Robust Modeling of Epistemic Mental States

This work identifies and advances some research challenges in the analysis of facial features and their temporal dynamics with epistemic mental states in dyadic conversations. Epistemic states are: Agreement, Concentration, Thoughtful, Certain, and Interest. In this paper, we perform a number of statistical analyses and simulations to identify the relationship between facial features and epistemic states. Non-linear relations are found to be more prevalent, while temporal features derived from original facial features have demonstrated a strong correlation with intensity changes. Then, we propose a novel prediction framework that takes facial features and their nonlinear relation scores as input and predict different epistemic states in videos. The prediction of epistemic states is boosted when the classification of emotion changing regions such as rising, falling, or steady-state are incorporated with the temporal features. The proposed predictive models can predict the epistemic states with significantly improved accuracy: correlation coefficient (CoERR) for Agreement is 0.827, for Concentration 0.901, for Thoughtful 0.794, for Certain 0.854, and for Interest 0.913.Comment: Accepted for Publication in Multimedia Tools and Application, Special Issue: Socio-Affective Technologie

Student Labour and Training in Digital Humanities

This article critiques the rhetoric of openness, accessibility and collaboration that features largely in digital humanities literature by examining the status of student labour, training, and funding within the discipline. The authors argue that the use of such rhetoric masks the hierarches that structure academic spaces, and that a shift to the digital does not eliminate these structural inequalities. Drawing on two surveys that assess student participation in DH projects (one for students, and one for faculty researchers), the article outlines the challenges currently faced by students working in the field, and suggests a set of best practices that might bridge the disparity between rhetoric and reality

Poissa luonnontieteiden opettajan kuuluvilta ja näkyvistä : tutkimus oppimisen mahdollisuuksista ulkoympäristöissä

The focus in this dissertation is on students’ interactions and science teaching practices in loosely supervised outdoor environments. The aim is to investigate the opportunities of students to participate in science learning in affectively meaningful ways that working away from the teacher can provide, and how these opportunities can be enabled through instructional strategies. The contribution of the dissertation is therefore to contribute to the current understanding of how potentially alienating dimensions of science teaching can be moderated. To understand students’ experiences and interactions in learning settings when the teacher’s supervision is not constant, in this dissertation I have investigated student groups conducting fieldwork activities in a forest and teachers who implement fieldwork extensively in their biology courses. The empirical data analyzed comes from video recordings of student groups, mobile messages used in the communication and student and teacher interviews. The empirical analysis focuses on sociocultural phenomena made visible in the interaction of the students and the discursive accounts of the teachers about their outdoor teaching practices. The results of the dissertation demonstrate a variety of non-conceptual but culturally important ways that students draw on to connect science learning with their everyday experiences and to temporarily overturn the authoritativeness of science. These interactions appear as potential ways to moderate the alienating aspects of teaching while they simultaneously allow students to complete the tasks. Furthermore, the results show which instructional strategies allow students’ sense of freedom to be balanced against controlling practices so that the initially uncommon setting is transformed into ordinary schooling for the students. Overall, the dissertation results should encourage educators and researchers to regard all students’ experiences during science lessons as potentially important and valuable. Provided that certain controlling practices ensure there is enough focus on the intended objectives, the loosely supervised learning settings appear to provide authentic opportunities for students to access science learning in affectively meaningful ways.Väitöskirja käsittelee oppilaiden toimintaa ja luonnontieteiden opettamista maasto-oppimisympäristöissä, joissa opettaja ei ole jatkuvasti valvomassa opiskelua. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on selvittää̈, millaisia mahdollisuuksia kaukana opettajasta työskentely tarjoaa oppilaille tehdä opiskelusta mielekästä ja omakohtaista. Lisäksi selvitetään, millaisia opetuksen järjestelyjä vaaditaan, jotta tavoitteellinen opiskelu toteutuu oppilaiden lisääntyvästä vapaudesta huolimatta. Luonnontieteiden opetuksen on havaittu usein olevan oppilaita vieraannuttavaa. Väitöskirjan tulosten avulla pyritään ymmärtämään paremmin sitä, miten luonnontieteiden opetuksen vieraannuttavuutta voidaan lieventää järkevillä tavoilla. Väitöskirjassa tutkitaan koulun lähimetsässä opiskelevia oppilasryhmiä, jotka työskentelevät kaukana opettajasta. Lisäksi tutkitaan opettajia, jotka hyödyntävät paljon maasto-opetusta biologian opetuksessaan. Tutkimuksen aineisto koostuu oppilasryhmien videoinneista, oppilaiden ja opettajan yhteydenpitoon käytetyistä mobiiliviesteistä sekä oppilaiden ja opettajien haastatteluista. Aineistosta analysoidaan oppilaiden vuorovaikutuksessa ilmeneviä sosiaalisia ja kulttuurisia ilmiöitä sekä opettajien maasto-opetuksen käytänteitä. Väitöskirjassa havaittiin useita keinoja, joiden avulla oppilaat spontaanisti yhdistävät luonnontieteiden opiskelun arkikokemuksiinsa. Oppilaat myös käsittelivät ja purkivat kokemaansa luonnontieteiden auktoritatiivisuutta erilaisin keinoin. Edellä mainitut keinot eivät liittyneet ensisijaisesti luonnontieteiden opiskeluun, vaan ne kumpusivat oppilaille kulttuurisesti läheisistä tavoista ymmärtää ja käsitellä maailmaa, liittyen esimerkiksi huumoriin, kehollisuuteen tai kiroiluun. Tällainen vuorovaikutus näyttäytyi mahdollisena keinona lieventää opiskelun vieraannuttavuutta ilman, että se olisi estänyt tehtävien tekemistä. Tutkimuksen tulokset kuvaavat myös lukuisia tapoja, joiden avulla opettajat voivat tukea oppilaille hyödyllisiä vapauden kokemuksia, mutta kuitenkin kontrolloida tilannetta riittävästi. Näitä keinoja hyödyntämällä oppilaille aluksi epätavallinen oppimisympäristö voidaan muuttaa tavalliseksi koulutyöksi. Väitöskirjan tulokset kannustavat kasvattajia ja tutkijoita suhtautumaan kaikkiin oppilaiden opiskelun aikaisiin kokemuksiin mahdollisesti tärkeinä̈ ja arvokkaina. Myös toiminta, joka ei aluksi vaikuta liittyvän opiskeluun, saattaa tukea opiskelua tekemällä siitä oppilaille omakohtaisempaa. Oppilaiden vapauden lisääntyessä opettajat voivat varmistaa riittävän keskittyminen tehtäviin tiettyjen kontrollia lisäävien keinojen avulla

Defining the Characteristics of Story Production of Autistic Children: A Multilevel Analysis

Several studies suggest that a valuable tool to examine linguistic skills in communication disorders is offered by procedures of narrative discourse assessment. Following this line of research, we present an exploratory study aimed to investigate storytelling abilities of autistic children to better define the characteristics of their story production. Participants included 41 autistic children and 41 children with typical development aged between 7.02 and 11.03 years matched on age, gender, level of formal education, intelligence quotient, working memory, attention skills, theory of mind, and phonological short-term memory. Narrative production was assessed by analysing the language samples obtained through the “Nest Story” description task. A multilevel analysis including micro- and macro-linguistic variables was adopted for narrative assessment. Group differences emerged on both micro- and macro-linguistic dimensions: autistic children produced narratives with more phonological errors and semantic paraphasias (microlinguistic variables) as well as more errors of global coherence and a fewer number of visible events and inferred events (macrolinguistic variables) than the control group.This study shows that even autistic children with adequate cognitive skills display several limitations in their narrative competence and that such weaknesses affect both micro- and macrolinguistic aspects of story production

Surgeon Education, Engaging with the Immanence of Events of Practice: an exploration of the ontological and ethical dimensions of surgical training and practice

This thesis contrasts the construction of medical knowledge that surgeons must acquire to practice with the kind of knowing that arises unpredictably, through actual events of surgical practice. Such knowing is demonstrated through the research process in which surgeons discuss events of practice and their strategies for coping. As such, the thesis argues that this kind of knowing is central to the onto- epistemological task of becoming a surgeon and is therefore, a crucial pedagogic dimension of such becoming. In actual situations of practice, surgeons may be forced to respond, act and think in ways that exceed the approved teachings of surgical knowledge and technical skills. This is not to diminish or disregard the structured programmes of education and training. Instead, I advocate reconfiguring the dominant models of surgical teaching and learning to include pedagogies that are sensitive to the immanent nature of clinical relations and practice. Whilst established clinical knowledge may be said to be abstracted from actual occasions of practice, knowing that emerges through the contingencies of such occasions is grounded in the ‘thisness’ of practice. In this practical immediacy, affective experiencing is a critical precursor to clinical strategies. The thesis draws upon theories of affect and becoming from Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, Brian Massumi and Gilbert Simondon. In analysing the policy documentation and training materials, the thesis draws from the theories of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Pierre Bourdieu. This investigation identified affective relations that form and develop within the local flows of experiencing of an event of practice. These forms of ‘thinking-feeling’ contribute to the entangled subjectivities and heterogenous obligations that can expand surgeons’ capacities of becoming. A pedagogy of the surgical event attempts to engage with a learner’s ideas and intensities of experience, triggered by the affective connections that arise when coping with the thisness of contingent events of practice. These immanent relations express how an event of practice comes to matter to a surgeon, how it attains significance

A Longitudinal Study of English Narrative Discourse Development in Young Spanish-English Bilinguals

Producing oral narratives is the best predictor of later literacy functioning. The ability to use performance on oral narratives as a way to identify children who may be at- risk for academic and language problems is helpful for educators. For example, it is likely that children who are identified with language impairments or who are learning English as a second language may have difficulty creating narratives due to the inherent language complexity of creating narratives. Research has demonstrated that similar to English monolingual children, narrative ability has been shown to underlie literacy development for bilingual children. Although there are numerous studies examining English narrative structure for Spanish-English bilingual (SEB) students, the literature is limited in examining episodic structure (initiating event, action, obstacle, and consequence) over time for SEB students.The purpose of this study is to examine the narratives of one hundred eighty-nine SEB children’s English narrative growth from fall of kindergarten through spring of second grade. Children’s narrative retells were examined at six different time points in the fall and spring of each academic year for their ability to recall story grammar elements and to impose a structure on these elements.The results of this study are potentially useful to educators to understand thedistinct narrative growth trajectories for young SEB children from kindergarten through second grade. Specifically, how the effect of gender, time, and initial English language proficiency impact narrative development. Findings have the potential to inform educators who make decisions regarding the need to provide additional assistance for children who may be at-risk for English language and literacy development