1,722,096 research outputs found
Cognitive and non-cognitive factors influencing the numeracy gender gap in higher education
No full textIn recent years, an important debate has developed on the role that digital technologies are playing and can play in the transformation of education and its institutions. Digital platforms, distance learning, blended learning, online training technologies are part of a significant restructuring and reculturing of the educational worlds. Digital technologies have restructured learning practices, educational content and the forms of educational governance which are immersed in public spaces and global markets. On the one hand, the digital governance of education contributes to changing and reconfiguring educational practices and the management of education on a local, national, international and transnational scale. On theother hand, technologies make possible the interconnection of multiple modes and shapes of formal, informal and non-formal education and training, producing forms of re-spatialization of education, locating the classroom within a digital learning ecosystem and favouring the emergence of different models of blended or hybrid learning
Field of Study and Gender Moderation of the Association of Personality and Math Anxiety with Numeracy
No full textMath anxiety and personality influence numeracy, although the nature of their contribution has been overlooked. In the present study, we investigated whether their association with numeracy depended on field of study and gender in higher education. Participants were Italian undergraduates in either the humanities (N = 201) or Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM; N = 209) fields of study. These participants remotely completed standardized tests assessing numeracy, math anxiety, personality, intelligence, and basic numerical skills. We tested whether math anxiety and personality interacted with field of study and gender in predicting numeracy. Results showed that math anxiety was negatively associated with numeracy independently of field of study and gender, while the effect of personality, especially neuroticism, on numeracy interacted with field of study over and above intelligence and basic numerical skills. Specifically, humanities undergraduates with higher neuroticism levels scored lower in numeracy than STEM undergraduates. These findings underscore the importance of emotional experience for a good performance in mathematics, beyond math anxiety and the other personality traits, in the students that are less familiar with mathematics. Finally, no robust gender moderation emerged, suggesting that its role may be overridden by differences associated with career choice
Numeracy Gender Gap in STEM Higher Education: The Role of Neuroticism and Math Anxiety
Full text linkThe under-representation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) is ubiquitous and understanding the roots of this phenomenon is mandatory to guarantee social equality and economic growth. In the present study, we investigated the contribution of non-cognitive factors that usually show higher levels in females, such as math anxiety (MA) and neuroticism personality trait, to numeracy competence, a core component in STEM studies. A sample of STEM undergraduate students, balanced for gender (NF = NM = 70) and Intelligent Quotient (IQ), completed online self-report questionnaires and a numeracy cognitive assessment test. Results show that females scored lower in the numeracy test, and higher in the non-cognitive measures. Moreover, compared to males’, females’ numeracy scores were more strongly influenced by MA and neuroticism. We also tested whether MA association to numeracy is mediated by neuroticism, and whether this mediation is characterized by gender differences. While we failed to detect a significant mediation of neuroticism in the association between MA and numeracy overall, when gender was added as a moderator in this association, neuroticism turned out to be significant for females only. Our findings revealed that non-cognitive factors differently supported numeracy in females and males in STEM programs
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Full text link“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
Full text linkWe 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
Math computerized games in the classroom: A number line training in primary school children
No full textSeveral studies have shown that the number line can be a useful tool to support early numeracy development. Here, we conducted a school-based training study to evaluate the effectiveness of the software “The Number Line” (“La Linea Dei Numeri”; Tressoldi and Peroni, 2013) in improving children's mathematical skills. We randomly allocated 10 classes of first, second and third graders (N = 183) to one of three experimental groups: one group played with The Number Line; the second group played with Labyrinth, a computerized game designed to train attention skills; the third group had no intervention (business-as-usual). At the end of the first training phase, children in The Number Line group completed another training phase playing with Labyrinth, whereas the other two groups played with The Number Line. After playing with The Number Line, all groups displayed more accuracy when placing numbers in the number line task. However, we observed no evident improvement in other mathematical skills. These results suggest that specific training effects emerge even in the school context, although transfer to other numerical skills may be harder to achieve
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe 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
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