Toward a new conception of conceptions: Interplay of talk,gestures, and structures in the setting

Most studies about students' conceptions and conceptual change are based exclusively on the analysis language, which is treated as a tool to make private contents of the mind public to researchers. Following recent studies that focused on (a) language and discursive practice and (b) the pragmatics of communication that draws on talk, gestures, and semiotic resources in the setting, we propose a redefinition of the nature of conception. Conceptions are understood as the dialectical relation of simultaneously available speech, gestures, and contextual structures that cannot be reduced to verbal rendering because gestures and contextual structures constitute different modalities in the communication. Drawing on data collected during a physics unit about gas taught in French tenth grade classrooms, we show why an appropriate account of conceptions requires: (a) gestures simultaneously produced with talk; and (b) identification of the relevant structures in the setting used by the participants as meaning‐making (semiotic) resources. We propose to: (a) reconceptualize the notion of conception as consisting of a dialectical unit of all relevant semiotic (meaning‐making) resources publicly made available by a speaker (talk, gesture, context); and (b) consider conceptual change through the temporal evolution of the dialectical unit defined in this manner. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 1086–1109, 2006     

Some remarks and proposals concerning the planning and performance of technology assessment studies

It is the authors' intention to clarify some basic problems of technology assessment studies and some apparent misunderstandings about the role and possibilities of technology assessment. The discussion centers around questions such as the following: Can technology assessment studies be objective in the scientific sense? What are the risks that may result from a lack of active participation of affected groups in the assessment process? Do technology assessment studies really produce evaluations of the future impacts of a technology according to future value systems? Are the frameworks or schemes for the technology assessment process that are proposed by a number of analysts really helpful for the conception of adequate pragmatic strategies in concrete cases? Should the European countries imitate the US example of setting up an Office of Technology Assessment in the legislature?The authors believe that technology assessment analyses should be organized as transparent, participatory, and argumentative processes and that procedures should be developed and applied that are suitable to fulfil this task.     

Co-authorship networks in the digital library research community

The field of digital libraries (DLs) coalesced in 1994: the first digital library conferences were held that year, awareness of the World Wide Web was accelerating, and the National Science Foundation awarded $24 Million (US) for the Digital Library Initiative (DLI). In this paper we examine the state of the DL domain after a decade of activity by applying social network analysis to the co-authorship network of the past ACM, IEEE, and joint ACM/IEEE digital library conferences. We base our analysis on a common binary undirectional network model to represent the co-authorship network, and from it we extract several established network measures. We also introduce a weighted directional network model to represent the co-authorship network, for which we define AuthorRank as an indicator of the impact of an individual author in the network. The results are validated against conference program committee members in the same period. The results show clear advantages of PageRank and AuthorRank over degree, closeness and betweenness centrality metrics. We also investigate the amount and nature of international participation in Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL).     

Agriculture as a subject in primary school

Many countries have included agriculture as a subject in primary school for a number of reasons. The present article briefly presents five rationales for including agriculture and offers three main approaches which seem to emerge from current practice. The main results of the subsequent discussion can be summarized as follows: integrating education with rural development most of the time would mean including agriculture as a subject in primary schools in rural areas and compensating it in core curriculum with some sort of practical subject taught in urban areas. It becomes clear that narrow vocational and extension-support approaches to school agriculture should be avoided in favour of a more general approach which relates agriculture to science. Unless these problems — curricular, technical, and organizational — are tackled, the results of school agriculture and its acceptance by those concerned will remain far behind expectations and possibilities.

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Zusammenfassung Zahlreiche Länder haben aus einer Vielzahl von Gründen Landwirtschaftskunde als Primarschulfach eingeführt. Die vorliegende Studie unterbreitet verschiedene Grundprinzipien für das Einbeziehen von Landwirtschaftskunde ins Curriculum und bietet drei Hauptansätze, die anscheinend aus derzeit üblichen Praktiken entstehen. Die wichtigsten Ergebnisse der damit zusammenhängenden Diskussion können folgendermaßen zusammengefaßt werden: Die Verknüpfung von Erziehung mit ländlicher Entwicklung bedeutet meistens, Landwirtschaft als ein Primarschulfach in ländlichen Gebieten einzubeziehen und im Kerncurriculum durch ein in städtischen Bereichen unterrichtetes praktisches Fach zu ersetzen. Es wird klar, daß Ansätze zur Landwirtschaft als Schulfach, die im engeren Sinne berufsbezogen sind oder die landwirtschaftliche Beratung fördern, zugunsten eines allgemeineren, Landwirtschaft mit Wissenschaft verknüpfenden Ansatzes vermieden werden sollten. Wenn diese Probleme curricularer, technischer und organisatorischer Art nicht gelöst werden können bleiben die Erfolge der Schullandwirtschaft und ihre Anerkennung durch die Betroffenen nicht nur weit hinter den Erwartungen anderer, sondern auch hinter ihrer, Möglichkeiten zurück.

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Résumé Plusieurs raisons ont améné de nombreux pays à introduire l'agriculture en tant que matière dans le contenu du programme d'études, de l'école primaire. Cet article présente brièvement cinq raisons d'être de l'introduction de cette nouvelle matière et trois approches principales qui semblent émerger de pratiques courantes. Les principaux résultats de la discussion subséquente peuvent être résumés de la façon suivante; l'intégration de l'éducation dans le développement rural signifie presque toujours introduire l'agriculture en tant que matière dans le plan d'études des écoles primaires des zones rurales et compenser cet enseignement par celui d'un sujet pratique dans les zones urbaines. Il apparaît évident que les approches purement professionnelles ou d'aide au développment de cette matière doivent être évitées en faveur d'une approche plus générale qui établirait une relation entre l'agriculture et la science. Les résultats de cette matière enseignée à l'école et sa réception par les personnes concernées resteront bien au-delà des espérances et des possibilités, si ces problèmes curriculaires, techniques et organisationnels ne sont pas résolus.

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For materials published by GTZ please write to: GTZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit GmbH), Postfach 5180, D-6236 Eschborn 1, Federal Republic of Germany.     

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