Meeting the Challenges of English Learners by Pairing Science and Language Educators

Research in Science Education - Learners of English as a new language and the teachers who find these young people in their classrooms face many challenges. For secondary science educators, this is...     

Using learning analytics in the Amazonas: understanding students’ behaviour in introductory programming

Tools for automatic grading programming assignments, also known as Online Judges, have been widely used to support computer science (CS) courses. Nevertheless, few studies have used these tools to acquire and analyse interaction data to better understand the students’ performance and behaviours, often due to data availability or inadequate granularity. To address this problem, we propose an Online Judge called CodeBench, which allows for fine-grained data collection of student interactions, at the level of, eg, keystrokes, number of submissions, and grades. We deployed CodeBench for 3 years (2016–18) and collected data from 2058 students from 16 introductory computer science (CS1) courses, on which we have carried out fine-grained learning analytics, towards early detection of effective/ineffective behaviours regarding learning CS concepts. Results extract clear behavioural classes of CS1 students, significantly differentiated both semantically and statistically, enabling us to better explain how student behaviours during programming have influenced learning outcomes. Finally, we also identify behaviours that can guide novice students to improve their learning performance, which can be used for interventions. We believe this work is a step forward towards enhancing Online Judges and helping teachers and students improve their CS1 teaching/learning practices.     

Understanding textbook quality in the USA: How governments distort the market

Textbooks deliver education and shape the daily routines of classrooms. Even in countries where schools enjoy ample and various instructional resources, text-books are the single most important support for teachers and students. It is not surprising, then, that textbooks are a major concern of states, schools, teachers, parents, publishers, and the research community. But textbooks often become a scapegoat for educational evils. In the USA, government regulation, special interest groups, and publishers exert pressure on textbook policies and state and local adoption processes. The result: textbooks are published to conform to a market distorted by government regulation. This paper discusses how their quality is constrained by government and special interest groups that interfere with the natural course of regulations and markets.

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Zusammenfassung Textbücher liefern Bildung und schaffen tägliche Routine im Klassenraum. Sogar in Ländern, in denen Schulen vielfältige und zahlreiche Unterrichtsquellen haben, sind Textbücher die wichtigste Unterstützung für Lehrer und Schüler. Es ist daher keine Überraschung, daß Textbücher ein Hauptanliegen von Staaten, Schulen, Lehrern, Eltern, Herausgebern und der Forschergemeinde sind. Aber Textbücher werden oft zum Sündenbock für erzieherische Fehler gemacht. In den USA üben Regierungsvorgaben, spezielle Interessengruppen und Herausgeber Druck auf die Textbuchpolitik und staatliche und lokale Anwendungsprozesse aus. In diesem Artikel wird diskutiert, wie ihre Qualität durch Interessen von Regierungen und Spezialgruppen beeinflußt wird, die mit dem natürlichen Lauf von Regulierungen und Märkten in Konflikt stehen.

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Resumen Los libros de texto proveen educación y delinean las rutinas diarias en las aulas. Incluso en aquellos países en los que las escuelas disponen de una amplia y variada gama de recursos de instrucción, los libros de texto son por cierto el más importante soporte para docentes y alumnos. No es sorprendente entonces que en los libros de texto se centre el máximo interés de Estados, escuelas, docentes, padres, editores e investigadores. No obstante, los libros de texto frecuentemente se convierten en el chivo emisario de los males de la educación. En los EE UU, la legislaciön, los grupos de interés y los editores ejercen presiones sobre las normas de conducta de los libros de texto y sobre los procesos de adopción estatles y locales. Resultado: los libros de texto se editan adaptándolos a un mercado distorsionado por la legislación. El trabajo plantea el problema de cómo su calidad es restringida por grupos de gobierno y de interés, que interfieren en el curso normal de la regulación y de los mercados.

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Résumé Les manuels scolaires délivrent un enseignement et déterminent la routine des salles de classes. Même dans les pays où les écoles disposent de matériels pédagogiques nombreux et variés, les manuels scolaires restent le soutien le plus important pour les enseignants et les apprenants. Par conséquent, il n'est pas surprenant que les manuels scolaires soient une préoccupation majeure des Etats, écoles, enseignants, parents, éditeurs et chercheurs. Mais les manuels scolaires servent souvent de bouc émissaire aux problèmes éducatifs. Aux Etats-Unis, la législation, les groupes de pression et les éditeurs ont une influence sur l'élaboration et le choix des manuels au niveau local et national. Résultat: les manuels doivent se conformer à un marché faussé par la législation. Cet article montre à quel point leur qualité dépend des décisions gouvernementales et des groupes de pression qui ont une influence sur le comportement des marchés et sur la législation.

     

A crosscultural validation of a test of science related attitudes

A test for measuring science attitudes, named Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA), was initially developed in Australia by Fraser (1977, 1978). This study investigated the crosscultural validity of this instrument when used with American high school students. Three hundred and thirty-six students (12th and 11th graders) in three high schools in suburban Chicago took the test. The results of the study, confirming previous validation of the test, revealed that the seven subscales of TOSRA were, in general, highly reliable. The discriminant validity of each of these scales, however, was found to be generally low. The item/scale correlation for all but four items of the test met Shrigley's (Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 20 (1), 87–89, 1983) criterion of being more than 0.30. The results of the principal components with varimax rotation did not support the distinctiveness of the subscale structure of the test.     

Interactive patterns and conceptual convergence during student collaborations in science

This study examines cognitive and social processes in group interactions that shape collaborative learning in science classrooms. Three small groups of students were observed while working collaboratively on explaining the burning of a candle under a jar. The learning environment served as a context for examination of conceptual convergence, a process wherein students construct shared meanings for science concepts through gradual refinement of ambiguous, partial meanings presented in group space. Despite engaging in the same activity with very similar instructional supports, the groups displayed very different patterns of interaction and achieved varied degrees of conceptual convergence. One group collaborated effectively and displayed evidence of individual conceptualizations of science content converging to establish a more well‐informed shared conceptualization. The other groups were not as successful, each for unique reasons. Problems demonstrated in one group included lack of self‐confidence, poor monitoring of group learning, and active avoidance of potentially fruitful conceptual conflicts. The other group struggled primarily because of a combative social context. The major educational significance of this study was the identification of social context and interactive patterns, group approaches to conceptual conflicts, and instructors' roles in collaborative activities as crucial aspects of productive group learning. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 634–658, 2008     

Cooperative methods and self-regulated strategies development for argumentative writing

The authors analyze the efficacy of a cooperative method associated with self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) for argumentative writing compared with a SRSD single approach. Seven teachers and 230 ninth-grade students from three middle schools participated in the present study in which teachers were part of a practice-based professional development program. Schools were assigned either to the experimental group or to the comparison group. Over a three-month period, all students were taught SRSD strategies. After this period, students from the experimental group participated in a cooperative setting, whereas the comparison group followed the SRSD only. The results indicated that students in the experimental group made statistically significant greater gains in structural argumentative elements and in the quality of writing texts immediately after the intervention and one month later. Thus, the study provides evidence for the benefits of adding a cooperative setting to SRSD in implementing argumentative writing skills.     

Assessing students’ perceptions of their learning environment in science classes in the United Arab Emirates

Learning Environments Research - As part of major education reform efforts underway in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), teachers have been introducing cooperative teaching methods in their science...     

Models for antecedents of turnover intention and behavior among Brazilian employees

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance - Studies indicate that the costs resulting from voluntary turnover range from 93 to 200% of the annual salary for a single position,...     

Teacher-Advocates Respond to ESSA: “Support the Good Parts—Resist the Bad Parts”

Although researchers consider them powerful, teacher policy advocates are among the least studied stakeholders in U.S. public education reform today. Although plenty of attention has been given to the impact of policy on teachers' work, little research explores how teachers interpret or interact with policy. Drawing on the work of Spillane, Reiser, and Reimer (2002) on teachers' policy implementation and Coburn's (2001) work on teachers' collective sense-making of policy, this qualitative study examines the different ways in which five teachers interpreted, translated, and enacted a response to ESSA. The findings describe how contextual factors influence teachers' relationship with education policy: (a) structural supports for grassroots involvement via social networks are instrumental in mobilizing teachers, and (b) unless a more bottom-up approach is taken that enables teacher agency, sense-making, and advocacy, top-down school policies will continue to hold limited promise. The paper concludes with implications for understanding how teachers are indeed policy advocates.     

Optimal complexity of deployable compressive structures

The usual use of fractals involves self-similar geometrical objects to fill a space, where the self-similar iterations may continue ad infinitum. This is the first paper to propose the use of self-similar mechanical objects that fill an alloted space, while achieving an invariance property as the self-similar iterations continue (e.g. invariant strength). Moreover, for compressive loads, this paper shows how to achieve minimal mass and invariant strength from self-similar structures. The topology optimization procedure uses self-similar iteration until minimal mass is achieved, and this problem is completely solved, with global optimal solutions given in closed form. The optimal topology remains independent of the magnitude of the load. Mass is minimized subject to yield and/or buckling constraints. Formulas are also given to optimize the complexity of the structure, and the optimal complexity turns out to be finite. That is, a continuum is never the optimal structural for a compressive load under any constraints on the physical dimension (diameter). After each additional self-similar iteration, the number of bars and strings increase, but, for a certain choice of unit topology shown, the total mass of bars and strings decreases. For certain structures, the string mass monotonically increases with iteration, while the bar mass monotonically reduces, leading to minimal total mass in a finite number of iterations, and hence a finite optimal complexity for the structure. The number of iterations required to achieve minimal mass is given explicitly in closed form by a formula relating the chosen unit geometry and the material properties. It runs out that the optimal structures produced by our theory fall in the category of structures we call tensegrity. Hence our self-similar algorithms can generate tensegrity fractals.