Effect of the challenger experience on elementary children's attitudes to science

This research explored how the Challenger experience influenced over 655 elementary boys' and girls' general attitudes to science and space during the 5 months after their visit by examining their responses to four different attitude scales. These were administered to the 10‐ to 11‐year‐olds immediately before and after the Challenger experience as well as 2 and 5 months later. Knowledge tests were also administered before and after the visit. A sample of children completed an existing measure of anxiety. Although there were mainly positive outcomes immediately after the Challenger experience, there were some negative effects. There were also noticeable differences between boys and girls. Some 24% of pupils were inspired to become scientists. There was also less fear of space travel with a greater appreciation of the use of science to protect the planet after the visit. Most girls improved and maintained their attitudes toward science in society. A sizeable number of pupils were relatively unaffected by the experience and there was a significant negative effect on a small group of anxious girls. There are indications that previsit preparation and careful choice of roles during the simulation are important. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 979–1000, 2002     

Children's choice of drawings to communicate their ideas about technology

This study examines children's choice of drawing to communicate their understanding of the concept “technology”. The study explored whether the children's drawings accurately reflected the depth and range of their understanding of technology in a way that was interpretable by others. Data were collected from 314 primary school children in England and 745 children in Western Australia. Children were invited to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding about technology by responding to a writing/drawing activity and a representative subsample were then interviewed about their responses. About two-thirds of children's responses to the activity included drawings. Children held a wide range of ideas about technology and only rarely was a drawing difficult to interpret. Although overall the drawings reflected the range of children's ideas, sometimes they did not reveal the depth or breadth of an individual child's understanding. Consistent with the ideas represented in the drawings, the interviews found that younger children held simpler ideas about technology, while older children held more complex, and sometimes quite abstract concepts of technology. A notable difference between the two countries was the emphasis on “design and make” and a smaller proportion of no response in the English sample, reflecting the greater length of time technology education has been implemented in England compared to Western Australia.     

Changing practice in Malaysian primary schools: learning from student teachers’ reports of using action,reflection and modelling (ARM)

Curricular and pedagogical reforms are complex inter-linked processes such that curricular reform can only be enacted through teachers teaching differently. This article reports the perspective of emergent Malaysian primary teachers who were expected to implement a Government reform that promoted active learning. The 120 student teachers were members of a single cohort completing a new B.Ed. degree programme in Primary Mathematics designed by teacher educators from Malaysia and the UK. They were taught to use a tripartite pedagogical framework involving action or active learning, supported in practice through reflection and modelling. Drawing on findings from surveys carried out with the student teachers at the end of their first and final placements this article examines evidence for the premise that the student teachers were teaching differently; illustrates how they reported using active learning strategies; and identifies factors that enabled and constrained pedagogic change in the primary classroom. The students’ accounts of using action, reflection and modelling are critiqued in order to learn about changing learning and teaching practice and to contribute to understanding teacher education and early teacher development. The students’ reports suggest diversity of understanding that emphasises the need to challenge assumptions when working internationally and within national and local cultures.     

运用学习理论设计教学材料：以全球化教学为例

学习的最基本含义是,通过认知、情感和实践的手段改变学习者的体验.本文将分析如何基于这一含义设计人文社会科学方面的课程和专业.人类生活中,心理环境、社会环境和物理环境要和谐,只要有不和谐状态发生,我们就会设法改变各方面的环境,从而重建这些关系,或者创建新型的关系.教学也是这样一种过程,通过该过程,我们可以或者应当提供新的信息、观念和价值等,以对学习者的现状进行干扰,帮助学习者获得新知识.新内容的展示是可以引起质疑的过程,学习者在这一过程中将设法建立新的和谐关系,教师也可以利用学习者对不和谐状态在认知（知识、信念和价值观）、情感和实践上的反应引导学习者.学习的结果始终是改变了的人.尽管本文主要是理论性的,但也有实践的一面,将以全球化为例进行说明,可作为构建课程的基础.     

Book Reviews

This article discusses changes in beliefs about knowledge reported by 36 women studying English Literature/Culture Studies in preparation for entry to Higher Education. These changes were identified through a qualitative study established to examine shifts in values and beliefs resulting from textual study and analysis. Data were collected through participant observation, structured and unstructured interviews and from students' learning journals. Data analysis revealed that students developed progressively more complex beliefs about knowledge as a result of close engagement with texts, as a consequence of considering texts as socially and historically situated and as a result of considering issues of authorial intention, intertextuality and the referential properties of language. This article argues that the development of the kinds of critical thinking skills and sophisticated models of knowledge needed to engage in effective lifelong education can be promoted through literary study.     

The Changing University: Meeting a Need and Needing to Change

This paper returns to the logic of industrialisation thesis of the 1960s and asks whether higher education can respond to the new infrastructures of global society. Its thesis is that capitalism has generated new global infrastructures (the control of capital empowered by information technology) and that these driving forces have generated changes in knowledge, higher education, research and learning. Higher education is a typical superstructural institution, functional to the infrastructure – but it is finding problems in responding rapidly to the greater demands of the knowledge-based society of advanced capitalism. It has to change but perhaps it is unable to change sufficiently rapidly, and so the infrastructure is beginning to generate its own educational institutions. More significantly, it would have to be non-functional to the infrastructure if it were to meet some of the human needs.