Reading Science Texts—Epistemology, Inquiry, Authenticity—A Rejoinder to Jonathan Osborne

We shall structure this rejoinder around two main sections. In the first, we address three underlying assumptions of our work that Osborne has identified. We indicate points of agreement, disagreement, and clarification. In the second section, we discuss briefly and add our clarifications to three understandings of his that Osborne introduces into the discussion. It should be noted that Osborne’s response is grounded in the same basic assumption as our set of papers, namely, the central role played by reading and writing, and communicative activities in general, both in science and in learning science.     

Robust hope,democracy and early childhood education

This paper discusses a recent Australian study of boys' education using case studies to determine successful practices. It focuses on an early childhood site where access to ‘discourses of power’ for students and parents and a valuing of students' ‘action knowledge’ created a particular democratic culture achieving improved outcomes for boys. The data are drawn from focus groups with families, interviews with educators, conversations with children and on‐site observations over two days. The findings are discussed in terms of those factors deriving from Henry Giroux's work on democracy and hope. In addition, we build on the work of Giroux by discussing the site as an exemplar of what we have come to call ‘robust hope’.     

科学资源对公众科学兴趣的贡献(上)

学校、科学中心、电视媒体、纸质媒体及网络是五种主要的公共科学教育资源。本研究以美国三座大城市的3000名成人为样本,调查了以上资源对公众科学兴趣的价值及认知倾向的作用。通过文献回顾,确定了以成人现在的科学兴趣价值观和认知倾向与其现在和过去使用相关科学资源的关系为研究目标,通过对洛杉矶、凤凰城和费城家庭样本使用CATI随机抽样得到的数据,采用主成分分析法得出最终问卷,并开展了相关人口统计学变量分析。     

科学资源对公众科学兴趣的贡献(下)

学校、科学中心、广播媒体、纸质媒体及互联网是五种主要的公共科学教育资源。本研究以美国三座大城市的3000名成人为样本,调查了以上资源对公众科学兴趣的价值及认知倾向的作用。下篇展示了如下调查结果:有五种经历对预测成年后的科学兴趣、价值及认知倾向具有特殊重要性,即青少年早期参观科学中心;青少年早期观看科学类电视节目;成年后参观科学中心;成年后阅读科学类书籍杂志;成年后使用互联网学习科学。本文同时讨论了自我选择、经历的质量以及科学学习生态系统的复杂性和协同性。     

Always Articulating: Theorizing on Mobile and Wireless Technologies

Through this article we theorize on the nature and effects of articulation work relative to the take-up and use of information and communications technologies (ICT). Articulation work is “work that enables other work”: that which links people, processes, and technologies within organizations. Articulation work in organizations is both common and too often invisible from a managerial or budgetary perspective. Drawing on data from a study of the introduction and implementation of mobile computing technologies into criminal justice organizations, we highlight two findings: (1) There exist ongoing but unmet articulation needs present in any organization or work system. (2) Articulation is cumulative. We find, that as work becomes more complex (such as adding new work tasks and using new technologies), there is more articulation needed. These findings raise issues with assessing the costs of articulation on individuals, and making arrangements to accommodate explicit and implicit articulation in organizational work, particularly around the take-up and ongoing use of ICT-based systems.     

School Field Trips: Assessing Their Long-Term Impact

Museums invest considerable resources in promoting and supporting elementary-school field trips, but remain skeptical about their educational value. Recent cognitive psychology and neuroscience research require a reappraisal of how and what to assess relative to school-field-trip learning. One hundred and twenty-eight subjects were interviewed about their recollections of school field trips taken during the early years of their school education: 34 fourth-grade students, 48 eighth-grade students, and 46 adults composed the group. Overall, 96% of all subjects could recall a school field trip. The vast majority recalled when they went, with whom they went, where they went, and three or more specific aspects of what they did. Most said that they had thought about their field-trip experience subsequently, nearly three-quarters said they thought about it frequently. Reinforced by this study were the strong interrelationships between cognition, affect, the physical context and social context. Even after many years, nearly 100% of the individuals interviewed could recall one or more things learned on the trip, the majority of which related to content/subject matter.     

Social Networks of Children With Developmental Language Disorder in Inclusive Preschool Programs

This study takes an ecological approach to examine how children with developmental language disorder (DLD) interact with their classmates within early childhood special education (ECSE) inclusive classrooms. Participants were 124 children with DLD, 56 children with other disabilities, and 247 typically developing children (M_age = 52.42 months, SD = 6.27) from 56 ECSE inclusive classrooms. Results of social network analysis showed that children with DLD had significantly smaller peer social networks and were more likely to be isolated. Children tended to interact with peers with the same DLD status. These effects of children's DLD status were above and beyond the effects of children's social pragmatics skills.