Experience and Explanation: Using Videogames to Prepare Students for Formal Instruction in Statistics     

Dylan A. Arena  Daniel L. Schwartz 《Journal of Science Education and Technology》2014,23(4):538-548

Well-designed digital games can deliver powerful experiences that are difficult to provide through traditional instruction, while traditional instruction can deliver formal explanations that are not a natural fit for gameplay. Combined, they can accomplish more than either can alone. An experiment tested this claim using the topic of statistics, where people’s everyday experiences often conflict with normative statistical theories and a videogame might provide an alternate set of experiences for students to draw upon. The research used a game called Stats Invaders!, a variant of the classic videogame Space Invaders. In Stats Invaders!, the locations of descending alien invaders follow probability distributions, and players need to infer the shape of the distributions to play well. The experiment tested whether the game developed participants’ intuitions about the structure of random events and thereby prepared them for future learning from a subsequent written passage on probability distributions. Community-college students who played the game and then read the passage learned more than participants who only read the passage.  相似文献   

Effective,Sustained Inquiry-Based Instruction Promotes Higher Science Proficiency Among All Groups: A 5-Year Analysis     

Jeff C. Marshall  Daniel M. Alston 《Journal of Science Teacher Education》2014,25(7):807-821

Student’s performance in science classrooms has continued to languish throughout the USA. Even though proficiency rates on national tests such as National Assessment of Educational Progress are higher for Caucasian students than African-Americans and Hispanics, all groups lack achieving desired proficiency rates. Further, the Next Generation Science Standards detail a new higher benchmark for all students. This study analyzes a professional development (PD) project, entitled Inquiry in Motion, designed to (a) facilitate teacher transformation toward greater quantity and quality of inquiry-based instruction, (b) improve student achievement in science practices and science concepts, and (c) begin to narrow the achievement gap among various groups. This 5-year PD study included 11 schools, 74 middle school teachers, and 9,981 students from diverse, high minority populations. Findings from the quasi-experimental study show statistically significant gains for all student groups (aggregate, males, females, Caucasians, African-Americans, and Hispanics) on all three science Measure of Academic Progress tests (composite, science practices, and science concepts) when compared to students of non-participating teachers. In addition to an increase in overall performance for all groups, a narrowing of the achievement gap of minority students relative to Caucasian students was seen. When combined with other studies, this study affirms that, when facilitated effectively, inquiry-based instruction may benefit all students, for all demographic groups measured.  相似文献   

When the atmosphere warms it rains and ice melts: seventh grade students’ conceptions of a climate system     

Daniel P. Shepardson  Anita Roychoudhury  Andy Hirsch  Dev Niyogi  Sara M. Top 《Environmental Education Research》2014,20(3):333-353

Although many environmental and science educators have explored students’ conceptual understandings, misconceptions, and knowledge of the greenhouse effect, global warming, and climate change, few have investigated the ways students conceptualize climate as a system or how components of the system influence climate. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to begin the process of understanding how US students conceptualize a climate system. A total of 42 seventh grade students (ages 12–13) from the Midwest completed an open-response task. From the inductive analysis of student written responses, 22 codes emerged that reflected students’ conceptions of the climate system. From these codes, three path diagrams were constructed that illustrate these students’ conceptions about how a climate system influences climate and how greenhouse gases and global warming impact the climate system. A generalized model of students’ conception of a climate system was generated. Students in this study conceptualized a climate system in a unidirectional, linear, cause and effect relationship that emphasized the atmospheric component of the climate system.  相似文献   

A Take on a Gothic Poem: Tablet Film-making and Literary Texts     

Theo Bryer  Morlette Lindsay  Rebecca Wilson 《Changing English: An International Journal of English Teaching》2014,21(3):235-251

  相似文献   

Teachers’ use of their mathematical knowledge for teaching in learning a mathematics learning trajectory     

P. Holt Wilson  Paola Sztajn  Cyndi Edgington  Jere Confrey 《Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education》2014,17(2):149-175

In the past decade, research on learning trajectories has progressed from an agenda for research on student learning to include an agenda for research on teaching. In this paper, we use a design experiment to examine a professional development program created to support teacher learning of one learning trajectory. Using a re-interpretation of Ball and colleagues’ mathematics knowledge for teaching framework, we conducted a retrospective analysis to examine how a purposefully selected sample of three teachers used their knowledge to participate in discussions of the professional learning tasks designed to support teacher learning of the trajectory. Findings indicate that professional learning tasks focusing on pedagogical content knowledge present in learning trajectories also allow for teacher learning of subject matter knowledge; this learning is mediated by teachers’ prior mathematics knowledge for teaching. We conclude with considerations for researchers and professional developers seeking to support teachers in learning about learning trajectories.  相似文献   

The Medical School Learning Environment Survey: an examination of its factor structure and relationship to student performance and satisfaction     

Shayna Rusticus  Anne Worthington  Derek Wilson  Karen Joughin 《Learning Environments Research》2014,17(3):423-435

The Medical School Learning Environment Survey (MSLES) was used with a sample of 311 undergraduate medical students in British Columbia, Canada, to assess the seven scales of Medical Breadth of Interest, Personal Breadth of Interest, Emotional Climate, Flexibility, Meaningful Learning Experience, Organization, Nurturance and Student–Student Interaction. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to support the validity of the MSLES when used with this sample.  相似文献   

Analysekompetenz von Lehrpersonen – Modellierung und Messung     

Prof. Dr. Wilfried Plöger  Dr. Daniel Scholl 《Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft》2014,17(1):85-112

This article reports on a project in which the analytical competence of teachers and trainee teachers is measured. The term analytical competence refers to the ability to assess and evaluate the quality of lessons which are observed. The sample consists of 800 teaching staff (200 students, 200 probationary teachers, 200 qualified teachers, 200 teacher training personnel). They are shown a video of a school lesson (in Physics) and then given a test in the form of a questionnaire in which they are asked to analyse the lesson. In the evaluation, the item scale of the test is checked for Rasch homogeneity. In the medium term, the results of this study should lead to consequences for the development of analytical competence in the various phases of teacher training.  相似文献   

Sex education,first sex and sexual health outcomes in adulthood: findings from a nationally representative sexual health survey     

Ashling Bourke  Daniel Boduszek  Caroline Kelleher  Orla McBride  Karen Morgan 《Sex education》2014,14(3):299-309

This study investigated the relationship between school sex education and sexual health behaviours at first sex and later in adulthood, using nationally representative data. Respondents were adults from the 2010 Irish Contraception and Crisis Pregnancy Survey, a cross-sectional survey designed to assess knowledge, attitudes and behaviours relating to sex, contraception and pregnancy in Ireland. Results indicate that respondents who received sex education were more likely to have first sex at an older age and use contraception on this occasion. Sex education also significantly increased the likelihood of using contraception at first sex, when first sex occurred before 17 years of age. The effect of sex education and sexual health behaviours into adulthood was also investigated. Sex education increased the likelihood of having a history of sexually transmitted infection testing and decreased the likelihood of having experienced a crisis pregnancy. No association was found between sex education and contraception use over the past year. Findings suggest that sex education is an important factor in the context of first sex and later sexual health, and programmes should continue to equip young people as they make immediate sexual behaviour decisions and further sexual health-related decisions throughout their lifespan.  相似文献   

Building cultural empathy and deconstructing Whiteness in counselor education     

Hannah B. Bayne  Robert Ocampo  Tawanda Wilson 《Counselor Education & Supervision》2023,62(2):118-131

Counselor training that does not attend to dynamics of cultural differences and oppression can run the risk of promoting false empathy that serves the voyeuristic purpose of the counselor rather than achieving accurate empathy for the client. In this article, we discuss the differences between true and false empathy and how Whiteness, racial identity and culture, and classroom dynamics can impact the ability to engage in cultural empathy development. We present a model for cultural empathy training that attends to each of these dynamics.  相似文献   

Synthesizing antipodal chaotic waveforms     

Daniel W. Hahs  Ned J. Corron  Jonathan N. Blakely 《Journal of The Franklin Institute》2014

Chaotic waveforms are natural information carriers since a correspondence can be established between the symbolic dynamics of a chaotic oscillator and the symbols of a message. Message symbols can be efficiently encoded in a chaotic waveform by applying vanishingly small perturbations to an oscillator to guide its symbolic dynamics to follow a desired course. Recently, two chaotic hybrid dynamical systems were shown to have matched filters enabling robust reception of chaotic communication waveforms in the presence of noise. The first of these, the exact shift oscillator, produces waveforms with desirable properties similar to antipodal signaling, but a physical implementation may be difficult to control using small perturbations. The second oscillator, the exact folded-band oscillator, produces less optimal waveforms but is more easily controlled. Here we introduce a method for generating waveforms of the exact shift oscillator by summing waveforms from a bank of easily controlled exact folded-band oscillators. We show that any solution of the exact shift oscillator can be so constructed using only three folded-band oscillators. Thus, this scheme allows us to realize the advantages of both chaotic systems while overcoming their individual disadvantages, thereby enabling practical chaos communications.  相似文献