Clinical auditory alarms are often found in hospital wards and operating rooms. In these environments, regular daily tasks can result in having a multitude of concurrent sounds (from staff and ...patients, building systems, carts, cleaning devices, and importantly, patient monitoring devices) which easily amount to a prevalent cacophony. The negative impact of this soundscape on staff and patients' health and well-being, as well as in their performance, demand for accordingly designed sound alarms. The recently updated IEC60601-1-8 standard, in guidance for medical equipment auditory alarms, proposed a set of pointers to distinctly convey medium or high levels of priority (urgency). However, conveying priority without compromising other features, such as ease of learnability and detectability, is an ongoing challenge. Electroencephalography, a non-invasive technique for measuring the brain response to a given stimulus, suggests that certain Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) components such as the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and P3a may be the key to uncovering how sounds are processed at the pre-attentional level and how they may capture our attention. In this study, the brain dynamics in response to the priority pulses of the updated IEC60601-1-8 standard was studied via ERPs (MMN and P3a), for a soundscape characterised by the repetition of a sound (generic SpO2 "beep"), usually present in operating and recovery rooms. Additional behavioural experiments assessed the behavioural response to these priority pulses. Results showed that the Medium Priority pulse elicits a larger MMN and P3a peak amplitude when compared to the High Priority pulse. This suggests that, at least for the applied soundscape, the Medium Priority pulse is more easily detected and attended at the neural level. Behavioural data supports this indication, showing significantly shorter reaction times for the Medium Priority pulse. The results pose the possibility that priority pointers of the updated IEC60601-1-8 standard may not be successfully conveying their intended priority levels, which may not only be due to design properties but also to the soundscape in which these clinical alarms are deployed. This study highlights the need for intervention in both hospital soundscapes and auditory alarm design settings.
This paper reports research work related to a wider study, aimed at developing a mobile app for Science Education in primary-school. Several studies reveal that Science Education can be improved by ...using technology, namely educational software. However, to promote a structured use of technology, innovative learning approaches must be designed for educational software. This paper aims to answer how the interaction between students and a mobile app for Science Education can promote students’ scientific competences development and self-regulated learning. To achieve this, a learning approach was designed, combining the Universal Design for Learning principles, Inquiry-Based Science Education and the BSCS 5E – teaching model for Science Education designed by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, which results in the acronym of the model. The 5E is related to each phase of the model: Engagement; Exploration; Explanation; Elaboration; Evaluation. The proposed was based on a grounded, participatory, and user-centred approach, crossing literature contributions with data collected among primary-school teachers through the application of a questionnaire (n = 118). Data collected allowed deductions about the expected adequacy of the learning approach, according to Nieveen’s criteria for high quality educational interventions. This adequacy was revealed through the teachers’ conceptions about the potential impact of the conceptualized mobile app (i) to provide a comprehensive and practical Science Education learning; and (ii) to enhance students’ scientific competences development and self-regulated learning. The paper aims to contribute to the design of an innovative learning approach in Science Education and to share it with other researchers since it can be expanded to other educational software.
The development of critical thinking in higher education is fundamental, preparing students to think well, find explanations, make decisions and solve problems. Given the importance of its promotion, ...its assessment is crucial, since the two are inseparable. Moreover, the number of instruments that are validated to assess critical thinking in the Portuguese language and culture are scarce. We present the validation psychometric study of the PENCRISAL test (short version) to the Portuguese language, a critical thinking assessment test for higher education students, designed and validated in Spain (full and short version), which presents adequate reliability and validity psychometric characteristics to assess key-dimensions of critical thinking. A sample of 225 Portuguese higher education students from three universities (two public and one private) performed a reduced version of the PANCRISAL test. The results obtained allowed replicating the Spanish reduced version in Portugal (only changing one of the six items), and the confirmatory factorial analysis permits to identify two factors intercorrelated, legitimizing the combination of the six items in a global score. This short version can be used as a screening test, and its potential is pointed out to assess students critical thinking to support teaching and research in higher education.
Science education become one prioritie of modern societies, with the purpose of forming scientifically literate youth and adults. They play an active role in solving the problems existing in society, ...making critical and informed decisions. In this paper we discuss the need for scientifically literate citizens and the relevance of practical work as a key strategy for science learning in the early years. We'll describe the investigative process which supported in real-life educational contexts of a set of Didactic Strategies. We'll focus on the results of the 'Materials Lotto' detailing the results in science teaching and learning in kindergarten. The results show that children mobilize a wide array of skills and attitudes/beliefs, showing scientific knowledge at different degrees of complexity. We concluded that practical work in science education in the early years is an effective strategy for science teaching and learning, as groundwork for future science literacy of kindergarten children.
Nowadays, both on-line and "off-line" lives seem to be bound to the terms of democratization of information. While this brings clear advantages, does free and fast access to plenty of information ...entail that individuals are better informed and well-equipped to think reasonably, make decisions, and solve problems? In a time apparently governed by fraudulent decision-makers, floppy media, fake news, and frantic information, it is essential to know how to think critically. Critical thinking is crucial along schooling, in the world of work, in personal everyday life, and in life as members of a society. Nonetheless, critical thinking is not innate and effortless; it must be developed and mobilized with deliberation in a systematic way. Researchers and international agencies agree that it is critical to have critical thinking to face present-futurist challenges such as the United Nation's 17 Sustainable Development Goals. But before individuals learn to become critical thinkers, teachers themselves need teacher education opportunities to learn how to use their critical thinking abilities, and how to spark students' critical thinking potential and promote it. Here, the role played by education in developing critical thinking is stressed, and specific teaching-learning strategies that have shown to be effective are identified.
STEM—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—and STEM literacy have emerged as one (of many) concerted efforts aiming to provide the different competences required for future generations to ...adapt to an evolving world. Despite lacking a comprehensive framework for STEM, this concept has been studied under different perspectives, one of which is the digital competences of teachers. This study focuses on the digital competence and proficiency of 20,935 teachers, distributed across the following subjects: mathematics and natural sciences, physics and chemistry, biology and geology, and mathematics. It uses DigCompEdu as a conceptual framework to describe teachers’ use of digital technologies to teach STEM subjects. The results show that biology and geology teachers achieved significantly higher digital proficiency scores when compared to teachers from the other three subjects. Physics and chemistry teachers also scores significantly higher than mathematics and natural sciences teachers. The results show the existence of significant positive correlations among all competence areas for the four STEM subjects. In conclusion, Portuguese teachers presented different levels of digital competence and perceived themselves as differently prepared for integrating digital technologies. A potential implication of this study is the need for teacher education about digital competences and a focus on producing teachers capable of dealing with STEM in their future classroom teaching and learning.
Critical Thinking is a transversal skill needed to face current and future challenges, longed for in school, work, and life. Paradoxically, such relevance does not always translate into tangible ...efforts to measure and promote it. We present the cross-cultural translation, adaptation, and validation process of Critical Thinking Mindset Self-Rating Form to Portuguese university students. This study followed three phases: translation and adaptation of the form to Portuguese; a pilot study using the think-aloud technique, to assure the form's comprehensibility and accuracy; a second pilot study to validate that preliminary version. According to results, the translation showed validity and reliability. In the long-run, this version may be used by teachers as a formative assessment tool, to show university students what is their general disposition towards thinking critically and, from there, to create opportunities for reflection and transformation, thus contributing to the realization of Critical Thinking in the classroom and in campus.
Este trabalho tem como objetivo investigar a compreensão de licenciandos de uma disciplina de Estágio Supervisionado em Química acerca da abordagem com enfoque CTS/PC, implementada por um programa de ...formação inicial voltado ao ensino CTS/PC aos estudantes, para seus planejamentos e intervenções didáticas. Para tanto, foi realizada a análise de portfólios produzidos por 12 licenciandos matriculados em uma disciplina de Estágio Supervisionado II no ano letivo de 2019. Os dados foram analisados por meio do Software WebQDA, sendo utilizada a análise de conteúdo, aparecendo como emergentes três categorias: Compreensão de CTS; Compreensão de CTS/PC; e Aprendizagem e desenvolvimento da abordagem CTS. Os resultados apontaram que os licenciandos compreendem a importância de tais abordagens e do curso para sua formação, mas acabam muitas vezes apresentando ideias simplistas sobre elas, o que intensifica a importância de cursos de formação que promovam a compreensão das abordagens CTS/PC.
The research work reported in this article is part of a wider study aimed at developing a mobile application (app) for Science Education in primary school. For that, we designed a participatory ...framework proposal nested within the larger framework of Educational Design Research. This framework emerged from the authors’ need to organise the different phases of the mobile apps development and to arrange the expected products that arise from them. Our framework suggests a grounded, participatory and user-centred approach, relating literature contributions with data collected among future end-users. In this study, we exemplify the implementation of the proposed framework by presenting the outcomes of a specific moment of the preliminary research: students’ stories and drawing analysis, to define the mobile app concept. For that, we (1) present and describe the participatory framework proposal, (2) identify and characterise the research method adopted to define the mobile app concept, (3) reveal and analyse data collected from the implementation of a creative writing and drawing activity performed by fourth grade primary-school students, and (4) describe the implications of data analysis in the mobile app concept definition. Our intention is to share with other educational researchers an approach that can be used to develop educational mobile apps grounded on future end-users’ perceptions and ideas. We also aim to contribute to deepen the Educational Design Research apps by proposing and exemplifying the implementation of a framework that brings together researchers, students, teachers and experts.
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is an approach used in different countries for learning foreign languages (FL) during non-language classes. Studies suggest that teaching methodologies ...aware of (verbal) language--such as CLIL--and other science modes (operational, symbolic, visual, etc.) can be beneficial for learning science. Within this PhD research, we aimed to understand science education practices and the influence of English (as a FL) on CLIL science teaching/learning. We designed a qualitative case study in a Portuguese school and gathered information through different methods. We found that, because English is present, a science teacher may become more open to the students' (language) learning difficulties and to changing strategies/resources. Besides promoting FL proficiency, CLIL could represent a language-aware approach for enhancing science teaching/learning. This contributes to studies on CLIL and science education with a language focus and opens a reflection on teacher practices/education for the learning of science.
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