Developing a science teacher education course that supports student teachers’ thinking and teaching about the nature of science

This paper reports on part of an ongoing research project in England concerning the Nature of Science (NOS). The particular focus is on the initial thinking of the graduate scientists starting a one-year, Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) course and the way the course approaches adopted influence their views and understanding of NOS and their teaching. The research is set against a wealth of literature indicating that teachers find it difficult to teach curricula that emphasise NOS. Thus a key impetus for research in this area has been to look for ways that beginning teachers might be better prepared to face such challenges.

Sample

The paper draws on data from three cohorts of secondary PGCE students in a university–schools partnership, involving a total of 169 students.

Design and method

The research lies within a design research tradition. It has used mixed methods, involving written tasks, interviews and focus groups, with an iterative approach where the outcomes from one cohort have been used to inform course developments in successive years.

Results

The results from these cohorts suggest that, while the students starting the course have a less restricted view of NOS than indicated by some other studies, in most cases there is a lack of breadth and depth to their understanding. There is some evidence that the use of specific tasks focusing on NOS in university-based sessions may be helping to develop and deepen understanding. However, the impact of current approaches remains fairly limited and attempts to develop teaching practices often face considerable barriers in the school-based practicum.

Conclusions

Graduate science students’ understanding of NOS as they embark on the PGCE is not highly developed. Hence, the emphasis on aspects of NOS in the school curriculum presents a considerable challenge. This study suggests that there is a need to both further develop an explicit focus on NOS in university-based sessions and to develop closer relationships between schools and university faculty in seeking to support developments in classroom practice in this difficult area.     

Knowledge translation and research careers: Mode I and Mode II activity among health researchers

Defining knowledge translation activities using Gibbons and Nowotny's Mode I and II forms of knowledge production, health researcher (N = 240) characteristics are compared with their knowledge translation activities. Applied researchers (n = 168) engaged in more Mode II activity (p < .001), perceived their work as having more impact (p < .001), and reported higher levels of relational capital (p < .001) when compared to basic researchers (n = 72). Those from medical schools (n = 128) had more publications (p = .004) as did applied researchers in medical school compared to applied researchers from other faculties (p = .001). These findings provide early empirical insights into emerging tensions in environments where Mode I and Mode II activities co-exist; tensions that may extract unintended costs from researchers. Such costs may be paid in the currency not only of tenure and promotion, but also of successful grant and career scientist award acquisition.     

我国图情档学科关于文化信息数字资源整合的研究——以博物馆研究为视角

我国图情档学科认为博物馆是文化信息数字资源整合的主体之一。博物馆中以其展品为代表的文化信息资源对满足公众多样化的文化需求、增强中华文化竞争力起着重要作用。本文借助Citespace分析软件,通过对作者、机构、关键词可视化图谱的绘制,识别出我国图情档学科下以博物馆为主题词的科研文献成果概况、科研机构分布及研究热点词与其研究发展趋势。经分析得知,该学科下以博物馆为主题的研究可以分为两个阶段:第一阶段(1996-2008年)主要是博物馆文献资源的开发与利用、博物馆与图书馆文献资源的开发与利用、博物馆古籍保护管理工作以及古籍文献等主题。第二阶段(2009-2019年)主要探讨三馆馆际合作的资源整合路径、数字资源整合理论模式与合作机制等的研究,并结合相关文献内容,深入探讨以博物馆为主题的研究重点,基于此,我国图情档学科应以博物馆中丰富多样的文化信息资源为视角,开展涵盖档案馆、图书馆、博物馆的全种类、全范围的全文化信息数字资源整合。最后,本文围绕数字资源整合这一具有影响力的研究热点,探讨如何从图情档学科的角度出发,有效地涵盖博物馆,构建以图书馆、档案馆、博物馆三馆为主体的数字资源整合模式与机制,建立为公众文化精神需求服务的信息共享平台。     

Examination standards and the limits of linking

There is a tendency in the literature to characterize linking as equating done somewhat less rigorously. The ambiguity of this conception can lead to confusion amongst policy‐makers and members of the public and can result in the proliferation of comparability myths. As the constructs assessed by two tests decrease in similarity, so the difference between equating and linking becomes one of kind rather than degree. To help make sense of linking in different contexts, a general model is proposed, based upon the idea of a ‘linking construct’. This general model is used to define the limits of linking and to clarify what users and stakeholders need to know about linking and linked scores. Finally, a distinction is drawn between judgemental linking as a method (e.g., social moderation) and judgemental linking as a theory (i.e., the value judgement theory of linking). The latter presents a challenge to the general model, which is defended.     

Identifying top relevant dates for implicit time sensitive queries

Despite a clear improvement of search and retrieval temporal applications, current search engines are still mostly unaware of the temporal dimension. Indeed, in most cases, systems are limited to offering the user the chance to restrict the search to a particular time period or to simply rely on an explicitly specified time span. If the user is not explicit in his/her search intents (e.g., “philip seymour hoffman”) search engines may likely fail to present an overall historic perspective of the topic. In most such cases, they are limited to retrieving the most recent results. One possible solution to this shortcoming is to understand the different time periods of the query. In this context, most state-of-the-art methodologies consider any occurrence of temporal expressions in web documents and other web data as equally relevant to an implicit time sensitive query. To approach this problem in a more adequate manner, we propose in this paper the detection of relevant temporal expressions to the query. Unlike previous metadata and query log-based approaches, we show how to achieve this goal based on information extracted from document content. However, instead of simply focusing on the detection of the most obvious date we are also interested in retrieving the set of dates that are relevant to the query. Towards this goal, we define a general similarity measure that makes use of co-occurrences of words and years based on corpus statistics and a classification methodology that is able to identify the set of top relevant dates for a given implicit time sensitive query, while filtering out the non-relevant ones. Through extensive experimental evaluation, we mean to demonstrate that our approach offers promising results in the field of temporal information retrieval (T-IR), as demonstrated by the experiments conducted over several baselines on web corpora collections.     

Interdisciplinary therapy changes superoxide dismutase activity and adiponectin in obese adolescents: a randomised controlled trial

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of interdisciplinary therapy in the parameters of the oxidative stress and the anti-inflammatory responses of obese adolescents. We selected 57 participants, who were randomly divided into 2 groups: interdisciplinary therapy group and a control group. After 6 months of intervention, 17 participants of the interdisciplinary therapy group and 8 of the control group returned for re-evaluation. The interdisciplinary therapy group participated in a treatment with 4 weekly sessions of exercise, a weekly group therapy session and a weekly nutritional education session. Blood parameters of oxidative stress and anti-inflammatory response were evaluated. The results demonstrated that there were significant increases in the interdisciplinary therapy group for superoxide dismutase activity (6.56 ± 3.22 to 11.40 ± 7.49) and ferric-reducing antioxidant potential concentration (532.91 ± 106.48 to 573.25 ± 112.57), although adiponectin levels did not reduce (40.9 ± 29.34 to 49.05 ± 41.22). A significant decrease in nitrite levels was also found (14.23 ± 8.48 to 11.45 ± 6.05). In the control group, significant reduction was found in adiponectin (31.56 ± 18.88 to 18.01 ± 11.66). This study suggests that interdisciplinary therapy for 6 months was effective in improving the anti-inflammatory responses and the antioxidant defences in obese adolescents.     

Deficiency,Contamination, and the Signal Processing Metaphor

Educational assessment involves eliciting, transmitting, and receiving information concerning the level of proficiency of a learner in a specified domain. With that in mind, it is perhaps surprising that the literature seems to make very little use of the signal processing metaphor. The present article begins by making a general case for greater use of this metaphor, as a simple and intuitive thinking tool for helping to explain how educational assessment works. The main body of the article extends this argument by demonstrating the utility of the metaphor in helping to explain how educational assessment can go wrong. During the 1980s and 1990s, Samuel Messick extensively discussed two major ways in which educational assessment can go wrong via construct-irrelevant variance and construct underrepresentation, respectively. Despite their importance, these concepts have had only a limited impact on the literature. Part of the reason for this may be a lack of clarity and comprehensiveness in their articulation. The present article aims to articulate these concepts more clearly and comprehensively, within a framework provided by the signal processing metaphor, reconfiguring them as signal contamination and signal deficiency, respectively.