Secondary school students’ epistemic insight into the relationships between science and religion – a preliminary enquiry

A number of previous studies have shown that there is a widespread view among young people that science and religion are opposed. In this paper, we suggest that it requires a significant level of what can be termed ‘epistemic insight’ to access the idea that some people see science and religion as compatible while others do not. To explore this further, we draw on previous work to devise a methodology to discover students’ thinking about apparent contradictions between scientific and religious explanations of the origins of the universe. In our discussion of the findings, we highlight that students’ epistemic insight in this context does seem in many cases to be limited and we outline some of the issues emerging from the study that seem to boost or limit students’ progress in this area.

The power of anticipated feedback: Effects on students' achievement goals and achievement emotions.

In an experimental study (N = 153 high school students), we tested a theoretical model positing that anticipated achievement feedback influences achievement goals and achievement emotions, and that achievement goals mediate the link between anticipated feedback and emotions. Participants were informed that they would receive self-referential feedback, normative feedback, or no feedback for their performance on a test. Subsequently, achievement goals and discrete achievement emotions regarding the test were assessed. Self-referential feedback had a positive influence on mastery goal adoption, whereas normative feedback had a positive influence on performance-approach and performance-avoidance goal adoption. Furthermore, feedback condition and achievement goals predicted test-related emotions (i.e., enjoyment, hope, pride, relief, anger, anxiety, hopelessness, and shame). Achievement goals were documented as significant mediators of the influence of feedback instruction on emotions, and mediation was observed for seven of the eight focal emotions. Implications for educational research and practice are discussed.

Reading aloud in high schools: students and teachers across the curriculum

Reading aloud is apparently an indispensible part of teaching. Nevertheless, little is known about reading aloud across the curriculum by students and teachers in high schools. Nor do we understand teachers’ attitudes towards issues such as error correction, rehearsal time, and selecting students to read. A survey of 360 teachers in England shows that, although they have little training in reading aloud, they are extremely confident. Reading aloud by students and teachers is strongly related, and serves to further understanding rather than administrative purposes or pupils’ enjoyment. Unexpectedly, Modern Language teachers express views that set them apart from other subjects.

Upper secondary school students' gendered conceptions about mathematics

This study explores Swedish Natural Science students' conceptions about gender and mathematics. I conducted and compared the results from two questionnaires. The first questionnaire revealed a view of rather traditional feminities and masulinities, a result that did not repeat itself in the second questionnaire. There was a discrepancy between the traits the students ascribed as gender different and the traits they ascribed to themselves.

BlueFriends: measuring, analyzing and preventing social exclusion between elementary school students

Social exclusion is a relatively recent term, whose creation is attributed to René Lenoir(Lenoir, 1974). Its concept covers a remarkably wide range of social and economic problems, and can be triggered for various reasons: mentally and physically handicapped, abused children, delinquents, multi-problem households, asocial people, and other social “misfits” (Silver, 1995, pp. 63; Foucault, 1992). With an increasingly multi-cultural population, cultural and social inequalities rapidly ascend, bringing with them the need for educational restructuring. We are living in an evermore diverse world, and children need to be educated to be receptive to the different types of people around them, especially considering social and cultural aspects. It is with these goals that inclusive education has seen an increased trend in today’s academic environment, reminding us that even though children may be taught under the same roof, discriminatory practices might still happen. There are, however, a number of developed tools to assess the various dimensions of social networks. These are mostly based on questionnaires and interviews, which tend to be fastidious and don’t allow for longitudinal, large scale measurement. This thesis introduces BlueFriends, a Bluetooth-based measurement tool for social inclusion/exclusion on elementary school classes. The main goals behind the development of this tool were a) understanding how exclusion manifests in students’ behaviors, and b) motivating pro-social behaviors on children through the use of a persuasive technology. BlueFriends is a distributed application, comprised by an application running on several smartphones, a web-hosted database and a computer providing a visual representation of the data collected on a TV screen, attempting to influence children behaviors. The application makes use of the Bluetooth device present on each phone to continuously sample the RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indication) from other phones, storing the data locally on each phone. All of the stored data is collected, processed and then inserted into the database at the end of each day. At the beginning of each recess, children are reminded of how their behaviors affect others with the help of a visual display, which consists of interactions between dogs. This display illustrates every child’s best friends, as well as which colleagues they don’t interact with as much. Several tips encouraging social interaction and inclusiveness are displayed, inspiring children to change their behaviors towards the colleagues they spend less time with. This thesis documents the process of designing, deploying and analyzing the results of two field studies. On the first study, we assess how the current developed tools are inferior to our measuring tool by deploying a measurement only study, aimed at perceiving how much information can be obtained by the BlueFriends application and attempting to understand how exclusion manifests itself in the school environment. On the second study, we pile on the previous to try and motivate pro-social behaviors on students, with the use of visual cues and recommendations. Ultimately, we confirm that our measurement tool’s results were satisfying towards measuring and changing children’s behaviors, and conclude with our thoughts on possible future work, suggesting a number of possible extensions and improvements.

Prevalence of strabismus among students in Natal-RN - Brazil

To estimate the prevalence of strabismus in Natal, Brazil, among elementary and high school students of the public and private educational systems, in addition to detecting etiological factors. Methods: 1024 students were randomly selected and submitted to a questionnaire and a complete ophthalmologic examination, by professors and resident physicians in Ophthalmology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. Results: Of 1024 students, 1015 were examined; 29 were found to have strabismus (2.9%), 20 of whom had manifest exotropia (2%), 2 had intermittent exotropia (0.2%), 6 had esotropia (0.6%) and 1 had V anisotropies (0.1%). Conclusions: The strabismus prevalence of the student population of Natal falls within the range of the worldwide population. There was ocular lesion in only one student (retinochoroiditis scar on the posterior pole in both eyes) related to strabismus

Sleep patterns of day-working, evening high-schooled adolescents of São Paulo, Brazil

Children who grow up in developing countries of the world must work to help financially support their families, and they must also attend school. We investigated the impact of work on the sleep of working vs. nonworking high school students. Twenty-seven São Paulo, Brazil, public high school students (eight male and eight female working students plus six nonworking female and five nonworking male students) 14-18 yrs of age who attended school Monday-Friday between 19:00 to 22:30h participated. A comprehensive questionnaire about work and living conditions, health status, and diseases and their symptoms was also answered. The activity level and rest pattern (sleep at night and napping during the day) were continuously assessed by wrist actigraphy (Ambulatory Monitoring, USA). The main variables were analyzed by a two-factor ANOVA with application of the Tukey HSD test for multiple comparisons, and the length of sleep during weekdays vs. weekends was compared by Student t-test. Working students went to sleep earlier weekends [F-(1,F-23) = 6.1; p = 0.02] and woke up earlier work days than nonworking students [F-(1,F-23) = 17.3; p = 0.001]. The length of nighttime sleep during weekdays was shorter among all the working [F-(1,F-23) = 16.7; p < 0.001] than all the nonworking students. The sleep duration of boys was shorter than of girls during weekends [F-(1,F-23) = 10.8; P < 0.001]. During weekdays, the duration of napping by working and nonworking male students was shorter than nonworking female students. During weekdays, working girls took the shortest naps [F-(1,F-23) = 5.6; p = 0.03]. The most commonly reported sleep complaint during weekdays was difficulty waking up in the morning [F-(1.23) = 6.5; p = 0.02]. During weekdays, the self-perceived sleep quality of working students was worse than nonworking students [F-(1,F-23) = 6.2; p = 0.02]. The findings of this study show that work has negative effects on the sleep of adolescents, with the possible build-up of a chronic sleep debt with potential consequent impact on quality of life and school learning.