Science classroom activities and student situational engagement

This study examines the association between student situational engagement and classroom activities in secondary school science classrooms in Finland and the U.S. Situational engagement is conceptualised as times when students feel that a task is interesting and challenging to them and that they have the skills to complete it (see Schneider et al., 2016. Investigating optimal learning moments in U.S. and Finnish science classes. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 53(3), 400–421. doi:10.1002/tea.21306). Data on situational engagement and classroom activities were obtained using the experience sampling method (ESM) from 247 Finnish students in 13 secondary science classrooms and 281 U.S. students in 18 secondary science classrooms. In both samples, the students tended to be situationally engaged only a small proportion of the time during their science classes. However, the Finnish students were more likely than the U.S. students to report being situationally engaged. To investigate when the students were most likely to report being situationally engaged, hierarchical logistic regression models were employed, which suggested that some classroom activities were associated with higher levels of student situational engagement than others. The Finnish students were more likely to report being situationally engaged when calculating and presenting scientific information. In the U.S., the students were more likely to report being situationally engaged while discussing scientific information and less likely when listening to the teacher. The results suggest that situational engagement is momentary and associated with specific science classroom activities.     

The effects of summary production and encoding condition on children��s metacognitive monitoring

Two studies were conducted to investigate whether context variations were suitable to improve metacognitive judgments in children in a complex, everyday memory task. In the first phase of each experiment, participants were shown a short event (video) and gave judgments-of-learning (JOLs), that is, rated their certainty that they would later be able to recall specific details correctly. In the second phase of the experiments, participants took part in a memory interview about the memory event and gave confidence judgments (CJs), that is, rated their certainty that the provided answers to the memory questions were correct. Study 1 specifically investigated the potential positive influence of giving a verbal summary before the JOL-interview on metacognitive monitoring, whereas Study 2 had a closer look on the effect of intentional versus non-intentional encoding on JOL and CJ accuracy. Results revealed no significant influence of giving a summary and hardly any effect of encoding condition on metamemory monitoring although children from age 6 on showed adequate monitoring performance. JOL accuracy appears to be a complex process, which is even more difficult to influence in children than in adults.     

Acoustic driven flow and lattice Boltzmann simulations to study cell adhesion in biofunctionalized ��-fluidic channels with complex geometry

Accurately mimicking the complexity of microvascular systems calls for a technology which can accommodate particularly small sample volumes while retaining a large degree of freedom in channel geometry and keeping the price considerably low to allow for high throughput experiments. Here, we demonstrate that the use of surface acoustic wave driven microfluidics systems successfully allows the study of the interrelation between melanoma cell adhesion, the matrix protein collagen type I, the blood clotting factor von Willebrand factor (vWF), and microfluidic channel geometry. The versatility of the tool presented enables us to examine cell adhesion under flow in straight and bifurcated microfluidic channels in the presence of different protein coatings. We show that the addition of vWF tremendously increases (up to tenfold) the adhesion of melanoma cells even under fairly low shear flow conditions. This effect is altered in the presence of bifurcated channels demonstrating the importance of an elaborate hydrodynamic analysis to differentiate between physical and biological effects. Therefore, computer simulations have been performed along with the experiments to reveal the entire flow profile in the channel. We conclude that a combination of theory and experiment will lead to a consistent explanation of cell adhesion, and will optimize the potential of microfluidic experiments to further unravel the relation between blood clotting factors, cell adhesion molecules, cancer cell spreading, and the hydrodynamic conditions in our microcirculatory system.     

INFLUENCES ON TEACHERS’ JUDGMENT ACCURACY OF READING ABILITIES ON SECOND AND THIRD GRADE STUDENTS: A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS

The present study aims at examining variables (at individual and class level) that influence the accuracy of teacher judgments of second and third graders’ reading abilities (decoding and reading comprehension). Data of 1,468 students and 86 teachers were collected. Due to the nested structure of the data, multilevel regression analyses were applied. Results revealed about 5% of the variance in judgment accuracy at class level. Generally, teachers judged reading comprehension abilities more accurately than decoding abilities. Low‐achieving students’ abilities, though, were judged less accurately. Accuracy in judging decoding was higher in small classes and in students with special educational needs. Accuracy in judging reading comprehension grew along the years (higher in Grade 3 and at the end of the academic year). Additionally, teachers judged second language learners' reading comprehension less accurately. The results are discussed in the light of implications for teacher training.     

Examining Measure Correlations With Incomplete Data Sets

A 2-stage procedure for estimation and testing of observed measure correlations in the presence of missing data is discussed. The approach uses maximum likelihood for estimation and the false discovery rate concept for correlation testing. The method can be used in initial exploration-oriented empirical studies with missing data, where it is of interest to estimate manifest variable interrelationship indexes and test hypotheses about their population values. The procedure is applicable also with violations of the underlying missing at random assumption, via inclusion of auxiliary variables. The outlined approach is illustrated with data from an aging research study.     

"... a certain amount of engineering involved": constructing the public in participatory governance arrangements

This paper argues that it is time for public understanding of science to develop a critical inventory of the forms, formats and methods of public participation and their respective implications and ambiguities. It highlights the need for analysing not only the limitations and deficiencies of participatory arrangements but also their constructive dimension, in particular the construction of the subject of participation. Looking into participatory governance arrangements in the issue area of genetic testing in Germany and the UK the paper presents a typology of formats according to the way the respective public is constructed and identifies four major constructions of publics: the general public, the pure public, the affected public and the partisan public. Each of these enables certain speaking positions while foreclosing others. The study shows that the main purposes of participatory arrangements in this issue area are knowledge production and education rather than political deliberation and decision-making.     

Towards detection of learner misconceptions in a medical learning environment: a subgroup discovery approach

Ill-structured problems, by definition, have multiple paths to a solution and are multifaceted making automated assessment and feedback a difficult challenge. Diagnostic reasoning about medical cases meet the criteria of ill-structured problem solving since there are multiple solution paths. The goal of this study was to develop an adaptive feedback mechanism that is capable of identifying and responding to novice physician misconceptions by mining the log trace data of user interactions in BioWorld, a computer-based learning environment designed to support medical students in regulating their own diagnostic reasoning. We applied a series of text pre-processing algorithms to extract the linguistic features that characterized symptoms identified by 30 medical students solving three endocrinology cases: diabetes mellitus (type 1), Pheochromocytoma, and Hyperthyroidism. A subgroup discovery mining algorithm was applied in two steps. First, rules were induced to predict an incorrect diagnosis submitted as the final solution for a case on the basis of symptoms highlighted by medical students as being pertinent, that were in fact not pertinent. Second, rules were induced to predict a distractor hypothesis (an incorrect hypothesis listed as the most probable) during the differential diagnosis process while solving the case. The rule set discovered through the subgroup discovery task was shown to predict both incorrect and distractor hypotheses set by novice physicians while solving the case. We discuss the implications in terms of developing an adaptive feedback mechanism that can detect physicians’ misconceptions and errors during problem-solving as a means to deliver prompts and feedback that promote the acquisition of metacognitive monitoring and control skills.     

Verbal and nonverbal indices of the communicative performance and acculturation of Chinese immigrants

This paper develops a theoretical framework for examining the acculturation process of immigrants. Focusing on communication variables, it suggests five levels of analysis for assessing acculturation as a continuous rather than dichotomous variable: the speech act level, ritualistic communication, strategic communication, the organization of conversational discourse, and verbal information processing. Examples from research on Chinese communication are utilized to illustrate important differences between Chinese and Americans at each level of analysis. The use of this perspective offers the twofold promise of improving our understanding of “acculturation processes” in general as well as our understanding of the particular everyday communicative actions of immigrant groups. Research on Chinese communication patterns using this perspective will increase our knowledge of Chinese and American interrelations, in addition to providing insight aimed at developing better indices of acculturation of Chinese in the United States.