Service ‘CUIDE'‐‐Coopération Universitaire pour l'Information et la Documentation des Enseignants

The ongoing reform in science education in many countries, including Israel, has attainment of scientific literacy for all as one of its main goals. In this context, it is important to provide teachers with the opportunity to construct meaning for the term science literacy and by doing so to obtain a clear understanding of the new teaching goals. Here we report on a study in which teachers, as part of their professional development, were involved in defining the term ‘chemical literacy’; they discussed the need for it, and suggested educational experiences that are necessary in order to attain it. The programme was conducted as part of a reform in the content, as well as in the pedagogy, of chemistry education in Israel. The collected data provide some insights regarding the process by which the teachers’ perception of ‘chemical literacy’ developed and the way actual school practice influences teachers’ perception of ‘chemical literacy’.     

Education through Fiction: Acquiring opinion‐forming skills in the context of genomics

The present study examined the outcomes of a newly designed four‐lesson science module on opinion‐forming in the context of genomics in upper secondary education. The lesson plan aims to foster 16‐year‐old students’ opinion‐forming skills in the context of genomics and to test the effect of the use of fiction in the module. The basic hypothesis tested in this study is whether fiction stimulates students to develop opinions with regard to socio‐scientific issues. A quasi‐experimental pre‐test and post‐test design was used, involving two treatment groups and one control group. One of the experimental groups received a science module incorporating movie clips (i.e., the movie group). The other experimental group received the same science module, but only news report clips were used (i.e., the news report group). Prior to and after the module, 266 secondary school students completed a questionnaire to test their opinion‐forming skills. The results demonstrate that the science module had a significant positive effect on students’ opinion‐forming skills and that the movie group improved their skills more compared with the news report group. It may be concluded that the use of fiction—to be more specific, movie clips about genomics extracted from feature films—to introduce a socio‐scientific issue in the classroom stimulates students to develop their opinion‐forming skills.     

The mall,the library and the church: inquiring into the resourcing of early learning through new spaces and networks

Early learning has increasingly been the focus of social policy and programmes with a proliferation of public, community and commercial entities entering the field of production. Understanding this phenomenon requires educational researchers to conceptualise early learning both within a globalised network of circulating commodities and within specific situated spaces of local sociocultural practice. This paper describes how a research project has drawn on geosemiotic and actor-network theories, and employed spatially sensitive methods, to investigate the resourcing of early learning in spaces new to most educational researchers. Focusing on the suburban field site ‘Midburb’, we analyse the ways in which discourses operate through/in place producing different entry points, pathways and access for parents, impacting on their opportunities for encountering early learning resources.     

Effects of Autonomy-Supportive Teaching on Student Learning and Motivation

Although autonomy-supportive teaching has been linked with increased student performance, this contention has not yet been explored in an experimental study. This article presents a small, pre/post control group experimental study evaluating the effect of procedural and cognitive autonomy-supportive teaching on student learning and motivation during a 7th-grade reform-based science lesson on motion. In a 2 × 2 factorial design, the 4 treatment conditions featured high and low levels of procedural and cognitive autonomy support. As hypothesized, there was no effect of procedural autonomy support. However, to the authors’ surprise—and in contrast with their hypotheses—students in the low cognitive autonomy-supportive conditions learned significantly more, perceived significantly more choice, and rated instruction as more positive than did students in the high cognitive autonomy-supportive conditions. Results are framed in the context of achieving reform in science teaching.     

Cinema and Choric Connection: Lost in Translation as Sensual Experience

The rise of the new information technologies, and corresponding proliferation of signs, images, and information, has contributed to a growing sense of alienation and dislocation. For many, the contemporary moment is an unending and disorienting sea of sensory-symbolic excesses. Lost in Translation is a film addressed to these anxieties. Engaging the film as a sensual experience, we argue that Lost in Translation equips viewers to confront the feelings of alienation and dislocation brought on by the sensory-symbolic excesses of (post)modernity by fostering a sense of choric connection. This sense, we demonstrate, is elicited primarily by the film's material (nonsymbolic, aesthetic) dimensions. Drawing on an analysis of the film's aesthetic elements, we conclude by reflecting on the implications for film studies, rhetorical studies, and everyday life.     

HOW TO CONDUCT A MUSICAL SERVICE IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL

The purpose of this column is to keep religious educators abreast of relevant significant research in the general field of psychology. Each section describes a group of findings which have been reported in PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS together with titles of these works so that those who wish may go to the original source. This column is written as a service to religious educators by the Union College Character Research Project. All abstracts are used with permission of the periodical, PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS. The abstract numbers are Volume 37, Numbers 1‐5. 1963.     

Meta-Analysis of Meta-Analyses in Communication: Comparing Fixed Effects and Random Effects Analysis Models

Thirty-nine meta-analyses obtained from the past 10 years of communication research (1997–2007) were reanalyzed using fixed effects (FE), random effects (RE), and Hunter and Schmidt (HS) meta-analytic methods. The majority of studies (62%) reported use of the HS model in the original analysis. Differences identified between models include (a) greater propensity for Type 1 error under the FE approach, (b) episodes of inflated effect size (ES) under the RE approach, and (c) high levels of heterogeneity in population ESs across studies. Recommendations are made for scholars to appropriately choose and implement meta-analytic models in future research.     

Burge,Elizabeth et al ed (2011) Flexible pedagogy,flexible practice Athabasca U Press (Edmonton,Canada) isbn 978‐1‐926836‐20‐1 348 pp CDN$34.95 (download free of charge) http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120203

In this excellently edited and stimulating book, targeted at all interested in post‐secondary education, practitioners in the fields of flexible pedagogy and distance education across the globe share and critically reflect on experiences of flexibility grounded in the gritty reality of practice. If the content of this book is likely to be relevant to you, I recommend that you arrange to borrow a copy for a while. Marie Martin     

Longitudinal Relations Among Language Skills,Anger Expression,and Regulatory Strategies in Early Childhood

Researchers have suggested that as children's language skill develops in early childhood, it comes to help children regulate their emotions (Cole, Armstrong, & Pemberton, 2010; Kopp, 1989), but the pathways by which this occurs have not been studied empirically. In a longitudinal study of 120 children from 18 to 48 months of age, associations among child language skill, observed anger expression, and regulatory strategies during a delay task were examined. Toddlers with better language skill, and whose language skill increased more over time, appeared less angry at 48 months and their anger declined more over time. Two regulatory strategies, support seeking and distraction, explained a portion of the variance in the association between language skill and anger expression after toddlerhood.