Using socio-scientific issues as a learning context is an effective approach to achieve an important goal in science education, which is to enhance scientific literacy. It involves strengthening skills such as argumentation while also improving an understanding of the Nature of Science and imparting content knowledge. The present study evaluates the impact of a web-based educational instrument consisting of a unique combination of features designed to promote students’ development of skills and knowledge as well as to address the challenges faced by teachers in teaching socio-scientific issues. Participants included 423 students in secondary education. Students in the experimental condition received a three-lesson intervention with the educational instrument, and students in the control condition followed their regular science lessons. Findings indicated that the instrument proves effective in fostering learning outcomes while teachers benefit from the shift of managing classroom discussion to individual guidance of students. Applying the educational instrument in the classroom demonstrates promise in improving student engagement and their comprehension of socio-scientific issues.
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A goal of science education is for students to develop scientific literacy. Scientific literacy involves the acquisition of factual scientific knowledge and the ability to assess the credibility of scientific assertation. Furthermore, students should be able to include ethical considerations. Realising this goal is complicated because it requires the development of argumentation skills, content knowledge, and an understanding of Nature of Science. Teachers struggle to apply effective strategies in the classroom. Few studies have shed light on usable, effective strategies. Therefore, the research goal is to identify features that encourage students to explore socio-scientific issues. To stimulate the development of scientific literary and support teachers, a web-based educational instrument was designed. In this study, the effects and influences of its features in the context of socio-scientific issues are investigated. The instrument provides a sequence of concept cartoons alternated with an interactive diagram. The instrument is deployed in 14 classrooms in both primary and secondary schools. In this paper, we present the educational instrument and report on its practical implementation and its constituent features. The results indicate that students show active involvement during their interaction with the instrument and reveal both the merits and challenges regarding the various features.
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We assess the incidence of numeracy skills mismatch in five countries: Belgium, Chile, Italy, Netherlands, and the United States of America. To do this, we make use of a new approach (Brun-Schamme & Rey, 2021), namely by identifying someone as being mismatched if the score for numeracy skills is outside the interval [median – SD , median + SD]. We make use of the PIAAC dataset, collected by the OECD, a survey that measures adults’ proficiency in numeracy among other type of skills. We find that 14% of the workers are over-skilled, whereas 16% are under-skilled. Being over-skilled is more likely for men, younger age-groups, having a high level of education, using numeracy skills often at work, and having studied science, mathematics, and engineering.
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Mentor teachers need a versatile supervisory skills repertoire. Besides taking the prevalent role of daily advisor and instructor, mentor teachers should also be able to stimulate reflection in student teachers. Video recordings were analyzed of 60 mentoring dialogues, both before and after a mentor teacher training aiming at developing the encourager role. Mentor teachers' repertoires of supervisory skills were found to consist of an average of seven supervisory skills. After training, a shift was observed in the frequencies and duration with which supervisory skills were used. Although considerable inter-individual variability existed between mentor teachers, training positively affected the use of supervisory skills for stimulating reflection in student teachers.
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Universal school-based social-emotional learning (SEL) programs target several social-emotional skills assuming a relationship between the skills and psychosocial health outcomes. However, greater insight into the relationship is required to clarify the skills that are most crucial to address. It will support the development and refinement of SEL programs. This study investigated (1) the relationship among the social-emotional skills, (2) the association between the skills and psychosocial health variables, and (3) the mediating effect of the skills on psychosocial variables. Results: There was a high degree of overlap between the five skills (self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making). The skills were univariately associated with emotional-behavioral difficulties and prosocial behavior. In the multivariate model, self-management most strongly correlated with emotional-behavioral difficulties and mediated the relationship between self-awareness and emotional-behavioral difficulties. Social awareness showed the highest correlation with prosocial behavior and mediated the relationship between prosocial behavior and three other skills: self-awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.
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In this critical review article, Isaac and Platenkamp present the case that tourism is not isolated from the world's dramatic situations in which humanity is at stake. Their argument principally centers on the devastating historical and contemporary conflict in Palestine and its relations with tourism. In this article, Isaac and Platenkamp maintain that (in relation to current happenings in Palestine) ethical and moral argumentation would be beside the point, and might even be a "cynical" exercise. They suggest that the conflict there is imbued with many kinds of normative argumentation. It is their view that positions need to be taken with regard to "Palestine," as in all extreme circumstances, where at the same time respect for the other positions becomes crucial. In this critical review article, therefore, Arendt's idea of "agora" will be introduced, in order to create a space where these "respectful positions" can be taken in a public arena and in order to contribute to a possible peaceful development. To Isaac and Platenkamp, tourism could enable this sort of "peaceful development" and could promote or help empower conditions where violence would be excluded, and where different sorts of "argumentation" could be generated and heard about these so-called "controversial spaces." In these respects, they maintain that tourism is a challenging field, because it has (itself) many faces-and they argue that such scenarios for "tourism" indeed could apply/should be applied for many controversial other spaces like Nepal and Burma (for instance) where (as in Palestine) the original population has no say in any economic development, such as that of tourism. But Isaac and Platenkamp recognize that (even in Burma) resistance against injustice can never be destroyed. Their own principal focus remains targeted upon Palestine, though. There, tourism is known to have "an incredibly high potential," despite the fact that (in their view) a strong and powerful "Israeli self" indeed controls the "humiliated Palestinian other." Thus, to our two reviewers in the Netherlands, therefore, tourism seems to be a communicative activity that might enable the implementation of Arendt's idea of and about "the agora." Isaac and Platenkamp suggest that there is no violence in the agora, itself, because only the force of argumentation rules. there.
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In this study, a data feedback program to improve teachers’ science and technology (S&T) teaching skills was designed and tested. The aim was to understand whether and how the four design principles underlying this program stimulated the intended teacher support. We examined how teachers in different phases of their career applied and experienced the employed design principles’ key aspects. Eight in-service teachers and eight pre-service teachers attended the data feedback program and kept a logbook in the meantime. Group interviews were held afterwards. Findings show that applying the four employed design principles’ key aspects did support and stimulate in- and pre-service teachers in carrying out data feedback for improving their S&T teaching. However, some key aspects were not applied and/or experienced as intended by all attending teachers. The findings provide possible implications for the development and implementation of professional development programs to support in - and pre-service teachers’ S&T teaching using data feedback.
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This study contributes to the employability skills debate by investigating how students’ self-perceived 21st century skills relate to the self-perceived fit between their higher education curriculum and their future labor market for a sustainable entry to this labor market. Survey data from 4670 fourth-year students over a period of four years were analyzed. Furthermore, out of this group, 83 students were monitored longitudinally over their full educational student careers. Results showed a positive relationship between students’ self-perceived 21st century skills and their self-perceived “education-future labor market fit”. Among more recent cohorts, a significant improvement in their self-perceived 21st century skills was found. Overall, this study indicated that in order to deliver “employable” graduates, students need to be thoroughly trained in 21st century skills, and their development should be retained and expanded. This is one of the few studies that uses a vast amount of both cross-sectional and longitudinal data on skills and labor market perspectives among new graduates.
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This paper examines how the learning environment in primary education can be enhanced by stimulating the use of innovative ICT applications. In particular, this discussion focuses on mind tools as a means of leveraging ICT for the development of cognitive skills. The stimulating effect of mind tools on the thinking skills and thinking attitudes of students is examined. The various types of mind tools and a number of specific examples are closely examined. We consider how mind tools can contribute to the establishment of an ICT-rich learning environment within the domain of technology education in primary schools. We illustrate two specific applications of such mind tools and discuss how these contribute to the development of thinking skills.
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BACKGROUND: This paper reports a study about the effect of knowledge sources, such as handbooks, an assessment format and a predefined record structure for diagnostic documentation, as well as the influence of knowledge, disposition toward critical thinking and reasoning skills, on the accuracy of nursing diagnoses.Knowledge sources can support nurses in deriving diagnoses. A nurse's disposition toward critical thinking and reasoning skills is also thought to influence the accuracy of his or her nursing diagnoses.METHOD: A randomised factorial design was used in 2008-2009 to determine the effect of knowledge sources. We used the following instruments to assess the influence of ready knowledge, disposition, and reasoning skills on the accuracy of diagnoses: (1) a knowledge inventory, (2) the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory, and (3) the Health Science Reasoning Test. Nurses (n = 249) were randomly assigned to one of four factorial groups, and were instructed to derive diagnoses based on an assessment interview with a simulated patient/actor.RESULTS: The use of a predefined record structure resulted in a significantly higher accuracy of nursing diagnoses. A regression analysis reveals that almost half of the variance in the accuracy of diagnoses is explained by the use of a predefined record structure, a nurse's age and the reasoning skills of `deduction' and `analysis'.CONCLUSIONS: Improving nurses' dispositions toward critical thinking and reasoning skills, and the use of a predefined record structure, improves accuracy of nursing diagnoses.
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