Focusing on the Classical or Contemporary? Chinese Science Teacher Educators’ Conceptions of Nature of Science Content to Be Taught to Pre-service Science Teachers

Drawing from the phenomenographic perspective, an exploratory study investigated Chinese teacher educators’ conceptions of teaching Nature of Science (NOS) to pre-service science teachers through semi-structured interviews. Five key dimensions emerged from the data. This paper focuses on the dimension, NOS content to be taught to pre-service science teachers. A total of 20 NOS elements were considered by the Chinese science teacher educators to be important ideas to be taught. It was also found that among these educators, whether focusing on the classical or contemporary NOS elements in NOS instruction was a prominent controversy. After explaining the criteria for differentiating between classical and contemporary NOS elements, this paper reports the specific NOS elements suggested by Chinese science teacher educators in this study. Afterward, it describes how all educators in this study were categorized in term of NOS content taught by them to pre-service science teachers. In the end, it discusses three factors influencing the decision on NOS content to be taught, i.e., view of the concept of NOS itself, vision of teaching NOS, and belief in general philosophy.     

Parenting Style as a Context for Emotion Socialization

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine parenting style in the domain of emotion socialization through studying the relationships among parenting styles, emotion-related parental practices, and parental goals of Hong Kong–Chinese mothers. Data were collected from 189 Hong Kong–Chinese mothers of 6- to 8-year-old children. Hong Kong–Chinese mothers reported that among authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive parenting styles, they adopted an authoritative style most often and an authoritarian style least often. They valued both relational and individualistic emotional competence of their children as parental goals but regarded the former as more important than the latter. Structural equation modeling results indicated that parental goals mediated the influences of parenting styles on parental practices. Authoritative mothers who held individualistic emotional competence goals adopted different parental practices (a coaching or an emotion-encouraging approach) from those who held relational emotional competence goals. When mothers adopted authoritarian parenting and endorsed relational emotional competence as a parental goal, they responded to children's expression of emotions in a dismissing way. Practice or Policy: Parenting styles play an overarching role in emotion socialization, influencing both parental practices and goals. The results imply that school personnel, counselors, or social workers should take into account parenting styles, parental goals, and cultural values of participants when they offer training programs to parents.     

Views from the Chalkface

Although the goal of developing school students’ understanding of nature of science (NOS) has long been advocated, there is still a lack of research that focuses on probing how science teachers, a kind of major stakeholder in NOS instruction, perceive the values of teaching NOS. Through semi-structured interviews, this study investigated the views of 15 Hong Kong in-service senior secondary science teachers about the values of teaching NOS. These values as perceived by the teachers fall into two types. The first type is related to students’ learning of science in the classroom and involves: (i) facilitating the study of subject knowledge, (ii) increasing the interest in learning science, (iii) supporting the conduct of scientific inquiry, (iv) meeting the needs of public examinations, and (v) fulfilling the requirement of learning science. The second type goes beyond learning science and includes (i) developing thinking skills, (ii) cultivating scientific ethics in students, and (iii) supporting the participation in public decisions on socioscientific issues. Although rich relationships were perceived by these teachers between NOS instruction and students’ learning of science, few values were stated from broad social and cultural perspectives. Suggestions are made about developing teachers’ views of the values of teaching NOS so as to influence their intention of teaching it.     

Managing Element Interactivity in Equation Solving

Between two popular teaching methods (i.e., balance method vs. inverse method) for equation solving, the main difference occurs at the operational line (e.g., +2 on both sides vs. ?2 becomes +2), whereby it alters the state of the equation and yet maintains its equality. Element interactivity occurs on both sides of the equation in the balance method, but only on one side in the case of the inverse method. Thus, the balance method imposes twice as many interacting elements as the inverse method for each operational line. In two experiments, secondary students were randomly assigned to either the balance method or the inverse method to learn how to solve one-step, two-step, and three-or-more-step linear equations. Test results indicated that the interaction between method and type of equation favored the inverse method for equations involving higher element interactivity. Hence, by managing element interactivity, the efficiency of instruction for equation solving can be improved.     

游戏化研究性学习案例比较研究

将游戏应用到研究性学习课程的教与学中,目前已经成为教育技术领域新的研究热点。在对大量文献及实证研究项目调研的基础上,精选了四个国内外学者对游戏在能力培养和通识课程中应用的实证研究案例,分析了游戏环境支持下的研究性学习(游戏化研究性学习)的实施过程,重点比较了案例中知识整合、学习过程和师生角色三个方面的异同点,总结了游戏化研究性学习的实施特点和注意事项。这对于我国的研究性学习课程的教学,具有一定的参考价值。     

Challenges Faced by Canadian Social Work Field Instructors in Baccalaureate Field Supervision

ABSTRACT

This article examines the challenges faced by social work field instructors in two Canadian provinces. The results are based on the responses from 239 field instructors to a questionnaire survey. Findings highlight student difficulties, administrative issues with the social work schools, and practicum setting challenges. These demands hinder the optimal implementation of social work field education, reveal the concerning gatekeeping role of schools of social work, and discourage some social workers from taking on (or continuing) as field instructors. Implications for social work student placements, supervision of students, academic programs, and directions for future research are presented.     

Hong Kong Teacher Education Students’ Goal Orientations and Their Relationship to Perceived Parenting Styles

The study examined goal orientations, perceived parenting styles, and their relationships in a sample of Hong Kong teacher education students. It was found that students adopted both learning and performance goals but tended to be more performance goal‐oriented. Females were more performance goal‐oriented than males. As well, students perceived their most influential parents to be authoritative. In terms of gender, authoritativeness was more effective with females and authoritarianism worked better with males. It was found that perceived parenting styles predicted goal orientations. Authoritativeness was significantly and positively related to learning goals, whereas authoritativeness and authoritarianism were significantly and positively related to performance goals. Besides main effects, there were interaction effects between gender and parenting styles on goal orientations. Cultural and contextual factors were considered in interpreting the findings.