Chemistry for whom? Gender awareness in teaching and learning chemistry

Marie Ståhl and Anita Hussénius have defined what discourses dominate national tests in chemistry for Grade 9 in Sweden by using feminist, critical didactic perspectives. This response seeks to expand the results in Ståhl and Hussénius’s article Chemistry inside an epistemological community box!—Discursive exclusions and inclusions in the Swedish national tests in chemistry, by using different facets of gender awareness. The first facet—Gender awareness in relations to the test designers’ own conceptions—highlighted how the gender order where women are subordinated men becomes visible in the national tests as a consequence of the test designers internalized conceptions. The second facet—Gender awareness in relation to chemistry—discussed the hierarchy between discourses within chemistry. The third facet—Gender awareness in relation to students—problematized chemistry in relation to the students’ identity formation. In summary, I suggest that the different discourses can open up new ways to interpret chemistry and perhaps dismantle the hegemonic chemistry discourse.     

Didactical designs for students’ proportional reasoning: an “open approach” lesson and a “fundamental situation”

In this paper, we analyze and compare two didactical designs for introducing primary school pupils to proportional reasoning in the context of plane polygons. One of them is well-documented in the literature; the other one is based on our own data and is accordingly presented and discussed in more detail in this paper. The two designs come from different cultural and intellectual environments: lesson study in Japan (implicitly based on the “open approach method”) and “didactical engineering” in France (based on the theory of didactical situations). The general aim of our paper is to compare these two environments and their approaches to didactical design, basing our discussion on the concrete designs mentioned above. Clear differences among them are presented, while we also identify links which hold potential for integrating research and practice.     

The effect of language specific factors on early written composition: the role of spelling,oral language and text generation skills in a shallow orthography

Spelling skills have been identified as one of the major barriers to written text production in young English writers. By contrast oral language skills and text generation have been found to be less influential in the texts produced by beginning writers. To date, our understanding of the role of spelling skills in transparent orthographies is limited. The current study addressed this gap by examining the contribution of spelling, oral language and text generation skills in written text production in Italian beginner writers. Eighty-three children aged 7–8 years participated in the study. Spelling, lexical retrieval, receptive grammar, and written sentence generation and reformulation skills were assessed and children were asked to write a text on a set topic. A factor analysis revealed that the children’s written text production was captured by three factors: productivity, complexity and accuracy. In contrast to results from children learning to write in opaque orthographies, such as English, this study showed that receptive grammar and written sentence generation skills accounted for significant variance in measures of productivity, complexity and accuracy in Italian children’s written text production. Spelling skills contributed to text accuracy and quality and explained more variance than receptive grammar in microstructural accuracy. By contrast, oral grammatical skills explained more variance in text quality than spelling. The current study shows the differential impact of language systems, such as Italian, on written text production. Implications for assessment and instruction are outlined.     

Patterns of Motivational Beliefs in the Science Learning of Total,High-, and Low-Achieving Students: Evidence of Taiwanese TIMSS 2011 Data

The purpose of this study was to examine the pattern of the relationships among motivational beliefs and science achievement of 8th grade Taiwanese students, given that the students in Taiwan have high science academic achievement but low motivational beliefs in science learning on a series of international large-scale assessments. Three motivational beliefs in science learning, including self-concept, intrinsic value, and utility value, were conceptualized based on the modern expectancy-value theory. Data are from the Taiwanese proportion of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2011 dataset. Three groups of students, namely, the total group, the high-achieving group (HAG), and the low-achieving group (LAG), were examined. Results showed that the patterns of the relative predictions of motivational beliefs to science achievement were distinct for each group. In the total group, all the motivational beliefs could positively predict science achievement (R ²?=?20%). On the other hand, self-concept could positively and negatively predict science achievement for the HAG and LAG students, respectively, and intrinsic value could positively predict science achievement for the LAG students. In conclusion, this study, based on the Taiwanese representative sample, contributes to the discussion regarding national variation in students’ motivational beliefs and provides empirical-based evidence of the motivational beliefs in science learning of students of different levels of ability.     

Cognitive brain potentials in kindergarten children with subtyped risks of reading retardation

Cognition-related brain responses to meaningful and meaningless figures were registered in 5-year-old kindergarten children who either had been subtyped as being at-risk of developing an L- or P-type dyslexia (LAL versus LAP) or who were not at-risk. While identifying, naming, or categorizing pictures, event-related potentials (ERP) were registered. Three cognition-related components were found: the N460, the P780, and the Slow Wave (SW). LAP-children produced weak N460 activity across tasks, whereas LAL children, and to a lesser degree, non-risk children produced robust task-dependent activity. This finding may indicate that LAP-children lack semantic input while processing the figures. P780 latencies to frequently occurring figures were found hemisphere-dependent: LAP-children showed longer latencies in the right than in the left hemisphere, whereas the distribution was reversed in the LAL and non-risk children. It was also found that the right hemisphere is generally responsible for a lion's share of the processing of figures and therefore it seems that the right hemisphere of LAP-children invests ample time in doing so. Whereas LAP-children showed largest SW amplitude differences between frequent and infrequent stimuli at posterior locations, LAL children did so at frontal locations. Assuming that the SW represents working-memory processes, it may be that working-memory in LAP-children deals with figure-relevant visual-spatial information and with figure-derived concepts in LAL children. Overall, the findings suggest that LAL and LAP represent two different groups of kindergartners at risk of dyslexia and that these differences, to some degree, fit with the presumed etiology of L- and P-type dyslexia.     

Acceptance of learning management system: The case of secondary school teachers

There are many ICT tools that teachers can use to support teaching and learning. In recent years, Learning Management Systems (LMSs) have been present in most higher education institutions. However, the availability of LMSs in K-12 is more recent. Furthermore, we believe that LMSs are promising even for K-12 teachers in face-to-face learning contexts because they have many educational features that can support learning with students. The goal of this study is 1) to identify the factors that influence the acceptability of the LMS by teachers, 2) to see if teachers’ ICT use influences their intention to use the LMS, and finally 3) to see if teachers’ ICT use influences their perception of the affordances of LMS educational features. The LMS in our study was introduced in a school board of more than 35,000 students and approximately 2400 teachers. To study the acceptability of the LMS, we used the Technology Acceptance Model. The results obtained from the show that the perception of usefulness is a good predictor of the intent to use the LMS. As for ICT use and the affordances of LMS educational features, the results show that they are not a good predictor of the intention to use.     

Enhanced control of DFIG-used back-to-back PWM VSC under unbalanced grid voltage conditions

This paper presents a unified positive-and negative-sequence dual-dq dynamic model of wind-turbine driven doubly-fed induction generator(DFIG) under unbalanced grid voltage conditions. Strategies for enhanced control and operation of a DFIG-used back-to-back(BTB) PWM voltage source converter(VSC) are proposed. The modified control design for the grid-side converter in the stationary αβ frames diminishes the amplitude of DC-link voltage ripples of twice the grid frequency,and the two proposed control targets for the rotor-side converter are alternatively achieved,which,as a result,improve the fault-ride through(FRT) capability of the DFIG based wind power generation systems during unbalanced network supply. A complete unbalanced control scheme with both grid-and rotor-side converters included is designed. Finally,simulation was carried out on a 1.5 MW wind-turbine driven DFIG system and the validity of the developed unified model and the feasibility of the proposed control strategies are all confirmed by the simulated results.     

Molecularly imprinted polymers as the extracted sorbents of clenbuterol ahead of liquid chromatographic determination

A pre-treatment methodology for clenbuterol hydrochloride (CLEN) isolation and enrichment in a complex matrix environment was developed through exploiting molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs). CLEN-imprinted polymers were synthesized by the combined use of ally-β-cyclodextrin (ally-β-CD) and methacrylic acid (MAA), allyl-β-CD and acrylonitrile (AN), and allyl-β-CD and methyl methacrylate (MMA) as the binary functional monomers. MAA-linked allyl-β-CD MIPs (M-MAA) were characterized by Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy and a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Based upon the results, M-MAA polymers generally proved to be an excellent selective extraction compared to its references: AN-linked allyl-β-CD MIPs (M-AN) and MMA-linked allyl-β-CD MIPs (M-MMA). M-MAA polymers were eventually chosen to run through a molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction (MISPE) micro-column to enrich CLEN residues spiked in pig livers. A high recovery was achieved, ranging from 91.03% to 96.76% with relative standard deviation (RSD) ≤4.45%.