1,720,955 research outputs found
Teaching and Learning of Chemistry: The Hybridity of Third Space Approach
Get PDFThis article explored diversity and hybridity in the third space as a teaching resource. Students bring to the classroom or third space their diverse sociocultural issues, knowledge levels of chemistry, and socioeconomic status. Educators also bring to the third space their university knowledge and culture. Hence, a classroom or third space is a hybrid. The intersection of the students’ activity systems and educators’ activity systems created a third space. Activity systems are social practices that include the norms, values, divisions of labour, and community goals. The study intended to explore the negotiations by chemistry educators and first-year students in teaching-learning of acids-bases reactions. It is a topic that most students experience challenges from secondary school to graduate level. Acids-bases are one of the threshold concepts. Qualitative research was employed in the study. Data were collected through classroom observations. A thematic approach was employed to analyse data. Five chemistry educators and their classes were purposely sampled. Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) was employed to unpack group dynamics in a Zambian university. Interactions in the learning spaces generated constraints, tensions, diversity, and affordances for both educators and students. The findings suggest that hybridity may be a resource in teaching acids-bases threshold concepts. Educators should understand students’ knowledge and cultural diversities. Researchers can investigate how students’ different acids-bases knowledge levels can promote success in chemistry
Acids-bases threshold concepts: a case of first-year students’ high failure and dropout rate
No full textA thesis submitted to the Wits School of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 2021Many higher institutions of learning are concerned about freshmen failure and dropout in science programmes. University dropout affects the society, university and the individual student. It is a loss of skilled manpower; brain drain and a waste of government resources. Statics have revealed that chemistry has a higher failure and drop-out rate than other sciences in institutions of learning. In the context of students’ challenges in learning chemistry, this study investigated threshold concepts of acids-bases reactions because it is a topic that students in the researcher’s institution claimed was a challenge. Acids-bases chemistry is also one of the Threshold Concepts (TCs) of chemistry and is connected to many chemical reactions in chemistry and other science topics. This study investigated the first-year students’ experiences in learning TCs of acids-bases, first-year educators’ experiences in teaching TCs of acids-bases, causes of high failure and drop-out rates and how they can be ameliorated in the researcher’s institution. Informed and guided by the pragmatism paradigm, this study employed qualitative methodological approaches to study chemistry freshmen failure and drop-out rates. The participants were purposely sampled and included five first-year chemistry educators and five classes of first-year students (47) of the sampled educators. Qualitative data were derived from educators’ questionnaires, interviews, less on observations and post-lesson conversations. Interview questions were not the same as they emanated from an individual educator’s response to a questionnaire and from less on observations. In addition, data were collected from students’ focus group discussions. Thematic analysis was used to analyse qualitative data. The main findings of the study revealed that students’ learning and studying strategies and their prior knowledge of acids-bases conflicted with the university’s teaching strategies hence creating challenges. On the other hand, challenges led some students to construct their own meaning and to generate collaborative learning, for example, learning from more knowledgeable others (Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)), studying late into the night with colleagues and watching online chemistry tutorials. The findings also revealed that the educators’ challenges emanated from students’ weak prior knowledge, hands-on and mind-on learning and too many students in a class. Students’ preconceived ideas that chemistry is difficult and their inconsistency in attending lessons also contributed to educators’ challenges. The challenges were alleviated by a handbook comprising out-lines and tasks on the first-year chemistry course. Furthermore, it was reported that the university’s assessment and progression policy was too demanding on students. Every academic year, students are examined in six courses. Students regard the 50% pass mark in all courses to proceed to the second year as too high. Recommendations are made for educators to employ student-centred pedagogical practices and formulate TCs of acids-bases module as a foundation courseCK202
Mainstreaming ESD into Science Teacher Education Courses: A Case for ESD Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Learning as Connection
Get PDFIn this case study, researchers evaluated national education policies in Zambia, analysed a localised science (Chemistry 5070) syllabus, assessed a university teaching methods course, and evaluated 54 mathematics and science education students’ perceptions on mainstreaming education for sustainable development (ESD) into their courses. ESD was a salient matter in education policies and in the preamble to Chemistry 5070, but not in the university teaching methods course. The chemistry syllabus included ESD issues in the ‘notes’ section, but was lacking in guidance on teaching and learning approaches to integrate the issues. The university Teaching Methods course did not include content and methods to assist teachers to effectively teach Chemistry 5070 and to integrate ESD issues into it. Students surveyed had some awareness of ESD issues and most were inclined to suggest that ESD issues must be mainstreamed into their courses, especially in educational theory courses; few students suggested natural sciences as carrier subjects for ESD. The findings pointed to a discrepancy among educational policies, school Chemistry 5070 and the university teaching methods courses. A paradigm shift is recommended in order that the quality and relevance of science education be viewed via the metaphor of ‘learning as connection’ and that Shulman’s (1986) pedagogical content knowledge model be adapted so that content and pedagogy of science courses are inclusive of social and humanistic issues such as those advocated in ESD discourse
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
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
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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