Critical rationalism and the search for standard (field-normalized) indicators in bibliometrics

Bibliometrics plays an increasingly important role in research evaluation. However, no gold standard exists for a set of reliable and valid (field-normalized) impact indicators in research evaluation. This opinion paper recommends that bibliometricians develop and analyze these impact indicators against the backdrop of Popper’s critical rationalism. The studies critically investigating the indicators should publish the results in such a way that they can be included in meta-analyses. The results of meta-analyses give guidance on which indicators can then be part of a set of indicators used as standard in bibliometrics. The generation and continuous revision of the standard set could be handled by the International Society for Informetrics and Scientometrics (ISSI).     

Revealing,reinterpreting, rewriting mujeres

This paper reanalyzed research previously conducted with Spanish-speaking childcare providers who participated in an educational literacy program. The women in the program were generally framed as the deficient other – illiterate, immigrant women. The authors used a critical framework and Chicana/Latina feminist methodologies, namely pláticas y encuentros (talks and encounters), to investigate, reanalyze, and reinterpret the data. Through the process, the authors not only revealed the inner flame of the participants in the study, but through the collision of their own worldviews, they also exposed more deeply the assumptions buried within their epistemologies, methodologies, and positionalities. The results speak to the importance of critical examinations of power and discourses in education that often reside unexamined, or perhaps examined but largely unpublished, in our research.     

Computer-based learning of spelling skills in children with and without dyslexia

Our spelling training software recodes words into multisensory representations comprising visual and auditory codes. These codes represent information about letters and syllables of a word. An enhanced version, developed for this study, contains an additional phonological code and an improved word selection controller relying on a phoneme-based student model. We investigated the spelling behavior of children by means of learning curves based on log-file data of the previous and the enhanced software version. First, we compared the learning progress of children with dyslexia working either with the previous software (n = 28) or the adapted version (n = 37). Second, we investigated the spelling behavior of children with dyslexia (n = 37) and matched children without dyslexia (n = 25). To gain deeper insight into which factors are relevant for acquiring spelling skills, we analyzed the influence of cognitive abilities, such as attention functions and verbal memory skills, on the learning behavior. All investigations of the learning process are based on learning curve analyses of the collected log-file data. The results evidenced that those children with dyslexia benefit significantly from the additional phonological cue and the corresponding phoneme-based student model. Actually, children with dyslexia improve their spelling skills to the same extent as children without dyslexia and were able to memorize phoneme to grapheme correspondence when given the correct support and adequate training. In addition, children with low attention functions benefit from the structured learning environment. Generally, our data showed that memory sources are supportive cognitive functions for acquiring spelling skills and for using the information cues of a multi-modal learning environment.