Beyond Consultation: A New Model for Librarian's Office Hours

ABSTRACT

Given the many changes in our students and their study and research practices, libraries are finding it necessary to seek new ways to reach these students. The Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign created a new model to do so. Librarian's Office Hours are a hybrid of reference and instructional services that fulfill the dual purposes of meeting the needs of term paper research counseling and library workshops. This article discusses the strategies involved in the creation and implementation of this service and examines suggestions for the future of such a service.     

Scan Rate: A New Metric for the Analysis of Reading Behaviors in Asynchronous Computer Conferencing Environments

This article introduces a new computer conferencing metric called Scan Rate, which is a measure of students' and instructors' online reading speed. The term “scan” refers to the practice of either skimming through a message at an unusually rapid pace or reading a message partially and then stopping before the end is reached. It is proposed that the Scan Rate metric offers a useful way of monitoring how thoroughly students attend to the messages they read. Four analyses illustrate the utility of the metric. These reveal that (1) scan rates increase with message size, (2) students are more likely to scan the messages of their peers than messages written by their instructor, (3) students engage in scanning practices more frequently than instructors, and (4) scan rates are partially a function of class size and class configuration.     

Impacts of Student Categorization of Their Online Discussion Contributions

A case study examined the collaborative experiences of students in an online business writing classroom. The purpose was to examine the same groups of students working on collaborative writing assignments in both a synchronous (real-time) and an asynchronous (non-real-time) discussion forum. This study focused on examining the amount, pattern, and focus of interactions, as well as assessing students' attitudes toward communicating in the two different environments.     

Multiple Aims in the Development of a Major Reform of the National Curriculum for Science in England

In the context of a major reform of the school science curriculum for 14–16‐year‐olds in England, we examine the aims ascribed to the reform, the stakeholders involved, and the roles of differing values and authority in its development. This reform includes an emphasis on socioscientific issues and the nature of science; curriculum trends of international relevance. Our analysis identifies largely ‘instrumental’ aims, with little emphasis on ‘intrinsic’ aims and associated values. We identify five broad categories of stakeholders focusing on different aims with, for example, a social, individual, political, or economic emphasis. We suggest that curriculum development projects reflecting largely social and individual aims were appropriated by other stakeholders to serve political and economic aims. We argue that a curriculum reform body representing all stakeholder interests is needed to ensure that multiple aims are considered throughout the curriculum reform process. Within such a body, the differentiated character of the science teaching community would need to be represented.     

The Use of Criteria in Argumentation and the Construction of Environmental Concepts: A university case study

We have analysed the processes of argumentation of three university student groups (A: six students, C: five students, and J: seven students) while making a decision about an environmental problem (selection of a heating system). The discussions took place in three 1½‐hour sessions that were audio‐taped and transcribed. For the analysis of the oral discussions, on the one hand, we have taken into account some of the dimensions characterising the quality of this decision‐making process, including the number and variety of criteria utilised, whether criteria, which did not favour the selected option, were considered and whether priorities were established among criteria, and, on the other hand, the use of environmental concepts such as renewable and sustainability as well as the meanings that were constructed for both concepts. We have determined that the students in this study proposed and utilised, both explicitly and implicitly, a high number and great variety of criteria to support their choices, although they were rarely able to consider contradictory evidence; that is, those that demonstrated disadvantages of the option selected. In terms of the construction of knowledge, we observed that in some groups the proposed task favoured the construction of a concept of sustainability that took the future into consideration and which was utilised as the most important justification in their selection. In terms of the concept of renewable, we found that they did not relate depletion of resources to economic consequences. We discuss the implications for the educational competence development.     

¿Han sido seleccionados o se han acostumbrado? Ideas de estudiantes de biología sobre la selección natural y consistencia entre ellas

Resumen

Estudiantes universitarios de Biología, ante problemas de respuesta abierta sobre la selección natural, utilizan, en porcentajes alarmantes, interpretaciones que consideran la adaptación como cambios heredables en los individuos. Se encontró un cierto grado de consistencia entre las respuestas de cada sujeto a los problemas en diferentes contextos; pero hay también casos en que una persona empleó esquemas conceptuales diferentes. Se sugiere que una de las condiciones para promover el cambio conceptual es que los profesores tengan en cuenta las ideas de los estudiantes.     

Adult literacy,learning identities and pedagogic practice

This article discusses the relationship between persistence in adult literacy and numeracy programs, changes in the participants’ attitudes to engaging in learning and pedagogic practices using data from eight Scottish literacy education organizations. It argues that literacy learning can act as a resource that enables vulnerable adults to change their dispositions to learning, achieve their goals and make a transition towards their imagined futures. Pedagogic practices that operate from an approach that emphasized learners’ strengths, rather than their deficits, and critically interrogated learners’ experiences used as a resource for learning were the most successful in enabling this transition. Holistic provision that creates a supportive community of practice was found to be the most effective in bringing about the positive changes that learners identified they wished to make in their lives.     

School science education for citizenship: Strategies for teaching about the epistemology of science

One consequence of the advancing globalization and technological dependence of society is that people outside professional science are finding that issues of concern to them have a science dimension. I consider how school science education can support engagement with scientific information. I contend that teaching about the epistemology of science is central to achieving this educational goal. I identify epistemic learning aims appropriate to school science education. These are derived from a survey of case studies of how individuals interact with science outside formal education. I consider different ways in which these learning aims might be achieved in schools. Teaching approaches based on modifications of existing practice are identified. Addressing the full range of epistemic learning aims is likely to require teaching approaches rarely used in current science teaching.     

The Formation of Identity: The importance of ideals

In the formation and composition of what might be termed personal identity a key but often neglected aspect is ideal identity. While comprising aspirations rather than realities, it makes a major contribution to the definition of self-identity. It does this as a result of: (a) clarifying what kind of person the individual wishes to be; and (b) an interrogation of how she sets about achieving her ideal identity, intimating what kind of person she is at a particular moment by virtue of the way in which she strives to achieve her ideal. The article argues for a re-appraisal of the notion of ideals in education and for its reinstatement as a significant feature of education. Indeed, we argue, children cannot avoid ideals--they are presented to them everyday from a wide variety of sources. But these sources or the ideals that they promote are not necessarily good for the child's well-being or for her fellow citizens. Consequently, teachers as moral agents have an important role in assisting children to acquire ideals that do meet such a criterion of goodness in addition to helping them reflect critically on the range of ideals they may encounter in their communities and society.