Great Expectations? Childhood,Family, and Middle-Class Social Mobility in Nineteenth-Century England

ABSTRACT

Existing histories of social mobility have focused on adults and on measuring the achievement of individual upward mobility. However, children and families were central to mobility strategies. Using the papers of the Heywoods of Bolton, this article examines how the families of the industrial middle class endowed their offspring with the goods and character needed to secure their social standing, highlighting the emotional intricacy of these processes. It demonstrates that such families conceived of social mobility as a familial project and that rather than pursuing upward mobility, their chief objective was to guard against social decline.     

Influence of Process Parameters on Chlorinated Biocide Decontamination by li-CO2 on Artificially Contaminated Model Materials

ABSTRACT

Previously, heavy use of biocides for the treatment of objects made of organic materials in museum collections (e.g. ethnographic, historical collections) was very common. Now suitable decontamination methods/technologies are being sought. A decontamination treatment by li-CO₂ was optimized that considered the specific requirements of museum objects. The treatment was tested on model materials artificially contaminated with biocide solutions containing dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), pentachlorophenol (PCP), lindane, and permethrin or cypermethrin. High decontamination was achieved for DDT, lindane, PCP, and permethrin on artificially biocide loaded wool and wood model materials. Optimal process parameter settings for li-CO₂ decontamination include a single 30?min cycle for woolen materials and three sequential 30?min cycles each for wood. These methods allow a reduction of at least 90% of all biocides for wool and between 70% and 85% for wood. Decontamination of the latter was more effective for less polar biocides as DDT and permethrin. Despite a significant improvement in decontamination for wood using co-solvents such as acetone, ethanol, and methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE), their use is not recommended due to the increased risk of damage to the objects, in particular if a surface coating is present.     

The Effects of Enrolling in Oversubscribed Prekindergarten Programs Through Third Grade

This study leverages naturally occurring lotteries for oversubscribed Boston Public Schools prekindergarten program sites between 2007 and 2011, for 3,182 children (M = 4.5 years old) to estimate the impacts of winning a first choice lottery and enrolling in Boston prekindergarten versus losing a first choice lottery and not enrolling on children’s enrollment and persistence in district schools, grade retention, special education placement, and third-grade test scores. There are large effects on enrollment and persistence, but no effects on other examined outcomes for this subsample. Importantly, children who competed for oversubscribed seats were not representative of all appliers and almost all control-group children attended center-based preschool. Findings contribute to the larger evidence base and raise important considerations for future prekindergarten lottery-based studies.     

Science notebooks as interactional spaces in a multilingual classroom: Not just ideas on paper

Past studies have explored the role of student science notebooks in supporting students' developing science understandings. Yet scant research has investigated science notebook use with students who are learning science in a language they are working to master. To explore how student science notebook use is co-constructed in interaction among students and teachers, this study examined plurilingual students' interactions with open-ended science notebooks during an inquiry science unit on condensation and evaporation. Grounded in theoretical views of the notebook as a semiotic social space, multimodal interaction analysis facilitated examination of the ways students drew upon the space afforded by the notebook as they constructed explanations of their understandings. Cross-group comparison of three focal groups led to multiple assertions regarding the use of science notebooks with plurilingual students. First, the notebook supported student-determined paths of resemiotization as students employed multiple communicative resources to express science understandings. Second, notebooks provided spaces for students to draw upon diverse language resources and as a bridge in time across multiple inquiry sessions. Third, representations in notebooks were leveraged by both students and teachers to access and deepen conceptual conversations. Lastly, students' interactions over time revealed multiple epistemological orientations in students' use of the notebook space. These findings point to the benefits of open-ended science notebooks use with plurilingual students, and a consideration of the ways they are used in interaction in science instruction.     

The effect of worked examples on student learning and error anticipation in algebra

Instructional Science - The present study examines the effectiveness of incorporating worked examples with prompts for self-explanation into a middle school math textbook. Algebra 1 students...     

Tales from three countries: reflections during COVID-19 for mathematical education in the future

How can school mathematics prepare citizens for a democratic society? Answers to this question are not static; they change as society and its problems change. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic with its corresponding disease COVID-19 presents such a problem: what is needed to navigate this complex situation that involves, among other things, mathematics? Using the essay genre, we use three narratives from three countries—Italy, the USA (California), and Germany—to reflect on the goals of teaching mathematics during this crisis and examine aspects of each country’s standards for mathematics education. These three stories are framed by the authors’ backgrounds, experiences, interests, their country’s situation, and response to the pandemic. We first present the three narratives and then examine common issues across them that might provide insights beyond this current crisis, for preparing students to become active citizens. In particular, we focus on three issues: (1) developing a positive mindset toward mathematics to engage with and reflect on real-world problems, (2) improving interdisciplinary connections to the sciences to better understand how science professional practices and insights are similar or different from everyday practices, and (3) considering interpersonal and collective matters beyond the individual.

     

Multimodal Interaction Analysis: a Powerful Tool for Examining Plurilingual Students’ Engagement in Science Practices

Research in Science Education - Science teaching and learning are discursive practices, yet analysis of these practices has frequently been grounded in theorizations that place language at the...     

How Science Teachers DiALoG Classrooms: Towards a Practical and Responsive Formative Assessment of Oral Argumentation

Journal of Science Education and Technology - We present lessons learned from an ongoing attempt to conceptualize, develop, and refine a way for teachers to gather formative assessment evidence...     

寻觅德国的牛津

达勒姆(Dahlem)不仅仅是一个传奇.在德国,几乎没有其他地方像柏林的这片土地那样,在科学史各个丰富的方面--包括令人质疑的方面--表现出如此强烈的活力.在马普学会历史档案馆馆长亨宁(Eckart Henning)的陪同下巡游他的“领地“,就如同在历史的时光中漫步,著名学者的创新精神始终伴随着我们的游程.……     

Exploring the relationship between physics-related epistemological beliefs and physics understanding

Three studies are reported that investigated the relationship between secondary school students’ physics-related epistemological beliefs and physics conceptual understanding. Study 1 involved the development of a Greek Epistemological Beliefs Evaluation Instrument for Physics (GEBEP) which was administered to 394 students (10th graders). Study 2 investigated the hypothesis that physics epistemological sophistication as measured by the GEBEP is a good predictor of physics understanding. The participants were selected from the 394 students who participated in Study 1. More specifically we selected the 10% (38) students with the highest scores in the GEBEP (high epistemological sophistication group, HES) and the 10% (38) students with the lowest GEBEP scores (low epistemological sophistication group, LES) and measured their understanding of Newton’s three laws using the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation instrument (FMCE) developed by Thornton and Sokoloff (1998). The results showed that the HES group had significantly higher scores in the FMCE than the LES group. Regression analysis showed that beliefs regarding the Construction and Stability of physics knowledge and the Structure of physics knowledge were good predictors of physics understanding. Study 3 re-examined the same hypothesis on a new independent sample of students. The results based on the entire sample, showed again that beliefs regarding the Construction and Stability of physics knowledge predicted physics understanding. Overall, the results suggest that sophisticated physics-related epistemological beliefs are necessary but not sufficient for physics understanding and point to the importance of taking them into consideration in physics education.