THINK: A Game of Choice and Chance

A game of chance in which players can maximise their expected gain by making appropriate decisions is described. Developing an optimal strategy involves computing probabilities and conditional expected values.     

Teaching a Biotechnology Curriculum Based on Adapted Primary Literature

Adapted primary literature (APL) refers to an educational genre specifically designed to enable the use of research articles for learning biology in high school. The present investigation focuses on the paedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of four high‐school biology teachers who enacted an APL‐based curriculum in biotechnology. Using a constructivist qualitative research approach, we analysed those teachers' aims and beliefs, the instructional strategies they used during the enactment of the curriculum, as well as the outcomes of the enactment as perceived by the teachers and their students, and as reflected in the class observations. Some of the teachers' strategies applied during the enactment, such as the conversational model, were specifically designed for teaching APL‐based curricula. We found that the instructional strategies applied for the adapted articles were associated with cognitive and affective engagement, active learning, inquiry thinking, and understanding of the nature of science. Suitable teacher PCK promoted learning by inquiry in addition to learning on inquiry. Students' challenges were mainly linked to the comprehension of complex, multi‐stage, biotechnological processes and methods that are abundant throughout the curriculum and required the use of previous knowledge in new contexts. A complex interaction of factors, namely teachers' PCK, the APL genre, and the biotechnology content of the curriculum, shaped the instructional strategies of the new curriculum and the outcomes of its enactment     

Working together to make things happen: New on-campus higher education opportunities in a regional centre

In 2005 a South Australian university inaugurated a new provision of higher education programs in a regional city. Previously, would-be university students in the area had only the options of off-campus study, moving away from home to become internal students, or not pursuing university studies at all. The initiative provided the opportunity to study the effects of the new university presence on its students, university staff and the wider community, and at the same time to learn much that would enable continuous improvement of the methods used in offering these programs. This article reports on the results from focus groups of students and staff, and a survey of the first cohort of students, part of the first stage of a longitudinal study. A combination of effort and collaboration has contributed to meeting community educational needs and aspirations.     

Implementing History and Philosophy in Science Teaching: Strategies, Methods, Results and Experiences from the European HIPST Project

This paper presents a rationale for utilizing HPS to teach physics and the NoS developed in the course of a project funded by the European Union. A core feature of this approach is formed by the development of historical case studies for the use in lessons. Furthermore, the learners?? perspectives are explicitly taken into account. Teaching methods comprise student-centered activities as creative writing for understanding science and scientists and role-play activities. Emphasis is laid on experimental work which is performed with the help of true-to-the-original replications of historical apparatus, especially built for this purpose. A new characteristic for NoS learning is introduced, namely the reflection corner giving the opportunity to explicitly discussing the relationship between history, knowledge acquisition, and the application of scientific findings. In order to make use of the special skills, creative potentials and experiences of teachers a symbiotic strategy for the development and evaluation process of the teaching material was adopted where a close and long-standing cooperation between science teachers and science educators could be established. On this basis the German partners were able to complete numerous case studies from the fields of mechanics, electricity, magnetism and heat.     

Extending Sociocultural Theory to Group Creativity

Sociocultural theory focuses on group processes through time, and argues that group phenomena cannot be reduced to explanation in terms of the mental states or actions of the participating individuals. This makes sociocultural theory particularly useful in the analysis of group creativity and group learning, because both group creativity and group learning emerge over time from the successive contributions of individual members, and they are difficult to reductively explain in terms of the mental states or actions of participating individuals. This paper presents a case study of group creativity, analyzing how a collective creative product emerges over 17 successive encounters of an improvisational theater group. This case study demonstrates the value of sociocultural theory in the study of group processes over time. And yet, it suggests that to fully explain group creativity and group learning, existing sociocultural theory must be extended beyond a narrow focus on process and practice, to focus on three levels of analysis: individual creative acts, interactional dynamics over time, and the emergence of collective group creations.