Growth of Social Competence During the Preschool Years: A 3‐Year Longitudinal Study

This study examined the stability and growth over a 3‐year period of individual differences in preschool children's social competence, which was assessed in three domains: social engagement/motivation, profiles of behavior and personality attributes characteristic of socially competent young children, and peer acceptance. A total of 255 children (126 girls and 129 boys) participated in this study. Growth curve analyses demonstrated both stability and change with regard to social competence over early childhood. Social competence measures and latent variables were invariant over this time period, individual differences in social competence were largely stable from year to year, and significant increases over time were observed for the domain most closely reflective of specific personal attributes skills.     

An initial examination of Singaporean seventh and eighth graders’ views of nature of science

Research in nature of science (NOS) among Asia-Pacific countries such as Singapore is arguably scarce. This study aimed to survey Singaporean secondary school students’ views of NOS with a newly developed instrument named Students’ Views of Nature of Science (SVNOS), which included various key aspects of NOS that are generally agreed upon by the science education community. Moreover, the relations between some demographic factors, including gender and grade, and students’ views of NOS were explored.

Sample, design and method

In total, 359 Singaporean seventh and eighth graders were invited to participate in this survey. The reliability, validity and structure of the SVNOS instrument were ensured by confirmatory factor analysis. A two-way multivariate analysis of variance was then conducted to determine the interaction effects between the gender variable and the grade-level variable.

Results and conclusion

The results indicated that the SVNOS instrument is reliable and valid to assess students’ views of NOS regarding seven distinct NOS dimensions. The male students were more prone to have constructivist-oriented views of NOS in the most of the SVNOS dimensions, while the female students conveyed more non-objective views of NOS. In addition, the eighth graders revealed more empiricist-oriented views of NOS than the seventh graders in several SVNOS dimensions. This result seems to contradict the results of previous studies that students’ views of NOS may reflect a developmental trend with their increasing educational experiences.     

大学为学生提供了什么样的信息技术经历：现状及效果的探析--基于南京大学与首尔大学的问卷调查

大学生的信息技术经历是其大学就读经历中的一个重要组成部分,分析大学生信息技术经历的现状及其对学业结果的促进效果,是探究本科教育质量的重要路径。通过对中国南京大学和韩国首尔大学的问卷调查,课题组发现,南京大学样本的信息技术经历的性别差异、家庭背景差异、生源地差异、年级差异、学科差异等都非常显著,首尔大学样本除了在年级和学科等因素上存在个别指标（即信息技术使用状况）的差异之外,在其他所有背景因素上都不存在显著的差异性。回归分析则表明,中韩本科生的“信息技术使用状况”和“信息技术使用的积极意向”都会对各种学术性学习结果产生显著的正向影响,但“信息技术使用的消极意向”均不会对各种学术性学习结果产生显著的负向影响。在定量分析和定性访谈的基础上,课题组认为,关注对弱势群体学生的信息技术使用经历、意向和能力的支持和帮助;关注对教师信息技术能力的提升;改革刚性的教学评价制度,发挥信息技术真正支持教学的潜力;将学生的信息技术能力（特别是学术信息的搜集、整理和交流能力）纳入到培养目标和考评体系中来等四个方面,是改进本科生信息技术经历、提升学生学习结果的重要实践策略。     

Destruction of hexafluoroethane in a dielectric-packed bed plasma reactor

The destruction of hexafluoroethane （C2F6）, also known as R- 116, was investigated in a nonthermal plasma reactor packed with dielectric pellets. The effects of the feed gas composition and the input power on the destruction of C2F6 were examined. The feed gas composition was varied by changing the oxygen content, the argon content and the initial C2F6 concentration. An increased input power led to increased C2F6 destruction as a result of promoting the electron-molecule collisions to dissociate C2F6 molecules. The addition of argon to the feed gas greatly improved the C2F6 destruction by reducing the energy losses due to vibrational excitation and dissociation of N2 molecules, while the increases in the oxygen content and the initial C2F6 concentration decreased the destruction efficiency. The byproducts including CO2, CO, COF2, CF4, SiF4, NO2, and N2O were identified, and the destruction mechanisms were elucidated, referring to these compounds. The most abundant byproduct was found to be carbonyl fluoride （COF2）, indicating that it serves as an important medium to convert C2F6 into CO2. The energy requirement for the C2F6 destruction was in the range of 8.2-45.3 MJ/g, depending on the initial concentration.     

Testing one premise of scientific inquiry in science classrooms: Examining students' scientific explanations and student learning

In this study, we analyzed the quality of students' written scientific explanations found in notebooks and explored the link between the quality of the explanations and students' learning. We propose an approach to systematically analyzing and scoring the quality of students' explanations based on three components: claim, evidence to support it, and a reasoning that justifies the link between the claim and the evidence. We collected students' science notebooks from eight science inquiry‐based middle‐school classrooms in five states. All classrooms implemented the same scientific‐inquiry based curriculum. The study focuses on one of the implemented investigations and the students' explanations that resulted from it. Nine students' notebooks were selected within each classroom. Therefore, a total of 72 students' notebooks were analyzed and scored using the proposed approach. Quality of students' explanations was linked with students' performance in different types of assessments administered as the end‐of‐unit test: multiple‐choice test, predict‐observe‐explain, performance assessment, and a short open‐ended question. Results indicated that: (a) Students' written explanations can be reliably scored with the proposed approach. (b) Constructing explanations were not widely implemented in the classrooms studied despite its significance in the context of inquiry‐based science instruction. (c) Overall, a low percentage of students (18%) provided explanations with the three expected components. The majority of the sample (40%) provided only claims without any supporting data or reasoning. And (d) the magnitude of the correlations between students' quality of explanations and their performance, were all positive but varied in magnitude according to the type of assessment. We concluded that engaging students in the construction of high quality explanations may be related to higher levels of student performance. The opportunities to construct explanations in science‐inquiry based classrooms, however, seem to be limited. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47: 583–608, 2010     

Classifying higher education institutions in Korea: a performance-based approach

The purpose of this study was to classify higher education institutions according to institutional performance rather than predetermined benchmarks. Institutional performance was defined as research performance and classified using Hierarchical Cluster Analysis, a statistical method that classifies objects according to specified classification factors. In the analysis, 47 Korean universities with doctoral programs were classified as research universities (seven universities), research active universities (14 universities), and doctoral universities (26 universities). In the detailed discussions, profiles of each group were analyzed and discussed; and, disciplinary classifications were conducted in engineering, natural science, and social science and humanities. In addition, to validate the classifications, the research performances of these categories were compared with those of U.S. peers. In the comparisons, the research performance of Korean universities was similar to that of U.S. peers. From the analysis, the classification results emerging from the performance-based approach were shown to be equivalent to that of conventional classifications using predetermined benchmarks.

Counting absolute numbers of items,from 1 to 8, in pigeons

Pigeons were trained in a forced choice task with four alternatives to categorize arrays consisting of 1, 3, 5, or 8 dots. Before the pigeons chose a comparison stimulus, they were required to peck each dot sequentially. A single peck to a dot, which was defined as an indicating response, changed the color of the dot so that it was differentiated from those that remained to be counted. The pigeons successfully learned to categorize the numerical arrays and then displayed transfer to novel arrays consisting of two, four, six, or seven dots, in a manner according to the order of 1 < 2 < 3 < 4 < 5 < 6 < 7 < 8. Subsequent tests revealed that the pigeons discriminated the stimuli by relying on the number of indicating responses. They also utilized multiple information (surface area, time, and other confounded events), but this was of minor significance, and after training, the pigeons were able to disregard these cues.     

Improving the integrated experience of in-class activities and fine-grained data collection for analysis in a blended learning class

Blended learning has steadily gained in popularity at the higher levels of education. This marks a change in pedagogical approaches from one-directional instruction to an interactive and technology-aided class. However, to manage fluent in-class activities and proper data analysis, real-time and fine-grained data collection activities are still needed. We propose an approach which provides rich information about student activities and automates processes which are time-consuming and which otherwise require extraneous effort. First, we implemented a program to collect real-time and fine-grained data and to provide an integrated experience during in-class activities. Second, we undertook a data analysis with the collected real-time, fine-grained data. Our blended learning is a type of flipped learning with personal response systems (PRSs) of the type commonly known as clickers. We used clickers for attendance, quizzes, and daily surveys, and collected the resulting data. Our outcome shows that the blended learning approach improves student achievement levels with a relatively small standard deviation compared to traditional classes. In addition, the present findings are factors related to student satisfaction and seat position, as analyzed from the data collected using the clickers.