Stasis in Space! Viewing Definitional Conflicts Surrounding the James Webb Space Telescope Funding Debate

During 2010 and 2011, debate ensued over funding for National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This article uses stasis theory to analyze reports and statements produced by NASA, politicians, and scientists. The analysis reveals that an official report addresses stasis questions and guides further action. Additionally, varying perspectives on the telescope suggest that definitions play a crucial role in technology funding debates. This analysis demonstrates that stasis theory provides a productive tool for analyzing technology policy debates.     

Student difficulty in constructing proofs: The need for strategic knowledge

The ability to construct proofs is an important skill for all mathematicians. Despite its importance, students have great difficulty with this task. In this paper, I first demonstrate that undergraduates often are aware of and able to apply the facts required to prove a statement but still fail to prove it. They thus fail to construct a proof because they could not use the syntactic knowledge that they had. By comparing doctoral students and undergraduates constructing proofs in abstract algebra, I have hypothesized four types of `strategic knowledge' – knowledge of how to choose which facts and theorems to apply – which the doctoral students appeared to possess and undergraduates did not. The doctoral students appeared to know the powerful proof techniques in abstract algebra, which theorems are most important, when particular facts and theorems are likely to be useful, and when one should or should not try and prove theorems using symbol manipulation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Output-sensitive autocompletion search

We consider the following autocompletion search scenario: imagine a user of a search engine typing a query; then with every keystroke display those completions of the last query word that would lead to the best hits, and also display the best such hits. The following problem is at the core of this feature: for a fixed document collection, given a set D of documents, and an alphabetical range W of words, compute the set of all word-in-document pairs (w, d) from the collection such that w ∈ W and d ∈ D. We present a new data structure with the help of which such autocompletion queries can be processed, on the average, in time linear in the input plus output size, independent of the size of the underlying document collection. At the same time, our data structure uses no more space than an inverted index. Actual query processing times on a large test collection correlate almost perfectly with our theoretical bound.

Differences in one's own and one's partner's perceptions of social skills as a function of attachment style

Two studies focused on attachment‐style differences in people's social skills. Study 1 had a sample of 237 students who completed questionnaires assessing their own attachment styles and social skills (based on Riggio's six dimensions of social skill). Study 2, which focused on partner‐reports, used data from 258 couples to determine whether people's perceptions of a partner's social skill would vary based on the partner's self‐reported attachment style. The results revealed attachment‐style differences in various social skills across self‐and partner‐reports; however, these differences were generally less robust for partner‐reports. Differences in self‐reported social skill were consistent with Bartholomew's two‐factor conceptualization of attachment. Dismissive and fearful individuals rated themselves as relatively antisocial and unexpressive, in line with their negative models of others; preoccupied and fearful individuals rated themselves as overly sensitive, in line with their negative models of self. Preoccupied individuals were also perceived as the most socially sensitive by their partners, and across all the analyses, secures were ostensibly the most socially skilled.     

Qualification paths of adult educators in Sweden and Denmark

The qualification of adult educators is a central aspect of the quality of adult education. However, within current policy discourses and adult education research on the professional development of prospective adult educators, little attention is paid to teacher qualification when compared to other fields of education and training. In this study, we analyse the qualification paths, or learning trajectories, of prospective adult educators in Sweden and Denmark. The analysis is based on narrative interviews with 29 students in training to become adult educators. The career paths of adult educators are often long and winding roads. Becoming an adult educator could be their primary desire, but it could also be their ‘Plan B’, a second choice. Individual motives and external demands interact in the professionalisation process. A shift in focus from teaching subject and methods to teaching context and the relation to the learners is part of the professional development. Finally, we argue that both academic studies and hands-on work in the adult education community are crucial parts of the adult educator's qualification path.     

A comparative study on student perceptions of their learning outcomes in undergraduate science degree programmes with differing curriculum models

ABSTRACT

This study investigated students’ perceptions of their graduate learning outcomes including content knowledge, communication, writing, teamwork, quantitative skills, and ethical thinking in two Australian universities. One university has a traditional discipline-orientated curriculum and the other, an interdisciplinary curriculum in the entry semester of first year. The Science Students Skills Inventory asked students (n?=?613) in first and final years to rate their perceptions of the importance of developing graduate learning outcomes within the programme; how much they improved their graduate learning outcomes throughout their undergraduate science programme; how much they saw learning outcomes included in the programme; and how confident they were about their learning outcomes. A framework of progressive curriculum development was adopted to interpret results. Students in the discipline-oriented degree programme reported higher perceptions of scientific content knowledge and ethical thinking while students from the interdisciplinary curriculum indicated higher perceptions of oral communication and teamwork. Implications for curriculum development include ensuring progressive development from first to third years, a need for enhanced focus on scientific ethics, and career opportunities from first year onwards.     

The Impact of Relational Characteristics and Reasons for Topic Avoidance on Relational Closeness

Although research suggests that the act of topic avoidance itself has consequences for romantic partners, it seems equally likely that the antecedent conditions underlying these decisions to avoid certain topics also lead to important relational outcomes. Framed by communication boundary management theory, relationship characteristics, motivation for topic avoidance, and implications for relational closeness were examined. Findings indicate that relational commitment characteristics and individuals' reported rationale for topic avoidance are related to perceptions of relational closeness. These results illustrate the importance of understanding the underlying factors that motivate the decision to engage in topic avoidance and their impact on romantic relationships.     

Student Teachers’ Understanding of the Terminology, Distribution, and Loss of Biodiversity: Perspectives from a Biodiversity Hotspot and an Industrialized Country

The loss of biodiversity is one of the most urgent global environmental problems of our time. Public education and awareness building is key to successful biodiversity protection. Knowledgeable and skilled student teachers are a key component for the successful implementation of biodiversity education in schools. Yet, little empirical evidence exists on teachers’ detailed understanding of biodiversity. This study aimed to assess student teachers’ conceptions of the terminology as well as their understanding of the distribution and loss of biodiversity. Data were collected from a qualitative in-depth interview study of student biology teachers from Costa Rica and Germany (n?=?24). Both verbal and visual methods were used to elicit responses. The results show that participants from both countries equated biodiversity with species diversity and had misconceptions about genetic diversity. Costa Rican student teachers seemed to have a more local perspective on biodiversity and unanimously described their local biodiversity as high, and under threat. In contrast, German teachers showed a more global view and were mostly uncertain about the level and threat status of local biodiversity. Prevailing associations explaining the global distribution and loss of biodiversity were heavily based on everyday assumptions, such as the presence/absence of humans, cities, and industries. Additionally, the transnational character of many of the socioeconomic drivers causing biodiversity loss was largely neglected. Although most participants were unfamiliar with the scientific concept of biodiversity hotspots, they implicitly used a naive biodiversity hotspots concept to explain the distribution and loss of global biodiversity. The results are discussed in terms of the educational implications.