Doing a science project: Gender differences during childhood

By adolescence, men's participation and achievement in science exceeds women's. This article reports a case study that examined the beginnings of this gender differentiation during a naturally occurring academic activity that was designed to support and guide young children's interest in doing science. Data were collected during 2 successive years of a science fair for children in Grades 1–6 of a progressive private school. A total of 268 projects were characterized in terms of achievement and area of science. Parents provided information about the way children selected and created projects. In both years and in all grade levels, boys tended to choose to work in the physical sciences, and girls in the biological and social sciences. Peer collaborations were exclusively same sex. Achievement and parental involvement were not gender related. Factors are discussed that might lead to an early divergence of boys' and girls' interests in science within a context that promotes its exploration. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 845–857, 1998.     

Prospective Elementary Teachers’ Analysis of Children’s Science Talk in an Undergraduate Physics Course

We investigated how prospective teachers used physics content knowledge when analyzing the talk of elementary children during special activities in an undergraduate physics content course designed for prospective teachers. We found that prospective teachers used content knowledge to reflect on their own learning and to identify students’ science ideas and restate these ideas in scientific terms. Based on this research, we inferred that analyzing children’s ideas through videos provides a meaningful context for applying conceptual physics knowledge in physics courses. Activities that are embedded within a disciplinary curriculum, such as those studied here, may help prospective teachers learn to use disciplinary knowledge in exactly the type of activity in which their content knowledge will be most useful: listening to and interpreting children’s science ideas.     

The pragmatics of payment: adventures in first-person economy with Bill Maurer

Bill Maurer, Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Professor of Anthropology and Law, and Director of the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion, all at the University of California, Irvine, has recently joined the Journal of Cultural Economy editorial team. Here, we reproduce an interview with him by Lauren Tooker from September 2014.     

The duty to succeed: honor versus happiness in college and career choices of East Asian students in the United States

To better understand factors underlying educational and career choices, this study used both survey data from an online networking tool and data collected in college classrooms to gauge differences between Asians (primarily Korean) and white students in the United States. More Asians (41%) than whites (9%) prioritized prestige over happiness, while more white students (67%) than Asian‐American students (28%) deemed happiness as paramount in selecting a college. When assessing their parents, more Asian Americans thought their mothers (51%) and fathers (34%) emphasized prestige in choosing a college than white mothers (9%) and fathers (17%). In addition, Asian parents were assessed as much more prone to stress the importance of financial independence in career selection while white parents were perceived as prioritizing career enjoyment. Certain parenting techniques were much more common among Asians, such as reminding children of parental sacrifices made for the next generation, teaching them that academic performance is a matter of family honor and prodding academic success by comparing their accomplishments with those of children of family and friends. These findings may reflect a conscious strategy to overcome racial discrimination if education is seen as the primary path to upward social mobility. Awareness of the social and emotional cost of the staunch emphasis on the duty to succeed is important for those involved in educating and providing career counseling for college students with an Asian family background. Acknowledgement of pressure to honor parental expectations of narrowly defined acceptable academic and career achievement should be a part of counseling sessions that might otherwise focus exclusively on individual aspirations without due recognition of an interdependent, collectivistic orientation where upholding family expectations is integral to perceived success.     

‘Just Say No’: public dissent over sexuality education and the Canadian national imaginary

ABSTRACT

Scholars of sexuality have argued that ‘moral panics’ about sexuality often stand in for broader conflicts over nationality and belonging. Canada has spent decades cultivating a national image founded on multiculturalism and democratic equality. The Ontario sexuality education curriculum introduced in 2015 drew audible condemnation from a variety of groups. Drawing from Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Race Theory, we argue that the public discourse surrounding these protests exposed the limits of Canadian pluralism, fuelling a meta-debate about the ‘Canadianness’ of recent immigrants and the incompatibility of liberal values with those of non-Westerners, especially Muslims. We explain this in terms of contextual factors such as Ontario’s publicly funded Catholic school system and anti-Muslim xenophobia in the post-9/11 era. Our analysis speaks to the importance of intersectional social justice efforts as part of the movement for comprehensive sex education.     

Finding the Best Types of Guidance for Constructing Self-Explanations of Subgoals in Programming

Subgoal learning, a technique used to break down problem solving into manageable pieces, has been used to promote retention and transfer in procedural domains, such as programming. The primary method of learning subgoals has been passive, and passive learning methods are typically less effective than constructive methods. To promote constructive methods of learning subgoals, we prompted learners to self-explain the subgoals of a problem-solving procedure. Self-explanation asks learners to make sense of new information based on prior knowledge and logical reasoning. Novices’ self-explanation is typically more effective when they receive guidance, because it helps them to focus on relevant information. In the present experimental study, the types of guidance that students received while self-explaining determined whether the constructive learning method was more effective than the passive method. Participants assigned to the constructive learning method performed best when they either received hints about the subgoals or received correct explanations as feedback, but not when they received both. These findings suggest that constructive learning of subgoals can further improve the benefits of subgoal learning when students receive only guidance that complements their construction of knowledge. This nuance is important for educators who engage their students in constructive learning and self-explanation.