Socioscientific decision making in the science classroom: the effect of embedded metacognitive instructions on students' learning outcomes

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of cooperative training strategies to enhance students' socioscientific decision making as well as their metacognitive skills in the science classroom. Socioscientific decision making refers to both “describing socioscientific issues” as well as “developing and evaluating solutions” to socioscientific issues. We investigated two cooperative training strategies which differed with respect to embedded metacognitive instructions that were developed on the basis of the IMPROVE method. Participants were 360 senior high school students who studied either in a cooperative learning setting (COOP), a cooperative learning setting with embedded metacognitive questions (COOP+META), or a nontreatment control group. Results indicate that students in the two training conditions outperformed students in the control group on both processes of socioscientific decision making. However, students in the COOP+META condition did not outperform students in the COOP condition. With respect to students' learning outcomes on the regulation facet of metacognition, results indicate that all conditions improved over time. Students in the COOP+META condition exhibited highest mean scores at posttest measures, but again, results were not significant. Implications for integrating metacognitive instructions into science classrooms are discussed

Ratings and rankings: Voodoo or Science?

Composite indicators aggregate a set of variables using weights which are understood to reflect the variables' importance in the index. In this paper we propose to measure the importance of a given variable within existing composite indicators via Karl Pearson's `correlation ratio'; we call this measure `main effect'. Because socio-economic variables are heteroskedastic and correlated, (relative) nominal weights are hardly ever found to match (relative) main effects; we propose to summarize their discrepancy with a divergence measure. We further discuss to what extent the mapping from nominal weights to main effects can be inverted. This analysis is applied to five composite indicators, including the Human Development Index and two popular league tables of university performance. It is found that in many cases the declared importance of single indicators and their main effect are very different, and that the data correlation structure often prevents developers from obtaining the stated importance, even when modifying the nominal weights in the set of nonnegative numbers with unit sum.Comment: 28 pages, 7 figure

Leading improvement through the challenges and opportunities in school and across schools

"This booklet is the fifth in a series of professional development materials entitled ‘Leading Improvement’. It is intended to inform ongoing discussions between the National Strategies, local authorities, School Improvement Partners (SIPS) and headteachers which focus on the leadership of improvement at national, local and school level... This booklet focuses on the methods of managing learning across a school which have proved successful, transferable and which have secured the sustained improvements in schools in recent years." - pages 3-4. Comprises booklet and 8 case studies

Microfinancing for Poverty Reduction and Economic Development; a Case for Nigeria

The main focus of this research is to juxtapose the features of microfinancing and the institutional forbearance of economic development in Nigeria. Based on empirical study, it has been observed that poverty is multifaceted and its persistence is due to lack of productive resources. The Nigerian case reveals that the major constraint to improving the standard of living of the poor is capital (finance). This has restricted their extensive participation in economic activities which could improve their lives. For this study, our theoretical a priori expectation is that provision of microfinance services such as savings and microloans have direct impact on GDP. A causal relationship will be established and evaluated with the ‘t-test’ statistic, while the relevance of the independent variables in explaining the subject will be justified based on the F-statistic test and R2 coefficient of multi-determination. Also, using a lin-log regression model, economic growth shall be regressed on poverty level in Nigeria. This will create an assertion whether Nigeria needs a systematic reinforcement of the microfinance mechanism to propagate a soothing trend for poverty reduction and economic growth.Microfinance, Poverty, Economic Development, Economic Growth, Financial Services, Gross Domestic Product

Socio-economic issues of prawn-seed collection in an open riverene fishery: a case study of prawn-seed collectors in West Bengal

This paper attempts to examine the socio-economic status of prawn seed collectors, who traditionally live on fishing, in open riverene fishery under 24 Parganas district in West Bengal. The study suggests that the prawn seed collectors’ households are the most vulnerable segment among the poorest of the poor and live under BPL (Below Poverty Line) category. There is high incidence of illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, negligence of children’s health and high family size among the majority of prawn seed collectors’ households. Despite the disliking of this occupation, female and adolescent girls, acting as main earners of their households, are compelled to be engaged in prawn seed collection to support their families in addition to their household duties at the cost of hard labour over day and night; high risks and high occupational health hazard; the monthly income of these families is too low to support their families throughout the year and other members of their families have to supplement them with subsidiary sources of income. The study also suggests that the practice of prawn seed collection under open riverene fishery is economically inefficient, ecologically unsustainable and socially unsoundopen riverene fishery; ecologically unsustainable; health hazard

The artisan and the artist. Innovation enables transformation

Technologies Excellence Group, for theCurriculum for Excellence Group for SG (commissioned by/for Mike Russell-Cabinet Secy on Education

Human Development: Means and Ends

Sometimes the change in the fashions of thinking about development appears like a comedy of errors, a lurching from one fad to another. Economic growth, employment creation, jobs and justice, redistribution with growth, basic needs, bottom-up development, participatory development, sustainable development, market-friendly development, liberation, liberalisation, human development; thus goes the carousel of the slogans. But this would not be a correct record. There has been an evolution in our thinking about development. Both internal logic and new evidence have led to the revision of our views. Previous and partly discarded approaches have taught us much that is still valuable, and our current approach will surely be subject to criticisms. A brief survey of the evolution of our thinking may be helpful. The discussion started in the 1950s, influenced by Arthur Lewis (1955) and others, who emphasised economic growth as the key to poverty eradication. Even at this early stage, sensible economists and development planners were quite clear (in spite of what is now often said in caricature of past thought) that economic growth is not an end in itself, but a performance test of development. Arthur Lewis defined the purpose of development as widening our range of choice, exactly as the Human Development Reports of the United Nations Development Programme do today. Three justifications were given for the emphasis on growth as the principal performance test. One justification assumed that through market forces–such as the rising demand for labour, rising productivity, rising wages, lower prices of the goods bought by the people–economic growth would spread its benefits widely and speedily, and that these benefits are best achieved through growth. Even in the early days some sceptics said that growth is not necessarily so benign. They maintained that in certain conditions (such as increasing returns, restrictions to entry, monopoly power, unequal distribution of income and assets), growth gives to those who already have; it tends to concentrate income and wealth in the hands of the few.