Practicality in Virtuality: Finding Student Meaning in Video Game Education

This paper looks at the conceptual differences between video game learning and traditional classroom and laboratory learning. It explores the notion of virtual experience by comparing a commonly used high school laboratory protocol on DNA extraction with a similar experience provided by a biotechnology themed video game. When considered conceptually, the notion of virtual experience is not limited to those experiences generated by computer aided technology, as with a video game or computer simulation. The notion of virtuality can apply to many real world experiences as well. It is proposed that the medium of the learning experience, be it video game or classroom, is not an important distinction to consider; instead, we should seek to determine what kinds of meaningful experiences apply for both classrooms and video games.     

“Wait,What Do You Mean by College?” A Critical Race Analysis of Latina/o Students and Their Pathways to Community College

ABSTRACT

As a group, Latina/o students are more likely to experience a substandard K–12 education complete with underresourced schools, high teacher turnover, and fewer college-preparatory courses. It is this same inferior education that denies many Latina/o high school students the opportunity to engage in college-choice—leading to their disproportionate enrollment in community colleges over 4-year colleges or universities. In California alone, approximately 75% of Latina/o students in higher education can be found in the community college sector—making this an important pathway for many Latina/o students. This qualitative study incorporated a Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Education framework to focus on the racialized K–12 experiences of four Latina/o graduate students who started their postsecondary career at a community college. This study was undertaken to better understand what led Latina/o students to enroll in community colleges after high school. Exploring the pathways of Latina/o students from high school to community college is imperative to community college practitioners (i.e., faculty, staff, and administrators) when considering best practices for their large Latina/o student body, as is found in California. The initial findings suggest that racism in K–12 in the forms of tracking, limited college information, and low expectations from academic personnel had a direct impact on the postsecondary experiences and opportunities available to Latina/o students. Lastly, the findings challenge prevailing portrayals where Latina/o students passively accept their marginalized position in education by highlighting their voice, resiliency, and agency in the face of systematic racism, as evidenced by their successes in academia.     

Using Virtual Field Trips to Connect Students with University Scientists: Core Elements and Evaluation of zipTrips?

Physical field trips to scientists?? work places have been shown to enhance student perceptions of science, scientists and science careers. Although virtual field trips (VFTs) have emerged as viable alternatives (or supplements) to traditional physical fieldtrips, little is known about the potential of virtual field trips to provide the same or similar science career exploration advantages as physical field trips. The overarching goal of this paper is to describe a VFT, zipTrips?, designed to provide middle school students, especially those in resource limited rural areas, with access to university scientists. Using zipTrips as a case example, the paper identifies and describes some of the core characteristics and elements of high quality authentic VFTs that foster student-scientist interactions. In addition, the paper uses program evaluation data to examine the impact of zipTrips on student perceptions of scientists.     

Issues in the application of a conjunctive/compensatory standard-setting model to a criterion-referenced, classroom-based teacher certification assessment system: A state case study

Wheeling Jesuit College     

“Why Give Up Something That Works So Well?”: Retirement Expectations Among Academic Physicians

For individuals with strong work identities, the decision to retire can be particularly challenging. For academic physicians, retirement is an important personal decision that also has far-reaching implications for the healthcare system. This is because academic physicians are responsible for producing the research from which key medical decisions are made, for training future healthcare providers, and for providing specialized care for patients. For this study, we conducted focus groups with academic physicians from a large research university in Canada and then performed inductive thematic analyses to examine perceptions and concerns about later life career transitions. This study highlights tensions between professional experiences for the next generation of physicians and individual struggles with personal identity. Findings suggest improvements to institutional programs that support flexible, agentive, and respectful retirement transitions will not only be beneficial but necessary as medical and university systems continue to grapple with issues of balanced recruitment and succession.     

Establishing word-object relations: a first step

This work explores how infants in the early phases of acquiring language come to establish an initial mapping between objects and their labels. If infants are biased to attend more to objects in the presence of language, that could help them to note word-object object pairings. To test this, a first study compared how long 18 10-14-month-old infants looked at unfamiliar toys when labeling phrases accompanied their presentation, versus when no labeling phrases were provided. As predicted, labeling the toys increased infants' attention to them. A second study examined whether the presence of labeling phrases increased infants' attention to objects over and above what pointing, a powerful nonlinguistic method for directing infants' attention, could accomplish on its own. 22 infants from 2 age groups (10-14- and 17-20-month-olds) were shown pairs of unfamiliar toys in 2 situations: (a) in a pointing alone condition, where the experimenter pointed a number of times at one of the toys, and (b) in a labeling + pointing condition, where the experimenter labeled the target toy while pointing to it. While the pointing occurred, infants looked just as long at the target toy whether or not it was labeled. During a subsequent play period in which no labels were uttered, however, infants gazed longer at the target toys that had been labeled than at those that had not. Thus language can increase infants' attention to objects beyond the time that labeling actually occurs. These studies do not pinpoint which aspects of labeling behavior contribute to the attentional facilitation effect that was observed. In any case, however, this tendency for language to sustain infants' attention to objects may help them learn the mappings between words and objects.     

Fostering Supportive Teacher–Child Relationships: Intervention Implementation in a State-Funded Preschool Program

Research Findings: Banking Time is a set of techniques designed to promote positive, supportive relationships through 1-on-1 interactions between teachers and children. Web-based training resources were made available to 252 preschool teachers who received different levels of support as a component of a professional development intervention, and the purpose of this study was to examine teachers' implementation of Banking Time. Teachers with greater levels of professional development support were more likely to implement Banking Time with children in their classes. Teachers were more likely to choose to implement Banking Time with children who had lower social-emotional skills (e.g., more problem behaviors). Teachers developed greater relational closeness with children who participated in Banking Time than with children who did not participate. Practice or Policy: The implications of these preliminary findings for fostering supportive teacher–child relationships are discussed.     

What’s your goal? The importance of shaping the goals of engineering tasks to focus learners on the underlying science

Instructional Science - Engaging in engineering tasks can help students learn science concepts. However, many engineering tasks lead students to focus more on the success of their construction than...