Outside the library: Early career researchers and use of alternative information sources in pandemic times

Presents findings from a study into the attitudes and practices of pandemic-era early career researchers (ECRs) in regard to obtaining access to the formally published scholarly literature, which focused on alternative providers, notably ResearchGate and Sci-Hub. The study is a part of the Harbingers project that has been exploring the work lives and scholarly communication practices of ECRs in pre-pandemic times and during the pandemic, and utilizes data from two rounds of interviews with around 170 ECRs from the sciences and social sciences in eight countries. Findings show that alternative providers, as represented by ResearchGate and Sci-Hub, have become established and appear to be gaining ground. However, there are considerable country- and discipline-associated differences. ECRs' country-specific level of usage of the alternative providers is partly traceable to the adequacy of library provisions, although there are other factors at play in shaping ECRs' attitudes and practices, most notably convenience and time saving, as well as the fact that these platforms have become embedded in the scholarly dashboard. There is a dearth of evidence of the impact of the pandemic on ECRs' ways of obtaining scholarly papers.     

The influence of the family,the school,and the group on the environmental attitudes of European students

The attitudes of young people arise from an intense interaction with their social groups of reference, and in this work we examine the extent to which this background conditions the individual environmental attitudes of the young. Using data provided by the PISA 2006 survey for the European Union, we test for the influence of the family, the characteristics of the school, and the social interactions or school peer group on attitudes toward the environment. The existence of social interactions, as well as the important role of family characteristics and school activities, are confirmed. The results allow us to emphasize the importance of the social context of the adolescent, and the need to take this into account as a channel that amplifies the influence of specific environmental education strategies.     

Regenerative Capacities: New Materialisms,Inheritance, and Biopolitical Technologies in Education Policy

Inheritance and social reproduction have been widely theorized and studied concepts in the social sciences. In theories of social reproduction a focus on social position and identity is assumed; a focus on moving from one position to another at the cost of overlooking the rich, and arguably more important, movement, process, and flow in between. Turning toward new materialisms for theoretical insight, this article points toward an alternative post-humanist perspective. Leaning on Massumi (2002) and Puar (2007), the author asserts that expanding the analytical focus to include the movement and process of biopolitical capacity will further sharpen the (new) materialist analysis of force and power relations, what Puar refers to as regenerative capacities. It is through the employment and performative force of biopolitical technologies in education policy, the author concludes, that enables the surveilling, managing, and demarcating of regenerative capacities that constrain the movement, process, and potentialities for, and of, social change.     

Negative certainty

The definitions of ‘negative knowledge’ and the studies in this regard published to date have not considered the categorial distinction Wittgenstein established between knowledge and certainty. Hence, the important role that certainty, despite its omission, should have in these definitions and studies has not yet been shown. In this article, I contrast the term ‘negative certainty’ with that of ‘negative knowledge’ in order to clarify this concept by describing its significant differences with the first. To characterize negative certainty, I base upon two criteria: on the one hand, negative certainty cannot be directly excluded by a positive certainty, and on the other hand, negative certainty must have an obvious and practical usefulness in which its negative nature is clearly appreciated. To illustrate the use of these two criteria, I describe four examples of negative certainty, paying special attention to their educational implications as well as the contrast between negative certainty and negative knowledge.     

Development and initial validation of a questionnaire to assess the reading beliefs of undergraduate students: the Cuestionario de Creencias sobre la Lectura

The aim of this research was to develop a new questionnaire for exploring the reading beliefs of undergraduate students, because the only currently available instrument has conceptual and methodological limitations. The paper describes the process of developing the instrument and presents a range of psychometric data obtained from a sample of 558 Spanish undergraduates who were in the first or final year of a degree programme in psychology, language and literature or engineering. The results provide evidence of the psychometric quality of items and reveal a dual structure of two and six factors, both obtained through exploratory and/or confirmatory factor analyses. Adequate reliability based on internal consistency of the factors was also demonstrated. As a measure of criterion validity, differences in reading beliefs by gender, academic year and knowledge area were also explored. The findings support the psychometric adequacy of this new instrument developed through an exploratory piece of research. Overall, the process of constructing the instrument and the results from this study provide a framework for research and intervention, in addition to presenting a tool that both researchers and teaching staff could use in the context of reading and reading comprehension.     

School principals’ leadership skills: measurement equivalence across cultures

Despite substantial interest and research in measuring leader’s skills, little is known about the measurement equivalence and mean differences in the scores measuring principals’ skills (cognitive, interpersonal, strategic) across cultures (collectivism versus individualism). The aim of the present study was to assess measurement equivalence – configural, metric and scalar – on leaders’ skills across Arab and Jewish teachers in the Israeli educational system. A total of 1388 teachers from 210 elementary schools responded to a skills questionnaire. Results indicated that the configural model is equivalent across samples. The test for metric equivalence, showed that the construct holds the same psychological meaning across the two samples, with the exception of two items. The intercept latent test means (i.e., scalar) showed unequal intercepts among the Arab and Jewish samples, in the strategic and cognitive skills scale. The results have implications for cross-ethnic research and, more broadly, for the assessment of principals’ skills.     

Secondary School Students’ Errors in the Translation of Algebraic Statements

In this article, we present the results of a research study that explores secondary students’ capacity to perform translations of algebraic statements between the verbal and symbolic representation systems through the lens of errors. We classify and compare the errors made by 2 groups of students: 1 at the beginning of their studies in school algebra and another 1 completing their studies on algebra in compulsory education. This comparison allows us to detect errors which require specific attention in instruction due to its persistence and to identify errors that disappear as students advance in their study of algebra. The results and conclusions have a pedagogic value to inform instruction and also lead to backed conjectures and research questions to push forward research on student’s translation capacity and students’ knowledge of algebraic symbolism.     

Teachers’ attitudes towards tracking: testing the socialization hypothesis

The paper examines how teachers’ attitudes towards tracking (separating pupils into groups with different curricula on the basis of their abilities and results) differ among various generations of teachers. Fundamental and quick changes in the educational system occurred in the Czech Republic after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 as a unified educational system moved to a system strongly accenting tracking practices. We use this ‘policy discontinuity’ to validate teacher socialization theory and test three alternative socialization hypotheses based on different key periods in teachers’ development: the pupil experience hypothesis, the pedagogical preparation hypothesis and the pedagogical experience hypothesis. We work with a data-set from 2009 covering 1002 Czech teachers. The mean tests and the logistic regression analysis support the socialization theory, however only the pedagogical experience hypothesis was found to be most influential.