Integrating History of Science in Science Education through Historical Microworlds to Promote Conceptual Change

This paper proposes a new way to integrate history of science in science education to promote conceptual change by introducing the notion of historical microworld, which is a computer-based interactive learning environment respecting historic conceptions. In this definition, “interactive” means that the user can act upon the virtual environment by changing some parameters to see what ensues. “Environment respecting historic conceptions” means that the “world” has been programmed to respect the conceptions of past scientists or philosophers. Three historical microworlds in the field of mechanics are presented in this article: an Aristotelian microworld respecting Aristotle’s conceptions about movement, a Buridanian microworld respecting the theory of impetus and, finally, a Newtonian microworld respecting Galileo’s conceptions and Newton’s laws of movement.     

Roles,practices and contexts for acting as agents of social justice – student teachers’ perspectives

ABSTRACT

Student teachers are oftentimes encouraged to apply theoretical principles of social justice to their professional practice. However, this can be problematic when theoretical knowledge is contested or if it is inconsistent with the practices in their future workplaces. Studies in this area often examine student teachers’ beliefs and understanding of their roles without taking account of how concrete working contexts shape what they see as possible in their practice. This study explored how students in two teacher education programmes based at the University of Edinburgh perceived their roles, practices and contexts for acting as agents of social justice. Mixed methods were used for data generation and triangulation including a questionnaire survey (n = 299) and scenario-based interviews (n = 9) to explore how students think about social justice issues in context. Student teachers generally saw agency for social justice as part of their role. Their understanding of the ways of addressing context-embedded issues of social justice focused on classroom practices while they raised concerns about how their practice depends on others in the system. We discuss the implications of these findings for teacher education.     

Switching Phenomena of CuTCNQ Induced Mainly by the Interaction among Microcrystaline Grains

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Risk Society and Science Education

Science & Education - The current COVID-19 pandemic raises reflection on the new roles of science education in citizen education in a world characterized by civilization risks, derived from the...     

From Book to Screen: Adopting Cinematic Adaptations of Literature in the EFL Classroom to Hone Students’ Critical Thinking Skills

In light of the paramount value placed on critical thinking (CT) in higher education and the scarcity of research into the use of cinematic adaptations to this end, this study investigated the incorporation of film into the source literature to hone students’ cognitive skills in the areas of analysis, inference, evaluation, induction, and deduction. Participants were 50 third-year students of English as a foreign language (EFL) enrolled in a university in eastern Algeria for academic year 2015–2016. During the fall semester, the treatment group (n = 24) and the control group (n = 26) took a regular literature course. In the spring semester, the treatment group took a film-literature course and the control group, a reading-only course that drew on Facione's IDEAS critical thinking model. The California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) was used as a pretest and posttest. Empirical findings indicated that both groups performed on par in all cognitive areas of CT with the exception of inference, wherein the film group outperformed the reading-only group in this dimension.     

Multi-objective optimization design of bridge piers with hybrid heuristic algorithms

This paper describes one approach to the design of reinforced concrete (RC) bridge piers, using a three-hybrid multi-objective simulated annealing (SA) algorithm with a neighborhood move based on the mutation operator from the genetic algorithms (GAs), namely MOSAMO1, MOSAMO2 and MOSAMO3. The procedure is applied to three objective functions: the economic cost, the reinforcing steel congestion and the embedded CO₂ emissions. Additional results for a random walk and a descent local search multi-objective algorithm are presented. The evaluation of solutions follows the Spanish Code for structural concrete. The methodology was applied to a typical bridge pier of 23.97 m in height. This example involved 110 design variables. Results indicate that algorithm MOSAMO2 outperforms other algorithms regarding the definition of Pareto fronts. Further, the proposed procedure will help structural engineers to enhance their bridge pier designs.