Giving the invisible hand a helping hand: How ‘Grants Offices’ work to nourish neoliberal researchers

Neoliberalism has become a highly dominating and taken-for-granted way of organising the university sector around the world. In the critical educational literature, this market-based rationality has been scrutinised in detail over the past decades. However, rather scant attention has been directed to how university managers and administrators, apart from setting up quasi-markets, may intervene more directly to give the invisible hand of the market a helping hand. Aiming to address this lacuna, the purpose of the current article is to develop an empirically grounded taxonomy of different types of such interventions, and to theorise them in terms of the different facets of the neoliberal milieu that they reproduce and the various forms of subjectivising work among academics that they seek to engender. We do so by means of a qualitative study of so-called ‘Grants Offices’ at three Swedish universities. The findings arguably add to and problematise our understanding of how neoliberal markets work in academia in three different ways. First, while extant research has noted that university managers and administrators may intervene beyond the setting up of neoliberal markets per se, our study is to our knowledge the first one that identifies and systematises a broad array of such interventions. Second, it problematises the view of neoliberal markets as a form of monolithic entity that produces a uniform competitive pressure on academics. Third, and related, it furthers our understanding of the type of subjectivity that competitive milieus are assumed to bring about.     

Primary Physical Science for Student Teachers at Kindergarten and Primary School Levels: Part II—Implementation and Evaluation of a Course

Interchange - This is the second of two papers on a novel physical science course for student teachers that develops and uses an imaginative approach to Primary Physical Science Education....     

数学与自然之书数学面对实在的可应用性问题

当今时代，人类差不多生活在数字的漩涡里。数学在时空实在中的可应用性问题，本质上是一个知识论的问题，文章分四个步骤对该问题进行了剖析：先是讨论亚里士多德的数学作为一种抽象的观点，随之讨论柏拉图的数学理念论，继之讨论康德的构造主义纲领，最后讨论维特根斯坦的规则理论。文中作者试图将康德与维特根斯坦的观点结合起来，以发展出一种“规则主义”，从而突破构造主义的限制，为古典数学留块地盘。在文章的最后，作者还指出了数学化的限度。     

No Difference in the Neural Underpinnings of Number and Letter Copying in Children: Bayesian Analysis of Functional Near‐Infrared Spectroscopy Data

It is under debate whether the neural representation of numbers and letters might rely on distinct neural correlates, or on a mostly shared neural network. In the present study, a total of 47 children in fifth grade (Experiment 1) and sixth grade (Experiment 2) simply copied numbers and letters on a touch screen while brain activation changes were recorded by means of functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). fNIRS data of both experiments and a joint analysis revealed that a shared neural network, particularly in the left hemisphere, was activated in response to both number and letter copying. Interestingly, no difference was observed in brain activation patterns between these two stimuli, as revealed by Bayesian analysis. Our findings indicate that both number and letter copying lead to similar brain activation in children. We further suggest methodological and applied applications of these findings in the frame of educational neuroscience.     

Science Teachers’ Use of a Concept Map Marking Guide as a Formative Assessment Tool for the Concept of Energy

In this study, we investigated the value of a concept map marking guide as an alternative formative assessment tool for science teachers to adopt for the topic of energy. Eight high school science teachers marked students’ concept maps using an itemized holistic marking guide. Their marking was compared with the researchers’ marking and the scores of a multiple-choice diagnostic test. Statistical analysis revealed that teachers evaluated students’ concept maps consistently, but the concept map scores were only mildly correlated with the multiple-choice test scores. We explored what each assessment method revealed in terms of students’ understanding with one student’s performance as a showcase. Teachers’ views on using the marking guide of concept maps as an assessment tool were also included. We discuss the value of the concept map marking guide as a formative assessment tool for science teachers to create and modify in order to encourage students’ conceptual learning.     

Enhancement of Quality in Chemical Inquiry by Pre-University Students

Our pre-university chemistry students face problems achieving sufficient quality in chemical inquiry. To try to enhance the quality of student performance in chemical inquiry, Dutch pre-university chemistry students (age 17) carried out an authentic research project on Diffusion of ions in distilled water. The learning materials for this student inquiry project, the teaching scenario and the website were designed in cooperation with five chemistry teachers. Three teachers from this network and two other teachers also implemented the project with 80 students to find out whether the emphasis on relevant concepts of evidence (CoE) improves the quality of student inquiry outcomes. This part – with its emphasis on the CoE – in the student inquiry task is based on four key features: the students feel motivated to explore, focus their attention on, give meaning to and reflect upon CoE. In teams students conducted a guide experiment, analysed a scientific article, did an inquiry and wrote a report, discussed CoE with peers on the Internet and rewrote their reports. All lessons were observed, field notes were made and analysed on whether the intended student activities had been realised. The Internet discussion was recorded in a database and analysed. The first and final reports of all teams were coded and analysed. Also the students appreciation of the activities was assessed. The teaching and learning activities were realized to a very large extent as planned in the design. The emphasis on CoE resulted in 65% of the students achieving a sufficient level of quality in their final reports.     

Developmental trajectories of externalizing behaviors in childhood and adolescence

This article describes the average and group-based developmental trajectories of aggression, opposition, property violations, and status violations using parent reports of externalizing behaviors on a longitudinal multiple birth cohort study of 2,076 children aged 4 to 18 years. Trajectories were estimated from multilevel growth curve analyses and semiparametric mixture models. Overall, males showed higher levels of externalizing behavior than did females. Aggression, opposition, and property violations decreased on average, whereas status violations increased over time. Group-based trajectories followed the shape of the average curves at different levels and were similar for males and females. The trajectories found in this study provide a basis against which deviations from the expected developmental course can be identified and classified as deviant or nondeviant.