Knowledge,its Application,and Attitudes Associated with the Reading of Diverse Genres of Science Texts

The purpose of this article is to assess the knowledge, application of knowledge, and attitudes associated with the reading of different genres of expository science texts. We assigned approximately half of a sample consisting of 220 students 14–15 years of age, chosen at random, to read an excerpt from a popular scientific text, and the other half to read an excerpt from a textbook addressing the same topic. Readers took knowledge and application tests immediately after the reading and again 15 days later. Students also took knowledge and reading proficiency pre-tests, and attitude tests related to the selected texts. Overall, girls scored higher than boys and readers of the popular scientific text scored higher than their colleagues who read the textbook excerpt. We noted interaction between ‘reader gender’ and ‘genre of the text read’ in terms of long-term learning based on the reading. Attitude regarding the text read appears as an important factor in explaining behavior of boys who read the popular scientific text. Surprisingly, knowledge and application test scores were not statistically different among girls with different degrees of reading proficiency who read the textbook excerpt. In addition, on the application tests, among the boys who read the popular scientific text, good readers scored lower than their colleagues who read the textbook excerpt. In our opinion, this study can serve to show that ‘reading in science education’ is not a trivial matter and we feel that the subject merits more in-depth investigation.     

Fostering Community Life and Human Civility in Academic Departments Through Covenant Practice

Creating desirable academic departments for individuals’ well-being and quality scholarship is an important effort as well as a novel idea. The focus of this reflective article is twofold: (a) We present a social capital theory of social justice covenants as a product and process of community building, and (b) we share the multiple lived experiences of three scholars within the context of our department's covenant ideology and practice. We explore how faculty can promote community and civility by not only developing but also enacting an internally generated covenant while operating within a larger institutional context that produces tension. As related to our purposes, we examined the relevant literature on social capital, capacity building, workplace environments, and organizational covenants to frame our discussion of community-driven action in education. We include an extended application of a covenant that guides our departmental faculty's social outlook, interpersonal behavior, scholarly work, and communal activism. Although our focus is on change-oriented, grassroots activity within higher education, the public schooling context is considered.     

Stereotypes of Older Lesbians and Gay Men

This study examined stereotypes of older lesbians and gay men. Key findings are that older lesbians and gay men were perceived as similar to older heterosexual women and men with regard to aging stereotypes, such as being judicious. At the same time, sexual minorities were targets of unique stereotypes. Consistent with the implicit inversion theory, lesbians were conceived as similar to heterosexual men, and gay men similar to heterosexual women with regard to gender-stereotypic traits, and regardless of age. These findings suggest the persistence into late adulthood of the belief that lesbians and gay men are inverted females and males.     

Investing in skills to overcome the crisis? Low-skilled workers in Italy: European strategies,policies and structural weaknesses

A skilled workforce is a prerequisite for productivity and a stepping stone for innovation. This is the reason why education and investment in skills have been made the foundations of Europe 2020, Europe’s strategy to overcome the economic crisis and boost growth. The propensity for developing skills is consistently present in European countries and concerns all educational levels. However, differences between countries are often considerable, in particular with regard to skills and educational attainment. There are countries, such as Italy, which have not been successful thus far at decreasing the number of low-skilled workers. This article aims to describe the situation of low-educated and low-skilled workers in Italy and the impact of the economic crisis on this particularly vulnerable group. The work is based on official data issued by national and international institutions, as well as on results from a narrative analysis of 15 biographical interviews with low-skilled adults in Italy conducted within a Cedefop project. Drawing on both types of sources, the article will offer a perspective on the relationship between structural constraints in regard to access to and participation in lifelong learning in Italy, specifically for low-skilled workers, and individual strategies adopted to cope with these constraints.     

Linguistic kernels for answer re-ranking in question answering systems

Answer selection is the most complex phase of a question answering (QA) system. To solve this task, typical approaches use unsupervised methods such as computing the similarity between query and answer, optionally exploiting advanced syntactic, semantic or logic representations.     

Inflectional morphology and dyslexia: Italian children’s performance in a nonword pluralization task

In this study, we present the results of an original experimental protocol designed to assess the performance in a pluralization task of 52 Italian children divided into two groups: 24 children with developmental dyslexia (mean age 10.0 years old) and 28 typically developing children (mean age 9.11 years old). Our task, inspired by Berko’s Wug Test, had the aim of testing the subjects’ ability to apply pluralization rules to nonwords in the morphologically complex context of Italian nominal inflection. Results demonstrate that dyslexics display poorer morphological skills in comparison to controls, showing lower accuracy in the task. Furthermore, the dissimilar performances reported by the subjects in the different conditions indicate that the ability to inflect nonwords depends on factors such as the rule’s productivity, frequency, and opacity with respect to gender. Finally, the children’s performance in this task was significantly related to their reading proficiency, and it could predict accuracy in word reading independently of phonological awareness and working memory.     

Alteration of serum beta 2-microglobulin in oral carcinoma

Serum β₂-microglubin (β₂-m) levels were measured in oral carcinoma patients and compared with normal healthy controls. It was observed that there was a significant rise in serum β₂-microglobulin in oral carcinoma patients. Progressively higher values were obtained as the cancer advanced clinically. Therefore the estimation of serum β₂-microglobulin may be useful as one of a battery of tests in the assessment of oral carcinoma patients.     

The dark side of the exceptional: On moral exemplars,character education,and negative emotions

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on negative exemplarity-related emotions (NEREs) and on their educational implications. In this article, we first argue for the nonexpendability of negative emotions broadly conceived by defending their instrumental and intrinsic role in a good and flourishing life. We make the claim more specific by focusing on the narrower domain of NEREs and argue for their moral and educational significance by evaluating whether they fit the arguments provided in the previous section. We go on to propose three educational strategies to foster NEREs’ positive moral role. In conclusion, we point out that an exemplarist approach to character education would greatly benefit from a more fine-grained account of the emotions involved in the educational process and from a broader perspective on which of these emotions should be taken as valuable for educational purposes.     

Autorregulación y desarrollo de capacidades que incrementan la coherencia entre juicio y acción

El desarrollo de las competencias autorreguladoras de la persona adquiere una especial importancia cuando se trata de incrementar la coherencia entre juicio y acción. En este artículo se analizan los conceptos de autorregulación y autocontrol así como las diferentes consideraciones que puedan ayudar a su contextualización en el aula. Se propone una actividad para el primer ciclo de Educación Primaria.     

Navigating the complexity of qualitative research in postmodern contexts: assemblage,critical reflexivity,and communion as guides

For graduate students and other emerging qualitative researchers, the ever-evolving and sometimes conflicting perspectives, methodologies, and practices within various post-positivist frameworks (e.g. feminist, critical, Indigenous, participatory) can be overwhelming. Qualitative researchers working within postmodern contexts of multiplicity and ambiguity are tasked with working through challenges – related to methods, interpretation, and representation – throughout the research process. Through examining related literature and incorporating my own experiences, I explore ethical dilemmas that social justice-oriented qualitative researchers may encounter as a result of conflicting multiplicities of difference among researcher(s), participants, and readers. Such dilemmas include incongruent interpretations between participants and researchers, and participants’ and researchers’ conflicting desires about what should be shared, intercultural (mis)interpretations, rapport issues, and conflicts between research life and home life. I consider how combining the practices of attending to assemblages, engaging in critical reflexivity, and centralizing communion may be useful in navigating relationships and ethical dilemmas in qualitative research.