Psychological Expertise and the Role of Individual Differences: An Exploration of Issues

Cognitive scientists have suggested that individual differences are relatively unimportant in predicting who will become an expert in any particular domain. This stance is at variance with the admissions screening practices of graduate programs in professional psychology as well as with counseling psychology's individual differences tradition. The purpose of this article was to consider some of the issues involved on both sides of this apparent contradiction, with particular emphasis on expertise in professional psychology. I first examine some of the possible operational definitions of expertise in this domain. I then consider salient literature and conclude that there almost certainly are threshold levels of intellectual and interpersonal skills that trainees in professional psychology should have. Beyond these levels, though, it may be that motivation and persistence are the most important variables in predicting the eventual attainment of expertise in professional psychology.     

Analysing the integration of engineering in science lessons with the Engineering-Infused Lesson Rubric

ABSTRACT

Science teachers are being called on to incorporate engineering practices into their classrooms. This study explores whether the Engineering-Infused Lesson Rubric, a new rubric designed to target best practices in engineering education, could be used to evaluate the extent to which engineering is infused into online science lessons. Eighty lessons were selected at random from three online repositories, and coded with the rubric. Overall results documented the strengths of existing lessons, as well as many components that teachers might strengthen. In addition, a subset of characteristics was found to distinguish lessons with the highest level of engineering infusion. Findings are discussed in relation to the potential of the rubric to help teachers use research evidence-informed practice generally, and in relation to the new content demands of the U.S. Next Generation Science Standards, in particular.     

Knowing,researching, and reporting science education: Lessons from science and technology studies

Recent research in science and technology studies changed the way we understand science as it is practiced—that is, how scientific knowledge emerges from social, natural, social, political, cultural, historical, and economic contingencies of scientific work. Many science educators agree that students should learn not only science but also about science. In this article, we (a) outline important findings, research methods, and ways of reporting research that emerged from science and technology studies; and (b) show how familiarity with science and technology studies research can provide science educators with valuable insights about curriculum design and research on learning. We conclude that science and technology studies can serve as a resource to science education and that there is a potential for conducting collaborative work between science education and science and technology studies. Such collaborations have the potential to yield better theories about how people become competent in science from childhood to adulthood. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 213–235, 1998.     

Cultural diversity in science education through Novelization: Against the Epicization of science and cultural centralization

Science educators are confronted with the challenge to accommodate in their classes an increasing cultural and linguistic diversity that results from globalization. Challenged by the call to work towards valuing and keeping this diversity in the face of the canonical nature of school science discourse, we propose a new way of thinking about and investigating these problems. Drawing on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, we articulate epicization and novelization as concepts that allow us to understand, respectively, the processes of (a) centralizing and homogenizing culture and language and (b) pluralizing culture and language. We present and analyze three examples that exhibit how existing mundane science education practices tend, by means of epicization, towards a unitary language and to cultural centralization. We then propose novelization as a way for thinking the opening up of science education by interacting with and incorporating alternative forms of knowing that arise from cultural diversity. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 824–847, 2011     

Sex differences in the environments of graduate students and faculty

This paper considers some important psychological aspects of the academic experience for male and female graduate faculty members and students. Drawing on data collected in a recent national study of doctoral program quality, information pertaining to the graduate department's environment for learning, the extent of faculty members' concern for students, graduate student assistantship experiences, and faculty members' satisfactions and views about various departmental practices and policies are examined. Gender differences in both student and faculty member perceptions of their environments were found to be generally slight and to vary by discipline.