We report a case study of two highly qualified science teachers as they implemented laptop computers in their Years 9 and 10 science classes at the beginning of the 'Digital Education Revolution,' ...Australia's national one-to-one laptop program initiated in 2009. When a largescale investment is made in a significant educational change, it is important to consider teachers perspectives and responses to such change and we draw from sociocultural perspectives for our analysis. Through interviews and classroom observations, our interpretive analysis identified four key tensions and contradictions. These include the following: (1) barriers to innovative science teaching; (2) maintaining classroom and school connectivity; (3) teacher versus student expectations; and (4) changes to classroom management. Analysis leads to implications for the future of this and similar programs. The study shows that while these two teachers were committed to developing and delivering technology-rich science lessons, there were many factors that challenge how the implementation progressed. The findings from this study have implications for the continued engagement of teachers in this and other jurisdictions considering the introduction of one-to-one laptop programs.
All teachers in Australia must now achieve and maintain certification through mandatory accreditation processes that include specified professional learning hours. While key policies that outline ...teacher professional learning in Australia and New South Wales make no specific reference to a role for universities, this discussion paper proposes that the new teacher accreditation landscape provides opportunities for universities to work collaboratively with education systems to co-design and deliver contextually relevant teacher professional learning, support teachers-as-researchers and support schools to become learning communities. This collaboration would advance the policy agenda inherent in the accreditation processes by developing the intended culture of professional learning among teachers, education systems and universities that goes beyond mandated professional learning hours. We review the Australian policy context from a systems-thinking perspective and argue that university Schools and Faculties of Education (called SOE throughout this paper) work across multiple levels in education systems and are thus uniquely positioned to co-design and deliver relevant and contextually significant learning opportunities that foster teacher professional learning and school improvement.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
A thorough understanding of human physiology and anatomy are pivotal in the preparation of competent nursing students for clinical practice. However, anatomy and physiology are among the most ...conceptually perplexing subjects that nursing students will encounter throughout the duration of their course. Research in other science-based contexts has demonstrated a positive relationship between student-generated digital media and learning scientific concepts. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore nursing students' experience in learning science concepts through a formative assessment task which was based on making a ‘digital explanation’. Our work was guided by semiotic theory and the study design was a mixed method study where 428 first-year nursing students across five campuses volunteered to complete self-reported surveys during the first and last week of the academic session. Students who consented for an interview were invited to attend one of five focus groups. More than half of the participating cohort had prior experience with science (66%), but only 24% had previous experience with making digital media. After completion of the assessment task, two-thirds of the students strongly agreed or agreed that they learned more about science and fewer students agreed that searching for scientific knowledge could be boring. The qualitative findings confirmed the presence of learning about science and four themes were identified: ‘learning about science’, ‘linking knowledge to practice’, ‘using technology’, and ‘making it real’. A key point was that the students began to see connections between science knowledge and nursing practice. But many students were challenged by the technology and the fact that the task was ungraded. Although the digital explanation was an overall positive experience for the nursing students, there is a need for a flexible and graded assessment task to achieve its potential benefits as a teaching and learning task in nursing. We conclude that additional intervention studies are warranted.
•Understanding the human body and its functions are pivotal for preparing competent nursing students for clinical practice.•Using student- generated digital explanations has been successful in learning science among students from different disciplines.•Student-generated digital explanations can assist the nursing students to better connect the science knowledge into nursing practice.
Jacques-Louis David's famous portrait, The Death of Marat (La Mort de Marat, 1793), garners Charlotte Corday's assassination of Jean-Paul Marat attention in art history. Corday contributed to her own ...dramatization by writing an "Address to the French" that evoked Brutus from the third act of Voltaire's tragedy The Death of Caesar (La Mort de Cesar, 1733), and by citing in a letter to her father, published in Parisian and English papers, a verse from her great-great grandfather, the playwright Pierre Corneille (1606-84).2 After Corday's decapitation on the guillotine, the executioner slapped her severed head, which purportedly blushed.
The teaching of science, especially at pre-college and teacher education levels has undergone tremendous transformation over the years: from teacher-centred transmission to student-centred approaches ...rooted in constructivism. Whereas constructivism has been charged with all manner of shortfalls, it still can be of benefit to the way physics instructions are organized and implemented. In this paper, the importance of learners' prior knowledge in understanding physics concepts is discussed. This study comprised a case of two cohorts of physics teacher candidates who had strong content knowledge of physics, but lacked pedagogical knowledge as demonstrated by their struggles to implement appropriate grade-level strategies in physics problem solving tasks (which are amenable to a variety of mathematical tool-choices). The case cohorts we used as exemplars to underscore the importance of learners' prior mathematical knowledge. Further, we focus on implications for pre-service teacher preparation, and the effects mathematical tool-choice can bear on students' conceptions. (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)
ABSTRACT
Brands are marketing tools that create mental representations in the minds of consumers about products, services, and organizations. Brands create schema that help consumers decide whether ...to initiate or continue use of a product or service. Health branding determines behavioral choice by building consumer relationships and identification with health behaviors and their benefits. Health branding can be measured by the associations individuals form with health behaviors. In 2008, Evans and colleagues systematically reviewed the literature on health brands, reported on branded health messages and campaigns worldwide, and examined specific branding strategies in multiple subject areas. This paper extends that review. We replicated the comprehensive online literature search strategy from 2008. We screened a total of 311 articles and included 130 for full-text review. This included both articles from the 2008 review and new articles. After excluding those new articles that did not meet full-text inclusion criteria, we reviewed 69 in total. Of these, 32 were new articles since the 2008 review. Branded health campaigns cover most major domains of public health and appear worldwide. Since 2008, we observed improvement in evaluation, application of theory, and description of campaign strategies in published work. We recommend enhanced education of public health practitioners and researchers on the use and evaluation of branding.
This study examined and compared students’ understanding of nature of science (NOS) with 521 Grade 8 Canadian and Korean students using a mixed methods approach. The concepts of NOS were measured ...using a survey that had both quantitative and qualitative elements. Descriptive statistics and one-way multivariate analysis of variances examined the quantitative data while a conceptually clustered matrix classified the open-ended responses. The country effect could explain 3–12 % of the variances of subjectivity, empirical testability and diverse methods, but it was not significant for the concepts of tentativeness and socio-cultural embeddedness of science. The open-ended responses showed that students believed scientific theories change due to errors or discoveries. Students regarded empirical evidence as undeniable and objective although they acknowledged experiments depend on theories or scientists’ knowledge. The open responses revealed that national situations and curriculum content affected their views. For our future democratic citizens to gain scientific literacy, science curricula should include currently acknowledged NOS concepts and should be situated within societal and cultural perspectives.
The aim of this study was to gather university student perspectives on a new type of assessment task requesting them to create "blended media". Blended media is a new form of student-generated ...multimedia whereby students devise a narration or voiceover to explain a science concept complemented by any combination of visuals such as video, animation or still images that are original or created by others to enhance the explanation. In the assessment task all the students successfully made a blended media product in their own time using their own technology and only requiring one session of media instruction. Surprisingly, the three case students who volunteered to be interviewed stated that they had never made a media product for a science assignment before and enjoyed creating this new form of assignment because they found it engaging and interesting. It also required them to represent content in new ways. Blended media is an innovative way for students to make digital media that engages them with content and as an assessment task could be used in any subject.
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