“Won't you give up your snack for the sake of science?” Emerging science identities in family everyday interaction

This study provides a rich account of everyday science engagement in a science family (a family rich in science habitus) and sheds light on how science–person and science–antagonist identities emerge through science engagement in such a family. Using audio recordings and field notes obtained over a year of self‐ethnography, I systematically analyze science engagement in one family, showing how science was infused in all aspects of family life. However, the children in this family diverged in patterns of science participation: one child exhibited a science person identity, expressing more positive disciplinary emotions, initiating more frequently, asking more questions, sustaining longer investigations, and generally holding the floor three times more than the other child, who exhibited a science antagonist identity. To further understand the reason why the two children thus diverged in their patterns of science participation, despite many shared conditions, I zoom in on the moment‐by‐moment interactions in the family. Using microanalysis, I explore how positioning and roles may elucidate such local variation. The analysis illustrates how repeating events of identification within everyday family interactions are a powerful mechanism that can help explain such divergences. The findings underscore the importance of parents' awareness of the myriad of ways that recognition and roles are intertwined in everyday science engagement and identity formation. They suggest considering the potential of informal science‐learning environments to lead to alienation from science. Furthermore, the study implies that although we must investigate how socio‐historical categories function to deny individuals' (and groups') access to science, we should also go beyond these categories to understand how equal access to science is denied in less apparent ways.     

The Implications of Culture and Identity: A Professor's Engagement with a Reform Collaborative

In this study, part of a larger United States project investigating K16 teachers and science reform, we seek to understand how a science professor's participation in a large-scale reform effort affects her conceptions of teaching, teachers, and reform. The topic in this study concerned how the professor's teaching identity was modified and created by the reform effort as she mediated her participation. A multiple-method approach utilizing (a) semi-structured interviews/correspondences with four students and the professor, (b) classroom observations, and (c) field notes, comprised the data collection. Results indicated that, although the professor was inclined to try out new teaching strategies in her classroom, the project failed to create pedagogical dissonance thus leading to her lack of desire to accommodate a more inquiry-based pedagogy.     

Automatic attention cueing through eye movement in 2-year-old children with autism

Automatic attention cueing by perceived changes in gaze direction was studied in 2-year-old children with autism and typically developing (TD) controls using a visual attention cueing paradigm. In Experiments 1 and 2 the cue consisted of an eye movement (Eyes) and a nonbiological movement (SimEyes), respectively. The results suggest that visual attention in children with autism and their TD counterparts is cued by perceived eye movement. Thus, although in naturalistic situations toddlers with autism do not follow the gaze of others, they are sensitive to directional cues inherent in eye movement. Cue-specific differences in performance related to the level of engagement and cue-processing time may suggest reliance on different underlying strategies for gaze processing in autism.     

Graphic Violence as Moral Motivator: The Effects of Graphically Violent Content in News

Common wisdom holds that graphic media violence leads to antisocial outcomes. This common wisdom is reflected in the Society for Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. However, theory and research regarding moral emotions’ ability to increase moral sensitivity suggests that this type of negative content may be capable of yielding prosocial responses. This article describes this logic and tests its predictions in two experimental studies utilizing news footage of a mass execution conducted by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Results corroborate claims that graphic media violence can serve as a moral motivator. Higher levels of graphic violence led to stronger anger and disgust responses, which in turn predicted higher levels of (a) moral sensitivity, (b) desires for anti-ISIS interventions (including military and humanitarian efforts), and (c) eudaimonic motivations (i.e., seeking meaning in life). Important to note, no increases in negative attitudes toward Arab Muslims were observed. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

Sharing the Stage

Despite the proliferation of research on social media and journalism, only a few studies have analyzed how journalists in Latin America embrace the affordances of social platforms for journalism practice. Based on a survey of 877 Latin American reporters, this article examines the platforms journalists use and how they use them. The broad finding is that, despite the great popularity of Facebook in the region, Twitter is the most important platform for daily newsgathering and journalistic work. Journalists turn to Twitter to find sources and stories, showing an important openness to participatory journalism. Yet, they mistrust information provided from political sources. Our findings show that different regions in Latin America work with social media in different ways, and local journalistic cultures have an impact on these adoptions, especially in the case of Brazil. Further research and implications for the field are discussed.     

Handwriting evaluation for developmental dysgraphia: Process versus product

The act of writing presents difficulties for10–30% of elementary school children. Thisstudy's objectives were to compare theabilities of digitizer-based evaluation of thehandwriting process and conventional evaluationof the handwriting product to discriminatebetween children with proficient and dysgraphichandwriting. Copied and dictated writingsamples were collected from 3rd grade students,50 with proficient and 50 with dysgraphichandwriting. Results indicated that bothdigitizer-based and conventional evaluationsdifferentiated between children with proficientand dysgraphic handwriting, and that togetherthey provided an improved understanding ofwriting difficulties. Moreover, copying anddictated writing task results differed significantly.The results demonstrate theadvantages of combining both handwritingprocess and product testing, and utilizing bothcopying and dictation tasks, in order toachieve a more comprehensive understanding andsuperior evaluation of developmentaldysgraphia.     

Doing different things or doing things different: exploring the role of action learning in innovation

The notion of action learning driven innovation is explored with reference to three action-learning projects carried out in the last year and a proposed multi stakeholder project starting in 2016. The authors also provide an account of ‘innovation’, including its rationale and characteristics, and argues for its particular suitability in the practice of action learning.     

Conditioning history and inhibitory instrumental stimulus control: Independent-groups and within-subjects measures

The effects of excitatory conditioning history on establishing inhibitory stimulus control have been investigated in classical conditioning, but not in the free-operant paradigm. The present experiments address this question within the context of discriminated free-operant avoidance in which rats’ barpressing postponed shock. When a stimulus with only a history of signaling safety was combined, on a summation test, with a stimulus that maintained avoidance, avoidance rate was reduced, on average, by 60%. In comparison, after a stimulus acquired an excitatory free-operant avoidance history, nonreinforcement alone was not adequate to make it a predictable and effective inhibitor of avoidance on a summation test. These results, consistent with the classical conditioning literature, were produced by both between-group (Experiment 1) and within-subject (Experiment 2) comparisons. These findings are discussed in terms of (1) Konorski’s distinction between “primary” and “secondary” inhibitory stimuli, (2) the Rescorla-Wagner model, (3) the potential contribution of the “reinstatement of fear” to the outcome of summation tests, and (4) their implications for assaying the effectiveness of behavior-modification treatments of phobias.