A Comparison of the Effects of Two Different Online Homework Systems on Levels of Knowledge Retention in General Chemistry Students

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Online homework systems have been shown to help student achievement in chemistry courses. This study sought to compare the levels of knowledge...     

Romantic Partner Selection and Socialization During Early Adolescence

This prospective study examined romantic partner selection and socialization among a sample of 78 young adolescents (6th–8th graders). Independent assessments of adolescent and romantic partner adjustment were collected before and after relationships initiated via peer nomination and self‐report. Prior to their relationship, adolescents and partners were significantly alike on popularity, physical attraction, and depressive symptoms. Controlling for initial similarity, partners’ popularity, depressive symptoms, relational aggression, and relational victimization significantly predicted changes in adolescents’ functioning in these areas over time. However, the magnitude and direction of change varied according to adolescents’ and partners’ prerelationship functioning. In general, adolescents who dated high‐functioning partners changed more than those who dated low‐functioning partners, and partner characteristics predicted greater change among low‐ versus high‐functioning adolescents. Results were consistent even when controlling for best friend characteristics. The current findings are among the first to demonstrate unique contributions of romantic partner characteristics to adolescents’ psychosocial functioning.     

Creativity and performativity: Counterpoints in British and Australian education

This article explores the complex interplay of power between performativity and creativity agendas—a mutual tension that resides in British and Australian education. Accountability constraints and conflicting policy debates are problematised against the wider imperatives of similar government agendas. This ‘counterpoint’ of freedom and control has significant implications for pedagogy and, through accommodating performativity, teacher agency and professionalism are under threat. The authors propose a ‘rebalancing’ where pedagogy transforms from a site of struggle for control, to one where a higher trust is placed in teacher professionalism. The idea of ‘rebalancing pedagogy’ offers a way for teachers to navigate and be supported through the opposing demands of performativity and creativity. It acknowledges the importance of teacher agency and where teaching is judged against the characteristics of a systemic approach that facilitates the building of creative learning communities capable of supporting any curricula or content‐focused programmes in and beyond schools.     

Teacher‐involved conversations with young children during small group activity

This qualitative study examines the conversations of two preschool teachers with two‐ and three‐year‐old children during small‐group activity settings in two high‐quality child development centers. Using interviews, observations and videotaping of small‐group activities, the conversations are characterized in terms of the kind and function of language, the usage of cognitive demands and the reciprocal nature of these conversations. The findings indicate that teachers use declarative statements primarily to manage instruction and encourage language development. While teachers control most conversations, teacher–child reciprocity is evident and more genuine in authentic, teacher‐guided activities. In both classrooms, the language during small‐group activities is characterized as having low cognitive demands. Teachers and teacher educators need to be more cognizant of their language, including its purpose and opportunities to facilitate cognitively challenging conversations with young children. Recommendations for practice are provided.     

Synergizing geriatric research and education in an allied health profession with an older adult community advisory board: development and process outcomes

ABSTRACT

Community advisory boards (CABs) have been used to improve research outcomes involving specific communities and populations, including older adults. There is potential to synergize the use of CABs to encompass both research activities and the education of healthcare professionals to help meet increasing demands for a geriatric healthcare workforce in aging populations worldwide. We describe the development and process outcomes of a CAB that synergizes geriatric research and education of students in an allied health profession (occupational therapy). Implementation costs from June 2017–June 2019 were recorded. In-depth interviews were conducted with CAB participants, who were community-dwelling older adults living in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Interview data were analyzed using a constant comparison method based on a grounded theory approach. Themes were derived regarding barriers, facilitators, and benefits of CAB participation for older adults. Fourteen older adults (aged 65 and over) were initially recruited. The total direct cost of CAB implementation was 4050 United States Dollars over two years. Barriers to CAB participation for older adults included unexpected schedule conflicts due to illness and lack of understanding of the research process, while facilitators included accessible meeting spaces, staff support, flexible participation options, and financial support (e.g., transportation). Perceived benefits of CAB participation included gains in social capital, more positive views of research, and social connectedness. Key lessons learned are described and can be used to inform a novel approach to developing and implementing CABs to improve outcomes of geriatric research and education.     

The effect of worked examples on student learning and error anticipation in algebra

Instructional Science - The present study examines the effectiveness of incorporating worked examples with prompts for self-explanation into a middle school math textbook. Algebra 1 students...     

Lay experts and the politics of breast implants

This paper discusses the controversy around breast implants in the United States and Europe. It focuses on the emergence of consumer and support groups for women and offers an analysis of the role they have played in recent policy developments in UK and Europe. The politics of breast implants is seen as a politics of knowledge in which scientific expertise has consistently been deployed in ways that minimize the credibility and legitimacy of women's accounts of their bodies and illness experiences. These women have been doubly disadvantaged in a policy debate that turns on scientific controversy and uncertainty. This implies a gendered dynamic to the changing relations of knowledge and expertise. The paper contributes to an understanding of the relations between regulators, manufacturers, users, and clinicians in the global medical device industry and to wider debates around the public understanding of science.     

Predicting relevance based on assessor disagreement: analysis and practical applications for search evaluation

Evaluation of search engines relies on assessments of search results for selected test queries, from which we would ideally like to draw conclusions in terms of relevance of the results for general (e.g., future, unknown) users. In practice however, most evaluation scenarios only allow us to conclusively determine the relevance towards the particular assessor that provided the judgments. A factor that cannot be ignored when extending conclusions made from assessors towards users, is the possible disagreement on relevance, assuming that a single gold truth label does not exist. This paper presents and analyzes the predicted relevance model (PRM), which allows predicting a particular result’s relevance for a random user, based on an observed assessment and knowledge on the average disagreement between assessors. With the PRM, existing evaluation metrics designed to measure binary assessor relevance, can be transformed into more robust and effectively graded measures that evaluate relevance towards a random user. It also leads to a principled way of quantifying multiple graded or categorical relevance levels for use as gains in established graded relevance measures, such as normalized discounted cumulative gain, which nowadays often use heuristic and data-independent gain values. Given a set of test topics with graded relevance judgments, the PRM allows evaluating systems on different scenarios, such as their capability of retrieving top results, or how well they are able to filter out non-relevant ones. Its use in actual evaluation scenarios is illustrated on several information retrieval test collections.