An investigation of middle school science teachers and students use of technology inside and outside of classrooms: considering whether digital natives are more technology savvy than their teachers

The purpose of the study is to investigate the popular assumption that the “digital natives” generation surpasses the previous “digital immigrants” generation in terms of their technology experiences, because they grow up with information and communication technology. The assumption presumes that teachers, the digital immigrants, are less technology savvy than the digital natives, resulting in a disconnect between students’ technology experiences inside and outside of the formal school setting. To examine the intersection of these generations and their technology experiences, this study used a mixed-methods approach to survey and compare middle school science teachers’ (n = 24) and their students’ (n = 1,060) inside–outside school technology experiences, and conducted focus group interviews to investigate any barriers that prevented them from using technology in school. The findings imply that the concept of digital natives may be misleading and that the disconnect between students’ inside–outside school technology experiences may be the result of the lack of sufficient teacher training concerning technology integration strategies.     

Using meta-reflection to improve learning and throughput: redesigning assessment procedures in a political science course on power

The aim of this article is to contribute to the discussion on how examinations can be designed to enhance students’ learning and increase throughput in terms of the number of students who sit, and pass, the course examination. The context of the study is a basic level political science course on power analysis, which initially suffered from low throughput. The contribution of the article is to demonstrate that no other changes to the course than the introduction of an element of meta-reflection in the take-home examination – a so-called ‘reflection exercise’ – helped increase throughput by 70–80%. The aggregated performance of the students was thus significantly enhanced after they were explicitly encouraged to meta-reflect on problems posed in the take-home examination, and on different strategies for tackling these problems. The introduction of another meta-reflection exercise in the mandatory seminars did not further increase throughput, but made a qualitative difference in terms of the positive feedback that students received on their work.     

The Relative Contribution of Certain Factors to Individual Differences in Arithmetical Problem Solving Ability

A hierarchy of analytic concepts and processes was derived from the related substantive and syntactical structures of geographic method and submitted to study as a test of a central premise underlying the curriculum reform movement in social studies. Performance data were obtained from 84 instructed second graders on test items criterion referenced to specific capabilities of the hierarchy. Application of Murray’s (5) misclassification model yielded the following results: (a) Values of correct classification probabilities for a modified five-level hierarchy were high, indicating over 90% of the Ss were correctly classified on all levels of the modified scale; and (b) Overall test of fit was well within nonsignificant boundaries, indicating the data could be assumed to fit the hypothesized latent pure scale model. Implications for curriculum were derived.     

Interreligious Student Work From the Perspective of A MEMBER OF AN INTERRELIGIOUS COUNCIL

The purpose of this column is to keep religious educators abreast of the relevant significant research in the general field of psychology. Its implications for methods and materials in religious education are clear. Religious educators may well take advantage of every new finding in scientific research.

Each abstract or group is preceded by an evaluation and interpretative comment, which aims to guide the reader in understanding the research reported.

All of these abstracts are from PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS, and used by permission of that periodical. The abstract numbers are from Volume 27, Numbers 2 and 3, February and March, 1953.     

A "dry and wet hybrid" lithography technique for multilevel replication templates: Applications to microfluidic neuron culture and two-phase global mixing

A broad range of microfluidic applications, ranging from cell culture to protein crystallization, requires multilevel devices with different heights and feature sizes (from micrometers to millimeters). While state-of-the-art direct-writing techniques have been developed for creating complex three-dimensional shapes, replication molding from a multilevel template is still the preferred method for fast prototyping of microfluidic devices in the laboratory. Here, we report on a "dry and wet hybrid" technique to fabricate multilevel replication molds by combining SU-8 lithography with a dry film resist (Ordyl). We show that the two lithography protocols are chemically compatible with each other. Finally, we demonstrate the hybrid technique in two different microfluidic applications: (1) a neuron culture device with compartmentalization of different elements of a neuron and (2) a two-phase (gas-liquid) global micromixer for fast mixing of a small amount of a viscous liquid into a larger volume of a less viscous liquid.     

Conversations on cultural sustainability: stimuli for embedding Indigenous knowledges and ways of being into curriculum

While Australian higher education agendas and literature prioritise Indigenous knowledges and perspectives across policy, curriculum and pedagogy, enacting this in practice remains problematic and contentious. Often the result is the inclusion of simplified Indigenous knowledges, rather than sustained engagement with and embedding of multiple and ‘messy’ ontological and epistemological positions. This paper explores ways of engaging with this ‘messiness’. Taking messiness as a focal point within our own context of teacher education at a regional university, this agenda and tension inform an ongoing dialogue about ways of assuring a conscious approach to cultural sustainability to embed, value and foreground Indigenous knowledges and ways of being and doing in curriculum. This endeavour can be conceptualised as a heuristic project, an ongoing conversation in response to multiple stimuli rather than a fixed endpoint or framework. In response to this exploration, this paper presents the stimuli for our conversation: situated, plural and reflexive knowledges that work together in inherently relational ways to nourish the cultural sustainability of Indigenous knowledges.     

Inclusive sport or institutional discrimination? New FIFA regulations,organized football and migrant youth in Italy

Over the last decade, the international governing body of association football, FIFA, has introduced new regulations for the registration of young players. The regulations are aimed at ‘protecting minors’ at being trafficked from developing countries to clubs based in the majority of cases in Europe. While strengthening control on the status of players as young as ten, the FIFA norms and their intersection with national and European norms have laid the legal basis for forms of institutional discrimination meted out to youth of immigrant background living in Europe. This paper emerges from a study on youth of immigrant background’s participation in Italian football. It uses the theoretical framework of Agamben’s analysis of Western democracies’ citizenship crisis to highlight the contradictions implicit in the Italian FA’s implementation of FIFA regulations in a scenario permeated by nationalistic values, which create different levels of participation according to the legal status of young people.