Qualitative sampling in research on international student mobility: insights from the field in Germany1

ABSTRACT

Although over the past decades the numbers of studies investigating international student mobility and migration (ISM) increased, methodological challenges in empirical research on the topic have remained mainly unaddressed. This is particularly the case for sampling, which is a crucial but often less considered part of qualitative research designs. In this article, we identify three main challenges in qualitative sampling for research into ISM: time, space and international students’ heterogeneities. In addressing those challenges, we theoretically discuss their implications and give empirical examples drawing on our research experiences. We argue for a more reflexive research procedure in studying educational mobility.     

Science and Mathematics Literacy: PISA for Better School Education

In this study, we explored how a teacher used a new mobile application that enables students to collect data inside and outside the classroom, and then use the data to create scientific explanations by using claim-evidence-reasoning framework. Previous technologies designed to support scientific explanations focused on how these programs improve students’ scientific explanations, but these programs ignored how scientific explanation applications can support teacher practices. Thus, to increase our knowledge about using mobile devices in education, this study aims to portray the synergy with an emphasis on a teacher’s practices when using mobile devices in 2 different units (water quality and plants). Synergy can be thought of as various scaffolds (scaffolds in the mobile application and the teacher support) working together to enable students to support creating explanations when using the mobile application. The findings of this study showed that the decrease in the teacher’s support for claims did not affect the quality of the students’ claims. On the other hand, the quality of students’ reasoning was linked with the teacher’s practices. This suggests that when supporting students’ explanations, focusing on components that students find challenging would benefit students’ construction of explanations. To achieve synergy in this process, the collaboration between teacher’s practices, professional development days, and scaffolds designed to support the teacher played a crucial role in aiding students in creating explanations.     

无水乙醇夹带剂超临界CO2萃取荔枝核

以无水乙醇为夹带剂,采用超临界CO2萃取荔枝核,并用气相色谱．质谱联用仪（GC—MS）对荔枝核萃取物的挥发性成分进行了分析．结果表明,以无水乙醇为夹带剂超临界CO2萃取荔枝核的萃取率为5．47％,GC—MS鉴定出32种化合物,主要为甾醇类、萜类、不饱和脂肪酸、棕榈酸、脂肪酸酯、芳香醇,相对质量分数分别为38．8％,26.4％,8．60％,7．54％,8．44％,6．11％．和无夹带剂相比,夹带剂无水乙醇可以提高荔枝核的超临界萃取率．     

A person‐in‐context approach to student engagement in science: Examining learning activities and choice

Science education reform efforts in the Unites States call for a dramatic shift in the way students are expected to engage with scientific concepts, core ideas, and practices in the classroom. This new vision of science learning demands a more complex conceptual understanding of student engagement and research models that capture both the multidimensionality and contextual specificity of student engagement in science. In a unique application of person‐oriented analysis of experience sampling data, we employ cluster analysis to identify six distinct momentary engagement profiles representing different combinations of the behavioral, cognitive, and affective dimensions of student engagement in high school science classrooms. Students spend a majority of their classroom time in one of several engagement profiles characterized by high engagement on one dimension, but low levels on the others. Students exhibited low engagement across all three dimensions of engagement in about 22% of our observations. Full engagement, or high levels across all three dimensions, is the least frequent profile, occurring in only 11% of the observations. Students’ momentary engagement profiles are related in meaningful ways to both the learning activity in which students are engaged and the types of choices they are afforded. Laboratory activities provided especially polarized engagement experiences, producing full engagement, universally low engagement, and pleasurable engagement in which students are affectively engaged but are not engaged cognitively or behaviorally. Student choice is generally associated with more optimal engagement profiles and the specific type of choice matters in important ways. Choices about how to frame the learning activity have the most positive effects relative to other types of choices, such as choosing whom to work with or how much time to take. Results are discussed in terms of implications for practice and the utility of the methodological approach for evaluating the complexities of student engagement in science classrooms. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 88: 19–43, 2018     

Influence of problem familiarity on learning in a problem-based course

The results of an experimental study investigating the influence of problem familiarity on learning in a problem-based psychology course are presented. Participants worked with either a familiar or an unfamiliar version of the same problem. The following measurements were taken (1) a measure of problem quality as perceived by students, (2) number of explanations of the problem put forward by the students while discussing it, (3) quality of learning issues derived from the discussion, (4) amount of time spent on self-study, and (5) the amount of knowledge acquired as indicated by a test. The results demonstrate that participants in the familiar problem condition perceived the problem to be of higher quality than the participants in the unfamiliar problem condition. No significant differences in learning were found. The findings do suggest, however, that problems may be improved by making them more relevant to the everyday experience of students.     

Identifying the Learning Styles and Instructional Tool Preferences of Beginning Food Science and Human Nutrition Majors

ABSTRACT: :
Learning styles vary among individuals, and understanding which instructional tools certain learning styles prefer can be utilized to enhance student learning. Students in the introductory Food Science and Human Nutrition course (FSHN 101), taught at the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, were asked to complete Gregorc's Learning Style Delineator^TM, which identifies dominant learning style(s). In addition, students were asked to complete a survey that asked them to identify which instructional tools used in FSHN 101 they preferred and which they did not. All students, regardless of learning style, preferred the in-class lecture, outlined lecture notes, the WebCT site as a whole, lecture study guide questions, and example exam questions.     

Visual Skills and Chinese Reading Acquisition: A Meta-analysis of Correlation Evidence

This paper used meta-analysis to synthesize the relation between visual skills and Chinese reading acquisition based on the empirical results from 34 studies published from 1991 to 2011. We obtained 234 correlation coefficients from 64 independent samples, with a total of 5,395 participants. The meta-analysis revealed that visual skills as a global construct had a medium correlation effect size (r?=?0.32) associated with Chinese reading acquisition. The various visual processing skills differed in their relation to Chinese reading acquisition in different stages. Visual perception, speed of processing visual information, and pure visual memory had low-to-moderate correlations with Chinese reading acquisition in the lower grades (i.e., below second grade), whereas these relations did not retain their magnitude for children in the higher grades (i.e., second through sixth grades). By contrast, visual–verbal association skill was found to account for 34 and 41 % of the variance in children’s Chinese reading acquisition in both lower and higher grade levels, respectively. Greater attention to this construct can significantly benefit reading research and instructional practice. No regional differences between studies in Mainland China and Hong Kong were found in the meta-analysis.     

Does Russia need sex education? The views of stakeholders in three Russian regions

Objective To investigate the attitudes of the main stakeholders towards the introduction of sex education in schools in Russia.

Design Qualitative semi-structured interview study.

Setting Altai Krai, Volgograd Oblast, Moscow, Russian Federation.

Participants One hundred and fifty-three interviews with Intersectoral HIV/AIDS Committee members, government officials responsible for HIV policies and interventions, non-governmental organisation and private-sector representatives.

Main outcome measures Perception of and attitudes towards the introduction of sex education in schools.

Results Ninety-one per cent of stakeholders welcomed the introduction of sex education in schools and emphasised its importance for a child's personal development, public health, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS control, and pregnancy planning. The majority of respondents suggested providing different information for each age and grade. Despite the claimed support of interviewed policy-makers and main HIV stakeholders, there has been no action to introduce sex education. The majority of respondents were of the view that wider positive support through propaganda about health, sex and healthy lifestyle should be gained prior to introducing sex education in schools by addressing the stigma surrounding sexual issues.

Conclusions There was little opposition to the introduction of sex education in Russian schools expressed in our survey, but there are uncertainties regarding curriculum quality, teaching methods and the starting grade of teaching about sex, and there is a need to cover local sensitivities in the territories. These concerns could and should be addressed during curriculum design, development and programme implementation by the federal and local authorities. Wider involvement of educational specialists, peer-adults, health workers, celebrities and religious representatives in discussion of the curriculum could help prevent opposition to its implementation.

Contribution to knowledge Discussion of sex-related topics has been taboo in Russia and there has been little research into opinions on issues related to sex education. The contribution of this research is in gaining theoretical in-depth understanding of the attitudes of the interviewed stakeholders in Russia about the introduction of sex education in schools.     

Interlibrary Lending in Mexican,Caribbean, Central American,and South American Libraries

This article reports on a survey to Mexican, Caribbean, Central American, and South American libraries about interlibrary loan services and activities. It builds on previous studies and reports in an attempt to address a void in current interlibrary lending literature concerning Latin American libraries’ interlibrary lending services.     

The Invisible Employee: Success and Fragility of Automating Interlibrary Loan

Libraries and their interlibrary loan departments have enacted different methods for improving processes and services to create greater efficiency and less waste. Techniques range from holistic, and expansive process improvement projects to leveraging the ability of request management systems to automate processes and services successfully. This article explores the effect of automation on the output of a sample interlibrary loan department and points out possible challenges that this automation success may create in the future.