Relational Analysis of College Science‐Major Students’ Epistemological Beliefs Toward Science and Conceptions of Learning Science

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest among educational researchers in exploring the relationships between learners’ epistemological beliefs and their conceptions of learning. This study was conducted to investigate these relationships particularly in the domain of science. The participants in this study included 407 Taiwanese college science‐major students. All of them responded to two major questionnaires, one assessing their scientific epistemological beliefs (SEBs) and the other one probing their conceptions of learning science (COLS). The SEB questionnaire included four factors: “certainty,” “source,” “development,” and “justification” of science knowledge. The COLS survey consisted of six factors in a hierarchical order, that is, learning science as “memorizing,” “preparing for tests,” “calculating and practicing,” “increasing one’s knowledge,” “application,” and “understanding and seeing in a new way.” The students’ confidence and interest toward learning science were also assessed by additional questionnaire items. Stepwise regression analyses, in general, showed coherence between students’ SEBs and their COLS, indicating that the sophistication of SEBs was consistent with less agreement with lower‐level COLS (such as “memorizing” and “preparing for tests”) as well as more agreement with higher‐level COLS (such as “understanding and seeing in a new way”). However, the SEB’s “justification” factor was positively related to almost all of COLS factors from the lower‐level to higher‐level. This study finally found that among all of the SEB and COLS factors, the “preparing for tests” factor in COLS was the solely significant variable for predicting students’ interest in science and confidence toward learning science.     

Quality lies in the eyes of the beholder: A mismatch between student evaluation and peer observation of teaching

Abstract

The study described in this article was prompted by the poor performance of students in an ‘at risk subject’ in a science faculty at a university in South Africa. Teacher performance could contribute to poor performance among students, therefore the performance of one of the science teachers whose students were performing poorly was evaluated by his students and through peer observation of his teaching. The article draws on a merger between Bernstein's ideas on framing as well as deep and surface approaches to learning to form a theoretical framework that underpinned the study. Peer observation showed that the teacher employed predominantly teacher-centred, passive approaches to teaching, and the facilitation of active learning was minimal, that is, framing was strong. Students, however, evaluated their teacher positively, indicating that he was an ‘effective’ teacher. Therefore, the perception of what constitutes ‘quality teaching’ is viewed differently by peers and students. This is most likely due to the incompatibility between peers' conception of teaching and students' conception of learning. Therefore, students' feedback on teaching is not necessarily accurate or useful.     

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��[Purpose/significance] We adopted experiment and questionnaires to investigate the difference in the change of health risk perception and health behavior change decision of individuals at different stages of the healthy behavior change process after receiving different framed information, in order to determine which information can more effectively improve their awareness of risks and promote the formation of change decisions, and to provide a basis for the longitudinal information intervention of adverse behavior change in the next step.[Method/process] Based on the theoretical model proposed in the previous study, we selected eating breakfast on time as the special case of the study, conducted cross-sectional investigation and study on the subjects by using the self-made questionnaire, and conducted statistical analysis on the data obtained, and analyzed and discussed the results with statistical differences, so as to obtain feasible intervention opinions.[Result/conclusion] In the early stages of the health behavior change (i.e. the precontemplation and the contemplation), negative frame information more helps individuals to increase risk perception and promote the formation of behavior change decision, and positive framework information more helps individuals feel tendency of decision-making of entering to the next stage in the mid-late in health behavior change while there is no difference in the impact of the frame on health risk perception (i.e. the preparation and the action).But the individual is not susceptible to the influence of the framed information at end-stage phase of health behavior change (the maintenance).     

中国媒体应避免“期待性沉默”——析“非典型肺炎事件”中新闻传媒的“不作为”失控

“非典型肺炎事件”中 ,政府和媒体的“缺席”(媒体的“不作为”)曾一度引起某些地区流言扩散 ,造成百姓恐慌 ,这种现象也引起人们的反思。作者认为 ,这实质上是因中国媒体的“期待性沉默”造成的 ,本文详细分析了这种现象产生的原因 ,并就今后如何避免类似情况发生提出建议     

Do Black Lives Matter?

This study employs content analysis to examine how the New York Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch framed “Black Lives Matter” protests in the aftermath of the shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. The researchers examine all New York Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch articles dealing centrally with the Michel Brown protests during three separate time periods corresponding to heavy protest activity. The coding scheme measured dominant frame direction, article length, sourcing, and mention of protester crimes. Contrary to expectations, the papers provided overwhelmingly sympathetic coverage of “Black Lives Matter” protests. In describing the protests, both newspapers were much more likely to employ a “positive” frame suggesting peacefulness and order than a “negative” frame suggesting lawlessness and deviance. Neither newspaper over-emphasized protester-perpetrated crimes, with both papers making relatively infrequent mention of looting, arson, assault, and gunfire, respectively. Importantly, both newspapers directly quoted protesters much more often than they quoted police officers and other government officials.     

Framing “Bad News”

This study proposes a dichotomous set of frames, the Blame Frame and the Explain Frame, to examine how the news media cover sudden tragic events. The Blame Frame affixes responsibility on human agents and foregrounds the pursuit of punishment and justice. The Explain Frame takes responsibility away from human agents and describes the tragedy in terms of natural or quasi-natural processes. The study argues that social identities of “prospective” agents predict the difference in framing: “deviants” and “aliens” are held culpable while local elites are deemed innocent, although these identities are themselves social and draw on prevalent cultural beliefs. Ultimately, both frames serve to reproduce social boundaries and reinforce the status quo. Empirical evidence comes from the ideological analysis of the coverage of April 2013’s Boston bombings and the West fertilizer plant blast in local and national newspapers.     

Projecting images of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad school’: top scorers in educational large-scale assessments as reference societies

Researchers interested in the global flow of educational ideas and programmes have long been interested in the role of so-called ‘reference societies’. The article investigates how top scorers in large-scale assessments are framed as positive or negative reference societies in the education policy-making debate in German mass media and which functions they fulfil. Top scores in large-scale assessments do not automatically promote a country to the status of a positive reference society. Whether top scorers are perceived as positive or as negative reference societies depends largely on stereotyped prior perceptions that determine how success in these assessments is framed. Among the functions positive and negative reference societies fulfil are making educational reform agendas more plausible and serving as projection screens for conceptions of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ school.     

Communicating to young Chinese about human papillomavirus vaccination: examining the impact of message framing and temporal distance

This research investigated the influence of message framing (gain or loss) and temporal distance (present or future) on the intention of Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination. A total of 156 Chinese undergraduates participated in a controlled experiment in Macau, a Special Administrative Region of China. Results showed that message framing and temporal distance interacted to impact the intention of HPV vaccination. Particularly, among participants who had no prior knowledge of HPV vaccine, the gain-present and loss-future framed messages resulted in more positive attitudes toward the message, higher degree of perceived severity of HPV infection, and more likelihood to get HPV vaccination than the gain-future and loss-present framed messages. Implications of the findings were discussed.     

Towards a Framework of Socio-Linguistic Analysis of Science Textbooks: The Greek Case

This study aims at presenting a grid for analysing the way the language employed in Greek school science textbooks tends to project pedagogic messages. These messages are analysed for the different school science subjects (i.e., Physics, Chemistry, Biology) and educational levels (i.e., primary and lower secondary level). The analysis is made using the dimensions of content specialisation (classification) and social-pedagogic relationships (framing) promoted by the language of the school science textbooks as well as the elaboration and abstraction of the corresponding linguistic code (formality), thus combining pedagogical and socio-linguistic perspectives. Classification and formality are used to identify the ways science textbooks tend to position students in relation to the interior of the corresponding specialised body of knowledge (i.e., in terms of content and code) while framing is used to identify the ways science textbooks tend to position students as learning subjects within the school science discourse. The results show that the kind of pedagogic messages projected by the textbooks depends mainly on the educational level and not particularly on the specific discipline. As the educational level rises a gradual move towards more specialised forms of scientific knowledge (mainly in terms of code) with a parallel increase in the students' autonomy in accessing the textbook material is noticed. The implications concern the way both students and teachers approach science textbooks as well as the roles they can undertake by internalising the textbooks' pedagogic messages and also the way science textbooks are authored.     

论优化企业经营管理的框架

经营者利用框架来对企业进行经营管理,但是,有时框架也会产生盲点和陷阱。通过对认知框架和框架效应的分析,指出了在企业经营管理中应对框架效应的策略以及如何建立和管理科学框架的问题。