GraphoGame SI: the development of a technology-enhanced literacy learning tool for Standard Indonesian

Early intervention programs are generally considered the most efficient and beneficial approach to providing support to struggling beginning readers. This paper discusses the theoretical background, development, and design of, as well as the first results obtained with, GraphoGame for Standard Indonesian, a technology-enhanced learning environment that trains the basic skills of reading by high but playful exposure to grapheme-phoneme coupling. The results of the pilot study assessing the usability of the program in 69 first-graders show that the more the students with low pre-test phonological skills were exposed to the game, the better their post-test performance on reading and decoding fluency became. Although large-scale, randomized controlled studies are needed to confirm the effectiveness of GraphoGame SI, these promising first results may offer a stepping stone for the development of additional language versions and future systematic comparisons of the method’s results in different languages and populations.     

Lichens and pollution monitoring

Lichens are traditionally cited as the prime example of mutual symbiosis in the plant kingdom. Scientifically fascinating, they are now receiving increasing attention by applied biologists for pollution monitoring. The present article explains the reasons why lichens are suitable for this role and reviews the techniques currently employed.     

Religious literacy,moral recognition,and strong relationality

Several proposals for addressing religious literacy or including religious content in American public schools point to potential advantages for intellectual and moral development. These proposals include moral arguments, which suggest that religious literacy is an individual and social good. Although the proposals selected for this analysis span the previous two decades, it appears that little progress has been made toward addressing religious literacy in American public school contexts. In this theoretical article, I examine several of these proposals using a philosophical contrast between weak and strong relationality. It is argued that although these proposals include strong relational assumptions, weak relational assumptions remain that could inhibit the successful implementation of these proposals—or perhaps even undermine their ultimate goals.     

On pigs and packers: Radically contextualizing a practice of science with Mexican immigrant students

This paper reports on instructional practices observed in a high school English Learner (EL) Science course serving newcomer Mexican immigrant youth. The school is located in a rural Midwestern meatpacking community in which labor at the hog plant is economically- and racially-segmented; it is the town’s Mexican residents, many of them undocumented, who comprise most of the unskilled labor force. The general purpose of the paper is to document how the economic and racial context of this community influences science instruction in the EL Science course and to describe how this presents particular challenges in achieving equitable science instruction for Mexican immigrant youth in these rural, globalizing places. Entering the data via critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995) and then utilizing Barton’s (2003) “practice of science” perspective, with an eye toward achieving “radical contextuality” (Grossberg, 1997), we describe the science events, identities, and structures of the pig dissection lesson and detail how what these students could do with science, as rendered by that lesson, was limited by the roles the teacher attributed to the students, her inability to draw on their funds of knowledge as resources for learning, and the voice and position she allowed them to take up. The data reinforce conventional understandings of schools as sites of cultural reproduction (Bowels & Gintis, 1976), as well as of resistance (Giroux, 1983), but afford us a glimpse of the particularity of those mechanisms within the demographically-transitioning American Heartland, iconic of the era of global capitalism.

The development of a content analysis model for assessing students’ cognitive learning in asynchronous online discussions

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a content analysis model for assessing students’ cognitive learning in asynchronous online discussions. It adopted a fully mixed methods design, in which qualitative and quantitative methods were employed sequentially for data analysis and interpretation. Specifically, the design was a “sequential exploratory” (QUAL → quan) design with priority given to qualitative data and methods. Qualitative data were 800 online postings collected in two online courses. Quantitative data were 803 online postings from the same two courses but from different discussion topics and different weeks. During the qualitative process, a grounded theory approach was adopted to construct a content analysis model based on qualitative data. During the quantitative process, χ² tests and confirmative factor analysis (CFA) which used online postings as cases or observations and was the first of its kind were performed to test if the new model fit the quantitative data.     

Information and informatics literacies of first-year medical students

Purpose

The study evaluated medical students'' familiarity with information literacy and informatics during the health sciences library orientation.

Methods

A survey was fielded at the start of the 2013 school year.

Results

Seventy-two of 77 students (94%) completed the survey. Over one-half (57%) expected to use library research materials and services. About half (43%) expected to use library physical space. Students preferred accessing biomedical research on laptops and learning via online-asynchronous modes.

Conclusions

The library identified areas for service development and outreach to medical students and academic departments.