immediately (Experiment 1) or after a 1-day delay (Experiment 2). This counterintuitive result reveals an “illusion of learning” due to fluency in lecture-based learning, a very common form of instruction.