Relationships de Confianza and the organisation of collective social action

This article examines the social and cultural organisation of learning and community change in a largely new immigrant and under-resourced neighbourhood in the US Situating our investigation within a local social movement for food justice, we use an ethnographic lens to study how learning is made to become consequential across relationships between people, across activities, and contexts. Our four-year ethnographic study highlights how community health workers (promotoras) build relationships de confianza as a tool that mediated new forms of action in the focal neighbourhood. We demonstrate how relationships de confianza have laid a foundation to (a) mediate social networks to organise for change and (b) promote solidarity through the response to urgent needs, creating a more holistic model of community health and sustainability. Drawing attention to relational resources foregrounds social actors and their ingenuity, promoting equity-oriented scale-making.     

A cautionary tale: digital resources in literacy classrooms

ABSTRACT

Supportive digital resources are key to supporting educators’ pedagogic practices in teaching children to be literate. But locating suitable resources can be confusing, with as claims about products being educational, aligned with curriculum outcomes, and even as ‘silver bullets’. In Australia, a lack of specificity in national and state curriculum guidelines about resource selection creates inconsistencies within and across schools. We investigate how teacher-selected digital resources are used in early childhood classrooms to support literacy learning. Drawing on three independent Australian classroom-based studies, we share three examples of children engaging with digital resources. Together, they show that not all digital resources promote active and engaged literacy learning in meaningful and socially interactive contexts. We propose principles for selecting digital resources to promote playful, scaffolded, and exploratory literacy learning.     

The Effects of Conjoint Behavioral Consultation in Early Childhood Settings

Conjoint behavioral consultation (CBC) is an ecological model of service delivery that brings together parents and educators to collaboratively address shared concerns for a child. This study provides exploratory data investigating the effects of CBC on home and school concerns for 48 children aged 6 and younger. Single-subject methods were used to evaluate the effects of CBC on individual children. Effect sizes across cases yielded large median effect sizes (0.97 at home and 1.06 at school). Results of paired sample t tests suggested significant improvements in parents' perceptions of communication with their child's teacher and in the overall parent-teacher relationship. In addition, parents and teachers reported high levels of acceptability of CBC and satisfaction with the consultant. Implications and limitations of the study and future research needs are presented.     

Unique Patterns of Cognitive Outcomes for Undergraduate Students at Southern Baptist Colleges: A Comparative Analysis

The purpose of this study was to examine the levels of growth in cognitive outcomes among students attending Southern Baptist universities, as compared to their peers at other Council of Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU), Catholic, and nonsectarian institutions, and to identify the college experiences that contribute to cognitive development. Using data from the College Senior Survey, inferential analyses revealed that students enrolled at Southern Baptist colleges and universities had significantly higher levels of academic self-concept and perceived cognitive skills than students enrolled at other types of Christian institutions. In addition, regression analyses showed that the Baptist sample yielded some unique patterns as to which college experiences contributed to cognitive outcome development among students.     

Enhancing children's sense of self and community through utilizing computers

Summary Research has documented the positive effects computers have on children's self-esteem. Computers can also play an important role in enhancing each child's sense of self. Storytelling, journals, and books about the self provide valuable avenues to help children express their thoughts, ideas, feelings, and dreams. With teacher guidance, each of these activities affirms the children's identity and helps them better understand themselves. For children to have high self-esteem, they need to feel a sense of belonging. In an inclusive environment, teachers use computers to build a classroom identity by graphing class information, recording classroom activities, and/or creating class books. Each of these activities not only helps to build a class identity but enables each child to develop a framework of herself or himself in relationship to the world.     

Anticipation of incentive gain

In four experiments, the once daily availability of saccharin (.15%) preceded the availability of sucrose (32% or 2%). Experiment 1 showed that the intake of saccharin was reduced when it preceded 32% sucrose but not when it preceded 2% sucrose, as compared with saccharin-alone conditions. Experiment 2 showed that less saccharin was consumed when the saccharin preceded sucrose by 5 min than when there was a 30-min intersolution interval. Experiment 3 replicated this finding and showed that the presentation of the two solutions through the same or different access holes in the apparatus was not relevant to the result. Experiment 4 showed that there was an inverse relationship between saccharin intake and the length of the intersolution interval in the range of 1 to 30 min. These data were interpreted to indicate that the animals learn the predictive relationship between the saccharin and sucrose solutions and that the intake of the saccharin is reduced by an anticipatory contrast mechanism—a mechanism that may have restricted temporal parameters.     

教育心理学与教育技术学联盟:促进学习者认知变化——与理查德·梅耶教授访谈

学习是教育的核心.教育的目标是促进学习.教学应该以学习者为中心而不是以技术为中心,技术只是一种学习工具用以适应学习者的需要.教学设计的主要挑战在于如何在不增加学习者信息加工系统中工作记忆负担的情况下,用促进生成的方式呈现学习材料.教育技术学的研究领域应该继续向着科学化迈进,使得理论能够依据数据得以检验.高品质研究应与教育问题息息相关,理论可靠,方法适宜,用数据说话,逻辑性强,最好是聚焦一个问题同时用多种方式加以研究.     

Tokamaks and turbulence: research ensembles, policy and technoscientific work

A comparative analysis of two fusion energy research facilities is used to examine how the ensemble of research technologies (materials, methods, instruments, techniques, and the like) constructed and used by a group not only connects the group to other researchers and policymakers but also influences the group’s trajectory, performance, and the work of its members. We use a combination of historical, interview, and questionnaire data to describe the two facilities, position them within the field, and examine the working conditions and job satisfaction of their members. We develop the idea of research ensemble, characterize it in comparison with related concepts, explain how it reflects policy priorities and provides a new way for research groups to accumulate advantage and disadvantage. Using multiple regression models, we demonstrate how differences in research ensembles lead to differences in working conditions and job satisfactions. Some implications are proposed for policy in fast-changing, large-scale fields of science and technology.     

Household Technology Use: Integrating Household Life Cycle and the Model of Adoption of Technology in Households

Recently, the model of adoption of technology in households (MATH) was developed and tested in the context of household personal computer (PC) adoption. In this study, we apply MATH to predict personal computer (PC) use. We conducted a nationwide survey including 370 households that owned at least one PC. Results indicate that attitudinal beliefs are extremely important in determining use of a PC in the household. In contrast to previous work examining adopters, normative and control beliefs were not significant in predicting use. Furthermore, several determinants of adoption that were important at different stages of the household life cycle were found nonsignificant in predicting use for the same stages of the household life cycle. Overall, the results demonstrate that the belief structure for household PC use is different from that of household PC adoption. Further, the results provide additional evidence regarding the importance of including household life cycle in studies of household technology adoption and use.     

Public bioethics and publics: consensus, boundaries, and participation in biomedical science policy.

Public bioethics bodies are used internationally as institutions with the declared aims of facilitating societal debate and providing policy advice in certain areas of scientific inquiry raising questions of values and legitimate science. In the United States, bioethical experts in these institutions use the language of consensus building to justify and define the outcome of the enterprise. However, the implications of public bioethics at science-policy boundaries are underexamined. Political interest in such bodies continues while their influence on societal consensus, public debate, and science policy remains ambiguous. This article presents a theoretical discussion of public bioethics bodies as boundary organizations and examines them in terms of relationship to the moral and cognitive authority of science and other forms of expertise, mechanisms for public participation in controversial science policy, and the deployment of consensus models. The theoretical discussion is examined in the case of the U.S. Human Embryo Research Panel.