Manipulate important educational variables

For nine years personnel of the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) at Johns Hopkins have found thousands of youths, chiefly seventh‐graders, who reason extremely well mathematically. SMPY strives in various ways to help these students proceed considerably faster and better in mathematics and related subjects than is usually permitted or encouraged. Its work is offered as an example of important problems that, in the judgment of the author, educational psychologists should attack vigorously. SMPY's four‐D model is described, which emphasizes educational acceleration of youths who arc highly able and eager to move ahead quickly.     

Against the odds: resilience in mathematics students in transition

This paper examines ‘resilience’ of mathematics students in transition from a sociocultural perspective, in which resilience is viewed as relational and in particular as a function of the social and cultural capital students may bring to the new field. We draw on two students’ stories of transition, in which we recognise elements traditionally viewed as ‘risks’ for mathematics students in transition into institutions where new demands are made. However, in each case it seems that some of their apparent background ‘risk factors’—coming from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds and disadvantaged schools—have come to serve to constitute capital, buttressing their particular resilience, as they provide a crucial kind of autonomy that is particularly valued in the new institution. We identify the learners’ reflexivity as having been crucial to this accumulation of capital and we discuss some educational implications.     

Supervising mentors’ lived experience on supervision in teaching, nursing and social care education. A participation-oriented phenomenological study

Research concerning the supervisor role in separate educational programmes has been undertaken, but cross-professional studies are few. The aim of this study was to explore the lived experience of supervising mentors in Sweden during the practice-based, off-campus sections of the education in teaching, nursing, and social care. The study used a participatory phenomenological approach in which four researchers and nineteen supervising mentors worked together in the research process which was accomplished in four different phases. The data collecting method used was interview. The results constituted a main essence entitled “Struggle of power and control of professional quality enhancement” built upon four themes: “Constitutes a motivating force”, “Feelings of responsibility”, “Feelings of frustration” and “Wishes for alteration”. Conclusions from the study are that communication, information and contact between the professionals in the fields and university teachers need to be strengthen to keep up supervising mentors’ motivating force and to give them support.     

Case-based reasoning and instructional design: Using stories to support problem solving

With an increased emphasis on problem solving and problem-based learning in the instructional design field, new methods for task analysis and models for designing instruction are needed. An important methodology for both entails the elicitation, analysis, and inclusion of stories as a primary form of instructional support while learning to solve problems. Stories are the most natural and powerful formalism for storing and describing experiential knowledge that is essential to problem solving. The rationale and means for analyzing, organizing, and presenting stories to support problem solving are defined by case-based reasoning. Problems are solved by retrieving similar past experiences in the form of stories and applying the lessons learned from those stories to the new problems. In this paper, after justifying the use of stories as instructional supports, we describe methods for eliciting, indexing, and making stories available as instructional support for learning to solve problems.     

Identification with early primary school mathematics: a home–school activity theory conceptualisation and methodology

This paper offers a new methodology for researching children’s identifications in the early primary phase that makes visible the ‘seeds’ of academic dis-/identities, which typically flower later in adolescence. It focuses on the ‘case’ of mathematical identifications (MI) to exemplify how children come to dis/identify from the academic curriculum more broadly. MI is defined as any act where cultural representations of being mathematical are reflected back on to the child by others or the self, as they engage in mathematical activity. Data are presented concerning Bilal and Nico to show identifications in a hybrid home–school mathematics activity that contradict or ‘align’ with MI elicited in school-mathematical activity. It is argued that contradictions between these MIs indicate ‘potential’ development towards disengagement (the case of Nico). This contrasts with home–school alignment involving Bilal’s ‘schoolified’ home activities, which (re)validate school-mathematical activity. It is further argued that this conceptual innovation offers potential for investigating identity in early childhood.     

Views on the philosophy of science among undergraduate science students and their tutors at the University of Papua New Guinea: origins,progression, enculturation and destinations

Using a schedule originated by Nott and Wellington to explore science teachers’ views on the philosophy of science, data were gathered at the University of Papua New Guinea. Similarities in response were established for successive first year intakes of science undergraduates (1999–2000). Students with experience in national high schools or Australian high schools responded more positively than their provincial secondary school trained peers to items indicating that the findings of scientific enquiry were universally true. A cross‐sectional analysis showed the undergraduates in the third and fourth years to be more process orientated than the first or second years. Both the first and second years were different in their views compared with their tutors in the relativism–positivism scale, where they were more positivist, the contextualism–decontextualism scale, where they were less decontextualist, and the process–content scale where they were considerably less process orientated. Those with a preferred career destination of medicine were slightly more decontextualist in outlook while being marginally realist, those with a preferred physical science career being very weakly instrumentalist. The results can be interpreted in terms of respondents’ experiences in secondary schooling and on programmes at the University of Papua New Guinea.