Nature's agents or agents of empire? Entomological workers and environmental change during the construction of the Panama Canal

This essay examines the role that entomological workers played in U.S. public health efforts during the construction of the Panama Canal (1904-1914). Entomological workers were critical to mosquito control efforts aimed at the reduction of tropical fevers such as malaria. But in the process of studying vector mosquitoes, they discovered that many of the conditions that produced mosquitoes were not intrinsic to tropical nature per se but resulted from the human-caused environmental disturbances that accompanied canal building. This realization did not mesh well with an American ideology of tropical triumphalism premised on the notion that the Americans had conquered unalloyed tropical nature in Panama. The result, however, was not a coherent counternarrative but a set of intra-administrative tensions over what controlling nature meant in Panama. Ultimately, entomological workers were loyal not just to the U.S. imperial mission in Panama but also to a modernist culture of science and to the workings of mosquito ecology as they understood them.     

Algorithmic culture,networked learning and the technological horizon of theory

ABSTRACT

Going via Bernard Stiegler’s theorisation of technology, and his response to Chris Anderson’s claim that the era of hyper-networked, algorithmically driven digital technologies signals the end of theory, this paper aims to place the educational practice of networked learning as a space to think the edge, excess or limit of this proposed algorithmic dominance. The author discusses how networked learning can negotiate the border between educational theory, the practice of teaching and learning, and the processes and systems of educational technology, but suggests that to do this it must engage these disciplines through a thinking of technology which does not decide upon its status in advance. He argues that affirming this particular relation to technology is increasingly urgent given we are at a moment in which educational institutions are asking how to prepare our students for an age of continuing technological disruption.     

Effectiveness of Spanish intervention for first-grade English language learners at risk for reading difficulties

The effectiveness of an explicit, systematic reading intervention for first-grade students whose home language was Spanish and who were at risk for reading difficulties was examined. Participants were 69 students in 20 classrooms in 7 schools from 3 districts who initially did not pass the screening in Spanish and were randomly assigned within schools to a treatment or comparison group; after 7 months, 64 students remained in the study. The intervention matched the language of instruction of their core reading program (Spanish). Treatment groups of 3 to 5 students met daily for 50 min and were provided systematic and explicit instruction in oral language and reading by trained bilingual intervention teachers. Comparison students received the school's standard intervention for struggling readers. Observations during core reading instruction provided information about the reading instruction and language use of the teachers. There were no differences between the treatment and comparison groups in either Spanish or English on any measures at pretest, but there were significant posttest differences in favor of the treatment group for the following outcomes in Spanish: Letter-Sound Identification (d = 0.72), Phonological Awareness composite (d = 0.73), Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Revised Oral Language composite (d = 0.35), Word Attack (d = 0.85), Passage Comprehension (d = 0.55), and two measures of reading fluency (d = 0.58-0.75).     

The Role of Childhood Executive Function in Explaining Income Disparities in Long-Term Academic Achievement

This study utilized data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (N = 14,860) to examine whether early-life family income (age 0–5) predicted long-term academic achievement (age 16–18) and to investigate the role of executive function (EF) assessed multiple times across age 7–11 in explaining this association. Task-based EF was a significant mediator between early-life family income and later academic achievement in every model. This mediating pathway persisted when adjusting for a comprehensive panel of covariates including verbal IQ, sex, family income at ages 8 and 18, and early-life temperament. Additionally, teacher-rated and parent-rated EF mediated in some models. Overall, these findings suggest that childhood EF may play an important role in perpetuating income-based educational disparities.     

Delayed Time-to-Degree and Post-college Earnings

Research in Higher Education - Increasingly, undergraduates take more than 4 years to complete a baccalaureate, a situation widely perceived as a waste of time and money, for students,...     

Safe spaces? A social-ecological perspective on student perceptions of safety in the environment of the school canteen

ABSTRACT

Background Research suggests that negative peer interactions that compromise student safety and wellbeing often occur in spaces at school that are not easily visible, not adequately monitored, overcrowded and/or relatively unstructured. In a large online survey conducted in Swedish schools by the anti-bullying organisation, Friends, a small proportion of students indicated that they felt unsafe in the school canteen and responded to a question about why they felt unsafe there. As the canteen is often reported to be a space where negative peer interactions, such as harassment, bullying and other forms of school violence, occur, but little is known about why negative peer interactions occur there, we were particularly interested in exploring why some students perceived their school canteen to be an unsafe space.

Purpose Taking a social-ecological perspective, our aim was to investigate why students reported feeling unsafe in the environment of the school canteen.

Method In order to investigate this question, we analysed 1,547 responses from students in Swedish schools in grades 3–6 (ages 9–12). The responses were from the anti-bullying organisation Friends’ online questionnaires from 2011 to 2016. In the responses, students who indicated that they felt unsafe in the school canteen explained why they felt this way. Data were analysed qualitatively, using a six-step thematic approach.

Findings The analysis identified four key themes: Space constraints, Time restrictions, The risk of social blunders and The negative actions of others. We discuss the findings in terms of the macrosystem, exosystem, mesosystem and microsystem.

Conclusions In matters of student safety and wellbeing, we argue that it is not only important to consider the social context, but also how that context is interconnected with environmental and structural elements.     

The Long Decay Model of One-Dimensional Projectile Motion

This article introduces a research study on student model formation and development in introductory mechanics. As a point of entry, I present a detailed analysis of the Long Decay Model of one-dimensional projectile motion. This model has been articulated by Galileo (in De Motu) and by contemporary students. Implications for instruction are discussed.

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Child Rearing: Passivity and being able to go on. Wittgenstein on shared practices and seeing aspects

It is not uncommon to hear parents say in discussions they have with their children 'Look at it this way'. And called upon for their advice, counsellors too say something to adults with the significance of 'Try to see it like this'. The change of someone's perspective in the context of child rearing is the focus of this paper. Our interest in this lies not so much in giving an answer to the practical problems that are at stake, but at disentangling the issues on a conceptual level. Within the so-called second part of his Philosophical Investigations , Wittgenstein deals with shared practices and with concepts such as 'seeing' and 'seeing as'. What he says there is in terms of content linked with his earlier Tractatus position concerning ethics, a matter which will first be dealt with. After that, the relevant sections of his later work are discussed. Following Cavell, it is concluded that to try to get someone to see what one sees, necessarily presupposes giving it out of one's hands. The passivity this points at highlights what Erziehung in the end comes down to.     

Establishing a Competence Profile for the Role of Student-centred Teachers in Higher Education in Belgium

The increasing importance of constructivism in higher education has brought about a shift in pedagogy from a focus on the teacher to a focus on the student. This has important implications for teaching and assessment. A student-centred pedagogy implies a different role for the teacher. What exactly does student-centred teaching require from teachers’ actual teaching practice? What is expected from them in order to teach in a student-centred way? It is in order to respond to these questions that this research project has been carried out establishing a core competence profile of student-centred teachers in higher education. Qualitative data were collected by means of semi-structured in-depth interviews with teachers from different institutions for higher education in Belgium, known for their student-centred way of teaching. This research method is innovative compared to the methods used for existing competence lists in the literature, which were usually developed on the basis of conversations with pedagogical experts. By exploring practice and having teachers participate in the development of a competence list, the acceptance of a competence profile is much higher. The result of the project is a validated competence profile which takes into account the critiques on existing competence lists. The competence profile provides a further insight in the functioning of teachers within a student-centred pedagogy and can be used as a starting point for the educational development of teachers within this pedagogy.     

Relationships between student characteristics and self‐, peer and tutor evaluations of oral presentations

There are many influences on how assessors grade themselves and others. Oral presentations are useful for exploring such factors in peer, self‐ and tutor marked assessments, being rapidly completed and assessed, commonly used in HE and very difficult to anonymize. This opportunistic study examined the effects of gender and level of attainment on the triangulation of marks awarded to student presenters. Grades generated by peer assessment were associated more strongly with tutor‐awarded marks than those from self‐assessment. For self‐assessment there was a strong effect of gender (female students undervalued their performance compared with tutor grades). Peer assessment produced higher marks than from tutors, perhaps because of the close‐knit community developed during residential courses. For tutor marks, the greatest variability was at the lower end of the scale, whereas peer assessors were most variable when marking students who self‐evaluated or peer assessed highly. Students awarded a narrower range of marks to peers compared with tutors, but when self‐assessing used a larger range. Presentations by students who admitted to little sleep the night before received lower grades from both peers and tutors, but this was not reflected by self‐assessments, suggesting they were unaware of their poorer performances. Sessions with fewer talks (four rather than seven) reduced the ‘dip’ in marks previously observed in the middle of sessions. Findings are discussed in the context of bias in this mode of assessment.