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“In the outskirts”: Exploring science identity development in biology education using insect natural history collections and self-determination theory
Get PDFSubmission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2023-12-04 without embargo termsThe student, Kaitlyn Coburn, accepted the attached license on 2023-07-17 at 16:44.The student, Kaitlyn Coburn, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2023-07-17 at 16:56.This Thesis was approved for publication on 2023-07-18 at 15:10.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #19721 on 2023-12-04 at 17:03:16The importance of science to human thriving has been reawakened amongst the challenges of a developing global pandemic, climate crisis, and attacks on gender and reproductive rights. These developments have centered the value of investing in systems of science that support individuals as they grow more prepared to approach science in current events and policy. Science educators function as catalysts for this growth by creating opportunities for individuals to engage in scientific thinking—a skill that enables individuals to approach science in current events and determine the reliability of information. Because time with students is limited, educators design curricula with the intention to motivate students to apply scientific thinking proactively throughout their lives beyond instructional contexts. These forms of motivation are considered self-determined motives, because they persist even in the absence of external pressures present in classroom contexts. Unfortunately, evidence of declines in motivation in STEM classrooms, decreases in STEM literacy, and extinction of experience with the natural world challenge the efforts of science educators in designing curricula that are engaging and impactful for students. In collegiate settings, these challenges are presented to instructors generally untrained in pedagogy, who reasonably struggle to navigate curricular development with minimal administrative support. To address these concerns, I applied self-determination theory (SDT) and insect natural history collections resources to classroom settings. SDT provides a framework of three key basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness that must be supported for students to achieve self-determined motives toward behaviors such as scientific thinking. Novelty is a proposed basic psychological need that is not fully accepted as a requirement for self-determined motivation, but can be utilized by educators to gauge familiarity with course topics and materials. Further, SDT describes the external and internal origins of motive, and the types of behavioral regulation that determine actionable motives to internalize and apply content long-term. As this framework has been applied to educational contexts to inform pedagogy for years, it shows promise for science educators who benefit from its use as a tool to interpret the essence of the developmental experiences of students in the classroom. Using survey tools developed to assess self-determined motives and support of psychological needs in-action, I assessed the use of insect natural history collections as instructional materials with unique supportive qualities. As the most diverse and abundant animal taxa, insects are a key point of entry for recreational scientists. Further, the prevalence of insects lends them to broader potential for connection with students’ lives and interests—vectors affirm relevance to medical science; insect declines affirm relevance to environmentalism; diverse sexual expression and reproductive behaviors affirm relevance to gender/sex and reproductive rights; and developing nature identification technologies bring nature discovery to the fingertips of many individuals. Digitization of natural history collections further creates databases widely available to students and researchers around the globe, while opening opportunities for students to directly contribute to collections progress from anywhere in the world as a form of service-based learning—even amongst quarantines. Museums have a long history of displaying artifacts to support discovery and curiosity, which emphasizes their value in object-based learning activities. For these reasons, I connected students in introductory biology for non-majors at both R1 and R2 institutions with insect natural history collections in service-based and object-based learning activities, respectively. I recruited students to participate in online surveys to observe the support of their basic psychological needs, behavioral regulation, and resulting motivational qualities throughout their instructional lab experience. I further surveyed student enjoyment of the learning activities and interest in science, and interviewed students from a R2 institution about their experiences with science identity and science culture to expand understanding of identity development beyond survey representations, while informing the interpretation of collected quantitative data using details revealed through qualitative discussions with students. We found that service-based collections activities enabled external forms of behavioral regulation that are reflective of non-self-determined motives; supported psychological needs of competence and relatedness, but not autonomy; decreased amotivation; and resulted in significant self-reported learning activity enjoyment, interest in science, and self-reported resulting increase in science interest amongst students in introductory biology for non-major students. Object-based collections activities did not support any forms of behavioral regulation—external or internal; supported competence significantly more than instructional activities without collections, but had no impact on relatedness, autonomy, or novelty; and decreased amotivation. Qualitative results revealed the values of “real science” for students, and emphasized potential differences in student perceptions of the authenticity of socio-contextual factors in science learning activities. I concluded that insect natural history collections have supportive potential for competence in learning activities and as such provide a promising foundation for building autonomy into student curricula, as students feel uniquely capable when working with insect collections compared to non-collections instructional activities. Though museum representatives are finding opportunity in engaging students in service-based learning, I emphasize the importance of centering support for autonomy amongst students when approaching collaboration with science educators to avoid risks of exploitative interactions when applying materials with histories strongly linked to colonization. My findings further reveal the nuance of what constitutes “real science” for students enrolled at institutions with differing research funding procurement and research productivity, which is valuable in considering the application of insect collections to educational contexts. That is, for students enrolled at less research-intensive institutions, insect collections may represent inaccessible aspects of science hierarchies that are not perceived as authentic without connection to the everyday lives of students, or a greater purpose connected to the values of students. On the other hand, though insect collections may be perceived as a part of “real science” by students at more research-intensive institutions, further research is necessary to conclude how this perception reflects hierarchies of science in its own right, and how educators and collections managers may apply natural history collections to education while centering rising efforts to decolonize systems of science, associated science curricula, and methods of instruction
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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The use of self-determination theory to foster environmental motivation in an environmental biology course
Get PDFA scientifically literate person is one who understands the nature of science, its processes, products, and their appropriate application to decision-making contexts. The impetus to make informed decisions about environmental issues is environmental motivation. I examined students' environmental motivation, its relationship to scientific knowledge, and how environmental motivation can be fostered in a science classroom. This study took place in a college-level environmental biology course in which the instructor attempted to support students' basic psychological needs, as defined by self-determination theory (SDT). The first question was to what extent does an SDT-guided environmental biology course differ from a non-SDT-guided course in the degree to which it fostered self-determined motivation toward the environment. The administration of a well-validated scale to two sections before, after, and six months following the end of the course indicated that SDT-guided instruction is a plausible way to foster environmental motivation in the classroom. The second question was what are the multiple influences on fostering self-determined motivation toward the environment in an SDT-guided course. Path analysis indicated that environmental motivation can be partially accomplished in an environmental biology course by conveying to students that they are cared for, are connected to others, and can trust others while solving environmental problems. The third question sought to characterize students' scientific conceptualizations as they solve environmental problems and the extent to which their conceptualizations relate to the satisfaction of their need for competence. Students were videotaped during in-class problem-solving, after which stimulated-recall interviews were conducted. Grounded theory and an established coding scheme were combined to analyze these data, which resulted in three grounded hypotheses about what characterizes students' scientific knowledge when they feel highly competent about solving environmental problems. The final research question sought to identify which classroom features students cite when they indicate that their basic psychological needs are being fulfilled or undermined. Grounded analysis resulted in seven features of the instructional environment. This dissertation marks the first application of SDT to a formal environmental education setting in which a goal was to foster environmental motivation. Several research prospects and a learning cycle based on findings are propose
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
The CURE-Comm Framework: A Guide for Infusing CUREs with Science Communication
Get PDFResearchers have employed diverse instructional strategies to impart science communication (SciComm) skills, a cherished 21st-century skill into undergraduate students. We reviewed the pedagogical strategies used in developing SciComm skills in undergraduates. This review revealed that analyzing data and scientific literature, increasing exposure to multiple writing contexts, providing multiple opportunities to present findings orally, and providing feedback are used to teach SciComm skills. Many instructors who implement course-based undergraduate research experiences (CURE) report improved SciComm skills as one of the benefits of CUREs. To decipher points of intersection among CUREs and SciComm pedagogical strategies, we also reviewed the literature on pedagogical strategies used during the implementation of CUREs. It was evident that analyzing experimental data and existing literature, writing manuscripts, proposals, lab notebooks, and oral presentation of findings with constructive feedback are commonly used in the implementation SciComm and CUREs. We contend that the implementation of CUREs frequently overlooks easy opportunities to incorporate pedagogies specifically designed to enhance undergraduates’ science communication skills, thereby leading to a notable underutilization of these critical competencies. Nevertheless, a guiding framework on how to infuse SciComm into CUREs does not exist. To harness the power of CUREs to develop SciComm skills, we propose the CURE-Comm Framework
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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