PRESERVICE TEACHERS’ VIEWS ABOUT NATURE OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPMENT: AN INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIVE STUDY

This article presents the findings of an international collaborative investigation into preservice teachers’ views on the nature of scientific knowledge development with respect to six elements: observations and inferences, tentativeness, scientific theories and laws, social and cultural embeddedness, creativity and imagination, and scientific methods. A total of 640 preservice teachers, 209 from the United States, 212 from China, and 219 from Turkey, participated in the study. The survey “Student Understanding of Science and Scientific Inquiry (SUSSI)”, having a blend of Likert-type items and related open-ended questions, was used to gain a fuller understanding of the preservice teachers’ views of the nature of scientific knowledge development. Across the three countries, the participants demonstrated better understanding of the tentative NOS aspect but less understanding of the nature of and relationship between scientific theories and scientific laws. The Chinese sample scored highest on five of the six Likert sub-scales, the USA sample demonstrated more informed views on observation and inference, and the Turkish preservice teachers possessed relatively more traditional views in all six NOS aspects. Conclusions and limitations of the present study as well as implications and recommendations for future studies, are also discussed.     

Formative Interventions for Expansive Learning and Transformative Agency

This article examines formative interventions as we understand them in cultural-historical activity theory and reflects on key differences between this intervention research tradition and design-based research as it is conceived in the learning sciences tradition. Three projects, including 2 Change Laboratories, are analyzed with the help of conceptual lenses derived from basic epistemological principles for intervention research in activity theory. In all 3 interventions, learners expansively transformed the object of their activity. The Change Laboratory cases, however, show that this learning process included productive deviations from the researchers’ instructional intentions, leading to significant outcomes, both practical and theoretical, that were not anticipated by the interventionists. Together these cases illustrate that an activity-theoretical formative intervention approach differs from design-based research in the following ways: (a) formative interventions are based on design done by the learners; (b) the collective design effort is seen as part of an expansive learning process including participatory analyses and implementation phases; (c) rather than aiming at transferable and scalable solutions, formative interventions aim at generative solutions developing over lengthy periods of time both in the researched activities and in the research community.     

Knowledge and processes that predict proficiency in digital literacy

Proficiency in digital literacy refers to the ability to read and write using online sources, and includes the ability to select sources relevant to the task, synthesize information into a coherent message, and communicate the message with an audience. The present study examines the determinants of digital literacy proficiency by asking 150 students who had 50 min of access to the Internet and a word processor to produce a research report on whether or not their college should require all students to own a laptop computer. The resulting essay received a holistic rating from 1 to 5. Concerning knowledge underlying digital literacy, the major predictors of digital literacy proficiency (as measured by essay rating) were academic experience (undergraduate versus graduate status) and domain knowledge (based on a questionnaire), rather than technical knowledge about how to use computers (based on a questionnaire). Concerning processing during the task, the major predictors of digital literacy proficiency were integrating processes (such as number of unique sources, citations, or supporting details) rather than search processes (such as number of actions, web pages, websites, links, or search terms). In short, proficiency in digital literacy depended mainly on academic experience rather than technical experience, and on how learners organize and integrate the information they find rather than on how much information they peruse. Findings from this study suggest that the basic tenets of good scholarship apply to digital media.     

Outreach initiatives operated by universities for increasing interest in science and technology

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s, the low number of students choosing to study science and technology in higher education has been on the societal agenda and many initiatives have been launched to promote awareness regarding career options. The initiatives particularly focus on increasing enrolment in the engineering programmes. This article describes and compares eight European initiatives that have been established and operated by universities (and in some cases through collaboration with other actors in society). Each initiative is summarised in a short essay that discusses motivation, organisation, pedagogical approach, and activities. The initiatives are characterised by comparing the driving forces behind their creation, how the initiative activities relate to the activities at the university, size based on the number of participants and cost per participant and pedagogical framework. There seem to be two main tracks for building outreach activities, one where outreach activities are based on the university's normal activities, and one where outreach activities are designed specifically for the visiting students.     

Inside the ‘body box’: exploring feedback in higher education

In recent years, educational research has paid special attention to teachers’ practical-operative experience. The growing interest in the concept of practice within workplace settings has become a turning point in sociological, anthropological and educational studies. The present study aims to explore lecturers’ perceptions and conceptions of feedback and their daily professional practice, with a focus on the use of body movement while providing feedback during the class. Even though educational research has paid a lot of attention to the concepts of practice and performance, there are very few studies that consider the main actor included in the definition of those concepts: the body. Methodologically this exploratory case study uses a mixed methods approach. Results identified two types of issues: the first one concerns the relation between lecturer and students during the feedback practice; the second one concerns the internal coherence of lecturers between the kind of verbal feedback they provide during the lesson and how at the same time they act bodily.     

Exploring employee perceptions of Six Sigma as a change management program in higher education

Change initiatives in higher education are frequently guided by an institutional change management program which provides employees with a framework and set of skills to better understand problems and facilitate change at the organisational level. In this paper, we explore employee perceptions of Six Sigma as a tool for facilitating change at one public institution of higher education in the southeast United States. Unlike previous research studies that focused on specific results of change initiatives using Six Sigma, our research team considered how individuals, trained in the implementation of Six Sigma techniques and strategies, viewed the potential of the Six Sigma model to enact and sustain change initiatives in a higher education setting. In this case study, we describe Six Sigma as a change management program in higher education based on Lewin’s Three-Phase Model of Change.