Conceptualizing and Assessing Higher-Order Thinking in Reading

Students engage in higher-order thinking as they read complex texts and perform complex reading-related tasks. However, the most consequential assessments, high-stakes tests, are currently limited in providing information about students’ higher-order thinking. In this article, we describe higher-order thinking in relation to reading. We provide a framework for understanding higher-order thinking in reading, in relation to relevant theories and research in reading, and standards and assessment initiatives. We conclude with the considerations in assessments of higher-order thinking in reading that can help teachers and students work toward attainment of the Common Core State Standards.     

Gun Violence and the Meaning of American Schools

In the United States, targeted school shootings have become a distinct genre of violence. In this essay, Bryan Warnick, Sang Hyun Kim, and Shannon Robinson examine the social meanings that exist in American society that might contribute to this phenomenon, focusing on the question: “Why are schools conceptualized as appropriate places to enact this form of gun violence?” The authors analyze the social meaning of American schooling by using empirical data, everyday observations, films, and poetry, and then connect these points of meaning to stories of individual school shooters. Through this analysis, three aspects of school stand out. First, schools are places of both real and symbolic violence, where force and power often rule the day. Second, schools are places connected to expectations of hope and refuge, friendship and romance, and when these expectations are not met, bitter resentment flows against schools. Third, suburban schools are seen as places of expressive individualism, which, in rare cases, is manifest in terms of “expressive violence.” Together, these points of meaning can make schools, for some youth, seem like appropriate places to express violent intentions. The essay concludes by speculating about how this analysis can be applied to prevent school shootings.     

Morphological Decomposition in the Recognition of Prefixed and Suffixed Words: Evidence From Korean

Korean has visually salient syllable units that are often mapped onto either prefixes or suffixes in derived words. In addition, prefixed and suffixed words may be processed differently given a left-to-right parsing procedure and the need to resolve morphemic ambiguity in prefixes in Korean. To test this hypothesis, four experiments using the masked priming lexical decision paradigm were conducted. Results showed that suffixed primes facilitated responses to their stem targets regardless of the lexicality or interpretability of the primes. In contrast, prefixed primes had a significant effect only when they were real words, and not when they were either interpretable or noninterpretable prefixed pseudowords. These results suggest that there may be two different processing mechanisms for derived words in Korean. One is prelexical morphological decomposition for suffixed words, and the other is the supralexical analysis for prefixed words where decomposition occurs only after the whole word has been accessed.     

CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON OF PERCEPTIONS ON THE GLOBAL SCIENTIFIC LITERACY WITH AUSTRALIAN,CHINESE, AND KOREAN MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS

In this study, we explored the extent to which Australian, Chinese, and Korean middle school students perceived themselves to have scientific literacy as global citizens and attempted to identify differences and/or commonalities in their perceptions. A total of 655 middle school students (8th and 9th grades; 358 girls and 297 boys) from the three countries participated in the study. We used Global Scientific Literacy Questionnaires (GSLQ) as a survey instrument to assess the students’ perceptions. The GSLQ was developed based on a conceptual framework of Scientific Literacy suggested by Choi, Kim, Lee, Mun, Choi, Krajcik & Shin (2011) and Choi, Lee, Shin, Kim & Krajcik (Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48(6), 670–697, 2011) for citizenship education in the 21st century. The results indicated that most of the students from the three countries showed a tendency toward higher scores for Science as human endeavor; the lowest scores were in Meta-cognition and self-direction. A pattern of gender difference was also examined among the three countries. We suggest future research questions based on a cross-cultural perspective in order to explore the reasons for the existence of these similarities and differences.     

Fiber composite slices for multiplexed immunoassays

Fabrication methods for the development of multiplexed immunoassay platforms primarily depend on the individual functionalization of reaction chambers to achieve a heterogeneous reacting substrate composition, which increases the overall manufacturing time and cost. Here, we describe a new type of low-cost fabrication method for a scalable immunoassay platform based on cotton threads. The manufacturing process involves the fabrication of functionalized fibers and the arrangement of these fibers into a bundle; this bundle is then sectioned to make microarray-like particles with a predefined surface architecture. With these sections, composed of heterogeneous thread fragments with different types of antibodies, we demonstrated quantitative and 7-plex immunoassays. We expect that this methodology will prove to be a versatile, low-cost, and highly scalable method for the fabrication of multiplexed bioassay platforms.     

Microfluidic reflow pumps

A new microfluidic pump, termed a reflow pump, is designed to operate with a sub-μl sample volume and transport it back and forth between two pneumatically actuated reservoirs through a flow channel typically containing one or more sensor surfaces. The ultimate motivation is to efficiently use the small sample volume in conjunction with convection to maximize analyte flux to the sensor surface(s) in order to minimize sensor response time. In this paper, we focus on the operational properties of the pumps themselves (rather than the sensor surfaces), and demonstrate both two-layer and three-layer polydimethylsiloxane reflow pumps. For the three-layer pump, we examine the effects of reservoir actuation pressure and actuation period, and demonstrate average volumetric flow rates as high as 500 μl/min. We also show that the two-layer design can pump up to 93% of the sample volume during each half period and demonstrate integration of a reflow pump with a single-chip microcantilever array to measure maximum flow rate.     

Microfluidic generation of PEG-b-PLA polymersomes containing alginate-based core hydrogel

Herein, we demonstrate a novel method for the generation of monodisperse cell-like structures containing a biocompatible hydrogel matrix surrounded by a membrane responsive to chemical cues. Specifically, we employ droplet-based microfluidics to generate PEG-PLA polymersomes encapsulating alginate in liquid form. We investigate alginate core gelation by creating an osmotic pressure gradient across the polymeric membrane that, through expansion, allows the passage of calcium ions. The effects of calcium concentration on the core gelation are explored.