A study of students’ reasoning about probabilistic causality: Implications for understanding complex systems and for instructional design

Understanding complex systems requires reasoning about causal relationships that behave or appear to behave probabilistically. Features such as distributed agency, large spatial scales, and time delays obscure co-variation relationships and complex interactions can result in non-deterministic relationships between causes and effects that are best understood statistically. Causal Bayesian Research (e.g. Gopnik and Schulz in Causal learning: psychology, philosophy, and computation, Oxford University Press, New York, 2007) suggests that summing across probabilistic instances is inherent to human causal induction, yet other research (e.g. Schulz and Sommerville in Child Development 77(2):427–442, 2006) suggests a human tendency to assume deterministic relationships. Classroom science learning often stresses the replicability of outcomes, putting this learning in tension with understanding probabilistic patterns in complex systems. This investigation examined students’ reasoning patterns on tasks with probabilistic causal features. Microgenetic studies were conducted in multiple sessions over a school year with students in kindergarten, second, fourth and sixth grades (n = 16) to assess their assumptions when dealing with tasks from four domains: social; games; machines; and biology. Later sessions attempted to scaffold students’ understanding using connection making and analogical reasoning. This paper reports on the overall patterns and trends in the data. Most students held a deterministic stance at the outset; however, at least one student at each grade level reasoned probabilistically from the start. All students except one eventually revealed at least one topic for which they held a primarily probabilistic stance. The results have implications for how students reason about complex systems and for how patterns of co-variation and evidence in science are discussed.     

Social Work in Higher Education: Internships in Opportunity Programs

ABSTRACT

Field education is essential to the development of professional social workers. Despite the significant overlap in social work’s and higher education’s missions and values, there is a scarcity of social work internships specifically in higher education settings. The placement of social work interns in institutions of higher education provides a setting where they can develop new knowledge and skills and increase their capacity to support college students toward academic success. This conceptual article discusses the role of social work in higher education and provides a model social work internship in an opportunity program, including its creation, development, challenges, outcomes, and future direction.     

The Effects of One versus Two Years of Intensive Reading Intervention Implemented with Late Elementary Struggling Readers

We examined the effectiveness of a researcher‐provided reading intervention with 484 fourth graders with significant reading difficulties. Students were randomly assigned to one year of intervention, two years of intervention, or a business‐as‐usual comparison condition (BAU). Students assigned to two years of intervention demonstrated significantly greater gains in reading fluency compared to students who received one year of intervention and the BAU group. Students in both the one‐ and two‐year groups demonstrated similar and significantly larger gains in word reading in comparison to the BAU group. There were no statistically significant differences between the three groups on standardized measures of reading comprehension. We discuss these results in the context of research with late elementary and secondary students targeting reading comprehension.     

Innovation and network multiplexity: R&D and the concurrent effects of two collaboration networks in an emerging economy

This study focuses on the multiplexity of firm R&D networks, and it investigates two types of boundary-spanning networks: the bipartite network between firms and government-sponsored institutions (GSIs), and the traditional firm–firm network. We apply a social network perspective to examine the effects that these kinds of networks have on firm innovativeness, in relation to the effects of the firm’s internal R&D efforts. We define the firm-GSI network as bipartite, and we investigate how the structural characteristics of this network (cohesion and centrality) affect innovativeness. We then decompose the innovational effects of firm–firm networks into two categories (intra- and inter-sector) to distinguish the effects of these collaboration networks. Furthermore, we investigate how these various external collaborative networks interact with a firm’s internal R&D efforts for driving innovativeness. Our empirical study of 420 manufacturing firms in Mexico evaluates evidence from surveys and secondary data. The findings indicate that the structural properties of both firm–GSI and firm–firm networks have positive effects on innovativeness, but firm–GSI network cohesion has a stronger negative interaction with R&D in influencing firm innovativeness. Moreover, intra-sector centrality in a firm–firm network has a stronger negative interaction with R&D than inter-sector centrality does in driving firm innovativeness. We contribute to the literature by integrating insights from the perspectives of network multiplexity, social embeddedness, and resource complementarity in regard to inter-organizational behavior. Our study also provides meaningful guidelines for both managers and policy makers. The study’s findings are robust to concerns of common method bias and alternative model specifications.     

A Two-Study Conceptual Replication Investigating the Role of Initial Word-Reading Skills with Response to Intervention for High School Students

This investigation examined the impact of preintervention word-reading ability on reading comprehension outcomes for ninth graders with learning disabilities, reading difficulties, and English learners in treatment and comparison conditions. Secondary data analyses were conducted for two separate but related experimental studies of intensive reading interventions. Both studies provided yearlong intensive reading interventions to ninth graders. The study included replication of a post hoc analysis employed in a previous study of ninth graders who also received 1 year of intervention. Results from both studies demonstrated that the effects of treatment were not moderated by decoding level for reading comprehension. Statistically significant effects of verbal ability were found. These findings suggest the effectiveness of intervention and that higher verbal skills improve students’ comprehension, though the effects were more pronounced for Study One than Study Two.     

When it's all Greek: The Importance of Collaborative Information Literacy Outreach Programming to Greek Student Organizations

This article examines the rationale and benefits of establishing collaborative outreach partnerships between academic librarians and student services professionals to meet the information literacy needs of Greek students. Through a literature review and case study, the authors discuss the realities involved in facilitating this kind of collaboration and its potential to create meaningful co-curricular outreach programming.     

Latinx Parents’ Literacy Practices and Concientización in Petitioning Their Local School Board Regarding Funding Priorities

A case study of a Latinx parent-school engagement program is presented illustrating how immigrant parents became collective political actors providing input into their California school district’s formulation of its Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP). The LCAP was part of newly adopted statewide Local Control Funding Formula policy providing supplemental funding to schools in support of services needed by students who were identified as low-income, English Language Learners (ELLs), and foster-care. The study investigated how Latinx parents developed a face-to-face understanding of the LCAP policy and planning process, and their rights and collective power as advocates for their children’s education. Focused attention is given to one parent group advocating for summer academic programs and how parents negotiated rhetorical and linguistic formulation of arguments in their letter petition to the local school board. In so doing, parents drew on their cultural funds of knowledge and developed sensitivity to the communicative practices of school boards, and to the need of parents to present their voice and stances persuasively and assertively indicative of their rights as community members. The study helps ground theories of political action in the face-to-face world of parent engagement programs.     

Critical Race Theory Meets the NYPD: An Assessment of Anti-Racist Pedagogy for Police in New York City

This research describes and assesses Critical Race Theory (CRT) pedagogy in a higher education ethnic studies course for police officers. CRT pedagogy aims to help students overcome “color-blind” thinking, which minimizes awareness of racism, by raising their critical understanding of racism and framing it as a pervasive and institutionalized reality that everyone has a responsibility to change. Using the Color Blind Racial Awareness (COBRA) Scale, critical awareness in three cluster areas, white privilege, institutional discrimination, and blatant racism, is measured among those completing the ethnic studies course and a comparison group of officers completing a different college course for police. Conclusions reflect on the impact of the course on students’ awareness of racism, the correlation of identity and awareness of racism, the hypothetical impact of such awareness in policing and possibilities for future research.