Summer Scientific Research for Teachers: The Experience and its Effect

Journal of Science Teacher Education -     

Gaps in affiliation indexing in Scopus and PubMed

Objective

The authors sought to determine whether unexpected gaps existed in Scopus''s author affiliation indexing of publications written by the University of Nebraska Medical Center or Nebraska Medicine (UNMC/NM) authors during 2014.

Methods

First, we compared Scopus affiliation identifier search results to PubMed affiliation keyword search results. Then, we searched Scopus using affiliation keywords (UNMC, etc.) and compared the results to PubMed affiliation keyword and Scopus affiliation identifier searches.

Results

We found that Scopus''s records for approximately 7% of UNMC/NM authors'' publications lacked appropriate UNMC/NM author affiliation identifiers, and many journals'' publishers were supplying incomplete author affiliation information to PubMed.

Conclusions

Institutions relying on Scopus to track their impact should determine whether Scopus''s affiliation identifiers will, in fact, identify all articles published by their authors and investigators.     

Body Donation,Teaching, and Research in Dissection Rooms in Spain in Times of Covid-19

The state of alarm due to Covid-19 pandemic in Spain stopped all educational and most university research activities. The Spanish Anatomical Society (SAE) Consensus Expert Group on Body Donations piloted a study based on a questionnaire to know the status of body donations and dissection activities during the lockdown, as well as the future implications of Covid-19 pandemic for body donation programs and anatomy teaching. The questionnaire results show that Spanish Universities refused body donations and stopped all dissection research and teaching. The Covid-19 expected influence on anatomy teaching was referred to the increase in teaching workforce and resources required to apply the new safety measures to future practical activities, as well as to prepare and adapt teaching material for online-only programs. The application of reinforced safety measures was expected to be perceived by the respondent's students as a gain in teaching quality, while the transformation of the anatomy courses in online-only programs will be perceived as a quality decrease. The respondent's concerns about future institutional implications of the pandemic were related to increased costs of the adaptation of the facilities and the reinforced preventive measures, as well as the eventual decrease in donations. The complete lockdown applied to dissection rooms was not justified by scientific evidence and represented a break of the confidence deposed in the institutions by the donors. A consensus is required for the adoption of a renewed, comprehensive protocol for present and future body donations including the evidence Covid-19 pandemic has contributed to create.     

More Later: Delay of Gratification and Thought About the Future in Children

We investigated whether individual differences in future time perception and the detail with which future events are imagined are related to children’s delay of gratification. We administered a delay choice task (real rewards), a delay discounting task (hypothetical rewards), a novel future time perception measure, an episodic future thinking (EFT) interview and IQ measures to a sample of 7- to 11-year-olds (N = 132) drawn from a urban predominately white population in N. Ireland. We found a strong correlation between delay choice and delay discounting. Future time perception and EFT were related to delay discounting, however only the relation with future time perception survived controlling for age and IQ. Children who showed greater compression of future time periods were the steepest discounters.     

The digital competence framework for primary and secondary schools in Europe

There has been a lot of interest to competence‐based education in research and scholarship. How competence‐based education has been developed and implemented varies across education systems in Europe. The European Commission defines digital competence as one of the eight key competence standards for lifelong learning. The European digital competence framework DigComp provides a comprehensive and exhaustive framework for citizens; it has the potential to be adapted to the needs of specific target groups. Nevertheless, no current research has focused on the need for developing a common framework for primary and secondary education. To address this gap we present a digital competence framework for European primary and secondary students. DigComp and a set of European frameworks are analysed in this paper. Combining categorical analysis with the collaboration of teachers and experts in the field, we define performance criteria and components that contribute to competence by five categories, providing a framework to promote the acquisition and evaluation of digital competence. This framework can be implemented in any EU country, it incorporates the most recent theoretical advances in research on information and communication technologies.     

Feeding a growing team: action learning as fertiliser

Here I describe an action learning programme I ran for a youth offending team, with 15 of the 19 team members, over a six month period. The programme emerged from running a development session for the team, which highlighted a need for more ownership of the work of the team by workers and for them to be involved in setting the direction of the team's work. Most members felt they had benefited from the programme, in pushing them into new roles and taking on more responsibility in the team. I believe that action learning acts as a powerful fertiliser on seeds of growth, providing a rich, multi-faceted and powerful ingredient for cultivation.     

Personalised reading for pleasure with digital libraries: towards a pedagogy of practice and design

This paper discusses the pedagogical practice of developing reading for pleasure in pre- schools and primary phase settings through the lens of one key dimension of twenty-first-century reading: personalisation. It draws on a series of studies and examples to identify, address and problematise human- and digitally mediated personalised reading for pleasure. Through a content analysis of the key features of current digital library systems, it shows how these increasingly popular systems position teachers as librarians, curators and monitors, and undermine their potential roles as listeners, mentors and co-readers in order to foster children’s personal response to texts. Through a theory-driven approach it identifies ways in which current design limitations of library management systems can be addressed and from which their effective application and use can develop. This conceptual elaboration, which combines contemporary reading theories with the affordances of digital personalisation, provides new insights concerning personalisation in digital library systems.     

Year-Long Peer Mentoring Activity to Enhance the Retention of Freshmen STEM Students in a NSF Scholarship Program

The last year of a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded scholarship program was used to provide pseudo-formal peer mentoring activities to engineering, mathematics, and science undergraduates. A one-credit class was used to afford time for peer mentors and mentees to interact. During the fall semester, seniors augmented each week’s topics with personal experiences as to how they used the skill/topic that they had learned in their freshmen class in a future sophomore, junior or senior level course or on their co-op assignment. The last 10 min of every class were used for the seniors and freshmen to have an informal discussion. During the spring semester, the seniors served as an additional technical resource for the freshmen as they completed their class project. All participants found the one-credit class, project and peer mentoring activities beneficial to their education and would highly recommend the experience to incoming students.     

Cross-cultural instrument translation: assessment, translation, and statistical applications

This article has four major sections: (a) general issues of assessment; (b) assessment of ethnic-group members, including those who are deaf; (c) translation of assessment tools, emphasizing translation into American Sign Language (ASL); and (d) statistical applications for translated instruments. The purpose of the article is to provide insight into and guidelines for translating instruments into another language and using the results for practice or research purposes. The use of translated instruments with deaf individuals is highlighted. A protocol for translating a scale into ASL is offered. Statistical applications for examining internal consistency and component structure are discussed. Finally, implications for practice and research are addressed.