Parental Academic Socialization: Effects of home‐based parental involvement on locus of control across U.S. ethnic groups

This study investigates the relations between three academic socialisation processes and late adolescents’ internal locus of control. A sample of 249 college students from four ethnic groups completed three measures. Three factors explained 46.44% of the variance in academic socialisation, and the following differences were found: emotional support and active involvement were rated by all as the most frequent practices used by parents, and European Americans rated these significantly higher than did Asian Americans, who reported the highest mean score on “demandingness” practices. Separate multiple regression analyses suggested that among Asian Americans and European Americans, emotional support practices predicted internal locus of control; however, this model was not significant among Latinos and African Americans. Results suggest that academic socialisation practices operate differentially on psychological outcomes for adolescents in different ethnic groups, extending our knowledge of how culture shapes parenting and parent–child relationships.     

The Faculty Development Portfolio: A Framework for Documenting the Professional Development of Faculty Developers

Portfolios are used for a variety of purposes in higher education. Two such purposes are the documentation of one's professional development for others and the improvement of one's own performance over time. This article discusses the concept of the faculty development portfolio and, in doing so, outlines the work of faculty development professionals. It also identifies characteristics of effective faculty development professionals and defines the steps involved in creating a faculty development portfolio. These steps include how to conceptualize, gather, and present evidence of items that can be used as a framework for faculty developers to consider when documenting their professional development for summative and formative purposes.     

Development of Working Memory from Grade 3 to 5: Differences between Children With and Without Mathematical Learning Difficulties

Based on the finding that children with mathematical learning difficulties (MLD) have deficits in working memory (WM), the question arises as to whether these children differ from typical learners only in the level or also in the developmental trajectories of WM functioning. To this end, the WM of 80 children with MLD and 71 typical learners was assessed longitudinally from third to fifth grade. Typical learners outperformed children with MLD in the phonological, visuospatial and central executive WM functioning in third grade. Latent change analyses indicated that both phonological and central executive WM functioning developed in a parallel pattern in children with MLD and in typical learners. In contrast, visuospatial WM functioning revealed a different development in children with and without MLD since the gap between both groups decreased over time. Overall, despite starting at a lower level, the WM functioning in children with MLD did not develop more slowly.     

‘When I do “bad stuff,” I make the most difference’: exploring doubt,demoralization, and contradictions in LGBTQIA + ally work

Research has demonstrated that teacher allies are integral to social justice work that strives to ensure safety and success for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and other gender and sexuality non-conforming (LGBTQIA+) students. However, prevailing discussions present allyhood in ways that ignore the complexities and contradictions that shape an ally’s efforts and experiences. Drawing on narrative-based interviews with ‘Bailey,’ and integrating conceptual frameworks that seek to make doubt and failure productive, this paper seeks to redefine ally activism in ways that challenge prevailing notions of ally work and that more fully consider sociocultural and political contexts.     

Three- to Four-Year-Old Children Rapidly Adapt Their Predictions and Use Them to Learn Novel Word Meanings

Adults create and update predictions about what speakers will say next. This study asks whether prediction can drive language acquisition, by testing whether 3- to 4-year-old children (n = 45) adapt to recent information when learning novel words. The study used a syntactic context which can precede both nouns and verbs to manipulate children's predictions about what syntactic category will follow. Children for whom the syntactic context predicted verbs were more likely to infer that a novel word appearing in this context referred to an action, than children for whom it predicted nouns. This suggests that children make rapid changes to their predictions, and use this information to learn novel information, supporting the role of prediction in language acquisition.     

An international collaborative investigation of beginning seventh grade students' understandings of scientific inquiry: Establishing a baseline

Although understandings of scientific inquiry (as opposed to conducting inquiry) are included in science education reform documents around the world, little is known about what students have learned about inquiry during their elementary school years. This is partially due to the lack of any assessment instrument to measure understandings about scientific inquiry. However, a valid and reliable assessment has recently been developed and published, Views About Scientific Inquiry (VASI; Lederman et al. [2014], Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51, 65–83). The purpose of this large-scale international project was to collect the first baseline data on what beginning middle school students have learned about scientific inquiry during their elementary school years. Eighteen countries/regions spanning six continents including 2,634 students participated in the study. The participating countries/regions were: Australia, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Mainland China, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States. In many countries, science is not formally taught until middle school, which is the rationale for choosing seventh grade students for this investigation. This baseline data will simultaneously provide information on what, if anything, students learn about inquiry in elementary school, as well as their beginning knowledge as they enter secondary school. It is important to note that collecting data from all of the approximately 200 countries globally was not humanly possible, and it was also not possible to collect data from every region of each country. The results overwhelmingly show that students around the world at the beginning of grade seven have very little understandings about scientific inquiry. Some countries do show reasonable understandings in certain aspects but the overall picture of understandings of scientific inquiry is not what is hoped for after completing 6 years of elementary education in any country.     

Appeals to Science: Recirculation of Online Claims in Socioscientific Reasoning

Conflicting knowledge claims regarding complex issues have become readily available through networked digital media, and the introduction of Internet access to classrooms has provided opportunities for accessing a huge number of sources. Science education plays an important role in providing students opportunities to seek and evaluate information and engage in reasoning. The aim of this article is to analyze ways upper secondary science students invoke recirculated online claims originating from a scientific paper in conversations regarding genetically modified organisms (GMO), and to understand how such invocations are effective in order for students to engage accountably. By using the notion of communicative activity types—the meaning and function of the recirculated claims were analyzed in (1) a peer discussion, (2) a debate, and (3) a reflective seminar. The persuasive power of the discursive resource “appeals to science” is illustrated when students enlist scientific objectivity and rigor to underpin the credibility of arguments in a debate, and when qualifying a reflective position in a seminar, whereas they reflect on how actors in a Web context use appeals to science rhetorically when engaged in a discussion with peers reporting online claims. The study offers insight into kinds of communicative competences involved in conversations and how “scientific facts” justify, in this case, opposition to GMO. Finally, it is reflected upon the importance of not only learning how to make well-founded knowledge claims, but also to understand how science is used rhetorically in order to develop appropriate responses to complex issues in the digital age.

     

At-risk at the gate: prediction of study success of first-year science and engineering students in an open-admission university in Flanders—any incremental validity of study strategies?

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Against the background of the increasing need for skilled scientists and engineers, the heterogeneous inflow of incoming students in science and...     

Data Science Support at the Academic Library

Data science is a rapidly growing field with applications across all scientific domains. The demand for support in data science literacy is outpacing available resources at college campuses. The academic library is uniquely positioned to provide training and guidance in a number of areas relevant to data science. The University of Arizona Libraries has built a successful data science support program, focusing on computational literacy, geographic information systems, and reproducible science. Success of the program has largely been due to the strength of library personnel and strategic partnerships with units outside of the library. Academic libraries can support campus data science needs through professional development of current staff and recruitment of new personnel with expertise in data-intensive domains.