Learning to argue as a biotechnologist: disprivileging opposition to genetically modified food

In the public discussion of genetically modified (GM) food the representations of science as a social good, conducted in the public interest to solve major problems are being subjected to intense scrutiny and questioning. Scientists working in these areas have been seen to struggle for the position of science in society. However few in situ studies of how the debate about science appears in learning situations at the university level have been undertaken. In the present study an introductory course in biotechnology was observed during one semester, lectures and small group supervision concerning GM food were videotaped and student’s reports on the issue were collected. The ethnographic approach to Discourse analysis was conducted by means of a set of carefully selected and representative observations of how a group of students learn to argue and appropriate views held in the Discourse they are enculturated into. While socio-scientific issues (SSIs) are often associated with achieving scientific literacy in terms of “informed decisions” involving “rational thought and Discourse” this study shows that SSI in practice, in the context studied here, is primarily concerned with using scientific language to privilege professional understandings of GMOs and discredit public worries and concerns. Scientific claims were privileged over ethical, economical and political claims which were either made irrelevant or rebutted. The students were seen to appropriate a Discourse model held in the biotechnological community that public opposition towards GMO is due to “insufficient knowledge”. The present study offers insights into biotechnology students’ decision making regarding socio-scientific issues, while also demonstrating the utility of Discourse analysis for understanding learning in this university context. Implications for reflection on the institutional Discourse of science and teaching of controversial issues in science are drawn and the study contributes to the investigation of claims of scientific literacy coupled to SSIs and argumentation     

Similarity of Interpersonal Behaviour in Career Counselling

This article explores how similarities in expected and perceived in-session behaviour between clients and career counsellors are related to evaluation of sessions. Interpersonal behaviour was defined by the Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour, SASB (Benjamin, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64(6), 1203–1212, 1996a; Journal of Personality Assessment, 66(2), 248–266, 1996b; Interpersonal diagnosis and treatment of personality disorders. New York, NY, Guilford Press). Fifteen dyads of clients and career counsellors in a Swedish upper secondary school participated. The hypotheses were that if clients and career counsellors had more similar expectations regarding their behaviour and more similar perceptions of in-session behaviour this would lead to more positive evaluations of the session. Only weak support was found for an association between positive evaluation of sessions and interpersonal similarities in expectations and experiences of behaviour.

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Résumé. Comportement interpersonnel dans l’entretien vocationnel. Cet article explore la manière dont les similitudes dans le comportement attendu et perçu à l’intérieur de sessions entre des clients et des conseillers d’orientation sont liées à l’évaluation de ces sessions. Le comportement interpersonnel a été défini par la Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour, SASB(Analyse Structurale du Comportement Social, ASCS) (Benjamin, 1996). Quinze dyades de clients et de conseillers d’orientation dans une école secondaire suédoise de deuxième cycle ont participé à cette étude. Les hypothèses étaient que si les clients et les conseillers d’orientation avaient des attentes concernant leur comportement et des perceptions du comportement intra-session plus proches, ceci mènerait à des évaluations plus positives de la session. On n’a trouvé qu’un faible appui à l’association entre l’évaluation positive des sessions et les similitudes interpersonnelles dans les attentes et les perceptions comportementales.Zusammenfassung. Interpersonelles Verhalten in der Beruflichen Beratung. Dieser Artikel untersucht die Einflüsse zwischen dem erwarteten und dem wahrgenommenen Verhalten von Klienten und Beratern während Beratungssitzungen und der Bewertung dieser Sitzungen. Das interpersonelle Verhalten wurde auf der Grundlage der “Strukturanalyse für soziales Verhalten (Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour, SASB, Benjamin, 1996) ausgewertet. Fünfzehn Klienten-Berater-Paare aus einer höheren Sekundar-Schule in Schweden nahmen an der Untersuchung teil. Ausgangshypothese war, dass die Bewertung der Beratungssitzung um so positiver ausfallen würde, je ähnlicher sich die Verhaltenserwartungen von Klienten und Beratern und die gegenseitigen Verhaltenswahrnehmungen sind. Für diesen vermuteten Zusammenhang zwischen positiver Bewertung einer Sitzung und interpersonellen Verhaltenserwartungen und –beobachtungen wurde jedoch nur ein sehr schwacher Nachweis gefunden.Resumen. Comportamiento Interpersonal en la Orientación (personalizada) para la Carrera. Este artículo explora cómo las semejanzas en el comportamiento esperado y percibido en las sesiones de orientación entre los clientes y los orientadores están relacionadas con la evaluación de dichas sesiones. El comportamiento interpersonal fue definido en el Análisis Estructural del Comportamiento Social (Benjamín, 1996). Participaron quince díadas de clientes y orientadores en una escuela secundaria superior sueca. La hipótesis de partida era que si los clientes y orientadores tenían expectativas semejantes con respecto a su comportamiento y percepciones más parecidas sobre el comportamiento en la sesión, esto llevaría a evaluaciones más positivas de la sesión. Los resultados proporcionaron sólo un débil apoyo a la relación entre la evaluación positiva de las sesiones y las semejanzas interpersonales en expectativas y experiencias de comportamiento.

     

The harmful aspect of teacher conditional support on students’ self-perception of school competence

When children perceive a conditional support, they only feel loved and encouraged for their ability to meet others’ standards. This may lead them to develop high sensitivity to errors and anxiety and low perception of competence. In this study, we examined the relationship between the perceived conditional support from teacher and children’s self-perception of school competence. We tested the mediating effect of sensitivity to errors and test anxiety in the relationship between teacher conditional support and children’s perception of school competence. Participants were 524 elementary school students (aged 9–10 years). The results showed that the greater the extent to which the children perceived conditional support from their teacher, the lower their self-perceived scholastic competence. They also confirm that this relationship was mediated by sensitivity to errors and test anxiety.     

The illusion of scholastic incompetence and peer acceptance in primary school

This paper reports results from two studies aimed at examining whether perception of social acceptance and actual social acceptance differ according to the presence of an illusion of scholastic incompetence. Results of both studies conducted in Belgium and in Quebec (respectively 179 and 543 participants) show that children’s illusion of scholastic incompetence is linked to a negative perception of social acceptance. However, according to the evaluation by peers, social acceptance of those children is similar to the others. This suggests a generalization of the negative bias of self-evaluation to both academic and social domains. The discussion proposes further variables that could improve the understanding of the origin of the illusion of incompetence.     

Synthetic speech and computer aided reading for reading disabled children

A simple way to partially compensate for word decoding problems is to let disabled readers have a micro-computer pronounce the words they are unable to read. Using a program developed for the IBM-PC/AT and a Scandinavian multilingual text-to-speech unit, children can read a textfile (of any size) on the monitor and use a mouse to request the immediate pronunciation of a word. In study 1, Grade-2 children did not perform better on a reading comprehension test when using computer-aided reading, but they rated their understanding significantly higher than when using a text. In study 2, the effect of computer-aided reading in special education settings was studied. Results indicated that older children, from grade 4 and up, benefited more from the computer aided reading than did younger ones. However, both experimental and control groups showed gains in several aspects of reading. Some children did not seem to have metacognitive skills enough to benefit from the computer-aided system. These children may initially need more extensive training in how to use the system and how to monitor their own reading. Reasons for letting the computer deliver the decoding aid as morphological segments are discussed.     

Knowing and teaching kinaesthetic experience in skateboarding: an example of sensory emplacement

The body has become a vital research object in several disciplines in recent years. Indeed, in the social sciences and humanities, a corporeal turn in which embodiment has become a key concept related to learning and socialisation is discussed. This cross-disciplinary paper addresses the epistemological question of how we know what we know and theoretically and empirically contributes to current arguments of a shift from embodiment to emplacement. In other words, this study strives for understanding of the intersection of mind, body and place through a focus on how bodily knowing is formed as part of a moving world. The purpose of the paper is to explore the kinaesthetic experience as bodily knowing in emplaced semi-formal teaching. Through long-term ethnography in a Swedish skateboard setting and in-depth analysis of digital visual material, this paper demonstrates how kinaesthetic experience might be viewed as knowing and how a particular type of this experience might be interpreted as explosiveness and, as such, an act of physical remembrance and energy transformation. Knowing is formed along paths of movement and rhythm, and kinaesthesia is identified as a multisensory experience. It is argued that a fruitful way of bridging the mind–body divide is to view the body as un/knowing, rendering it both knowing and not knowing simultaneously. Moreover, emplaced via its senses in a sociocultural and spatio-temporal environment, this conceptualisation of a moving body in a moving world might allow for re-thinking regarding how a body in context knows, teaches and, possibly, learns.     

‘Horrible or happy – we’ll have a little grey now’: aesthetic judgements in children’s narration with an interactive whiteboard

This empirical study investigates what activities emerge when six-year olds are instructed to create narratives with an interactive whiteboard (IWB). A detailed analysis is provided of what the participants are oriented towards in the activity, and further what aesthetic judgements are used and their role in the evolving activity. Theoretically, the study builds on a sociocultural perspective on learning and Dewey’s (1934–80. Art as Experience. New York, NY: Perigee Books) philosophy on aesthetic experience. The empirical data consist of video recordings of six technology-mediated story-making activities in a preschool class. The findings show that even when the teacher attempts to scaffold narrative learning, the children direct their attention foremost to the visual arts, which occasionally lead to the participants’ insufficient intersubjectivity. This finding is explained with reference to the inherent design of the IWB. Furthermore, the participants frequently use aesthetic judgements on both actions and the created visual objects. The judgements turn out to constitute directives in terms of leading the activities forward and, importantly, being indicators of the children’s learning.     

Challenges of engagement with health services in Sweden’s schools: listening to the views of school nurses and students with recurrent pain

This article reports on the views of school nurses (n = 25) and students with recurrent pain (n = 24) in Sweden with regard to school-based pedagogic practices. A number of common categories with implications for pedagogic practice were identified by analysing qualitative interviews with these groups, using the coding techniques of grounded theory. The results indicate that a failure to develop trust made it difficult for some students to initiate contact with a school nurse and that some students perceive the issue of recurrent pain being of relevance to all young people, deserving coverage in the curriculum. We thus conclude that it is important to integrate personal, social and health education in the ordinary spaces of teaching and learning in order to complement and bolster the conventionally organised school health services in Sweden. However, this might be difficult to achieve because many of the school nurses emphasised that health and education were commonly treated on parallel tracks in their schools, under the management of different authorities.     

Teachers leading teachers – understanding middle-leaders’ role and thoughts about career in the context of a changed division of labour

ABSTRACT

This longitudinal study aims to create in-depth knowledge about the phenomena of middle-leadership and career in school by identifying (1) driving forces for seeking and maintaining middle-leading positions, (2) opportunities and difficulties in maintaining the middle-leading role over time, and (3) underlying thoughts of career disclosed in the respondents’ expressions. Five different reasons for seeking middle-leading positions are identified and driving forces for maintaining the position are categorised as either internal reward/non-observable outcomes or external reward/observable outcomes. Furthermore, the results show that different types of difficulties arise in distinct phases and that middle-leaders’ needs for support therefore vary over time. Additionally, the complexity of teachers’/middle-leaders’ career thinking clearly emerges, and implications for practice are discussed.     

A Chance Lost in the Prevention of School Dropout? Teacher-Student Relationships Mediate the Effect of Mental Health Problems on Noncompletion of Upper-Secondary School

There is increasing awareness of the challenges that young people who do not complete upper-secondary school may encounter. The aim of the current study was to investigate teacher-student relationship as a possible mechanism to reduce the associations between mental health problems, grades, and subsequent noncompletion. Mental health problems and teacher-student relationships were assessed through students’ self-reports in 10th grade, and linked with Norwegian registries of education and sociodemography (n?=?10,931). A dual-factor serial mediator model was specified, allowing the effect of mental health problems on school dropout to be mediated by the teacher-student relationship via school grades. Results indicated that teacher-student relationship is a potential mechanism to reduce the negative associations between mental health problems and later noncompletion. However, students with mental health problems seemed to experience less supportive teachers; therefore, interventions targeting teacher-student relationships may be required. The patterns were similar between genders.