Misconceptions about data-based decision making in education: An exploration of the literature

Research on data-based decision making has proliferated around the world, fueled by policy recommendations and the diverse data that are now available to educators to inform their practice. Yet, many misconceptions and concerns have been raised by researchers and practitioners. To better understand the issues, a session was convened at AERA’s annual convention in 2018, followed by an analysis of the literature based on misconceptions that emerged. This commentary is an outgrowth of that exploration by providing research, theoretical, and practical evidence to dispel some of the misconceptions. Our objective is to survey and synthesize the landscape of the data-based decision making literature to address the identified misconceptions and then to serve as a stimulus to changes in policy and practice as well as a roadmap for a research agenda.     

钱钟书《诗可以怨》解读

钱钟书的文学批评论文《诗可以怨》从文学和心理学两大方面对传统的历史观点提出了质疑。作者渊博睿智、明辨深思,横贯中西、打通古今,引经据典,大量的事实作论据,论证传统文学理论观点的偏颇和错误;以中外众多相似的语言现象进行中西文化比较,说明人类的心理体验、情感机制有共同的基础这一观点。     

Misconceptions About Human Rights and Women’s Rights in Islam

This paper aims to clarify three current misconceptions about the Islamic faith and issues of human rights and women’s rights in the West. The first misconception is that Muslims are terrorists because they believe in Jihad. It is factually the case that Islamic teachings stress the value of peace and prosperity for all human beings. The second misconception is that Muslims prohibit scientific knowledge and only aim to seek religious knowledge. To the contrary, Qur’an emphasizes that the opportunity to seek all forms of knowledge is a human right and responsibility of all Muslims. The third misconception and perhaps, the most controversial, is that Islam oppresses women. In reality, Islam offers women the right to make their own choices in the areas of education, business, and property, to name a few. By sharing my own experiential narrative as a Muslim born woman and that of a Canadian women who converted to Islam, I can actually see the similarities between human rights in Islam and the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).     

交际英语教学法的几个理解误区

交际英语教学法目前已被大多数应用语言学家和英语教学工作者广泛接受 ,认为是我国目前所采用的英语教学方法中最行之有效的一种。但是目前对这种方法还存在一些理解和应用上的误区。分析了这些误区产生的原因 ,并阐述了交际英语的学法及真正特点 ,以对广大英语教师有所启示     

Students’ misconceptions of statistical inference: A review of the empirical evidence from research on statistics education

A solid understanding of inferential statistics is of major importance for designing and interpreting empirical results in any scientific discipline. However, students are prone to many misconceptions regarding this topic. This article structurally summarizes and describes these misconceptions by presenting a systematic review of publications that provide empirical evidence of them. This group of publications was found to be dispersed over a wide range of specialized journals and proceedings, and the methodology used in the empirical studies was very diverse. Three research needs rise from this review: (1) further empirical studies that identify the sources and possible solutions for misconceptions in order to complement the abundant theoretical and statistical discussion about them; (2) new insights into effective research designs and methodologies to perform this type of research; and (3) structured and systematic summaries of findings like the one presented here, concerning misconceptions in other areas of statistics, that might be of interest both for educational researchers and teachers of statistics.     

A Review of Some Sources of Students' Misconceptions in Biology

It is now widely acknowledged that students' misconceptions in science impede their meaningful understanding of and good performance in the subject. A search in the literature reveals that textbooks, reference books, teachers, language, cultural beliefs and practices are some principal sources of high school students' misconceptions of many science concepts in biology. In this paper, some misconceptions students hold in biology, which originate from each of these sources, are reviewed using cognate studies and published documents. The implications of the conclusions from the review for biology education are addressed.     

A Three-Tier Diagnostic Test to Assess Pre-Service Teachers’ Misconceptions about Global Warming,Greenhouse Effect,Ozone Layer Depletion,and Acid Rain

This study describes the development and validation of a three-tier multiple-choice diagnostic test, the atmosphere-related environmental problems diagnostic test (AREPDiT), to reveal common misconceptions of global warming (GW), greenhouse effect (GE), ozone layer depletion (OLD), and acid rain (AR). The development of a two-tier diagnostic test procedure as described by Treagust constitutes the framework for this study. To differentiate a lack of knowledge from a misconception, a certainty response index is added as a third tier to each item. Based on propositional knowledge statements, related literature, and the identified misconceptions gathered initially from 157 pre-service teachers, the AREPDiT was constructed and administered to 256 pre-service teachers. The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the pre-service teachers’ scores was estimated to be 0.74. Content and face validations were established by senior experts. A moderate positive correlation between the participants’ both-tiers scores and their certainty scores indicated evidence for construct validity. Therefore, the AREPDiT is a reliable and valid instrument not only to identify pre-service teachers’ misconceptions about GW, GE, OLD, and AR but also to differentiate these misconceptions from lack of knowledge. The results also reveal that a majority of the respondents demonstrated limited understandings about atmosphere-related environmental problems and held six common misconceptions. Future studies could test the AREPDiT as a tool for assessing the misconceptions held by pre-service teachers from different programs as well as in-service teachers and high school students.     

The Influence of 16‐year‐old Students’ Gender,Mental Abilities,and Motivation on their Reading and Drawing Submicrorepresentations Achievements

Submicrorepresentations (SMRs) are a powerful tool for identifying misconceptions of chemical concepts and for generating proper mental models of chemical phenomena in students’ long‐term memory during chemical education. The main purpose of the study was to determine which independent variables (gender, formal reasoning abilities, visualization abilities, and intrinsic motivation for learning chemistry) have the maximum influence on students’ reading and drawing SMRs. A total of 386 secondary school students (aged 16.3 years) participated in the study. The instruments used in the study were: test of Chemical Knowledge, Test of Logical Thinking, two tests of visualization abilities Patterns and Rotations, and questionnaire on Intrinsic Motivation for Learning Science. The results show moderate, but statistically significant correlations between students’ intrinsic motivation, formal reasoning abilities and chemical knowledge at submicroscopic level based on reading and drawing SMRs. Visualization abilities are not statistically significantly correlated with students’ success on items that comprise reading or drawing SMRs. It can be also concluded that there is a statistically significant difference between male and female students in solving problems that include reading or drawing SMRs. Based on these statistical results and content analysis of the sample problems, several educational strategies can be implemented for students to develop adequate mental models of chemical concepts on all three levels of representations.     

Refutation texts: Implying the refutation of a scientific misconception can facilitate knowledge revision

Refutation texts facilitate knowledge revision by placing science misconceptions in the foreground. However, in some situations, repeating incorrect information can work against the desired goal of correcting misconceptions, or can spread misinformation to new audiences. Thus, our goal was to examine whether merely implying the existence of a misconception, without explicitly stating the incorrect information, is sufficient to facilitate knowledge revision from a text. Undergraduate participants who expressed a common physics misconception read one of three passages about the issue, including a correct explanation of the situation. The passages differed in whether the refutation of the misconception was explicitly stated, implied by a warning phrase, or not referred to at all. We found that participants were less likely to express the misconception when they were questioned about the topic after reading the passage with the explicit refutation or with the warning phrase. Furthermore, the current results indicate that refutations of misconceptions can influence knowledge revision in ways that extended beyond the details of the original learning episode, even when they are only implied by a warning phrase. However, it remains unclear whether implied refutations of misconceptions can endure across a delay in time. These findings have potential implications for optimizing science texts to effectively address misconceptions.