Assessing schematic knowledge of introductory probability theory

[Abstract]: The ability to identify schematic knowledge is an important goal for both assessment and instruction. In the current paper, schematic knowledge of statistical probability theory is explored from the declarative-procedural framework using multiple methods of assessment. A sample of 90 undergraduate introductory statistics students was required to classify 10 pairs of probability problems as similar or different; to identify whether 15 problems contained sufficient, irrelevant, or missing information (text-edit); and to solve 10 additional problems. The complexity of the schema on which the problems were based was also manipulated. Detailed analyses compared text-editing and solution accuracy as a function of text-editing category and schema complexity. Results showed that text-editing tends to be easier than solution and differentially sensitive to schema complexity. While text-editing and classification were correlated with solution, only text-editing problems with missing information uniquely predicted success. In light of previous research these results suggest that text-editing is suitable for supplementing the assessment of schematic knowledge in development

Rethinking the Foundational Critiques of Lawyers in Social Movements

This Article argues that the current moment invites reconsideration of these critiques. The rise of new social movements—from marriage equality to Black Lives Matter to the recent mobilization against President Trump’s immigration order—and the response of a new generation of movement lawyers eager to lend support has refocused attention on the appropriate role that lawyers should play in advancing progressive social change. Rather than fall back on familiar critical themes, the time is ripe for developing a new affirmative vision

Rethinking the Foundational Critiques of Lawyers in Social Movements

This Article argues that the current moment invites reconsideration of these critiques. The rise of new social movements—from marriage equality to Black Lives Matter to the recent mobilization against President Trump’s immigration order—and the response of a new generation of movement lawyers eager to lend support has refocused attention on the appropriate role that lawyers should play in advancing progressive social change. Rather than fall back on familiar critical themes, the time is ripe for developing a new affirmative vision

They (Don't) Care About Education: A Counternarrative on Black Male Students' Responses to Inequitable Schooling

Focus group interviews and systematic content analysis of 304 essays written by black male undergraduates refute the dominant message that black men do not care about education. On the contrary, these students aspire to earn doctoral degrees in education despite acute understanding that the education system is stacked against them. The analysis asks what compels that dedication

The Role of Motivational Persistence and Resilience Over the Well-being Changes Registered in Time

The present study investigates the interaction between personal characteristics that are considered nowadays strengths used to face difficult events or transition period. A number of 200 married or living together participants completed self-reports for common goals, motivational persistence, resilience and well-being. Results show that persistence and resilience do interact with each other at an individual level but also from a family concept perspective. Moreover, maintaining apositive outlook and family spirituality do have an impact over the intensity and direction of the relationship between long term purposes pursuing and recurrence of unattained purposes and changes in well-being registered in time. Resiliency as a personal characteristic and family resilience show good psychometric qualities for this study. Although some of the results are descriptive, in-depth analyses of direction and intensity of the relationships lead the finalconclusions to suggestions for further research and implications for psychological practice

From ‘motivational climate’ to ‘motivational atmosphere’: a review of research examining the social and environmental influences on athlete motivation in sport

This chapter is intended to provide a comprehensive review of the various theories of social and environmental factors that influence athletes’ motivation in sport. In order to achieve this, a short historical review is conducted of the various ways in which motivation has been studied over the past 100 years, culminating in the ‘social-cognitive’ approach that undergirds several of the current theories of motivation in sport. As an outcome of this brief review, the conceptualisation and measurement of motivation are discussed, with a focus on the manner in which motivation may be influenced by key social agents in sport, such as coaches, parents and peers. This discussion leads to a review of Deci & Ryan’s (2000) self-determination theory (SDT), which specifies that environments and contexts which support basic psychological needs (competence, relatedness and autonomy) will produce higher quality motivation than environments which frustrate of exacerbate these needs. The research establishing the ways in which key social agents can support these basic needs is then reviewed, and the review depicts a situation wherein SDT has precipitated a way of studying the socio-environmental influences on motivation that has become quite piecemeal and fragmented. Following this, the motivational climate approach (Ames, 1992) specified in achievement-goals theory (AGT – Nicholls, 1989) is also reviewed. This section reveals a body of research which is highly consistent in its methodology and findings. The following two sections reflect recent debates regarding the nature of achievement goals and the way they are conceptualised (e.g., approach-avoidance goals and social goals), and the implications of this for motivational climate research are discussed. This leads to a section reviewing the current issues and concerns in the study of social and environmental influences on athlete motivation. Finally, future research directions and ideas are proposed to facilitate, precipitate and guide further research into the social and environmental influences on athlete motivation in sport. Recent studies that have attempted to address these issues are reviewed and their contribution is assessed

What Can Artificial Intelligence Do for Scientific Realism?

The paper proposes a synthesis between human scientists and artificial representation learning models as a way of augmenting epistemic warrants of realist theories against various anti-realist attempts. Towards this end, the paper fleshes out unconceived alternatives not as a critique of scientific realism but rather a reinforcement, as it rejects the retrospective interpretations of scientific progress, which brought about the problem of alternatives in the first place. By utilising adversarial machine learning, the synthesis explores possibility spaces of available evidence for unconceived alternatives providing modal knowledge of what is possible therein. As a result, the epistemic warrant of synthesised realist theories should emerge bolstered as the underdetermination by available evidence gets reduced. While shifting the realist commitment away from theoretical artefacts towards modalities of the possibility spaces, the synthesis comes out as a kind of perspectival modelling

A Framing Analysis of Latinos in the Facebook Pages of News Organizations

This study of the Facebook pages of six legacy media organizations extended framing theory to apply to social media. In the study of 557 articles, four new frames and 10 new subframes were identified. The immigration frame and its two subframes, deportation and undocumented, dominated the coverage of Latinos during the period of the study. The politics frame was the second most dominant frame. This study updated the old data and found that no progress has been made, with the exception of a lesser use of the criminal frame. This improvement could be because the study included six months of the presidential campaign. However, Latinos were still framed as Others and as an oppressed community. This study concluded that there was no significant difference between the way legacy TV networks and legacy newspapers covered Latinos

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here?

Hope plays an important role in all individuals’ lives both today and in the future. While hope and hopelessness are important concepts and the subjects of much theorizing in psychology, theology, philosophy, political science, nursing, as well as in literature and the arts, it is absent from economics. This silence on hope is notable since hope is fundamentally at the centre of choice, especially intertemporal choice, which is at the centre of economic analysis. To place hope at the centre of intertemporal choice, it is important to clearly define what hope is and what it is not. What hope is not is constant. Hope is not optimism; hope is not unfounded dreams divorced from reality; hope is not irrational. I distil what hope is from its characterization in a number of different disciplines. A comparison of characterizations identifies a number of commonalities and common definitions. Using the derived set of definitions, I incorporate hope into economic analysis, consider what implications hope has for the modelling of choice and for economic behaviour, and discuss whether hope is implicitly imbedded in or has been abandoned, to our eternal cost, by economics.Hope, rational choice, goal orientation, expectations, faith

Integrating contested aspirations, processes and policy: development as hanging in, stepping up and stepping out

There are continuing disagreements regarding aspirations and processes in development and appropriate policies for promoting these. This paper proposes a dialogue around a conceptualisation of development as involving three complementary processes: ‘hanging in’, ‘stepping up’ and ‘stepping out’. It argues that these can describe different types of structural change operating at different scales and affecting national and sub-national societies and economies, different sectors within these economies, and people’s evolving livelihoods. The simplicity of this conceptualisation and its strong theoretical, empirical and experiential content make it a powerful framework both for inter-disciplinary, inter-sectoral, multi-scale analysis of dynamic development processes, and for structuring dialogue about contested aspirations, assumptions, modalities and constraints among development analysts and stakeholders with different interests and paradigms