Re-mediating knowledge infrastructures: a site for innovation in teacher education

ABSTRACT

The article outlines a framework for studying and organizing infrastructure, social and material to advance consequential knowledge. To demonstrate the utility of the framework, three examples of innovation in teacher education are presented that involve re-mediating infrastructure to imagine equity-oriented teacher learning. The first case focuses on re-mediating social resources to create new pathways for knowledge and expertise to flow between a school and a university teacher education programme. The second case considers how re-mediating social and material resources, specifically who is involved in designing the goals of a teacher education programme, expanded conceptions of the valued outcomes of teacher preparation. The third case addresses the impact of an innovation that re-mediated technical and social resources to support teachers’ professional judgment in classroom interactions. As teacher educators, we need to be open to shifting our purposes and our designs in response to changing institutional, political, and practical circumstances. This framework for organizing and re-mediating infrastructure provides a means of doing this work in principled and responsible ways.     

Coping with abstraction in object orientation with a special focus on interface classes

One of the subjects that undergraduate students learning Object Oriented (OO) design find hard to apply is the construction of class hierarchies in general, and the use of interface classes in particular. The design process requires decomposition and reconstruction of problems in order to model software classes. The common attributes and behaviors are usually modeled using class inheritance except when the common behaviors do not belong to the same class hierarchy; in such case, an interface class is preferred. In order to be able to properly design, the designer has to demonstrate the abstraction abilities on various levels. In this study, we aimed at examining the students' demonstration of abstraction levels during design of class hierarchy in general, and whether or not they use interface classes in particular. The results of the study reveal that a majority of students were able to build a reasonable class hierarchy; however, many of them did not use interface classes as a tool for expressing common behaviors. Nevertheless, all of them could identify and choose the best solution for a particular problem among four different solutions, which included the use of interface class.     

Developing an approach for teaching and learning about Lewis structures

ABSTRACT

This study explores first-year university students’ reasoning as they learn to draw Lewis structures. We also present a theoretical account of the formal procedure commonly taught for drawing these structures. Students’ discussions during problem-solving activities were video recorded and detailed analyses of the discussions were made through the use of practical epistemology analysis (PEA). Our results show that the formal procedure was central for drawing Lewis structures, but its use varied depending on situational aspects. Commonly, the use of individual steps of the formal procedure was contingent on experiences of chemical structures, and other information such as the characteristics of the problem given. The analysis revealed a number of patterns in how students constructed, checked and modified the structure in relation to the formal procedure and the situational aspects. We suggest that explicitly teaching the formal procedure as a process of constructing, checking and modifying might be helpful for students learning to draw Lewis structures. By doing so, the students may learn to check the accuracy of the generated structure not only in relation to the octet rule and formal charge, but also to other experiences that are not explicitly included in the formal procedure.     

Flipping the Business Information Literacy Classroom: Redesign,Implementation, and Assessment of a Case Study

A team of librarians at Purdue University transformed a business information literacy course from a traditional lecture, 40-student class into multiple sections of a flipped, 70-student classroom to meet the request that the successful course be required for all 500 undergraduate students. Scaling up required the adoption of flipped learning techniques for better utilization of library teaching resources. This case study provides key insights for others implementing credit classes or integrating similar content into one-shots or embedded work. It also describes the assessed results determined through student feedback (focus groups) and student performance (pre/post-tests).     

BRAIN ACTIVITY ASSOCIATED WITH TRANSLATION BETWEEN GRAPHICAL AND SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATIONS OF FUNCTIONS IN GENERALLY GIFTED AND EXCELLING IN MATHEMATICS ADOLESCENTS

In this study, we examine the impact and the interplay of general giftedness (G) and excellence in mathematics (EM) on high school students’ mathematical performance associated with translations from graphical to symbolic representations of functions, as reflected in cortical electrical activity (by means of ERP—event-related potentials—methodology). We report on findings of comparative data analysis based on 75 right-handed male high school students (16?–?18 years old) divided into four research groups designed by a combination of EM and G factors. Effects of EM factor appeared at the behavioral and electrophysiological levels. The fifth group of participants included 9 students with extraordinary mathematical abilities (S-MG: super mathematically gifted). We found that in EM participants, the G factor has no impact on the performance associated with translation between representations of the functions. The highest overall electrical activity is found in excelling in mathematics students who are not identified as generally gifted (NG-EM students). This increased electrical activity can be an indicator of increased cognitive load in this group of students. We identified accumulative and unique characteristics of S-MG at the behavioral and electrophysiological levels. We explain the findings by the nature of the tasks used in the study. We argue that a combination of the ERP techniques along with more traditional educational research methods enables obtaining reliable measures on the mental processing involved in learning mathematics and mathematical problem solving.     

Historiography of biomedicine: "bio," "medicine," and in between

History of biomedicine is a hybrid domain, intersecting with many other scholarly disciplines. From the 1970s, historians who investigated recent developments in medicine increasingly shared the approaches, presuppositions, and methods of inquiry of historians and sociologists of science and technology. One reason is that the increasing reliance of medicine on technologies, instruments, and drugs makes the demarcation between "medicine," "science," and "industry" more difficult. Another is the "practice turn" in the history of science, which gave greater attention to the ways scientists and physicians work. The impressive achievements of historians who applied these new approaches came, however, at a cost. The neglect of an earlier generation of historians of medicine may have limited more recent ambitions for understanding health and disease in society. Closer links with historians of science and technology and sociologists of science may have blurred the specificity of medicine as a domain grounded in the distinction between the normal and the pathological and lessened scholars' interest in "the clinic" as a unique site of the production of knowledge.     

Educational electronic book activity supports language retention among children at risk for learning disabilities

The main purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of an activity with an educational electronic book (e-book) on language retention among children at risk for learning disabilities (LD) (seven weeks after the intervention). Two modes of the educational e-book were investigated: with and without metacognitive guidance. Seventy seven kindergarteners aged 4.5–7 were randomly divided into three groups: (1) reading an e-book which included metacognitive guidance (EBM); (2) reading an e-book which did not include metacognitive guidance (EB); (3) receiving the regular kindergarten program (control). The children’s vocabulary was assessed before the intervention, immediately after the intervention (post 1) and seven weeks later (post 2). Story comprehension was assessed only following the intervention (post 1 and 2). The findings showed a long-term effect of the activity with the e-book on vocabulary. However, for story comprehension, a decrease in recall of words and quotes and an increase in the recall of main ideas from the story were found seven weeks after the activity with the e-book. No significant difference in retention was found between the two intervention groups (with and without metacognitive guidance). The implications of these results for kindergarteners at risk for LD are discussed.     

Young Children From Three Diverse Cultures Spontaneously and Consistently Prepare for Alternative Future Possibilities

This study examined future-oriented behavior in children (3–6 years; N = 193) from three diverse societies—one industrialized Western city and two small, geographically isolated communities. Children had the opportunity to prepare for two alternative versions of an immediate future event over six trials. Some 3-year-olds from all cultures demonstrated competence, and a majority of the oldest children from each culture prepared for both future possibilities on every trial. Although there were some cultural differences in the youngest age groups that approached ceiling performance, the overall results indicate that children across these communities become able to prepare for alternative futures during early childhood. This acquisition period is therefore not contingent on Western upbringing, and may instead indicate normal cognitive maturation.