For Which Boys and Which Girls Are Reading Assessment Items Biased Against? Detection of Differential Item Functioning in Heterogeneous Gender Populations

In gender differential item functioning (DIF) research it is assumed that all members of a gender group have similar item response patterns and therefore generalizations from group level to subgroup and individual levels can be made accurately. However DIF items do not necessarily disadvantage every member of a gender group to the same degree, indicating existence of heterogeneity of response patterns within gender groups. In this article the impact of heterogeneity within gender groups on DIF investigations was investigated. Specifically, it was examined whether DIF results varied when comparing males versus females, gender × socioeconomic status subgroups and latent classes of gender. DIF analyses were conducted on reading achievement data from the Canadian sample of the Programme of International Student Assessment 2009. Results indicated considerable heterogeneity within males and females and DIF results were found to vary when heterogeneity was taken into account versus when it was not.     

A comparative content analytical study of negative news in western and third world newspapers

Since the advent of the NWIO debate, the Western media have been under attack over the perceived emphasis on negative news when dealing with Third World countries. This paper seeks to determine the degree of bias between Western and Third World media in their reporting of each other, and examines the role of culture in perceiving/selecting news of one kind over another.

The study covers four elite English‐language daily newspapers from the US, UK, India and Nigeria.     

C2STEM: a System for Synergistic Learning of Physics and Computational Thinking

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Synergistic learning combining computational thinking (CT) and STEM has proven to be an effective method for advancing learning and understanding in a...     

The social value of anonymity on campus: a study of the decline of Yik Yak

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the social value of anonymity in online university student communities, through the presentation of research which tracked the final year of life of the social media application Yik Yak. Yik Yak was an anonymous, geosocial mobile application launched in 2013 which, at its peak in 2014, was used by around two million students in the US and UK. The research we report here is significant as a mixed method study tracing the final year of the life of this app in a large UK university between 2016 and 2017. The paper uses computational and ethnographic methods to understand what might be at stake in the loss of anonymity within university student communities in a datafied society. Countering the most common argument made against online anonymity – its association with hate speech and victimisation – the paper draws on recent conceptual work on the social value of anonymity to argue that anonymity online in this context had significant value for the communities that use it. This study of a now-lost social network constitutes a valuable portrait by which we might better understand our current predicament in relation to anonymity, its perceived value and its growing impossibility.     

An Analysis of Student Grade Expectations and Marker Consistency

This study sets out to assess the extent to which final‐year students following a four year degree in education have a realistic sense of the strengths and weaknesses of an independent research study they are required to undertake. An analysis of the self‐assessment grades and those of their tutors reveals a poor match, whilst the criteria students use to assess their studies emphasise lower order criteria such as style and presentation, and largely ignore higher order criteria concerned with theoretical and conceptual understanding and the quality of discussion. The paper considers why students appear not to have theorised their experiences, and why there is only limited evidence of a critical understanding of academic writing.