1,720,977 research outputs found
Paths through interpretive territory: Two teachers' enactment of a technology -rich, inquiry -fostering science curriculum.
No full textNew understandings about how people learn and constructivist pedagogy pose challenges for teachers. Science teachers face an additional challenge of developing inquiry-based pedagogy to foster complex reasoning skills. Theory provides only fuzzy guidance as to how constructivist or inquiry pedagogy can be accomplished in a wide variety of contexts and local constraints. This study contributes to the understanding of the development of constructivist, inquiry-based pedagogy by addressing the question: How do teachers interpret and enact a technology-rich, inquiry fostering science curricula for fifth grade students' biodiversity learning? This research is a case study of two teachers chosen as critical contrasting cases and represent differences across multiple criteria including: urban I suburban, teaching philosophy, and content preparation. The two fifth grade teachers each enacted BioKIDS: Kids' Inquiry in Diverse Species, an eight week curriculum focused on biodiversity. BioKIDS incorporates multiple learning technologies to support student learning including handheld computer software designed to help students collect field data, and a web-based resource for data on local animal species. The results of this study indicate there are tensions teachers must struggle with when setting goals during enactment of inquiry science curricula. They must find a balance between an emphasis on authentic learning and authentic science, and between natural history and natural science. Authentic learning focuses on students' interests and lives; Authentic science focuses on students working with the tools and processes of science. Natural history focuses on the foundational skills in science of observation and classification. Natural science focuses on analytical science drawing on data to develop claims about the world. These two key tensions in teachers' goal setting were critical in defining and understanding differences in how teachers interpreted a curriculum to meet local context and constraints. This study also examined how teachers used technology and scientific inscriptions to support their goals. Implications for research in science education as well as design of curricula and technology are discussed.PhDEducationEducational technologyScience educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/124260/2/3137893.pd
To what extent does classroom discourse synergistically support electronic discourse? A study of the Kids as Global Scientists Message Board.
No full textThe purpose of this study is to characterize mechanisms by which electronic discourse can be best integrated into a classroom environment and supported by classroom discourse. Sixth grade students participating in an inquiry-rich science program called Kids as Global Scientists (KGS) studied weather phenomena using real-time data and on-line collaboration with peers and scientists. This study examined the development of scientific understandings students exhibited on the web-based KGS Message Board and what role classroom discourse plays in the process and the product of electronic discourse. Domain analysis of classroom discourse identified three cycles of the Message Board-related activities. Results demonstrated different patterns of teacher-student interaction both across the cycles and between a science classroom and a computer lab. In general, the teacher's conceptual scaffolding was more frequently observed in the science classroom than in the computer lab. In addition, the frequency of conceptual scaffolding increased whereas the frequency of procedural scaffolding decreased overtime in the computer lab. Verbal analysis of electronic discourse revealed that students' understanding of scientific concepts and scientific inquiry varied across the cycles depending on curriculum objectives, the degree of teacher's conceptual scaffolding including explicit modeling, the opportunity to practice, and students' prior understanding of science and technology. The results of this study suggest several recommendations for future design of a learning environment where electronic communication is integrated in a face-to-face classroom environment. To promote students' understanding of scientific inquiry as well as scientific concepts, curriculum should provide explicit and multiple models of scientific inquiry, and curriculum objectives should explicitly address both scientific concepts and inquiry. Students should have multiple opportunities to practice scientific discourse in a meaningful context. This study also argues that a teacher's conceptual scaffolding is more critical in the computer lab than in a traditional classroom, because of the tendency that teacher feedback can easily fall back to procedural scaffolding for using the technology. To ensure proper conceptual scaffolding in the computer lab, this study recommends heterogeneous student grouping, customizable procedural scaffolding through curricula and technology tools, and diverse sources of conceptual scaffolding such as on-line scientists.PhDEducationEducational technologyScience educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/123347/2/3000986.pd
The nature of students' science knowledge base: Using assessment to paint a picture.
No full textGoals in inquiry-based science include not only that students understand content knowledge, but also that students be able to utilize this knowledge in complex problem solving situations to work with tasks that involve skills such as interpreting data and formulating scientific explanations. In addition, advancements in the measurement sciences allow for sophisticated and complex ways to score and interpret student responses on assessment tasks. However, while many studies have shown the benefits of scientific inquiry in the classroom and others have described new types of psychometric models available for scoring analysis, few have combined the two to develop a better understanding of how students know science. I describe an assessment system used to create items that systematically measure and disentangle three focal aspects of sixth grade students' science knowledge base associated with the BioKIDS: Kids' Inquiry of Diverse Species curriculum. Then, using students' verbal and written responses to the assessment, I analyzed the validity of the assessment tasks and examined the nature of students' science knowledge base when working in science problem solving situations. Overall, the results suggest that the tasks created using the assessment system provided students with opportunities to demonstrate the knowledge and skills about which they were designed, thus indicating that utilizing this assessment system could enable assessment designers to create tasks that allow them to gather information about multiple key aspects of students' science knowledge base. Specifically, tasks can generate information about students' content knowledge, explanation ability and interpreting data ability. In addition, utilizing psychometric models, the results suggest that students have a multidimensional science knowledge base. However, after students have participated in an inquiry-based curricular program, these dimensions are highly related to one another. Despite the relationships between the dimensions of students' science knowledge base, students struggled to integrate their content knowledge with their reasoning abilities in complex situations, indicating that developing a fully functioning science knowledge base takes time. These results hold implications for assessment development and scoring as well as for understanding the ways in which students develop a fully functioning science knowledge base.PhDEducationEducational tests and measurementsScience educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/126160/2/3237965.pd
Timing scaffolding during Web design instruction to positively affect women's expectations for success and task values.
No full textThe ratio of women participating in information technology at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels has consistently decreased over the past 20 years. This is concerning because it represents a diminishing pipeline of potential women who can bridge the digital divide in the information technology workforce. This dissertation examined how introducing scaffolded software at different times during instruction would affect the likelihood that female students would make future educational and career choices that include information technology. To assess the affect of instruction on students' future choices, the attitudinal measures of expectations for success and task value were monitored during ten weeks of web design instruction. A crossover research design was used to compare how introducing scaffolding at different points in instruction would affect students' attitudes. Participants in this study, upper-division undergraduate women with limited technical experience, were enrolled in two sections of the same course. In one section, students were introduced to scaffolded software in the beginning of instruction and to unscaffolded software in the middle of instruction. In the second section, students were introduced to the unscaffolded software in the beginning of instruction and to the scaffolded software in the middle of instruction. To compare affects of each approach, students' attititudes were measured through interviews and surveys at three points during instruction: before instruction, in the middle of instruction, and at the end of instruction. Weekly journals and field notes were also collected. In this study, students who were introduced to the scaffolded software in the middle of instruction reported larger increases in their expectations for success and task values of web design. This group also reported greater confidence creating web pages working alone. These findings suggest that introducing scaffolded software in the middle of instruction may be more effective at increasing the likelihood that students will make future choices that include computer work. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed in this dissertation, including the development of mental templates based on access to scaffolds; students perception of software as distributed intelligence; and loss of authenticity because of too much assistance from the scaffolded software.PhDClinical psychologyEducationEducational technologyPsychologySocial SciencesWomen's studiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/125704/2/3208505.pd
Scaffolding elementary students' authentic inquiry through a written science curriculum.
No full textThis study investigated scaffolding elementary school students' formulation of explanations through an 8-week biodiversity curriculum. Authentic inquiry situations in the curriculum provided opportunities for students to conduct elements of scientists' practices in hands-on investigations driven by the students' interests. Three support features-modeled explanations, direct content prompts, and sentence starters-were designed to help students focus on salient features of the inquiry situations. These three support features were placed differently in two treatments. In the consistent support treatment, three support features were present throughout eleven authentic inquiry situations. In the fading support treatment, three support features were gradually withdrawn over the same inquiry situations. The manipulation of the fading dimension of the scaffolding concept was based on the idea that students can learn more effectively when they take more responsibility to complete the learning task as they gain knowledge and experience. Forty-eight students in two 5th/6th combined classes participated. This study was quasi-experimental with two treatment variations. Based on students' prior knowledge and explanation ability, block strategies were used to assign students into the two treatments. Data sources included a multiple-choice test and an open-ended test administered before and after the treatments. Students' written explanations in the eleven inquiry situations were collected. Eighteen students were interviewed after the treatments. Results demonstrate that both groups improved on the multiple-choice and open-ended tests. While these two tests were not sensitive to the treatment differences, students' explanations were a much better indicator of the treatment effects. The consistent support group included fewer valid warrants in explanations before the treatments but gradually outperformed the fading support group as certain support features were withdrawn in the fading support treatment. Furthermore, this trend was largely created by students with high knowledge and medium and high explanation abilities while students with low knowledge and low explanation ability did not appear to take advantage of the scaffolds provided in this study. These findings imply that (1) consistent support is critical for elementary students' development of scientific explanations in complicated real-world inquiry situations and (2) effective scaffolds should be designed to reflect students' prior knowledge and inquiry experience.PhDCurriculum developmentEducationScience educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/123633/2/3096136.pd
A Qualitative Case Study on the Perceived Impact that Changing Requirements from Medical Boards are Having on the Day-to-Day Activities of Community Physicians
No full textIn today's healthcare field, recent changes in professional standards, specifically board certification, are affecting physicians who have been practicing medicine for years. While historically board certification was voluntary, in recent years there has been a push to make it mandatory to retain hospital and insurance privileges. In an attempt to make continuous board certification easier to uphold, the American Board of Medical Specialties launched a Maintenance of Board Certification (MOC) program to help physicians keep up to date on their skills and allow easier recertification. This has resulted in intense pushback from members of the medical community who believe in continuing education, but are opposed to the MOC process. The aim of this study is to determine how community physicians perceive these changes on their professional lives and personal well-being. To this end, the research questions were as follows: What are the perceived impacts from recent changes on continuing education requirements for board renewal, on the professional activities of physicians?;What are physicians doing differently within their practice to comply with the new requirements?; With physician stress and suicides featuring predominantly in the news lately, what kinds of impact have the changing requirement over the past three years had on physicians' well-being and retention?; and How do local trends compare with trends being reported at the state and national level? The research questions were answered through a qualitative case study design using an original online survey to participants and then interviewing volunteers to share their experiences. This data was then triangulated to show that participants' perceptions were split almost evenly down the middle. While the dataset was small, it did show that women were less likely to report any negative perceptions or make any changes within their daily practice. Results also showed that physicians in practice over 30 years reported feeling more of an impact on their professional lives than their personal lives and that any negative impact was felt more strongly among outpatient focused physicians. On this basis, it is recommended that physicians work closer with the American Board of Medical Specialties to help improve the process and create a cohesive alignment within the medical profession to reduce any perceived impact. Longitudinal studies could be undertaken using the same questionnaires and research questions to study these changes in other hospitals, locations or populations every few years to identify the direction of the initiative.Ed.D., Educational Leadership and Management -- Drexel University, 201
Learning Science with a Child-Focused Resource: A Case Study of Kids as Global Scientists
No full textRecommended from our members
Learning Science with a Child-Focused Resource: A Case Study of Kids as Global Scientists
Full text linkThis project investigates student
learning within an innovative model of
classroom learning: student-generated and
maintained nodes of "expertise" along the
Internet superhighway. Using Internet
access as the backbone for classroom
activities in the environmental and
atmospheric sciences, the Kids as Global
Scientists (KGS) project is contributing
insights into: 1) h o w the technology can be
used to promote middle school students'
construction of knowledge, 2) the nature of
distributed expertise across child-
developed and focused Internet nodes, and 3)
the design of K-12 appropriate Internet
interfaces. In particular, the K G S project
recognizes that current Internet resources are
not focused with a K-12 audience in mind.
Therefore, a shift in focus from adult to
child-focused Internet nodes w a s
established. In addition, the development
of communities of learners which support
the exchange of information between
diverse and geographically distinct
learners is investigated. Results indicate
that becoming student experts in particular
areas of science that other students value,
and being responsible resources for other students' learning increases the "use value"
of students' knowledge and encourages the
learning of real science from first hand
sources
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
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