Doctoral conceptual thresholds in cellular and molecular biology

ABSTRACT

In the biological sciences, very little is known about the mechanisms by which doctoral students acquire the skills they need to become independent scientists. In the postsecondary biology education literature, identification of specific skills and effective methods for helping students to acquire them are limited to undergraduate education. To establish a foundation from which to investigate the developmental trajectory of biologists’ research skills, it is necessary to identify those skills which are integral to doctoral study and distinct from skills acquired earlier in students’ educational pathways. In this context, the current study engages the framework of threshold concepts to identify candidate skills that are both obstacles and significant opportunities for developing proficiency in conducting research. Such threshold concepts are typically characterised as transformative, integrative, irreversible, and challenging. The results from interviews and focus groups with current and former doctoral students in cellular and molecular biology suggest two such threshold concepts relevant to their subfield: the first is an ability to effectively engage primary research literature from the biological sciences in a way that is critical without dismissing the value of its contributions. The second is the ability to conceptualise appropriate control conditions necessary to design and interpret the results of experiments in an efficient and effective manner for research in the biological sciences as a discipline. Implications for prioritising and sequencing graduate training experiences are discussed on the basis of the identified thresholds.     

英国中小学信息通信技术课程变革述评

2012年,英国中小学信息通信技术(Information and Communications Technology,以下简称ICT)课程正在经历着全面的变革。英国现有的ICT课程受到质疑与批判,被认为是呆板和不能够激发学生动机的。英国中小学ICT课程变革就是要突破传统的以办公软件为主的ICT课程内容,重新厘清ICT课程所包含的计算机科学、信息技术和数字化素养等组成部分,强调计算机科学课程的重要性,使得学生不只是信息技术使用者,更应该进一步成为信息技术创造者。英国中小学ICT课程所呈现出来的课程内容更新、产业参与以及研究先行等特点对于我国中小学信息技术课程改革具有很强的借鉴意义。     

Climate Change and Morality: Students' perspectives on the individual and society

There is a growing interest in addressing moral aspects in the research and education of socio‐scientific issues. This paper investigates students' interpretations of climate change from a moral perspective. The students were 14 years old, studying at Green Schools in the Beijing area, China. The study was based on semi‐structured group interviews and the data were analysed from an intentional perspective, which means that both cognitive and situational aspects were taken into consideration in the analysis. Previous research has revealed a close relation between morality and socio‐scientific issues and also advocated the need for addressing ethical aspects in science education. However, empirical studies exploring the question of what students' moral reasoning might look like at the individual level have not yet generated enough attention. In this study this is the core focus of interest. The findings show that the students conceptualise the solutions to mitigating climate change in relation to two different stances. That is, they contextualise the problems and solutions by addressing the individual, where the individual is either ‘myself’ or ‘someone else’. The different notions of the individual become crucial as the students' views and considerations for the environment, as well as society, change according to the different contexts. From a moral point of view, the students seem quite unaware of their varying consideration for others, the environment and society. The paper ends with a discussion of implications for practice and research.     

The Comparative Effects of Prediction/Discussion‐Based Learning Cycle,Conceptual Change Text,and Traditional Instructions on Student Understanding of Genetics

The present study examined the comparative effects of a prediction/discussion‐based learning cycle, conceptual change text (CCT), and traditional instructions on students' understanding of genetics concepts. A quasi‐experimental research design of the pre‐test–post‐test non‐equivalent control group was adopted. The three intact classes, taught by the same science teacher, were randomly assigned as prediction/discussion‐based learning cycle class (N = 30), CCT class (N = 25), and traditional class (N = 26). Participants completed the genetics concept test as pre‐test, post‐test, and delayed post‐test to examine the effects of instructional strategies on their genetics understanding and retention. While the dependent variable of this study was students' understanding of genetics, the independent variables were time (Time 1, Time 2, and Time 3) and mode of instruction. The mixed between‐within subjects analysis of variance revealed that students in both prediction/discussion‐based learning cycle and CCT groups understood the genetics concepts and retained their knowledge significantly better than students in the traditional instruction group.     

Curriculum change: a study of the implementation of General National Vocational Qualifications

This article focuses on curriculum change, in particular on course team responses to the introduction of a new curriculum and on the implications of empirical findings for our understanding of curriculum implementation and change. The case discussed is that of the second version of GNVQ. The discussion is based on an analysis of data collected across twenty-two course teams in ten schools and colleges over a two-year period as part of an ESRC-funded project. The model of comprehensive assessment of the second version of the GNVQ is one in which the curriculum reinforcement role of assessment related to the coverage and standards of the qualification but not to the design of courses. Theoretically, significant scope was accorded to course teams to develop and provide courses that responded to local contexts. The article explores how patterns of difference and similarity in course team responses to the introduction of this curriculum might be explained and indicates three broad approaches: implementation, adaptation and assimilation, relating these responses to the existing experience and expertise of members of the various course teams. The article draws on concepts from the field of linguistics to put forward the notions of ‘curricular fields’ and ‘sub-curricular fields’ and suggests that curriculum implementation needs to take greater account of the sub-curricular fields of course teams.     

Potentiality for change? Revisiting an action research project with a sociomaterial approach

This article takes as its point of departure an action research project conducted in an upper secondary school in Sweden. The project had a practitioner research approach and was carried out with students in one class. In this article, I elaborate on the tensions that appeared during the project concerning collaboration and action. This is done by revisiting the project with a theoretical approach of sociomaterialism. Revisiting entails critically and creatively exploring how to comprehend collaboration and action differently. It raises question about who or what are involved in the collaborations and what are to be considered ‘good’ actions. Within the elaboration, collaboration and action become intertwined phenomena that are always working together. Furthermore, it proposes how the notion of intervention embraces the distributed and collective disposition of both collaboration and action. By addressing the notions of collaboration and action with a sociomaterial approach changing a teaching practice becomes a relational experiment without preset goals. The potential for change becomes within speculative interventions that affords various encounters and relations.     

On being critical: uniting theory and practice through emancipatory action research

This paper engages with some of the specific issues that challenge critical practice. My argument is related to the Carr and Kemmis debate on ‘staying critical’ and to ideas expressed in my current book, Community Development: A Critical Approach. I refer to critical practice as any practice that has a transformative social justice intention, and which happens in a range of contexts from grassroots community activism to more institutionalised settings, such as hospitals or schools. My own professional base is community development, and this paper is founded on emancipatory action research developed over many years in grassroots practice. It is my view that emancipatory action research, committed to the practice of social justice, with the intention of bringing about social change, is a necessary component of critical practice. In fact, I would go so far as to say that emancipatory action research is the glue that binds critical praxis in a unity of theory and action. However, all too often collective action for change is not followed through to its greatest potential, and practice remains contextualised in the immediate, local and specific without making critical connections with the structural roots of oppression from which inequalities emanate. The result is that we constantly fixate on symptoms, and leave the root causes free to perpetuate oppressions. At the same time, we find ourselves in a globalised world marked by intensifying social divisions. So, it is my intention to raise a few issues which present challenges to get beyond sticking points in critical practice as we face times in which there is an accelerating urgency to ‘become critical’.     

Buttercups and daisies: building a community of practice amongst teachers in a Brazilian university

This article examines the promotion and adoption of action research as an instrument of institutional change by academic staff in a Brazilian rural university. The results of the research are presented showing the mobilisation of a group of volunteers, the implementation of their action research projects and the sustainability of the process. Particular attention is drawn to the significance of an insider change agent/facilitator as the initiator of the action research process and how his role became superfluous as the networks evolved into true communities of practice. On reflection the original composite daisy model of Melrose and Reid has been discarded in favour of a simpler buttercup‐type flower model of analysis to describe the process.     

音变规则对民族地区英语教学的启示

基于语义严格对应理论,结合英语系统中五条常见的语音对应关系进行举例分析,认为民族地区英语教学可以利用音变对应关系及其规律进行。     

新媒体时代中国武术传播的形态嬗变、舆论问题与路径阐释

无所不在、无处不有的新媒体泛在传播,为中国武术传播开创了新格局。运用文献资料法和逻辑分析法,从形态嬗变、舆论问题与路径阐释三方面剖析新媒体对武术传播的影响。研究认为:新媒体技术催生武术传播主体从师徒向人人演进,内容从单一向多元过渡,空间从场域向脱域延伸,时间从长时向瞬时转变。同时,也面临着信息偏差引发的错位解读,真伪难分引发的话语失衡,利益驱动引发的价值损益,娱乐倾向引发的理性缺失。新媒体时代中国武术传播的舆论路径体现为把握好舆论主体的话语主权,掌握好以理服人的人文素养,抓好和谐共生的传播空间,把关好文化精神的价值取向。