Student Decision-Making about a Globally Familiar Socioscientific Issue: The value of sharing and comparing views with international counterparts

This paper focuses on the views of 16–17-year-old science students from England, Germany, Hong Kong and Sweden on whale hunting, and their perceptions of the views of their international counterparts. The students were all provided with the same decision-making task, discussed the issue in small groups and then presented their views on video, which were shared with their counterparts. The findings show that the decision-making task served to deepen and modify students' views across all nationalities, and the students generally valued and learned from the sharing of views with students of the same age from around the world. However, an important discovery was that the German students' opinions often ran counter to those from the other 3 locations, and the paper cautions against making broad-sweeping generalisations about students' views on socioscientific issues.     

Perceptions of Learning: Interviews with First and Second Graders in a Hungarian Primary School

The paper discusses children’ attitudes towards school and learning soon after entering primary school in Hungary. First and second grade primary school students (N?=?33) were interviewed. The interviews explored the following questions: What are the teachers’ and the children’s roles in the classroom? What is learning? Where do children learn? What kind of learning strategies do students use in arithmetic and reading? How are students evaluated in the school? What do students like best about school? The data suggest that the children quickly adapt to the school environment and, on the whole, have a positive attitude towards school and learning but—with a few exceptions—their views on the role of schooling in life reflect traditional, school subject centred goals and values and little awareness of the learning process.     

Teaching English-Spanish cognate-recognition strategies through the Américas Book Award-winners and honor picture books

Cognates are words that are the same or nearly the same orthographically and semantically in English and Spanish. The majority of the more than 20,000 cognates are academic vocabulary words comprised of Latin and Greek roots and affixes. Several thousand cognates can be found in the picture books that have earned the Américas Book Award, which was established to honor quality multicultural books that portray Latino cultures in a positive light. The authors present lessons for teaching primary school Latino ELLs about cognates through the Américas Award picture books, as they educate their students about their rich Latino cultures.     

Use of biochemical parameters for non-invasive screening of oesophageal varices in comparison to elastography-based approach in patients with compensated advanced chronic liver disease

IntroductionOesophageal varices are routinely diagnosed by esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD), and their bleeding has high mortality. We aimed to evaluate diagnostic performance of biochemical tests in comparison to elastography-based approaches, as non-invasive alternatives to EGD, for ruling-out high risk oesophageal varices (HRV).Material and methodsRetrospective analysis of patients (N = 861) who underwent liver stiffness measurement (LSM) by transient elastography (TE) in a single centre over 5-year period, with available results of EGD (within 3 months from LSM). Only patients with suspicion of compensated advanced chronic liver disease (cACLD) defined by LSM ≥ 10 kPa were included comprising the final cohort of 73 subjects. Original and expanded Baveno VI criteria (B6C), controlled attenuation parameter (CAP), platelet count (PLT), aspartate aminotransferase to PLT ratio index (APRI), Fibrosis-4 index (FIB4), model for end stage liver disease (MELD) score were evaluated against the results of EGD that served as the reference method.ResultsAnalysed patients had median age 62 years, 59/73 (0.81) were males, 54/73 (0.74) had alcoholic/non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and 21/73 (0.29) had HRV. In multivariate logistic regression analysis only LSM and PLT were independently associated with HRV. The best performing tests for ruling-out HRV (% of spared EGD; % of missed HRV) were respectively: LSM < 20 kPa (53.4%; 0%), B6C (38%; 0%), Expanded B6C (47.9%; 4.8%); PLT > 214x10⁹/L (21.9%; 0%); FIB4 ≤ 1.8 (21.4%; 0%), APRI ≤ 0.34 (12.3%; 0%). CAP, MELD = 6 alone or combined with PLT > 150(x10⁹/L) did not show acceptable performance.ConclusionThe best performing biochemical tests for ruling-out HRV in our cohort of patients were PLT and FIB-4, but they were still outperformed by elastography-based approaches.Keyword: portal hypertension, cirrhosis, platelet count, esophageal varices, non-invasive tests     

Factors related to study success in engineering education

Recent studies on student learning in higher education have paid attention to the relationships between characteristics of the learning environment and students' study orientations and study success. The purpose of the present paper is to examine these relationships in university level engineering education. The data were collected from Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland, by means of an Internet survey (n=394). Grade point average, credits per semester and students' qualitative evaluation of their learning outcomes were used as indicators of study success. The findings of the study indicate that students' perceptions of their learning environment were related to their study orientations which, in turn, were related to study success. Having a deep study strategy was the most important predictor of study success. Having a surface strategy, doubt about one's abilities and lack of regulation were factors negatively related to study success. Meaning-oriented and self-regulated students using a deep strategy showed the best success in their studies and externally regulated students using a surface strategy the worst. The findings of the study suggest that the learning environments in Lappeenranta University of Technology encourage deep learning.     

Where enterprise and equity meet: the rise of mentoring for women in Australian universities

In this paper I use a governmentality framework to explore the growth of women's mentoring programmes in Australian universities over the last 10–15 years. These programmes are supported because they speak to institutional concerns with improving performance in a performative culture, while being seen to deal with the problem of gender inequity. I draw on the mentoring experiences of two women academics from a larger study to illustrate the ways women are governed and self-govern, and negotiate subjectivities through mentoring. This reading locates mentoring within a network of institutional power relations, in so doing unsettling the truths we hold about mentoring as always good and unproblematic. It offers an important account of why mentoring has become so popular in these places in these times and reflects on the implications for feminist political goals.     

When Talking Differences Makes Us Closer: Communicative Dynamics of Group Salience in Intergroup Contact

Group salience, although a key variable in generalizing contact effects toward the target out-group, often negatively affects the quality of intergroup contact. Countering this pessimistic view, we investigated whether or not communicatively-induced group salience could yield positive contact effects by inducing prosocial intergroup emotions and by increasing relational closeness with the out-group interactant in the context of cross-group friendships. A survey conducted with MTurk participants (N = 331) revealed that communicating group-related topics within intergroup friendships increased prosocial intergroup emotions, which was further predictive of relational closeness and intergroup prejudice. However, relational closeness showed no evidence of mediating the effect of prosocial emotions on intergroup prejudice. The results contribute to intergroup scholarship in expanding the discussion of the influence of communicative dimensions of salience on intergroup relations.