Theoretically framed within Social Cognitive Career Theory emphasising on the construct of situational interest, this study explores the impact of career-based scenarios, as an instructional ...approach, on students' interest in science and understandings of STEM careers. This case study involved 16 students aged 13-15 years old, who participated in a classroom intervention consisting of five sessions in a period of two years. Data were collected through a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews administered repeatedly after each session. The questionnaire data were analysed with the use of descriptive statistics and the interview data were analysed through content analysis. The findings illustrate that opportunities for active engagement in scientific practices and interactions with experts were important conditions for career-based scenarios to succeed in enhancing students' situational interest and understandings of STEM careers. These findings hold important implications for educational practice as they offer insights into career-oriented curriculum design for the purpose of enhancing student interest in science as well as understandings of STEM careers.
Context personalization-the incorporation of students' out-of-school interests into learning tasks-has recently been shown to positively affect students' situational interest and their performance ...and learning in mathematics. However, few studies have shown effects on both interest and achievement, drawing into question whether context personalization interventions can achieve both ends. The effects of personalization are theorized to result from activation of students' prior knowledge of personal interests and generation of situational interest in math tasks, though theorists have begun to question whether situational interest serves as a mechanism by which learning outcomes are achieved. This experimental study examines whether personalizing 4 units of algebra problems that high school students (N = 150) solve in an intelligent tutoring system could improve their performance in units (i.e., accuracy and learning efficiency) and on classroom exams, whether adolescents who solved personalized problems would report greater situational interest in units (and later, individual interest in math) than peers who solved standard problems, and whether paths through situational interest would contribute to effects of personalization on outcomes. High school students in the personalization condition reported greater triggered situational interest in experimental units, and triggered interest predicted in-tutor outcomes (accuracy, learning efficiency). A total effect of personalization was also observed on classroom exam performance and individual interest in mathematics. Implications for theories of interest and context personalization are discussed, as are implications for math instruction and design of personalized learning environments.
Educational Impact and Implications Statement
Context personalization refers to an instructional design strategy that incorporates students' out-of-school interests into learning tasks like math problems. Recent research has shown that personalization positively affects students' situational interest and their performance and learning in math, but students seldom obtain both outcomes. This study confirmed that personalizing 4 units of algebra story problems to students' out-of-school interests was sufficient to increase their situational interest in the task and to improve the efficiency with which they solved problems within the intelligent tutoring system. Months later, those who solved personalized problems also reported greater interest in mathematics and scored higher on a classroom math test than a control group. These results extend evidence for the benefits of personalization and confirm that personalizing problems to incorporate student interests at an appropriate depth and specificity can simultaneously produce effects on math interest and learning.
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The Development of the STEM Career Interest Survey (STEM-CIS) Kier, Meredith W.; Blanchard, Margaret R.; Osborne, Jason W. ...
Research in science education (Australasian Science Education Research Association),
06/2014, Volume:
44, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Internationally, efforts to increase student interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers have been on the rise. It is often the goal of such efforts that increased ...interest in STEM careers should stimulate economic growth and enhance innovation. Scientific and educational organisations recommend that efforts to interest students in STEM majors and careers begin at the middle school level, a time when students are developing their own interests and recognising their academic strengths. These factors have led scholars to call for instruments that effectively measure interest in STEM classes and careers, particularly for middle school students. In response, the authors leveraged the social cognitive career theory to develop a survey with subscales in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This manuscript details the six stages of development of the STEM Career Interest Survey. To investigate the instrument's reliability and psychometric properties, this 44-item survey was administered to over 1,000 middle school students (grades 6-8) who primarily were in rural, high-poverty districts in the southeastern United States. Confirmatory factor analyses indicate that the STEM-CIS is a strong, single factor instrument and also has four strong, discipline-specific subscales, which allow for the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subscales to be administered separately or in combination. This instrument should prove helpful in research, evaluation, and professional development to measure STEM career interest in secondary level students. Author abstract, ed
Recent research has re-emphasized the importance of vocational interests for understanding workplace attitudes and behavior. As a result, there is a renewed interest in the assessment of vocational ...interests in organizations. Numerous interest assessments have been developed over the past century, and they are now administered to millions of people throughout the world. Nevertheless, there is still work to be done, particularly as interest assessments are increasingly being used in organizational settings. This article reviews developments in interest assessments and discusses the implications of their use for both research and practice. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of examining vocational interests in organizational contexts and proposes future research directions.
With the goal of improving assessment of interests toward social and enterprising areas, we developed the Vertical Social Interest Scale (VSIS) by incorporating vertical differentiation between ...occupations in terms of authority and communication. Social and enterprising occupations, their complexity levels, and work activities were identified using the information in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and Occupational Information Network. Three studies (N = 515 total), two of which utilized students and one a working adult sample, were conducted to assess the factor structure and validity of VSIS. Construct validity was demonstrated using factor analyses and based on associations with traditional interest assessments and extraversion. Criterion-related validity was demonstrated based on associations with satisfaction with academic domain for the student sample and affective occupational commitment for the adult sample. Results support the validity of VSIS in predicting relevant vocational outcomes.
We tested whether a utility value intervention (via manipulated relevance) influenced interest and performance on a task and whether this intervention had different effects depending on an ...individual's performance expectations or prior performance. Interest was defined as triggered situational interest (i.e., affective and emotional task reactions) and maintained situational interest (i.e., inclination to engage in the task in the future). In 2 randomized experiments, 1 conducted in the laboratory and the other in a college classroom, utility value was manipulated through a writing task in which participants were asked to explain how the material they were learning (math or psychology) was relevant to their lives (or not). The intervention increased perceptions of utility value and interest, especially for students who were low in expected (laboratory) or actual (classroom) performance. Mediation analyses revealed that perceptions of utility value explained the effects of the intervention on interest and predicted performance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
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Offers a careful analysis of how Aristotle understands civil war, partisanship, distrust in government, disagreement, and competition, and explores ways in which these views are relevant to ...contemporary political theory.
"What happens when the defining moment of your life might be a figment of your imagination? How do you understand — and live with — definitive feelings of having been abused when the origin of those ...feelings won’t adhere to a singular event but are rather diffused across years of experience? In Bullied: The Story of an Abuse, Jonathan Alexander meditates on how, as a young man, he struggled with the realization that the story he’d been telling himself about being abused by a favorite uncle as a child might actually just have been a “story” — a story he told himself and others to justify both his lifelong struggle with anxiety and to explain his attraction to other men. Story though it was, Alexander maintains that some form of abuse did occur. In writing that is at turns reflective, analytic, and hallucinatory, Alexander traces what it means to suffer homophobic abuse when such is diffused across multiple actors and locales, implicating a family, a school, a culture, and a politics — as opposed to a singular individual who just happened to be the only openly gay man in young Alexander’s life. Along the way, Alexander reflects on Jussie Smollett, drug abuse, MAGA-capped boys, sadomasochism, Catholic priests, cruising, teaching young adult fiction about rape, and a host of other oddly but intimately related topics."
It was once common for pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers to treat doctors to lavish vacations or give them new cars; companies would do virtually anything to buy influence so that ...their medications or devices would be used in a doctor’s office or hospital. But with growing public scrutiny of kickbacks to doctors, the huge giveaways have disappeared. In Infiltrating Healthcare , Quinn Grundy shows that sales representatives are working instead behind the scenes. It is to nurses that these companies now market. Nurses, Grundy argues, are the perfect target for sales reps: their work is largely invisible and frequently undervalued, yet they wield a great deal of influence over treatment and purchasing decisions. Furthermore, there are no legal restrictions on marketing to most nurses. Grundy describes how, under the guise of education or product support, and through gifts and free samples, sales representatives influence nurses in the course of day-to-day clinical practice. Grundy argues that the very presence of sales reps in operating rooms, purchasing committee meetings, and patient care units blurs the boundaries between patient care and medical sales. Helpfully, she also describes ways that nurses can be aware of (and resistant to) their influence. Infiltrating Healthcare is a call to action to protect the clinical spaces where we are at our most vulnerable—and the decisions that take place there—from the pursuit of profit at any cost. This is a timely book that shines a light on a practice that often goes unseen, and which has tangible implications for healthcare policy and practice.
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