Measuring Effectiveness of Health Education in a Web‐based Learning Environment: a preliminary report

Driven by claims of efficacy, flexibility and resource effectiveness, higher education is increasingly utilising the Web as an instructional tool. The claims for pedagogical effectiveness are often just that – claims — and appear not to have been proven in the reality of subject presentation and evaluation. Thus, it is necessary to examine assumptions regarding the benefits of Web‐based instruction in terms of effectiveness. This article discusses aspects of an investigation which examined and compared the effectiveness of HIV/AIDS related collaborative tutorial activities carried out in both a Web‐based learning environment and a face‐to‐face class situation within an undergraduate health education subject. Effectiveness of the pedagogical strategy and the different learning environments were measured in terms of observed learning outcomes and reported perceptions of the learners regarding their learning experience. Preliminary results based on measured learning outcomes related to the subject matter, HIV/AIDS, demonstrated that collaborative learning activities were significantly more effective in the Web‐based than in the class environment. Additionally, the vast majority of learners perceived the Web‐based environment to be as effective or more effective than the face‐to‐face, class environment in terms of facilitating their understanding of the issues explored in the subject.     

History and Philosophy of Science through Models: The Case of Chemical Kinetics

The case for a greater role for the history and philosophy of science in science education is reviewed. It is argued that such a role can only be realised if it is based on both a credible analytical approach to the history and philosophy of science and if the evolution of a sufficient number of major themes in science is known in suitable detail. Adopting Lakatos' Theory of Scientific Research Programmes as the analytical approach, it is proposed that the development, use, and replacement, of specific models forms the core of such programmes.Chemical kinetics was selected as an exemplar major topic in chemistry. Eight models which have played a central role in the evolution of the study of chemical kinetics were identified by an analysis of the literature. The implications that these models have for the teaching and learning of chemistry today are discussed.     

Two Cheers for Naturalised Philosophy of Science or: Why Naturalised Philosophy of Science is Not the Cat's Whiskers

Science &; Education -     

Parenting Teamwork: The Impact of a Fathering Intervention on Mothers and Infants in Vietnam

A multifaceted, relationally focused intervention involving group and individual pre- and postnatal counseling, print resources, and community resources encouraged 390 fathers of newborn infants in Vietnam to responsively support mothers and work with them as a parenting team. Both partners completed questionnaires prebirth and 1-, 4-, and 9-months postbirth on measures of breastfeeding support, exclusive breastfeeding duration, relationship quality, and infant development. Compared to 412 comparison group couples, intervention couples evidenced greater father support, especially in terms of helping and responsiveness to the mother's needs. This support predicted longer exclusive breastfeeding duration, improved relationship quality, and higher levels of infant development at 9 months. Sensitively working together with mothers as a coordinated team enhanced couple's relationship functioning and improved children's developmental outcomes.     

Transformative Education

Universities aspire to offer students a transformative experience, but rarely spell out the nature of this transformation. In this essay, L. A. Paul and John Quiggin frame the successful university education as transformative in the philosophical sense. They explain the way that a successful college education can be understood as generating an individual conceptual revolution, and thus, as a transformative experience. Education can create epistemically transformative change through the process of developing critical thinking skills, leading to conceptual replacement and the discovery of new intellectual frameworks. This epistemic transformation, if deep enough, scales up into a personal transformation. After explicating the nature and structure of transformative education, Paul and Quiggin show how understanding transformation in terms of personal change and awareness of unawareness clarifies the debate over its value.     

The association between homework and primary school children's academic achievement. International evidence from PIRLS and TIMSS

The association between time devoted to homework and children's academic achievement has long been an issue of great debate. A small number of mainly correlational studies have been conducted into this issue in a primary school setting, but have produced somewhat mixed results. In this paper we contribute to this literature by investigating the relationship between time spent upon homework and children's outcomes across 24 countries. By using a student fixed-effects approach, capturing differences in homework time amongst the same student across different school subjects, we argue that our results are likely to be subject to less confounding than much of the existing literature. We find little evidence that the amount of homework time primary school children are assigned is related to their academic achievement. This holds true across a large number of countries, survives various robustness tests and does not vary by gender or socio-economic status. We interpret this finding as suggesting that the homework assigned to primary school pupils may not be adequate to produce a positive association, and needs be improved if this time-consuming activity is ever going to bring benefits for children's academic achievement.     

Preface to special topic: surface modification, wetting, and biological interfaces (guest editors: john ralston and jingfang zhou)

This Special Topic section of Biomicrofluidics on "Surface Modification, Wetting, and Biological Interfaces," is discussed. The topic is very timely and one that is tremendously relevant to the microfluidics and nanofluidics community.