Quantitative reasoning,complexity, and additive structures

Six fifth-grade children participated in a four-day teaching experiment on complex additively-structured problems, which was followed by in-depth interviews of individual children. The teaching experiment was meant to investigate children's difficulties in holding in mind at once situations in which one or more items played multiple roles. Two important difficulties were identified: (1) distinguishing between difference as the result of subtracting and difference as the amount by which one quantity exceeded another; and (2) indirect evaluation of an additive comparison. Sources of these difficulties, along with pedagogical and curricular recommendations for addressing them, are discussed.Research reported in this paper was supported by National Science Foundation Grants NO. MDR 89-50311 and 90-96275, and by a grant of equipment from Apple Computer, Inc., Office of External Research. Any conclusions or recommendations stated here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official positions of NSF or Apple Computer.     

Using Research Based Assessment Tools in Professional Development in Current Electricity

We present a practical way of adapting and using four research-based assessments for different purposes in an electricity and magnetism course for K-8 science teachers. The course is designed to accomplish conceptual change toward accepted scientific conceptions as well as introducing teachers to materials and activities appropriate for their classrooms. Our data support that using the research-based tests to identify alternative conceptions and discuss test results with teachers is a promising way to use the knowledge of alternative conceptions in professional development. We also identify some mismatches between the research of conceptual change and its use in programs of professional development.

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The role of gender constancy in early gender development

Kohlberg's (1966) hypothesis that the attainment of gender constancy motivates children to attend to gender norms was reevaluated by examining these links in relation to age. Ninety-four 3- to 7-year-old children were interviewed to assess whether and how constancy mediates age-related changes in gender-related beliefs. As expected, results indicated a general pattern of an increase in stereotype knowledge, the importance and positive evaluation of one's own gender category, and rigidity of beliefs between the ages of 3 and 5. Moreover, the stability phase, rather than full constancy, mediated some of these relations. After age 5, rigidity generally decreased with age, with relations primarily mediated by consistency.     

Evaluating electronic resources: Personal Development Planning resources at the Open University,a case study

This paper discusses the evaluation of Web‐based tools to support Personal Development Planning (PDP) in order to illustrate issues associated with the introduction and assessment of the effectiveness of online resources. The aims of the evaluation were based on concerns about the very complex situation that offering online resources including PDP poses for part‐time off‐campus students. In this paper the authors utilize a modified RUFDATA framework (Saunders, 2000 Saunders, M. 2000. Beginning an evaluation with RUFDATA: theorising a practical approach to evaluation planning. Evaluation, 1: 7–21.  [Google Scholar]) and consider the benefits a range of methods, including surveys and observational studies, can offer evaluations of electronic resources. They found that students used and valued some aspects of the provision but that even with best efforts of instructional designers, and user testing at the draft stage, students do not always behave as intended. This evaluation highlighted the need for a range of strategies for evaluating online resources and that regardless of student attitude there are real worries about eLearning imposing extra workload burdens on ‘time poor’ adults.     

Old Enemies？

本专栏由英国大使馆文化处供稿,旨在让读者从中学习地道英文,体悟英文百味。本期介绍了英国的四个组成部分——英格兰、苏格兰、威尔士和北爱尔兰之间的“恩怨”与“宿仇”。由于英格兰地域广,政治、经济实力强,不了解英国的人通常误把英格兰当英国。但是,在体育上,其他几个“兄弟”可是要扳回一城的……     

Investigating populations via penguins and their poo!

We describe an activity that introduces students to population modelling, enables them to use estimates obtained from a sample to infer back to the population, and understands how the findings are translatable via penguins and their poo!     

CHE Principles: facilitating authentic and dialogical semi-structured interviews in educational research

This paper examines the values of the CHE principles of Connectivity, Humanness and Empathy as a guiding framework for maximizing the ethical and methodological advantages of semi-structured interview research practices. The authors draw from two separate educational studies and apply the CHE principles to analyse and evaluate the effectiveness of decision-making in facilitating sustainable relationships with the participants in each study. Findings highlight that dialogical relations with participants were evident in both studies, and identify significant junctures where decision-making and actions influenced effective rapport-building and respectful and reciprocal relationships with participants in the research. The CHE principles emerge as providing a robust framework for educational researchers to employ when auditing their decision-making prior to and during their engagement in qualitative interviews.     

Cross-cultural influence on communication effectiveness and user interface design

The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of cultural diversity on communication effectiveness with different communication styles and to apply the results in the field of user interface design for computer-based communication systems. The scope of this study was limited to the relationship between context and verbal/nonverbal communication, and also the relationship between power distance and communication interaction. The results indicated that high context people (HCP) had better communication effectiveness in comprehending nonverbal clues than low context people (LCP), while LCP had better communication effectiveness in verbal communication than their counterparts. It was also found that high power distance people (HPDP) could not communicate as effectively as low power distance people (LPDP) during communication with interaction, but there was no significant difference between HPDP and LPDP in dealing with communication without interaction.