Working Together: Integrating Computational Modeling Approaches to Investigate Complex Phenomena

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Complex systems are made up of many entities, whose interactions emerge into distinct collective patterns. Computational modeling platforms can provide...     

Farmers' financing of agricultural research in Israel

Agricultural research is mostly a public undertaking. In Israel, as in many other countries, farmers participate in the finance of research through taxes imposed by farm organizations on the marketed products. Farmers contribution ranges from 8% of research outlay in tomatoes to 79% in cotton. Strength of organization and ease of collection were the major factors affecting this share. In general, as inflation eroded the real value of government's finance, the farmers increased their share.Representatives of farmers' organization participate in the bodies that approve grants to proposed research projects. It was found that the higher the share of farmers' finance the larger the part of short-term research directed at immediate outcomes and the smaller the part of long-term, more basic research.The tendency of the farmers to prefer short-term, applicable research may reflect both their familiarity with practical problems and a comparatively high degree of risk aversion.It is not clear how farmers' participation in the direction of research, which is based on their financial contribution, affects the efficiency of resource allocation to the agricultural sciences.     

Manipulating Written Hebrew Roots Across Development: The Interface of Semantic,Phonological and Orthographic Factors

The study examined children and adolescents’ ability to improve root spelling in Hebrew words by paying attention to phonological, semantic and orthographic properties of priming roots. One hundred and fifty 8, 9, 10, 11 and 15-year olds were administered two spelling tests in Hebrew. The same 40 target words were used in both tests, each word containing a root with at least one homophonous letter. Target words were matched one-to-one with 40 priming words containing the same root. The pool of prime-target word pairs was classified into two major groups:Words containing genuine root primes, and words containing false root primes. In the first test, participants had to spell the 40 target words. In the second test they had to spell the same words, each primed by its written genuine or false match. Results showed that unprimed spelling improved with age. Priming – both genuine and false – improved spelling performance significantly, especially in younger grades, but genuine priming was more effective. Spellers were able to overcome phonological opacity in root primes and to take root semantics into account. This finding testifies to the robustness of the root as a unified morphological entity in Hebrew and to children’s ability to make use of their knowledge of lexical and morphological organization in learning to spell.We thank Dominiek Sandra, Harald Baayen and an anonymous reviewer for their important and constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Fútbol para Todos (Soccer for All): Democratization,Populist Legitimization or Quasi-Authoritarianism?

Abstract

In 2009 the Argentine government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner created Fútbol para Todos (Soccer for All), a programme that led to a policy of direct state intervention in the acquisition of government television rights for the transmission of soccer matches throughout Argentina. Does Fútbol para Todos serve as a tool for the democratization of Argentinean society, a strategy for populist legitimization, or as an embodiment of quasi-authoritarianism? Successive Argentine governments have politicized soccer. Fútbol para Todos has served as a tool for populist legitimization, but also as a strategy designed to legitimize state interference in a historically private domain, promote government propaganda through a new state monopoly, and strengthen governance processes through popular approval under the ambit of the ‘democratization’ slogan. Fútbol para Todos thus aims to use the state as an agent in the construction of better governance processes for all, but it also reinforces the historical union between soccer and establishment political power in Argentina. Fútbol para Todos is populist in tone and appears democratic, but also masks a darker undercurrent of quasi-authoritarian tendencies in Argentina.     

Context effects on heterophonic-homography resolution in learning to read hebrew

The paper examines the role of context in reading unpointed Hebrew, demonstrating the changing nature of reliance on context during the course of reading acquisition. We analyze the reading-aloud of sentences with heterographic-homographic ambiguity, aiming to shed light on the development of ambiguity resolution processes in typically developing schoolaged and adult populations. 171 Hebrew-speaking children and adolescents in seven age/schooling groups (beginning and end of second grade, third, fourth, seventh, and eleventh grade), and a group of adults, participated in the study. Using homographic garden-path and non-Garden-path sentences, we demonstrate the cumulative effect of context as well as processes of monitoring cum reanalysis. Two hypotheses are borne out in the present research: First, context effect is inherent to reading; it is present throughout all age/grade groups, becoming more efficient with age/grade level. Second, monitoring and reanalysis lag far behind context effects, appearing only as age and reading experience increase.     

Science Teachers' Spontaneous,Latent or Non‐attendance to the Validity of Conclusions in Reported Situations

In today's science curricula, especially the Science‐Technology‐Society (STS) approach, ‘process skills’, including aspects of critical thinking and logical analysis, are heavily stressed. Many studies—globally‐‐have shown serious deficiencies in secondary schools, and also in (student‐) teacher populations. The question arose whether, and to what extent, science teachers critically and spontaneously attend to the logical structure of situations, do so only after prompting, or completely fail to do so. The ‘Analysis of Scientific Passages Test’ (ASPT) was constructed to ascertain whether respondents would spontaneously identify invalid conclusions as the common denominator of logically isomorphous situations, would do so only after being informed that the conclusions were invalid and be able to give reasons for this fact, or would be unable to do so at all. The test was administered to 76 practising science teachers attending an STS summer course at a major university in the mid‐western USA. Zero scores were obtained by 13% in the test, 17% obtained full scores, the rest occupied transitional positions; but no less than 51% did not attend to the logical structure and conclusions of the situations without being told to do so. The findings‐‐in line with previous ones on similar aspects of ‘process skills’ by this and other authors‐‐were interpreted to represent serious shortcomings in science teachers' pre‐ and inservice education, leading to their failure to allocate the same emphases and priorities to their teaching activities as one might expect them to do considering curricular demands and expectations.     

FIFA seen from a postcolonial perspective

FIFA was created in Zurich in 1904 in order to oversee international football competitions among eight European states. The fact that FIFA was created by eight European states at the turn of the twentieth century is significant. The geopolitical context of the period is important for understanding FIFA’s pro-colonialist roots. With the exception of Switzerland, all the founding countries of FIFA were colonial powers. FIFA’s foundation coincided with the birth of the study of geopolitics and the perpetuation of control of territories and populations into the twentieth century. These pro-colonial foundations of FIFA are relevant because it would be European powers that originally controlled global football and also sought to block rival countries from other regions within the organization’s power structures. Europeans controlled FIFA through the selection of World Cup places that favoured Europeans. In addition, former colonial powers or ‘historically ‘aggressive racialized states’ have won all World Cup competitions.