Writing in the Mathematics Classroom: Does It Have an Effect on Students’ Mathematical Reasoning?

In this action research study of my classroom of 5th grade mathematics, I investigate how to improve students’ written explanations to and reasoning of math problems. For this, I look at journal writing, dialogue, and collaborative grouping and its effects on students’ conceptual understanding of the mathematics. In particular, I look at its effects on students’ written explanations to various math problems throughout the semester. Throughout the study students worked on math problems in cooperative groups and then shared their solutions with classmates. Along with this I focus on the dialogue that occurred during these interactions and whether and how it moved students to a deeper level of conceptual understanding. Students also wrote responses about their learning in a weekly math journal. The purpose of this journal is two-fold. One is to have students write out their ideas. Second, is for me to provide the students with feedback on their responses. My research reveals that the integration of collaborative grouping, journaling, and active dialogue between students and teacher helps students develop a deeper understanding of mathematics concepts as well as an increase in their confidence as problem solvers. The use of journaling, dialogue, and collaborative grouping reveals themselves as promising learning tasks that can be integrated in a mathematics curriculum that seeks to cultivate students’ thinking and reasoning.

Modelling Mathematical Reasoning in Physics Education

Many findings from research as well as reports from teachers describe students' problem solving strategies as manipulation of formulas by rote. The resulting dissatisfaction with quantitative physical textbook problems seems to influence the attitude towards the role of mathematics in physics education in general. Mathematics is often seen as a tool for calculation which hinders a conceptual understanding of physical principles. However, the role of mathematics cannot be reduced to this technical aspect. Hence, instead of putting mathematics away we delve into the nature of physical science to reveal the strong conceptual relationship between mathematics and physics. Moreover, we suggest that, for both prospective teaching and further research, a focus on deeply exploring such interdependency can significantly improve the understanding of physics. To provide a suitable basis, we develop a new model which can be used for analysing different levels of mathematical reasoning within physics. It is also a guideline for shifting the attention from technical to structural mathematical skills while teaching physics. We demonstrate its applicability for analysing physical-mathematical reasoning processes with an example.

Teaching of the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness strategy in undergraduate nursing programs

Objective: To describe and analyze the teaching of the Integrated Management of hildhood Illness (IMCI) strategy on Brazilian undergraduate nursing programs. Method: Integrating an international multicentric study, a cross-sectional online survey was conducted between May and October 2010 with 571 undergraduate nursing programs in Brazil Results: Responses were received from 142 programs, 75% private and 25% public. 64% of them included the IMCI strategy in the theoretical content, and 50% of the programs included IMCI as part of the students’ practical experience. The locations most used for practical teaching were primary health care units. The ‘treatment’ module was taught by the fewest number of programs, and few programs had access to the IMCI instructional manuals. All programs used exams for evaluation, and private institutions were more likely to include class participation as part of the evaluation. Teaching staff in public institutions were more likely to have received training in teaching IMCI. Conclusion: In spite of the relevance of the IMCI strategy in care of the child, its content is not addressed in all undergraduate programs in Brazil, and many programs do not have access to the IMCI teaching manuals and have not provide training in IMCI to their teaching staff.

Content and English Language Integrated Learning: The use of Moodle in Aircraft Maintenance Training Programs

The aim of this work is to develop a prototype of an e-learning environment that can foster Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) for students enrolled in an aircraft maintenance training program, which allows them to obtain a license valid in all EU member states. Background research is conducted to retrace the evolution of the field of educational technology, analyzing different learning theories – behaviorism, cognitivism, and (socio-)constructivism – and reflecting on how technology and its use in educational contexts has changed over time. Particular attention is given to technologies that have been used and proved effective in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL). Based on the background research and on students’ learning objectives, i.e. learning highly specialized contents and aeronautical technical English, a bilingual approach is chosen, three main tools are identified – a hypertextbook, an exercise creation activity, and a discussion forum – and the learning management system Moodle is chosen as delivery medium. The hypertextbook is based on the technical textbook written in English students already use. In order to foster text comprehension, the hypertextbook is enriched by hyperlinks and tooltips. Hyperlinks redirect students to webpages containing additional information both in English and in Italian, while tooltips show Italian equivalents of English technical terms. The exercise creation activity and the discussion forum foster interaction and collaboration among students, according to socio-constructivist principles. In the exercise creation activity, students collaboratively create a workbook, which allow them to deeply analyze and master the contents of the hypertextbook and at the same time create a learning tool that can help them, as well as future students, to enhance learning. In the discussion forum students can discuss their individual issues, content-related, English-related or e-learning environment-related, helping one other and offering instructors suggestions on how to improve both the hypertextbook and the workbook based on their needs.

Fidelity of Implementation of Research-Based Instructional Strategies (RBIS) in Engineering Science Courses

Background Increasing attention is being paid to improvement in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education through increased adoption of research-based instructional strategies (RBIS), but high-quality measures of faculty instructional practice do not exist to monitor progress. Purpose/Hypothesis The measure of how well an implemented intervention follows the original is called fidelity of implementation. This theory was used to address the research questions: What is the fidelity of implementation of selected RBIS in engineering science courses? That is, how closely does engineering science classroom practice reflect the intentions of the original developers? Do the critical components that characterize an RBIS discriminate between engineering science faculty members who claimed use of the RBIS and those who did not? Design/Method A survey of 387 U.S. faculty teaching engineering science courses (e.g., statics, circuits, thermodynamics) included questions about class time spent on 16 critical components and use of 11 corresponding RBIS. Fidelity was quantified as the percentage of RBIS users who also spent time on corresponding critical components. Discrimination between users and nonusers was tested using chi square. Results Overall fidelity of the 11 RBIS ranged from 11% to 80% of users spending time on all required components. Fidelity was highest for RBIS with one required component: case-based teaching, just-in-time teaching, and inquiry learning. Thirteen of 16 critical components discriminated between users and nonusers for all RBIS to which they were mapped. Conclusions Results were consistent with initial mapping of critical components to RBIS. Fidelity of implementation is a potentially useful framework for future work in STEM undergraduate education.

English in England

The intention of the present volume is to unite the research of a range of scholars who have been working on features of non-standard, vernacular English which show an areal distribution, i.e. which cluster geographically across the world. Features common to an area can be due to (i) shared dialect input, (ii) common but separate innovations after settlement, or (iii) area-internal diffusion from one variety to another and/or others. The relative weighting of these factors is an important topic in the book and is a key focus in the 17 chapters. The book is divided into two large blocks, the first one consisting of case studies (8 chapters) and the second with features complexes (9 chapters). The former look at major anglophone locations from an areal perspective while the latter examine linguistic categories and features with a view to determine whether these could be areally based or not.

A variationist approach to the examination of insertion and deletion of /h/ in Kosraean English

I report on language variation in the unresearched variety of English emerging on Kosrae, Federated States of Micronesia. English is spoken as the inter-island lingua franca throughout Micronesia and has been the official language of FSM since gaining its independence in 1986, though still retaining close ties with the US through and economic “compact” agreement. I present here an analysis of a corpus of over 90 Kosraean English speakers, compiled during a three month fieldwork trip to the island in the Western Pacific. The 45 minute sociolinguistically sensitive recordings are drawn from a corpus of old and young, with varying levels of education and occupations, and off-island experiences. In the paper I analyse two variables. The first variable is the realisation of /h/, often subject to deletion in both L1 and L2 varieties of English. Such occurrences are commonly associated with Cockney English, but also found in Caribbean English and the postcolonial English of Australia. For example:  Male, 31: yeah I build their house their local huts and they pay me /h/ deletion is frequent in Kosraean English, but, perhaps expectedly, occurs slightly less among people with higher contact with American English, through having spent longer periods off island. The second feature under scrutiny is the variable epenthesis of [h] to provide a consonantal onset to vowel-initial syllables.  Male, 31: that guy is really hold now This practice is also found beyond Kosraean English. Previous studies find h-epenthesis arising in L1 varieties including Newfoundland and Tristan de Cunha English, while similar manifestations are identified in Francophone L2 learners of English. My variationist statistical analysis has shown [h] insertion:  to disproportionately occur intervocalically;  to be constrained by both speaker gender and age: older males are much more likely to epenthesis [h] in their speech;  to be more likely in the onset of stressed as opposed to unstressed syllables. In light of the findings of my analysis, I consider the relationship between h-deletion and h-epenthesis, the plausibility of hypercorrection as a motivation for the variation, and the potential influence of the substrate language, alongside sociolinguistic factors such as attitudes towards the US based on mobility. The analysis sheds light on the extent to which different varieties share this characteristic and the comparability of them in terms of linguistic constraints and attributes. Clarke, S. (2010). Newfoundland and Labrador English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Hackert, S. (2004). Urban Bahamian Creole: System and Variation. Varieties of English Around the World G32. Amsterdam: Benjamins Milroy, J. (1983). On the Sociolinguistic History of H-dropping in English in Current topics in English historical linguistics: Odense UP

English and French causal connectives in contrast

Discourse connectives are often said to be language specific, and therefore not easily paired with a translation equivalent in a target language. However, few studies have assessed the magnitude and the causes of these divergences. In this paper, we provide an overview of the similarities and discrepancies between causal connectives in two typologically related languages: English and French. We first discuss two criteria used in the literature to account for these differences: the notion of domains of use and the information status of the cause segment. We then test the validity of these criteria through an empirical contrastive study of causal connectives in English and French, performed on a bidirectional corpus. Our results indicate that French and English connectives have only partially overlapping profiles and that translation equivalents are adequately predicted by these two criteria.

Multigrade teaching in primary education as a promising pedagogy for teacher education in Austria and Finland

This chapter focuses on teaching practices used in multigrade classes and the importance of them being incorporated in teacher education as promising pedagogies for future use. Multigrade classes - defined as classes in which two or more grades are taught together - are common worldwide. Hence, there is a need for teacher candidates to become familiar with how to teach in split grade classrooms. However, research on multigrade teaching as well as its development in teacher education studies has been neglected, even though multigrade teachers need special skills to organize instruction in their heterogeneous classrooms. We argue that in successful multigrade teaching practices, the heterogeneity of students is taken into account and cultivated. Based on content analysis of teacher interviews conducted in Austrian and Finnish primary schools, we recommend teaching practices such as spiral curricula, working plans, and peer learning as promising teacher education pedagogies for future multigrade class teaching. We also suggest that the professional skills required in high-quality teaching practices in multigrade teaching should be further studied by researchers and educators.

Vocation in the insertion of the university student and the graduate

The work plan aims at deepening the analysis of the theoretic assumptions which support the practice in Vocational Guidance: analyzing the incidence of endogenous and exogenous factors both in the election and studying of a particular course of study and in the occupational resolution of the graduate. This analysis enables the revision and the new theoretic conceptualization which is afterwards transferred to the course, and to different groups and provincial institutions where the practice of Vocational Guidance occurs, as well as to other schools in the Northwest provinces of Argentina. Semiotic analysis, statistical elaboration and the research-action approach which, while surveying data renders a service to the milieu, provide the base for the project. Said project focuses on the following individuals: 1) freshmen, who offer us the following aspects to be considered: a) factors which either favor or hinder the insertion of the students attending the first years of the course; b) the conditions making up the learning situation in each subject, from the teaching point of view; c) the influence of institutional dimension in the insertion process; 2) graduands: the characteristics of the situation following graduation from University, those of the labor field and the different ways of gaining access to it are investigated. This analysis is carried out in the courses of study of Psychology and English (education of Professionals in English and English for Professionals).

Vocation in the insertion of the university student and the graduate

The work plan aims at deepening the analysis of the theoretic assumptions which support the practice in Vocational Guidance: analyzing the incidence of endogenous and exogenous factors both in the election and studying of a particular course of study and in the occupational resolution of the graduate. This analysis enables the revision and the new theoretic conceptualization which is afterwards transferred to the course, and to different groups and provincial institutions where the practice of Vocational Guidance occurs, as well as to other schools in the Northwest provinces of Argentina. Semiotic analysis, statistical elaboration and the research-action approach which, while surveying data renders a service to the milieu, provide the base for the project. Said project focuses on the following individuals: 1) freshmen, who offer us the following aspects to be considered: a) factors which either favor or hinder the insertion of the students attending the first years of the course; b) the conditions making up the learning situation in each subject, from the teaching point of view; c) the influence of institutional dimension in the insertion process; 2) graduands: the characteristics of the situation following graduation from University, those of the labor field and the different ways of gaining access to it are investigated. This analysis is carried out in the courses of study of Psychology and English (education of Professionals in English and English for Professionals).

Vocation in the insertion of the university student and the graduate

The work plan aims at deepening the analysis of the theoretic assumptions which support the practice in Vocational Guidance: analyzing the incidence of endogenous and exogenous factors both in the election and studying of a particular course of study and in the occupational resolution of the graduate. This analysis enables the revision and the new theoretic conceptualization which is afterwards transferred to the course, and to different groups and provincial institutions where the practice of Vocational Guidance occurs, as well as to other schools in the Northwest provinces of Argentina. Semiotic analysis, statistical elaboration and the research-action approach which, while surveying data renders a service to the milieu, provide the base for the project. Said project focuses on the following individuals: 1) freshmen, who offer us the following aspects to be considered: a) factors which either favor or hinder the insertion of the students attending the first years of the course; b) the conditions making up the learning situation in each subject, from the teaching point of view; c) the influence of institutional dimension in the insertion process; 2) graduands: the characteristics of the situation following graduation from University, those of the labor field and the different ways of gaining access to it are investigated. This analysis is carried out in the courses of study of Psychology and English (education of Professionals in English and English for Professionals).

Enzyme activity, body measures and heart mass of Sepia officinalis sampled in the English Channel and Adriatic Sea

In the eurythermal cuttlefish Sepia officinalis, performance depends on hearts that ensure systemic oxygen supply over a broad range of temperatures. We therefore aimed to identify adjustments in energetic cardiac capacity and underlying mitochondrial function supporting thermal acclimation and adaptation that could be crucial for the cuttlefish's competitive success in variable environments. Two genetically distinct cuttlefish populations were acclimated to 11, 16 and 21°C. Subsequently, skinned and permeabilised heart fibres were used to assess mitochondrial functioning by means of high-resolution respirometry and a substrate-inhibitor protocol, followed by measurements of cardiac citrate synthase and cytosolic enzyme activities. Temperate English Channel cuttlefish had lower mitochondrial capacities but larger hearts than subtropical Adriatic cuttlefish. Warm acclimation to 21°C decreased mitochondrial complex I activity in Adriatic cuttlefish and increased complex IV activity in English Channel cuttlefish. However, compensation of mitochondrial capacities did not occur during cold acclimation to 11°C. In systemic hearts, the thermal sensitivity of mitochondrial substrate oxidation was high for proline and pyruvate but low for succinate. Oxygen efficiency of catabolism rose as temperature changed from 11 to 21°C via shifts to oxygen-conserving oxidation of proline and pyruvate and via reduced relative proton leak. The changes observed for substrate oxidation, mitochondrial complexes, relative proton leak and heart mass improve energetic efficiency and essentially seem to extend tolerance to high temperatures and reduce associated tissue hypoxia. We conclude that cuttlefish sustain cardiac performance and, thus, systemic oxygen delivery over short- and long-term changes of temperature and environmental conditions by multiple adjustments in cellular and mitochondrial energetics.