Comprehending conflicting science-related texts: graphs as plausibility cues

When reading conflicting science-related texts, readers may attend to cues which allow them to assess plausibility. One such plausibility cue is the use of graphs in the texts, which are regarded as typical of ‘hard science’. The goal of our study was to investigate the effects of the presence of graphs on the perceived plausibility and situation model strength for conflicting science-related texts, while including the influence of readers’ amount of experience with scientific texts and graphs as a potential moderator of these effects. In an experiment mimicking web-based informal learning, 77 university students read texts on controversial scientific issues which were presented with either graphs or tables. Perceived plausibility and situation model strength for each text were assessed immediately after reading; reader variables were assessed several weeks prior to the experiment proper. The results suggest that graphs can indeed serve as plausibility cues and thus boost situation model strength for texts which contain them. This effect was mediated by the perceived plausibility of the information in the texts with graphs. However, whether readers use graphs as plausibility cues in texts with conflicting information seems to depend also on their amount of experience with scientific texts and graphs.     

Cultural Competence: Toward a More Robust Conceptualisation

ABSTRACT

This article revisits LIS literature about cultural competence. It is not the prominent topic it was but is still considered important for addressing diversity, and is still criticized for obscuring racism and power structures in librarianship and society. Articles published in the last four years suggest, however, that library and information studies educators are teaching to engage with these issues. The cultural competence conceptual framework, specifically the environmental domain, can be recast to incorporate engagement with race and power. This more robust framework would enable culturally competent professionals to do more than accommodate difference.     

Measuring learning for citizenship

Over the past two hundred years or so, there has been a remarkable growth in the professionalization of occupations. This article identifies a range of social theories that may be used as maps and compasses to gain a deeper understanding of the processes of professionalization and the roles of professional education and particularly continuing professional education (CPE) in these processes. Underlying the article is the notion that educators working in this field are poorly served by the lack of adequate social theory. The article discusses limitations inherent in technicist and instrumentalist theories and various forms of liberal functionalist theory of professionalization and CPE. It then goes on to suggest the beginnings of an alternative critical social theory that may inform our thinking about professionalization and CPE. It suggests that sites of continuing professional learning and education may usefully be conceptualized as sites of struggle, and identifies a number of areas of tension and contradiction that, it is argued, must inform debates about the aims, purposes and structure of CPE, about who should gain access to what forms of knowledge, and about which forms of knowledge should be seen as most valuable. It suggests that these questions are primarily political and cannot be resolved in instrumental and technical terms alone. The contradictions and tensions identified give rise to ethical issues, issues of competence, excellence and mediocrity, issues surrounding the role of the state, professional self-regulation and monopolization, the links that may or may not be developed with wider political and industrial struggles of working people, issues concerned with occupational imperialism vs. the legitimation of occupations, professionalization and bureaucratization, and issues concerning professionalization and globalization. The hope is that this article will provoke further theorizing. In particular, I hope that it will stimulate critical research, which will look historically at the professionalization of a range of occupations and the role of CPE in this process.     

Adapting instruction to individual difference among students

This article discusses some of the problems in research on aptitude treatment interactions (ATIs). Among these are the inconsistency and lack of generality in many ATI findings, especially in classroom based ATI investigations. It is suggested that such investigations may well be of limited generality due to the nature of the phenomena. Careful classification of aptitude and treatment variables between individual differences in prior achievement and instructional method avoids some of the problems of other approaches, including examining interactions between cognitive processes and instructional method. Suggestions for further ATI research are made.     

Prospective elementary teachers’ development of fraction language for defining the whole

This article examines the ways in which prospective elementary teachers’ develop an understanding of language use for defining the whole throughout a 9-day rational number unit. Student work samples and classroom conversations are used to illustrate their difficulties and growth with defining the whole and corresponding language use for describing fractional amounts. The results indicate that three mathematical ideas became taken-as-shared by the class. The first was that fractions depend on a group or whole. The second included defining an of what. The third was developing language in terms of what the denominator represents. Difficulties prospective teachers had conceptualizing language included distinguishing among the phrases of a, of one, of the, and of each. Implications for mathematics education courses and future research studies are also discussed.     

The gross anatomy course: An analysis of its importance

The gross anatomy dissection course is a cost‐intensive piece of undergraduate medical education that students and professionals alike describe as very important within the overall medical curriculum. We sought to understand more explicitly students' valuation of gross anatomy as an “important” course and so developed a quantitative longitudinal questionnaire. Medical students (n = 124) enrolled in the winter term 2006/2007 gross anatomy course at the Ulm University Faculty of Medicine were surveyed anonymously prior to, in the middle of, and at the end of the dissection course. Subgroups of students expressing rising or falling opinions of course value were identified and correlated with student opinions about the course's ability to convey professional competencies. Five‐point Likert scales were used for each survey item, which included such standardized instruments as the NeoFFI, BSI, and FBM. The study confirmed that medical students believe dissection to be valuable. Students indicated that participation in the course facilitated acquisition of anatomy knowledge as well as skills related to teamwork, coping with stress, and, to a lesser extent, time management. Students also noted that they developed less empathy than expected beforehand. Significant subgroup differences were observed relative to the competencies of teamwork, stress coping strategies, and empathy, as well as in students' stress levels associated with having to take a dissection course. Our study builds on previous work that has shown dissection courses help students develop professional competencies. The increase in professionalism might be a reason for the generally high value students place on the gross anatomy dissection course, Anat Sci Educ 3:3–11, 2010. © 2010 American Association of Anatomists.     

Some Recent Developments in Teacher Education in Mathematics and Science: A Review and Commentary

Teacher preparation in science and mathematics will be best served, says the author of this roundup, by improvements both in the pedagogy and content of the undergraduate science and mathematics courses required of future teachers and in the reform of required science and mathematics methods courses. In a review of the history and politics of teacher education, the author underscores the twin goals of achieving program coherence and higher standards. She compares the place of mathematics education in mathematics departments with that of science education in science departments and recommends the replacement of bare bones methods courses with those combining pedagogy and content. Included is a selective bibliography.