Industrial work placement in higher education: a study of civil engineering student engagement

For civil engineering undergraduates, the opportunity to spend a period of time in formal industrial work placement provides an invaluable learning experience. This paper reviews student engagement with short-term industrial placement and provides analysis of questionnaires (n=174) returned by undergraduates studying civil engineering at four Higher Education Institutes (HEI’s) in the West of Scotland. The data captures industrial placement statistics, employability skill-sets and presents brief testimonies from students. Whilst the journey to becoming a professional civil engineer is undoubtedly enhanced by short-term placement clear opportunities exist for HEI’s to affect and change existing pedagogical discourse. Commentary is likely to resonate beyond civil engineering and serve as a timely reminder of the need to re-invigorate academia / industry curriculum partnerships

Exploring engineering students' epistemic beliefs and motivation: A case of a South African university

This study seeks to investigate how chemical engineering students from South African low-income communities locate knowledge structures. The study used an existing Engineering Related Beliefs Questionnaire (ERBQ) to evaluate beliefs of 268 chemical engineering students. The questionnaire collects additional information by allowing open-ended responses on each item to increase reliability of the questionnaire. Findings suggest that more than 60 per cent of students believe that engineering knowledge cannot be argued, and that learning takes place only when the lecturer transmits knowledge. Engineering educators may consider a humanizing pedagogy, which create opportunities for students from low-income communities to be liberated and reduce the dependency culture. Application of this pedagogy may assist students to achieve life long learning whilst developing necessary soft skills like independent thinking and innovation

The Effects of Epistemic Beliefs on Undergraduate Students\u27 Emotions and Attitudes towards Genetically Modified Foods

Much research has explored socio-scientific issues (SSIs) in science instruction, including the connections between conceptions and attitude. Studies have also shown that epistemic beliefs affect epistemic emotions, which are a key component of students’ reaction to complex scientific topics. Correcting misconceptions can also result in emotional and attitude change, particularly surrounding the topic of genetically modified foods (GMFs). However, the impact of epistemic beliefs on emotions and attitude towards GMFs has largely gone unexplored. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of epistemic beliefs on epistemic emotions and attitudes towards GMFs. This quantitative correlational study sampled 78 students from a large Christian university in Virginia. Participants were assessed for epistemic belief, then read refutation and persuasive texts about GMFs prior to completing questionnaires about epistemic emotions and attitudes towards GMFs. These variables were measured using the following instruments: the Epistemic Belief Inventory (EBI), the Epistemically-Related Emotion Scales (EES), and the Attitudes about GMFs survey. The results did not indicate a predictive relationship between epistemic beliefs and emotions or attitudes towards GMFs. However, a significant predictive relationship between negative epistemic emotions and negative attitudes towards GMFs was found. As a result, the null hypothesis was rejected, and the regression analysis yielded a significant effect size. The contribution of these findings to the scholarly literature, as well as their practical implications, is discussed

Communities in university mathematics

This paper concerns communities of learners and teachers that are formed, develop and interact in university mathematics environments through the theoretical lens of Communities of Practice. From this perspective, learning is described as a process of participation and reification in a community in which individuals belong and form their identity through engagement, imagination and alignment. In addition, when inquiry is considered as a fundamental mode of participation, through critical alignment, the community becomes a Community of Inquiry. We discuss these theoretical underpinnings with examples of their application in research in university mathematics education and, in more detail, in two Research Cases which focus on mathematics students' and teachers' perspectives on proof and on engineering students' conceptual understanding of mathematics. The paper concludes with a critical reflection on the theorising of the role of communities in university level teaching and learning and a consideration of ways forward for future research

Development of quantum perspectives in modern physics

Introductory undergraduate courses in classical physics stress a perspective that can be characterized as realist; from this perspective, all physical properties of a classical system can be simultaneously specified and thus determined at all future times. Such a perspective can be problematic for introductory quantum physics students, who must develop new perspectives in order to properly interpret what it means to have knowledge of quantum systems. We document this evolution in student thinking in part through pre- and post-instruction evaluations using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey. We further characterize variations in student epistemic and ontological commitments by examining responses to two essay questions, coupled with responses to supplemental quantum attitude statements. We find that, after instruction in modern physics, many students are still exhibiting a realist perspective in contexts where a quantum-mechanical perspective is needed. We further find that this effect can be significantly influenced by instruction, where we observe variations for courses with differing learning goals. We also note that students generally do not employ either a realist or a quantum perspective in a consistent manner.Comment: 18 pages, plus references; 3 figures; 9 tables. PACS: 01.40.Fk, 03.65._

Effects of a thermal inversion experiment on STEM students learning and application of damped harmonic motion

There are diverse teaching methodologies to promote both collaborative and individual work in undergraduate physics courses. However, few educational studies seek to understand how students learn and apply new knowledge through open-ended activities that require mathematical modeling and experimentation focused on environmental problems. In this work, we propose a novel home experiment to simulate the dynamics of a particulate under temperature inversion and model it as damped harmonic motion. Twenty six first year students enrolled in STEM majors answered six qualitative questions after designing and developing the experiment. These questions helped analyze the students epistemological beliefs about their learning process of physics topics and its applications. Results showed that this type of open-ended experiments could facilitate the students understanding of physics phenomena. In addition, this experiment showed that it could help physics professors to promote students epistemological development by giving their students the opportunity to search for different sources of knowledge and becoming self-learners instead of looking at the professor as the epistemological authority. At the end, students described this activity as a positive experience that helped them realize alternative ways to apply physics topics in different contexts of their environment.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figure

Argument as a Context to Understand Students\u27 Biology Epistemology

Science epistemology, what we know about science and how we know it, is an essential part of scientific literacy. Individuals’ science epistemology allows them to comprehend and ascertain the validity of scientific claims, helping biology majors to become better scientists and non-biology majors to influence how biology knowledge informs social policy. As biology education shifts toward active learning and practice-focused approaches, there will be increasing opportunities to discuss what we know in biology and how we know it. For example, Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) present students with the opportunity to engage in authentic practices that result in biological knowledge production. However, little is known about how students employ their epistemologies while participating in these new kinds of learning environments, specifically how students evaluate, build and justify knowledge. Recent work on epistemology has revealed that student epistemologies are not coherent structures that can be accessed and examined independent of context. Rather, these developing epistemologies comprise disparate cognitive resources that are activated in response to particular contexts. As such, a phenomenographic approach was employed to investigate the qualitatively different epistemic practices that undergraduate biology majors used in the context of building arguments in a biology CURE. In this study, twenty undergraduate students were interviewed about the arguments they constructed in a research proposal poster presentation. Analysis of participant poster presentations and interviews revealed that participants approached argument construction from local (classroom) and global (scientific) perspectives. Additionally, when engaging with scientific information, participants discussed the validity of the information (epistemic cognition) and the processes behind how the information was constructed (epistemic metacognition). Each participant constructed two research questions: one developed in collaboration with instructors, and another constructed solely by the participant. As participants moved between the context of the two research questions, their argument practices shifted between local and global perspectives as well as between epistemic cognition and metacognition. Three distinct practice composites emerged from analysis of participant argument construction across these contexts: Validating, Enculturing, and Transitioning. Validating practices were aimed at matching information and practices to what participants perceived as instructor expectations. Enculturing practices were built around information sharing within a knowledge culture. Transitioning practices were applied when participants perceived differences between instructor-sourced information and information gathered through literature searchers and experiments. As students moved from the periphery of the classroom culture toward the center of this community, they used Validating, Transitioning, and finally, Enculturing practices. These findings inform instructional practice by outlining contexts in which students discuss scientific knowledge production. Biology educators can create similar contexts to stimulate discussion about what biologists know and how they know it, thereby enhancing student understanding of biology epistemology. Furthermore, these findings support and extend previous research describing epistemology as context-dependent. During their interviews, students also discussed dissonance between their classroom perspectives and their perspectives on how professional science constructs knowledge. These reflections led to student descriptions of their beliefs about biological knowledge. These insights invite future research into how student biology epistemologies develop, and how the culture of the classroom contributes to the development of these epistemologies

Exploring Professional Teacher Identity Development for STEM Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs)

Graduate students are responsible for much undergraduate instruction (Boyle & Boice, 1998; Luft et al., 2004; Miller, Brickman and Oliver, 2014) and need professional learning that aims to develop their pedagogical knowledge and instructional skills. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the influence of a pedagogy course that focuses on the implementation of evidence based instructional practices, on STEM Graduate Teaching Assistants’ (GTAs) professional science teaching identities. Guided by Thomas Guskey’s (1985) model of teacher change that relates changes in practice to changes in teachers’ attitudes and perceptions, the guiding research question and sub-questions were as follows:Are STEM GTAs\u27 professional teaching identities influenced by participating in a sciencepedagogy course?1. What are STEM GTAs\u27 beliefs about science teaching and learning?2. What factors nurture or inhibit the development of their teaching identities?Data sources included anonymous artifacts from 53 participants, as well as interviews and representations of professional science teacher identity models for a subset of eight volunteers. Analysis revealed that (i) the professional teaching identities of the STEM GTAs were influenced by their participation in the course, (ii) STEM GTAs\u27 beliefs about science teaching and learning include connecting with students, academic identity/content knowledge, and cultural background, and (iii) the factors that STEM GTAs identified as nurturing or inhibiting the development of their teaching identities included pedagogical knowledge, self-efficacy, and mentoring. Conclusions that can be drawn from these findings include the following, which have implications for research and for practice:1. Activities of professional development must recognize the interactions and influences of the multiple identities of the individual (Fritz & Smith, 2008). The exploration of a teaching identity must therefore involve the interplay of the GTA’s cultural identity and academic identity as student researcher and teacher.2. Professional learning experiences explicitly addressing identity are valuable to STEM GTAs. Creating representations of their professional teaching identity can serve as a powerful metacognitive tool to help GTAs reflect on their instructor positionality.3. Educational developers and departments should provide graduate students with mastery experiences and mentorship to help develop their academic self-concept and professional teaching identity

Development and Validation of Pre-service Teachers\u27 Personal Epistemologies of Teaching Scale (PT-PETS)

The Internet has changed not only how we conceptualize knowledge, but also how we learn in classroom. Knowledge is not any longer transmitted from experts to non-experts, but is constructed through communication, collaboration, and integration among a network of people. In this context, teachers are expected to facilitate student-centered learning by helping students to construct knowledge through higher-order thinking rather than reproduce a series of facts. Although a growing body of research suggests that teachers\u27 beliefs about the nature of knowledge and the process of knowing, that is personal epistemology, are related to their teaching and their students\u27 learning, little work has done to examine its role of teachers\u27 personal epistemologies in preparing future generations of teachers. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate an instrument designed to assess pre-service teachers\u27 personal epistemologies of teaching (PT-PETS). The PT-PETS was administered to two samples of pre-service teachers. Factor analysis of the results revealed a multidimensional construct composed of three factors: Construction of Teaching Knowledge, Contextuality of Teaching Knowledge, and Complexity of Teaching Knowledge. The Construction of Teaching Knowledge consists of 9 items (i.e., Teaching knowledge is handed down by external authority or constructed by individuals). The Contextuality of Teaching Knowledge consists of 8 items (i.e., Teaching knowledge is viewed as absolute or contextual). And the Complexity of Teaching Knowledge contains 3 items (i.e., Teaching knowledge is viewed as an accumulation of facts or comprise highly interrelated concepts). Structural equation modeling was used to examine the nomological relationships between the three latent constructs of the PT-PETS and other factors related to knowledge construction. Results indicate that pre-service teachers\u27 perceptions of their instructors\u27 pedagogical practices are positively related to their beliefs in the Complexity of Teaching knowledge. Interestingly, pre-service teachers\u27 knowledge sharing self-efficacy is negatively related to their personal epistemologies of teaching, while their information evaluation self-efficacy is positively related to them. However, the mediating role of information evaluation self-efficacy was found to enhance the positive indirect effect of knowledge sharing self-efficacy, while simultaneously reducing its negative direct effect to personal epistemologies of teaching. In general, pre-service teachers who reported experiencing inductive teaching practices by their instructors were more likely to be aware of the complexity of teaching knowledge. Students who reported feeling confident in both sharing knowledge and evaluating information also tended to be those who hold sophisticated beliefs in the nature of teaching knowledge and the process of knowing. Overall the Pre-service Teachers\u27 Personal Epistemologies of Teaching (PT-PETS) provides a psychometrically sound instrument for teacher educators and researchers interested in understanding pre-service teachers\u27 personal epistemologies and knowledge construction