Primary pre-service teachers' pedagogical reasoning skills

This paper discusses a preliminary investigation into primary pre-service teachers' pedagogical reasoning skills. Results from this investigation led to the development of a problem-based learning model which focused on improving primary pre-service teachers' pedagogical reasoning skills. The problem-based learning model uses pedagogical reasoning as the basis for creating problem situations for the pre-service teachers to investigate. The paper reports on pre-service teachers' views on the use of the approach to improve their pedagogical reasoning skills. Specializations: science teacher education, learning in science, chemistry education. Specializations: student learning, conceptual change, technology education, curriculum evaluation.     

Response to the discipline review of teacher education in mathematics and science

This paper relates to a study commissioned by the Department of Employment, Education and Training to evaluate the impact of the Discipline Review of Teacher Education in Mathematics and Science. The major datagathering strategies employed in that study have been to visit every higher education institution in Australia involved in teacher education to interview relevant staff and to seek information by mail from other bodies to whom recommendations of the Review were addressed. This paper reports a supplementary activity, the analysis of citations of the Report of the Discipline Review in the journal of the Australasian Science Education Research Association,Research in Science Education. This research reveals that there has been relatively little critical analysis of the Review, somewhat surprising in the light of its significance for science teacher education. Further the citations in the journal suggest that the Review Report has struck a responsive chord with those involved in the science education of primary school teachers. Its impact on secondary teacher education would appear to be less significant. This difference is explored in the context of professional education. Specializations: science education, teacher education. Specializations: international education, educational measurement, science education.     

机载相控阵雷达调度的专家系统研究

本文研究设计了一种新型的机载相控阵雷达调度(SOMAPAR)的专家系统。该系统构造了一个由多种知识表达方式实现的知识库,并运用模糊数学方法表达知识,建立了一个简单的模糊推理机。仿真结果表明,该SOMAPAR专家系统能使雷达自适应于目标环境的变化,调整自身状态在最佳条件下工作,具有一定的专家水平。     

Faculty acceptance of a workload survey in one major university

The faculty survey or workload instrument becomes the focal point for both praise and criticism about measuring how faculty spend professional time. While research on the workload instrument often centers on the design and administration of the survey, NCHEMS has questioned how faculty react to such workload analysis, a researchable area seemingly overlooked. In a 1973 report, NCHEMS suggested that faculty reaction or acceptance may be related to the degree of faculty self-governance, experience in completing the survey, the positive use of data for departments, and the expectation that faculty are required to complete the survey for an external governing board. Faculty on one large state-supported midwestern university were asked how they felt about the workload survey administered on campus and whether the NCHEMS' factors were related to their acceptance of the survey. Multivariate analysis and a path model helped to analyze and interpret faculty responses to a questionnaire administered by this author. Results upheld one of the four NCHEMS relationships, namely, that a positive attitude toward a survey is related to perceived value of the data for allocating faculty resources and communication in the department. Several practical and methodological considerations are reviewed to extend research on faculty acceptance.     

Students' estimates of knowledge gained as measures of the quality of teacher education

One set of measures of the quality of courses for the preparation of science teachers stems from the perceptions exit students have of their knowledge with respect to that teaching. The Discipline Review of Teacher Education in Mathematics and Science surveyed these students late in 1988 on three broad types of knowledge-science content knowledge, curriculum knowledge, and pedagogical knowledge. Some of these findings of the Review are described. In addition, the base for developing items to measure these three types of knowledge is discussed in this paper. The variety in the data that emerged is also presented and the consistency of the findings with other measures of quality is described. Specialisations: science and technology curriculum, environmental education, educational disadvantage. Specialisations: research and evaluation in teacher education, technical and further education and total quality management. Specialisations: research in educational systems.     

Four dialogues and metalogues about the nature of science

We analyse and explore, in the form of dialogues and metalogues questions about the dialogic nature of beliefs and students belief talk about the nature of science and scientific knowledge. Following recent advances in discursive psychology, this study focuses not on students' claims but on the discursive resources and dialogical practices that support the particular claims they make. We argue that students' discourse is better understood as a textual bricolage that is sensitive to conversational context, common sense, interpretive repertoires, and textual resources available in the conversational situation. Our text is reflexive as it embodies the discursive construction of knowledge and undercuts any claims to authoritative knowledge. The very conception of “belief” is itself an expression or construction from within the mundane idiom.... We learn to use “belief” in conditions when the “objective facts” are unknown or problematic and we want to indicate the tenuous character of our claim.... The notion of “real world” or “objective reality” is embedded in an extensive, pervasive language game which includes as an intelligible move or possibility the use of the very concept of “belief” itself. (Pollner, 1987, p. 21)     

The course as token: A construction of/by networks

In actor-network theory (ANT) the movement from the instability of science-in-the-making to the relative stability of ready-made-science is followed by tracing the path of a token or focal actor (either human or non-human) as it both constructs a network and is simultaneously transformed by the developing network. Within science education, a new course can be seen to be a token. It undergoes various transformations as it simultaneously changes those who encounter it (teachers, students, and interested actors beyond the school) and is changed by those same actors. This paper describes the way a new applied physics course introduced in British Columbia as part of a program in applied academics can be seen to construct different networks in different contexts and, in the process, to take on significantly different characteristics. Data are collected from interviews and observations in two different settings characterized in part by differences in the types of partnerships developed with industry, labour, and post-secondary groups. The success of the applied physics course in challenging traditional forms of school physics is seen to rely on the size and strength of the network in which it is imbedded.