EdShare: collaboration in a University for learning and teaching

Poster for the School of Electronics and Computer Science, Learning Societies Lab Open Day, 27 February 2008 at the University of Southampton. Profile and presentation of the EdShare resource. The poster illustrates the philosophy of EdShare, how it relates to the Web 2.0 environment and its relationship to the education agenda in a University.

School innovation in science (SIS): focusing on teaching

Focuses on the framework of School Innovation in Sciences (SIS) in Australia. Aim of SIS; Concept of school; Components of SIS for effective learning and teaching. INSET: School Innovation in Science Strategy.

A longitudinal study of children`s developing knowledge and reasoning in science

The growth in science understanding and reasoning of 12 children is being traced through their primary school years. The paper reports findings concerning children’s growing understandings of evaporation, and their changing responses to exploration activities, that show the complexity and coherence of learning pathways. Children’s responses to identical explorations of flight, separated by two years, are used to explore the interactions between conceptual knowledge and scientific reasoning, and the manner in which they change over this time. The paper discusses the particular insights afforded by a longitudinal study design, and some attendant methodological issues.

BHP Billiton science teacher awards

The prestigious BHP Billiton Science Teacher Awards are awarded annually to one teacher from each state of Australia. The awards recognise and value the time and effort that teachers give to the profession and to students conducting scientific research projects. This paper examines the Science Award scheme to identify the characteristics common to these innovative teachers in science. The data is drawn from interviews with seven award-winning teachers plus the judges of the scheme. The data indicated that quality teaching was evident in their practice - valuing students’ ownership of their work, doing authentic science investigations and showcasing their work.

Science students' perceptions of engaging pedagogy

During their years of schooling, students develop perceptions about learning and teaching, including the ways in which teachers impact on their learning experiences. This paper presents student perceptions of teacher pedagogy as interpreted from a study focusing on students' experience of Year 7 science. A single science class of 11 to 12 year old students and their teacher were monitored for the whole school year, employing participant observation, and interviews with focus groups of students, their teacher and other key members of the school. Analysis focused on how students perceived the role of the teacher's pedagogy in constructing a learning environment that they considered conducive to engagement with science learning. Two areas of the teacher's pedagogy are explored from the student perspective of how these affect their learning: instructional pedagogy and relational pedagogy. Instructional pedagogy captures the way the instructional dialogue developed by the teacher drew the students into the learning process and enabled them to “understand” science. How the teacher developed a relationship with the students is captured as relational pedagogy, where students said that they learned better when teachers were passionate in their approach to teaching, provided a supportive learning environment and made them feel comfortable. The ways in which the findings support the direction for the middle years and science education are considered.

Locating learning: making connections between virtual and physical spaces with mobile touch-screen devices

This paper is concerned with the potential of mobile touch-screen devices and emerging socio-technological practices to support pedagogies of place that provide a means for young people to reflect critically on the social construction of place and to take actions that speak of and to their own locatedness. Drawing on de Certeau’s (1984) concept of space as a practiced place and Massey’s (2005) perspective of spatiality and interrelatedness, we examine two school-based examples of learning activities that bring together the virtual and physical as in experiences and representations of place. The first example is an Australian local history unit, where lower secondary school students participated in a series of field trips, planned and conducted under the guidance of an indigenous elder. They used Smartphones and iPads to capture and create personalised audio-visual records of their knowledge of place that were then used to create geo-location games. In the second example, upper primary school students worked with local authorities and environmental educators to select sites for two environmental monitoring posts, which were then installed and provided a locus for the students’ school-based environmental science learning as well as a vehicle for community engagement. Drawing on interview, video and photographic data, this paper examines the way mobile technologies were deployed for student knowledge production, engagement with place, reconstruction of place and engagement with community.

Learning through Listening: Conversations for Strategic Change in a Healtcare Provider

The aim of this paper is investigate the role of conversation in strategic change so as to enhance both theory and practice in this respect. As an investigation on how conversations shape change processes in practice, we reflect on an interpretive case study in a health care organization. Through an OD project complemented by semi-structured interviews with participants, we gained a set of data and experiences that allows us to inquire into the relationship between conversations and change in more depth.

Equipping young people to engage with media driven science experiences: beyond science knowledge to science literacy and discerning consumers of news.

This paper reports on a study of a curricular intervention for pupils (age 10-13 years) in the UK aimed at supporting critical engagement with science based media reports. In particular the study focused on core elements of knowledge, skills and attitudes identified in previous studies that characterize critical consumers of science presented as news. This was an empirical study based on classroom observation. Data included responses from individual pupils, in addition video recording of group activity and intentional conversations between pupils and teachers were scrutinised. Analysis focused on core tasks relating to different elements of critical reading. Pupils demonstrated a grasp of questioning and evaluating text, however the capacity to translate this experience in support of a critical response to a media report with a science component is limited in assessing the credibility of text and as an element in critical reading.

Talking everyday science to very young children: a study involving parents and practitioners within an early childhood centre

The acquisition of everyday scientific concepts by 3-6 year old children attending early childhood institutions has been widely studied. In contrast, research on science learning processes among younger children is less extensive. This paper reports on findings from an exploratory empirical study undertaken in a ‘stay and play’ service used by parents with children aged 0-3 and located within an East London early childhood centre. The research team collaborated with practitioners to deliver a programme of activities aimed at encouraging parents’ confidence in their own ability to support emergent scientific thinking among their young children. The programme generated children’s engagement and interest. Parents and practitioners reported increased confidence in their ability to promote young children’s natural curiosity at home and in early childhood provision. The authors see no reason for positing qualitative differences between the way children acquire scientific and other concepts in their earliest years.

Locating learning: making connections between virtual and physical spaces with mobile touch-screen devices

This paper is concerned with the potential of mobile touch-screen devices and emerging socio-technological practices to support pedagogies of place that provide a means for young people to reflect critically on the social construction of place and to take actions that speak of and to their own locatedness. Drawing on de Certeau's (1984) concept of space as a practiced place and Massey's (2005) perspective of spatiality and interrelatedness, we examine two school-based examples of learning activities that bring together the virtual and physical as in experiences and representations of place. The first example is an Australian local history unit, where lower secondary school students participated in a series of field trips, planned and conducted under the guidance of an indigenous elder. They used Smartphones and iPads to capture and create personalised audio-visual records of their knowledge of place that were then used to create geo-location games. In the second example, upper primary school students worked with local authorities and environmental educators to select sites for two environmental monitoring posts, which were then installed and provided a locus for the students' school-based environmental science learning as well as a vehicle for community engagement. Drawing on interview, video and photographic data, this paper examines the way mobile technologies were deployed for student knowledge production, engagement with place, reconstruction of place and engagement with community.

Early childhood science exploration: a vehicle for inclusive practices

Social justice and equity are important elements of all educational services and particularly in early childhood where there is an emphasis on including all children in the everyday life of early childhood settings. This emphasis has targeted both the policies and practices in early childhood to meet the needs of a diverse range of learners. An outcome of policy reform is the emphasis on inclusive education that is based on the right of all children to access and participate in general education. A critical pedagogy approach counters discrimination by promoting positive attitudes towards diversity. Science learning is important for all children as it is an approach to thinking and behaving that incorporates aspects of motor, behavioural, sensory, communication and mental functioning. Children from diverse situations can contribute at their own level to the opportunities involved in exploration and investigations. This paper discusses inclusive pedagogy and planning in early childhood centres with a particular focus on science learning through play and child-instigated explorations.

Learning data-driven models of non-verbal behaviors for building rapport using an intelligent virtual agent

There is a growing societal need to address the increasing prevalence of behavioral health issues, such as obesity, alcohol or drug use, and general lack of treatment adherence for a variety of health problems. The statistics, worldwide and in the USA, are daunting. Excessive alcohol use is the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States (with 79,000 deaths annually), and is responsible for a wide range of health and social problems. On the positive side though, these behavioral health issues (and associated possible diseases) can often be prevented with relatively simple lifestyle changes, such as losing weight with a diet and/or physical exercise, or learning how to reduce alcohol consumption. Medicine has therefore started to move toward finding ways of preventively promoting wellness, rather than solely treating already established illness.^ Evidence-based patient-centered Brief Motivational Interviewing (BMI) interventions have been found particularly effective in helping people find intrinsic motivation to change problem behaviors after short counseling sessions, and to maintain healthy lifestyles over the long-term. Lack of locally available personnel well-trained in BMI, however, often limits access to successful interventions for people in need. To fill this accessibility gap, Computer-Based Interventions (CBIs) have started to emerge. Success of the CBIs, however, critically relies on insuring engagement and retention of CBI users so that they remain motivated to use these systems and come back to use them over the long term as necessary.^ Because of their text-only interfaces, current CBIs can therefore only express limited empathy and rapport, which are the most important factors of health interventions. Fortunately, in the last decade, computer science research has progressed in the design of simulated human characters with anthropomorphic communicative abilities. Virtual characters interact using humans’ innate communication modalities, such as facial expressions, body language, speech, and natural language understanding. By advancing research in Artificial Intelligence (AI), we can improve the ability of artificial agents to help us solve CBI problems.^ To facilitate successful communication and social interaction between artificial agents and human partners, it is essential that aspects of human social behavior, especially empathy and rapport, be considered when designing human-computer interfaces. Hence, the goal of the present dissertation is to provide a computational model of rapport to enhance an artificial agent’s social behavior, and to provide an experimental tool for the psychological theories shaping the model. Parts of this thesis were already published in [LYL+12, AYL12, AL13, ALYR13, LAYR13, YALR13, ALY14].^

Reasoning in science through representation

In this chapter we argue that our analysis of student reasoning through constructing representations points to a range of informal and formal reasoning processes. This suggests the need for researchers and teachers to shift from an exclusive focus on formal syllogistic reasoning as the main or only reasoning resource for science learning. First we review the literature to identify how informal reasoning is described, and relates to reasoning through representation, then examine one case of reasoning during a representational challenge, to argue that reasoning should be thought of as deliberative thinking that involves choices, leading to a justifiable claim. Two case studies from RILS units are then used to identify how reasoning through representation can occur at a number of points during a representational challenge, and finally to develop an indicative taxonomy of the different purposes of reasoning as part of the processes of science.

Integrating engineering model eliciting activities in elementary school curricula

This paper argues for a future-oriented, inclusion of Engineering Model Eliciting Activities (EngMEAs) in elementary mathematics curricula. In EngMEAs students work with meaningful engineering problems that capitalise on and extend their existing mathematics and science learning, to develop, revise and document powerful models, while working in groups. The models developed by six groups of 12-year students in solving the Natural Gas activity are presented. Results showed that student models adequately solved the problem, although student models did not take into account all the data provided. Student solutions varied to the extent students employed the engineering context in their models and to their understanding of the mathematical concepts involved in the problem. Finally, recommendations for implementing EngMEAs and for further research are discussed.