Toward an Ethical Rhetoric of the Digital Scientific Image: Learning From the Era When Science Met Photoshop

Over the past two decades, scientific editors have attempted to correct “mistaken” assumptions about scientific images and to curb unethical image-manipulation practices. Reactions to the advent and abuse of image-adjustment software (such as Adobe Photoshop) reveal the complex relations among visual representations, scientific credibility, and epistemic rhetoric. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's model of argumentation provides a flexible system for understanding these relations and for teaching students to use scientific images ethically and effectively.     

Diagnosing Teachers’ Understandings of Rational Numbers: Building a Multidimensional Test Within the Diagnostic Classification Framework

We report a multidimensional test that examines middle grades teachers’ understanding of fraction arithmetic, especially multiplication and division. The test is based on four attributes identified through an analysis of the extensive mathematics education research literature on teachers’ and students’ reasoning in this content area. We administered the test to a national sample of 990 in‐service middle grades teachers and analyzed the item responses using the log‐linear cognitive diagnosis model. We report the diagnostic quality of the test at the item level, mastery classifications for teachers, and attribute relationships. Our results demonstrate that, when a test is grounded in research on cognition and is designed to be multidimensional from the onset, it is possible to use diagnostic classification models to detect distinct patterns of attribute mastery.     

Reviving audience studies

Audience measurement data are increasingly central to what many media corporations produce, yet much of these data are inaccessible to scholars. I therefore argue that cultural studies is in need of an audience studies revival. Fan studies continues at strength, but a wider range of audience studies is required to counter and to interrogate the occasional proclamations that companies such as Netflix, Facebook, and Google share with us about audiences and users.     

Assessment,and the literacy practices of trainee PCET teachers

Drawing on concepts of learning as socially situated within communities of practice and of literacy as social practice (the New Literacy Studies), this paper seeks to explore the assessment practices of a part-time teacher training course for teachers working in the post-compulsory education and training sector. This paper argues that the ways in which student teachers make sense of the assessment requirements of their course is not related to their prior experiences as students or as teachers, contradicting notions of transferable study skills. This paper also posits a conceptual framework for exploring the assessment process that seeks to reconcile assessment and pedagogy with the community of practice model.     

Gender roles and the American academe: a case study of graduate student mothers

Studies have found that motherhood is significantly associated with attrition for female graduate students in the United States. Few, however, have examined this phenomenon from the point of view of current students. Utilizing data from 30 in‐depth interviews with student mothers from a number of academic fields, this study details both the structural environments and the socio‐cultural constructs that affect the women’s daily experiences. The data highlight the fact that the symbolic nature of both roles – mother and student – is often in conflict with the structural elements around which each role is performed. Student mothers confront this dilemma through a number of strategic practices including ‘maternal invisibility’, ‘academic invisibility’, luck, and reliance on the more traditional means of economic and emotional support that come from spouses and parents. In detailing these practices, the study offers both important clues about the factors that may contribute to attrition for graduate student mothers as well as suggestions for institutional improvement.     

Fish Oil Supplementation in Pregnancy and Neurodevelopment in Childhood—A Randomized Clinical Trial

A double-blind randomized controlled trial of n-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid (n-3 LCPUFA) supplementation or matching placebo during third trimester of pregnancy was conducted within the COPSAC₂₀₁₀ mother-child cohort consisting of 736 women and their children. The objective was to determine if maternal n-3 LCPUFA pregnancy supplementation affects offspring neurodevelopment until 6 years. Neurodevelopment was evaluated in 654 children assessing age of motor milestone achievement, language development, cognitive development, general neurodevelopment, and emotional and behavioral problems. Maternal n-3 LCPUFA supplementation during pregnancy improved early language development and reduced the impact of emotional and behavioral problems. The n-3 LCPUFA supplementation was in boys associated with the earlier achievement of gross motor milestones, improved cognitive development, and a reduced impact of emotional and behavioral problems.