Student Decision-Making about a Globally Familiar Socioscientific Issue: The value of sharing and comparing views with international counterparts

This paper focuses on the views of 16–17-year-old science students from England, Germany, Hong Kong and Sweden on whale hunting, and their perceptions of the views of their international counterparts. The students were all provided with the same decision-making task, discussed the issue in small groups and then presented their views on video, which were shared with their counterparts. The findings show that the decision-making task served to deepen and modify students' views across all nationalities, and the students generally valued and learned from the sharing of views with students of the same age from around the world. However, an important discovery was that the German students' opinions often ran counter to those from the other 3 locations, and the paper cautions against making broad-sweeping generalisations about students' views on socioscientific issues.     

Socioscientific Issues as a Vehicle for Promoting Character and Values for Global Citizens

Our guiding presupposition in this study was that socioscientific issues (SSI) instruction, given the humanistic features that comprise this type of instruction, could play a role as a vehicle for cultivating character and values as global citizens. Our main objective was to observe how and to what extent SSI instruction might contribute to this. In order to achieve this aim, we implemented a SSI program on genetic modification technology for 132 ninth-grade students over 3–4 weeks and identified its educational effects using a mixed method approach. Data sources included student responses to questionnaire items that measure the students' character and values, records of student discussions, and semi-structured interviews with the students and their teachers. Results indicated that the students became more sensitive to moral and ethical aspects of scientific and technological development and compassionate to diverse people who are either alienated by the benefits of advanced technology or who are vulnerable to the dangers of its unintended effects. In addition, the students felt more responsible for the future resolution of the genetic SSI. However, the students struggled to demonstrate willingness and efficacy to participate within broader communities that entailed action toward SSI resolution.     

The Impact of Omitting Random Interaction Effects in Cross-Classified Random Effect Modeling

The present study examines bias in parameter estimates and standard error in cross-classified random effect modeling (CCREM) caused by omitting the random interaction effects of the cross-classified factors, focusing on the effect of a sample size within cells and ratio of a small cell. A Monte Carlo simulation study was conducted to compare the correctly specified and the misspecified CCREM. While there was negligible bias in fixed effects, substantial biases were found in the random effects of the misspecified model depending on the number of samples within a cell and the proportion of small cells. However, in the case of the correctly specified model, no bias occurred. The present study suggests considering the random interaction effects when conducting CCREM to avoid overestimation of variance components and to calculate an accurate value of estimation. The implications of this study are to illuminate the conditions of cross-classification ratio and to provide a meaningful reference for applied researchers using CCREM.     

A Rhetoric of Traumatic Nationalism in the Ground Zero Mosque Controversy

In the summer of 2010, a national controversy erupted suddenly as a majority of Americans protested the building of an Islamic community center near Ground Zero. In this essay, I suggest the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” controversy makes visible the emergence of a rhetoric of traumatic nationalism that articulates suffering to citizenship and reproduces national crisis through a motif of consecration whose upshot is a conservative, bipartisan moralism. An anti-political discourse of victimization masquerading as a memory discourse of righteous sacrifice, traumatic nationalism serves as an alibi that excuses the United States from answering responsibly for the war on terror and prevents critical examination of the state of the union.     

Classifying Korean adolescents’ career preparedness

Latent class analysis was used to examine the career preparation of 5,227 11th-grade Korean adolescents taken from the Korean Education Longitudinal Study of 2005 (KELS:2005). Three career preparedness groups were identified, to reflecting Skorikov’s (J Vocat Behav 70:8–24, 2007) conceptualization of career preparedness: prepared, confused, and unprepared. Most individual, family, and school factors selected for study were statistically significant predictors of group membership. Results provided insight about career decidedness and career planning from a Korean context.     

Inequality in adult learning and education participation: the effects of social origins and social inequality

ABSTRACT

This comparative study examines patterns of inequality in participation in two different types of adult learning and education (ALE) – job-related formal ALE (JFALE) and job-related non-formal ALE (JNFALE) – as related to social origins at the micro-level and three categories of social inequality at the macro-level at the macro level (economic, education, and skill inequality). Using data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), two methods are used to analyse 19 selected OECD countries: multivariate binary logistic regressions to explore the extent to which individuals’ social origins are associated with ALE participation and two-stage multilevel analysis to examine the relationship between social origins’ advantages in ALE participation and social inequality. Statistically significant advantages in ALE participation of social origins were observed in some countries. Additionally, statistically significant positive relationships between social inequality and social origins’ advantages in JNFALE participation are found, which implies that increases in social inequality strengthen advantages associated with social origins.     

The relationship between the level of bullying in primary schools and children’s views of their teachers’ attitudes to pupil behaviour

It is known that the incidence of bullying reported by primary school children varies greatly between schools. It has also been shown that schools in which staff express a greater level of concern with managing the problem generally experience lower levels of bullying. This study examines the children’s, rather than the teachers’, views about the level of care and attention which the teachers pay to issues relating to behaviour and the social organisation of their school. It is shown that the children’s views are a good indicator of the frequency of bullying that will be found in that school.