Science,Society and Trends in Science Education‐‐some Thoughts on the Development of Integrated Science in the Educational Systems of the World

Summaries

English

Before constructing a new curriculum for any level in integrated‐science education, it is very important to establish a basic philosophy of science teaching which reflects a symbiotic relationship between education and the socio‐economic development in a particular country of the world.

The curriculum structure of integrated‐science education should broaden the basis of curricular decision and should be designated to follow the expectations of the society in providing professional intellectual training so that education can make a significant contribution to the socio‐economic growth of the country. This basic assumption which established a link between cultural and socio‐economic growth, involves a diversification of the cultural trends of science education which must become appropriate to the economic and historical context of each country in a fast changing world of work.

Therefore, by critically removing outside influences in the transmission of scientific knowledge, there should be less uniformity in the context and methods of teaching, and considerable restructuring of education for each country should occur. Thus, considering the historical and geographical differences, a new order in international division of labour would come into being.

In such a hypothesis, a research‐oriented integrated curriculum in science education can play a central role (certainly a better one than in the traditional, discipline‐oriented scheme of science teaching) in obtaining an adequate interaction between scientific education and social problems; this is required for modern cultural and economic development of the world.     

The Pendulum: From Constrained Fall to the Concept of Potential

Kuhn underlined the relevance of Galileo’s gestalt switch in the interpretation of a swinging body from constrained fall to time metre. But the new interpretation did not eliminate the older one. The constrained fall, both in the motion of pendulums and along inclined planes, led Galileo to the law of free fall. Experimenting with physical pendulums and assuming the impossibility of perpetual motion Huygens obtained a law of conservation of vis viva at specific positions, beautifully commented by Mach. Daniel Bernoulli generalised Huygens results introducing the concept of potential and the related independence of the ‘work’ done from the trajectories (paths) followed: vis viva conservation at specific positions is now linked with the potential. Feynman’s modern way of teaching the subject shows striking similarities with Bernoulli’s approach. A number of animations and simulations can help to visualise and teach some of the pendulum’s interpretations related to what we now see as instances of energy conservation.     

e-university: a cross-case study in four Italian universities

This paper describes the aims, the methods, the stages and the results of the research project 'e-University. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) as a factor of change in Italian universities', undertaken between 2003 and 2006 by the Universities of Trento, Perugia and Sassari and the Catholic University of Milan.
The characteristics of the four institutions' subjects and objects of the investigation are analysed as case studies and then compared as a cross-case study in the light of the factors that we feel constitute the main areas of concern in the four institutions as to the implementation of ICTs in the teaching/learning process, ie, the characteristics of the governance strategic plan, the choices relating to technology and the choices related to pedagogy. The paper describes the collaborative effort characterising the community of researchers through the different stages of the research. It also analyses how the individual features of each university—relating to its history, the number of students, the range of faculties, the diffusion of e-learning, the driving factors for innovation, the institution's policies—have fostered a lively and fruitful discussion between different view points, thus engendering deeper reflections for each context.     

It's never too late: Funding dynamics and self pledges in reward-based crowdfunding

Crowdfunding recently emerged as an alternative funding channel for entrepreneurs. We use pledge-level data from Startnext, the biggest German platform, to gain insights on funding dynamics and pledgers’ motivations. We find that the majority of projects that eventually succeed are not on a successful track at 75% of their funding period. These late successes are boosted by information cascades during the final 25% of the funding duration. We conclude – in contrast with earlier literature – that project success is only partially path-dependent. While early pledges do anticipate project success, a lack of them does not necessarily mean that projects will fail. Interviews and questionnaire responses indicate that projects’ communication efforts play a role in making severely under track projects succeed eventually. Moreover, our dataset uniquely allows us to quantify the extent of self funding. Self pledges account for about 10% of all initial pledges and 9% of all pledges that secure funding. Nonetheless, the late surges at severely under track projects are mostly driven by external funders. Furthermore, we find no evidence of subsequent herding triggered by self pledges.     

The contribution of urban-scale environmental monitoring to materials diagnostics: A study on the Cathedral of Modena (Italy)

The problem of environmental monitoring aimed at identifying and evaluating the weathering mechanisms affecting historical stoneworks is here discussed and a methodology based on the use of already available, long record, urban-scale environmental data is proposed. An example of its application to the Cathedral of Modena (Italy, XII-XIV century, included in the UNESCO's World Heritage List) is then presented. In this case, the methodology allowed the identification of the main degradation causes, which found significant confirmation by material diagnostics on the available samples and finite element structural modelling. Thanks to the decay causes identification allowed by the proposed methodology, more effective restoration procedures can be outlined.     

Self-citations as strategic response to the use of metrics for career decisions

There is limited knowledge on the extent to which scientists may strategically respond to metrics by adopting questionable practices, namely practices that challenge the scientific ethos, and the individual and contextual factors that affect their likelihood. This article aims to fill these gaps by studying the opportunistic use of self-citations, i.e. citations of one’s own work to boost metric scores. Based on sociological and economic literature exploring the factors driving scientists’ behaviour, we develop hypotheses on the predictors of strategic increase in self-citations. We test the hypotheses in the Italian Higher Education system, where promotion to professorial positions is regulated by a national habilitation procedure that considers the number of publications and citations received. The sample includes 886 scientists from four of science’s main disciplinary sectors, employs different metrics approaches, and covers an observation period beginning in 2002 and ending in 2014. We find that the introduction of a regulation that links the possibility of career advancement to the number of citations received is related to a strong and significant increase in self-citations among scientists who can benefit the most from increasing citations, namely assistant professors, associate professors and relatively less cited scientists, and in particular among social scientists. Our findings suggest that while metrics are introduced to spur virtuous behaviours, when not properly designed they favour the usage of questionable practices.     

Universities’ attractiveness to students: The Darwinism effect

Due to significant government cuts to Higher Education funding in Southern European systems, their already underfunded universities were forced to increasingly compete for students as sources of additional revenue. Concurrently, families and students that continued to afford participation in Higher Education became more selective when choosing a university, realising the riskier investment that Higher Education participation had become. Through a competing destinations model and relying on all Italian private and public universities, this study finds that the competition forces characterising universities’ attractiveness over the last decade have changed since the financial crisis of 2008. In a context of lower demand for Higher Education, the competition for students grew and universities in close proximity were better prepared to face the new challenges, leading to the growth of Higher Education clusters.     

Deductive teaching from computer science foundations

Various problems concerning the teaching of informatics arise from the foundations of computer science. Difficulties in terminology, in lesson definition, in the introduction to topics are examples of substantial and they are not psychological or expressive problems. The foundations are officially acknowledged as an open problem and they give rise to incomplete and mnemomic computer science learning. They do not allow the student to be aware of informatics themes. They subsequently inhibit programming, systems design, research and many other activities. This paper discusses the results of theoretical research on the foundations carried out at IBM. This facititates deductive teaching and improves students preparation on the basic contents and on all the other themes of computer science. The early lessons of a high-school course are outlined. © 1998 IFIP, published by Chapman & Hall Ltd     

A Graphical Method for Assessing the Identification of Linear Structural Equation Models

A graphical method is presented for assessing the state of identifiability of the parameters in a linear structural equation model based on the associated directed graph. We do not restrict attention to recursive models. In the recent literature, methods based on graphical models have been presented as a useful tool for assessing the state of identifiability of the parameters of the model. This article proposes the graphical counterpart of the rank condition of the matrix of structural coefficients, which allows for checking of the identifiability through a simple graphical rule. This approach can be used to develop algorithms.