Explanations and Teleology in Chemistry Education

It has been commonly assumed that teleological explanations are unnecessary and have no place in the physical sciences. However, there are indications that teleology is fairly common in the instructional explanations of teachers and students in chemistry classrooms. In this study we explore the role and nature of teleological explanations and the conditions that seem to warrant their use in chemistry education. We also analyse the learning implications of developing explanations of chemical phenomena within a teleological stance. Our study is based on the qualitative analysis of the instructional explanations presented in traditional chemistry textbooks used in the United States. Our results indicate that teleological explanations are in fact present in these textbooks and help provide an explanatory reason for the occurrence of chemical transformations. Their use is tightly linked to the existence of a rule, principle, or law that governs the behaviour of a chemical system, and that explicitly or implicitly implies the minimisation or maximisation of some intrinsic property. This law or principle tends to provide a sense of preferred direction in the evolution of a transformation. Although teleological explanations seem to have heuristic pedagogical value in chemistry education, they may also lead students to develop alternative conceptions and unwarranted overgeneralisations.     

Exploring Dominant Types of Explanations Built by General Chemistry Students

The central goal of our study was to explore the nature of the explanations generated by science and engineering majors with basic training in chemistry to account for the colligative properties of solutions. The work was motivated by our broader interest in the characterisation of the dominant types of explanations that science college students use to make sense of phenomena under conditions of limited time and limited explicit knowledge about a topic. Explanations were collected in written form using two different quizzes that students completed under time constraints at the end of a two‐semester general chemistry course. Our study revealed that students’ ability to generate causal/mechanical explanations depended on the nature of the task. In general, students were more inclined or able to generate mechanistic explanations to account for boiling‐point elevation and freezing‐point depression than to make sense of osmotic flow. The analysis of the types of causal explanations built by the study participants suggests that students may be biased towards some causal models or explanatory modes characterised as causal‐additive and causal‐static in our work. A large proportion of the students built non‐causal teleological explanations to account for osmotic flow. None of the participants in our study used a dynamic model of matter as the basis for their explanations of any of the relevant phenomena; the idea of an underlying random process that is taking place at all times giving rise to emergent properties and behaviours was completely absent from their intuitive reasoning under conditions of limited time and knowledge.     

Correlation between variables subject to an order restriction,with application to scientometric indices

Variables subject to an order restriction, for instance Y ≤ X, have a bivariate distribution over a non-rectangular joint domain that entails a non-null and potentially large structural relation even if the variables show no association (in the sense that particular ranges of values of X do not co-occur with particular ranges of values of Y). Order restrictions affect a number of scientometric indices (including the h index and its variants) that are routinely subjected to correlational analyses to assess whether they provide redundant information, but these correlations are contaminated by the structural relation. This paper proposes an alternative definition of association between variables subject to an order restriction that eliminates their structural relation and reverts to the conventional definition when applied to variables that are not subject to order restrictions. This alternative definition is illustrated in a number of theoretical cases and it is also applied to empirical data involving scientometric indices subject to an order restriction. A test statistic is also derived which allows testing for the significance of an association between variables subject to an order restriction.     

Statistical relationships between corresponding authorship,international co-authorship and citation impact of national research systems

This paper presents a statistical analysis of the relationship between three science indicators applied in earlier bibliometric studies, namely research leadership based on corresponding authorship, international collaboration using international co-authorship data, and field-normalized citation impact. Indicators at the level of countries are extracted from the SIR database created by SCImago Research Group from publication records indexed for Elsevier’s Scopus. The relationship between authorship and citation-based indicators is found to be complex, as it reflects a country’s phase of scientific development and the coverage policy of the database. Moreover, one should distinguish a genuine leadership effect from a purely statistical effect due to fractional counting. Further analyses at the level of institutions and qualitative validation studies are recommended.     

Initial Characterization of Colombian High School Physics Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge on Electric Fields

We explore the initial characterization of the pedagogical content knowledge of four, in-service, Colombian pre-university secondary education physics teachers on the concept of electric field. Two of them teach the content in English as a second language. The aim of the study was to obtain an image of the participants’ teaching of electric field and the inherent complexities that go with that. The results revealed that factors which involved their personal educational models, such as, how they interpret their school’s curriculum, the relationship they see between physics and mathematics, the most effective strategies for teaching physics, and the time they have available to develop the topic played a significant role. The teachers considered it essential to establish new strategies that would motivate the pupils by helping them visualize the electric field.     

Aragonese Tiles in a Flemish Castle: A Chivalric Gift-Exchange Network in Fifteenth-Century Europe

Excavation of the mid-fifteenth-century castle of Pieter Bladelin, a high-ranking Burgundian official, in the village of Middelburg-in-Flanders, near Bruges (Belgium), has unearthed a remarkable series of blue and white painted and glazed floor tiles. Post-excavation archival and heraldic inquiries into the tiles has led to a deeper understanding of the role that gift exchange of luxury objects played within the diplomatic network of Alfonso V “the Magnanimous”, King of Aragon, and Philip “the Good”, Duke of Burgundy, in shaping a shared chivalric and crusading culture between Burgundy and Aragon. The study demonstrates the added value of the integration of archaeological and historical data in studying economic, political and cultural processes for the later medieval or early modern period.     

What do K-12 students feel when dealing with technology and engineering issues? Gardner's multiple intelligence theory implications in technology lessons for motivating engineering vocations at Spanish Secondary School

The interest on engineering and scientific studies can be raised up even from the early years of academic instructional process. This vocation may be linked to emotions and aptitudes towards technological education. Particularly, students get in touch with these technological issues (namely STEM) during the Compulsory Secondary Education in Spain (12–16 years old).This work presents a preliminary evaluation of how relevant is Gardner's multiple intelligence theory (MIT) in the teaching–learning process within the Technology Lessons. In this sense, MIT was considered as an explanation variable of the emotional response within the different educational parts (so-called syllabus units, SU) in the Technology spanish curriculum. Different intelligence style (IS) will orient the student to a vision of the engineering and technology. This work tries to identify which relationships can be established between IS and specific technology and engineering learning. This research involved up to 135 students were subsequently tested about their predominant (IS) and on the emotions that arouse in them when working with each SU. The results were statistically significant and only those with a Logic-arithmetic or Environmental IS were not affected by the SU.Best teaching and learning practicesare required for encouraging further engineering studies.