"... 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.     

Students’ confidence in their performance judgements: a comparison of different response scales

We report results of two studies on metacognitive accuracy with undergraduate education students. Participating students were asked to judge their personal performance in a multiple-choice exam as well as to state their confidence in their performance judgement (second-order judgement [SOJ]). In each study, we compared four conditions that differed in the type of the presented 5-point confidence scale for SOJs. In Study 1, four bipolar scales with different labels were applied; in Study 2, unipolar and bipolar scales were implemented. The results of Study 1 with N?=?420 students show that undergraduates on average provided accurate performance estimations. However, students were not aware of their judgement accuracy, shown by a low fit of SOJ and judgement accuracy. In addition, the type of provided scale significantly influenced the SOJs. Study 2 with N?=?348 students replicated the findings of the first study and gave further insight into the effects of uni- vs. bipolar response scales.     

A resourcification manifesto: Understanding the social process of resources becoming resources

In times of major global interconnectedness and environmental change, the pressure to identify, create, and exploit new resources is certain to intensify. Given that there are unavoidable trade-offs, conflicts, and arenas for violence involved when increasingly more material and immaterial things are turned into resources, we call for explicit research on the very process – a process that we label resourcification. The concept of resourcification shifts attention from essentialist queries about the nature of resources to a focus on the social processes through which things are turned into resources. In search of a better understanding of resources in the Anthropocene and, in particular, an understanding about the way resources emerge and are used, resourcification offers a new conceptual framework that allows for a systematic search for knowledge about the diversity of contexts, conditions, modes, and temporalities of resourcification. This Resourcification Manifesto offers a theoretical and empirical framework for a radical and disruptive approach to innovation, sustainability, and management studies and policies.     

Developing an agent-based adaptive system for scaffolding self-regulated inquiry learning in history education

This article presents a methodology for modelling the development of self-regulated learning skills in the context of computer-based learning environments using a combination of tracing techniques. The user-modelling techniques combine statistical and computational approaches to assess skill acquisition, practice, and refinement with the MetaHistoReasoning tool, a single-agent system that supports inquiry-based learning in the domain of history. Data were collected from twenty-two undergraduate students during a 4-h session where user interactions were logged by the system. A logistic regression model predicted user performance in relation to a skill categorization task with 75 % accuracy. The manner in which users apply the skills that are acquired is then assessed through a rule-based reasoning system that allows the pedagogical agent to adapt instruction. The results show that the model allows the agent to detect instances when skills are inappropriately applied as well as what type of goal that is pursued by students. We discuss the implications of these user-modelling techniques in terms of sequencing instructional content and using the tutoring agent to deliver several types of discourse moves in order to enhance learning.     

Wirksamkeit schulrelevanter Förderung in Kindertagesstätten

The present paper summarizes international and national research findings on the general and differential effectiveness of pedagogical work in early childhood education and care settings, evaluations of pilot projects on compensatory preschool education as well programs to support individual learning abilities. Based on these findings, the following conclusions are drawn: First, attending early childhood education and care settings at an early age (after the age of three) has a positive influence on the development of academic competences. Second, the effectiveness of these settings depends on the instructional quality, which could be considerably improved in Germany. Third, pilot projects on programs to support individual learning abilities could show that compensatory effects for disadvantaged groups of children exist, especially when they are interlinked with stimulating conditions in the family and at school. Fourth, effective training programs exist that can be implemented in early childhood education and care. However, a number of challenges need to be met before they can be successfully implemented.     

Learning opportunities from group discussions: warrants become the objects of debate

In the mathematics education literature, there is currently a debate about the mechanisms by which group discussion can contribute to mathematical learning and under what conditions this learning is likely to occur. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by illustrating three learning opportunities that group discussions can create. In analyzing a videotaped episode of eight middle school students discussing a statistical problem, we observed that these students frequently challenged the arguments that their colleagues presented. These challenges invited students to be explicit about what mathematical principles, or warrants, they were implicitly using as a basis for their mathematical claims, in some cases recognize the modes of reasoning they were using were invalid and reject these modes of reasoning, and in other cases, attempt to provide deductive support to justify why their modes of reasoning were appropriate. We then describe what social and environmental conditions allowed the discussion analyzed in this paper to occur.

Emotional and Behavioral Predictors of Preschool Peer Ratings

It was predicted that social cognitive, behavioral, and affective aspects of young children's social development would predict stable peer ratings of their likability. Measures of likability, emotion knowledge, prosocial and aggressive behavior, peer competence, and expressed emotions (happy and angry) were obtained for 65 subjects (mean age = 44 months). Sociometric ratings, particularly negative, were stable over 1- and 9-month time periods. Correlational analyses showed that emotion knowledge and prosocial behavior were direct predictors of likability. Prosocial behavior mediated the relations of gender and expressed emotions with likability (i.e., gender and expressed emotions were each related to prosocial behavior, and prosocial behavior was related to likability, but neither gender nor expressed emotions were related to likability with prosocial behavior partialled out). Knowledge of emotional situations similarly mediated the age-likability relation. Results uphold the early development of stable peer reputations and the hypothesized centrality of emotion-related predictors of likability.