Persons Living with HIV: Disclosure to Sexual Partners

A central concern of persons in HIV education and prevention is whether a person testing positive tells sexual partners of this result. An accumulation of 51 studies across twenty years reveals that 40% of persons testing positive for HIV antibodies did not reveal this result to sexual partners (5287/8854). The impact of various factors (age, gender, date of the study, time since diagnosis, nature of the diagnosis, and sexual orientation) received consideration.     

Student Perceptions of the Instructor's Relational Characteristics,the Classroom Communication Experience,and the Interaction Involvement in Face-to-Face versus Video Conference Instruction

The present study examined student perceptions of the instructor's relational characteristics, classroom communication experience, and interaction involvement in courses taken face-to-face and in a video conference context. MANCOVA results showed significant differences between these contexts, with more negative student ratings of instructor immediacy and receptivity; classroom communication connectedness/mutuality, satisfaction, and quality; and interaction involvement occurring in the video conference classroom context than in the face-to-face context. A path analysis modeled the relationships among these perceptions of instructor characteristics, classroom communication experience, and interaction involvement. Based on this model, suggestions for improving student perceptions of the instructor, classroom communication, and interaction involvement in video conference courses are offered.     

Specificity and overlap in skills underpinning reading and arithmetical fluency

The aim of this study was to examine unique and common causes of problems in reading and arithmetic fluency. 13- to 14-year-old students were placed into one of five groups: reading disabled (RD, n = 16), arithmetic disabled (AD, n = 34), reading and arithmetic disabled (RAD, n = 17), reading, arithmetic, and listening comprehension disabled (TRIPLE, n = 9), and typically developing students (NON-LD, n = 40). Multivariate analyses of covariance and variance component analyses showed that reading problems are characterised by difficulties with phonological processing and with rapid automatic naming. Problems with executive functioning and with digit span were typical for students with arithmetical fluency difficulties. RAD students had problems with phonological processing, rapid naming, executive functioning, and digit span. Impairments in number fact fluency, digit span, loudness perception, speeded sound manipulation, and coding, which all share a fluency component were common to problems with reading and arithmetical fluency.     

Vowel representations in the invented spellings of Spanish–English bilingual kindergartners

The study compared the invented spelling of vowels in kindergarten native Spanish speaking children with that of English monolinguals. It examined whether, after receiving phonics instruction for short vowels, the spelling of native Spanish-speaking kindergartners would contain phonological errors that were influenced by their first language. Results showed no differences between the two groups on the number of correct short vowel spellings, even though the sounds for four of the five English short vowels do not exist in Spanish. By contrast, differences were observed in the representation of long vowels with a higher rate of error among ELLs. The students had not received explicit instruction in long vowels. ELLs appeared to be trying to represent the diphthongized nature of some English long vowels by spelling long vowels with more than one vowel. The results support the authors’ hypothesis that kindergarten phonics instruction had an impact on the invented spellings of new second language vowel phonemes.     

European Survey of Master's and Doctoral Dissertions in Science Education

Editorial comment and summaries

English

Drs Kjöllerström and Lybeck present here a brief report of their European survey of master's and doctoral dissertations in science education, undertaken subsequently to a workshop on Research in Science Education in Europe held at Malente, FR Germany in 1976. The full report of their survey has recently been published by the Institute for Science Education (IPN), Kiel, FR Germany.

The article published here reports on the distribution, size and organization of science education research groups, their areas of research interest and higher degree programmes. It also surveys the main areas of science education research at master's and doctoral level undertaken during the period 1971‐1976, and the employment taken up by master's and doctoral students upon completion of their studies.     

Evolution 2.0. The Unexpected Learning Experience of Making a Digital Archive

Studies in the history of science and education have documented that the reception and understanding of evolutionary theory is highly contingent on local factors such as school systems, cultural traditions, religious beliefs, and language. This has important implications for teaching evolution in primary and secondary schools. No universal strategy can be applied in overcoming the barriers of learning that exist and that are part of the practical and daily life in classrooms all over the world. In light of this, a huge challenge is to make high standard teaching materials fit to specific target audiences readily available. As more and more schools require teachers to use low cost or free web-based materials, in the research community we need to take seriously how to facilitate that demand in communication strategies on evolution. This article addresses this challenge by presenting the learning experience of making a digital archive of Danish Darwin editions that marked the beginnings of a series of public engagement and teaching initiatives including, among other things, comprehensive new websites, exhibits, lecture series, television documentaries, and a computer game.     

A study of some frameworks used by pupils aged 11 to 13 years in the interpretation of air pressure

Summaries

English

When children interpret experiments concerning the physical properties of gases, they generally use frameworks from the field of mechanics. In reality, these experiments give them the opportunity of expressing relationships between movement, equilibrium and mechanical dimensions, such as forces.

In their experimental interpretations, children aged 11 to 13 years emphasize in most cases those stages of an experiment which involve movement: movement as a cause of pressure change of a gas, and movement as the effect of this pressure change. This leads them to express frameworks which have been similarly observed by Piaget and other authors. For example, movement of air in one direction is thought to cause or to be caused by a specific force in one direction; similarly, the state of equilibrium and thus the immobility at the end of the experiment, are characterized by an absence of forces.

The interpretations of several experiments relating to air pressure are analysed using the commentaries of children aged 11 to 13 in class and interviews carried out with children of the same age.     

Assessing Students' Understanding of Macroevolution: Concerns regarding the validity of the MUM

In a recent article, Nadelson and Southerland (2010. Development and preliminary evaluation of the Measure of Understanding of Macroevolution: Introducing the MUM. The Journal of Experimental Education, 78, 151–190) reported on their development of a multiple-choice concept inventory intended to assess college students' understanding of macroevolutionary concepts, the Measure of Understanding Macroevolution (MUM). Given that the only existing evolution inventories assess understanding of natural selection, a microevolutionary concept, a valid assessment of students' understanding of macroevolution would be a welcome and necessary addition to the field of science education. Although the conceptual framework underlying Nadelson and Southerland's test is promising, we believe the test has serious shortcomings with respect to validity evidence for the construct being tested. We argue and provide evidence that these problems are serious enough that the MUM should not be used in its current form to measure students' understanding of macroevolution.     

Respect in principal–teacher relations at primary schools in Turkey

Respect means consideration of actions and requests of others and confirmation of values of others. School is a social institution where students are equipped with knowledge and skills, as well as fundamental character attributes. Respect among students, teachers, administrators, parents, and other staff at schools is of importance. In this study, the focus group method, including 12 principals and 10 teachers at state primary schools, was employed to explore respect in principal–teacher relations. According to the findings, the participants generally developed professional respect understanding. The teachers presented different definitions of respect associated with hierarchical relations. The participants’ respect behaviors were commonly observed in positive communication and self-improvement. The principals displayed respect for teachers through some guarding behaviors, and the teachers displayed profession-related respect behaviors. The common respect expectations of the participants were as follows: self-improvement, establishment of positive social relations, and unbiased behavior. While the school principals expected obedience and complete fulfillment of assigned tasks from teachers, the teachers expected civility, justice, and guarding administration from principals. The participants regarded improper appearance, behaviors contradictory to rules of good manners and bad habits as disrespectfulness. The school principals regarded abuse of goodwill and false excuses by teachers as disrespectfulness; whereas the teachers regarded oral or behavioral insults by school principals and intervention in their private life as disrespectfulness.