EFFECTS OF AN INQUIRY-BASED SCIENCE PROGRAM ON CRITICAL THINKING, SCIENCE PROCESS SKILLS, CREATIVITY, AND SCIENCE FAIR ACHIEVEMENT OF MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS

This study investigated the impact of an inquiry-based science program on the critical thinking skills, science process skills, creativity, and science fair achievement of middle school students. Although research indicates the connection between inquiry and achievement, there is limited empirical research relating specific inquiry-based programs to critical thinking, creativity, and science fair achievement in middle school classrooms. The research took place in a small, suburban middle school in the northeast from November 2010 to May 2011. A sample of convenience was comprised of seventh and eighth grade students. The study was quasi-experimental in nature, with a pretest-posttest comparison group design using intact classrooms of students. Five instruments were administered related to the elements of science process skills, critical thinking, creative thinking, and science fair achievement. The scores of those students in the inquiry-based science program were compared to those students in the traditional science classroom to determine the impact of each method of delivering instruction. In the multivariate analysis of variance, the inquiry instruction group scored significantly higher for science process skills as measured by the Earthworm Test (p \u3c .001) and Cognitive Integrity, an area of critical thinking measured by the CM3 (p \u3c .025). In multiple regression analysis, program type contributed significantly to the prediction of science fair achievement scores above and beyond the predictor variables of science process skills, critical thinking, and creativity (p \u3c .001). Science fair scores were significantly higher (p \u3c .001) for the treatment as compared to that of the direct instruction group. Overall, science process skills (p \u3c .025) and program type (p \u3c .001) contributed significantly to the prediction of science fair achievement

The formulation and development of instruments to measure field dependence-field independence using spatial and verbal modalities

The thesis gives a description of the formulation and development of an Embedded Shapes Test which was subsequently used as a method of measuring the construct/cognitive style of field dependence – field independence, using a spatial modality. Two additional methods of measuring field dependence – field independence were also formulated and developed, which used a verbal modality, in the form of a Sense Word Test (SWT) and Non-Sense Word Test (NSWT). Each of the above field dependence – field independence 'tests' were used in a series of pilot studies and studies, as part of their development and application. With two of the studies, of which there were four, additional ‘tests’ were used to measure cognitive attributes considered to have some association with those inherent in the measurement of field dependence – field independence. These included the Chronological Order Integration Test (COIT) and the Gestalt Picture Completion Test (GPCT) in Study Three; and the GPCT; British Ability Scales (BASI)/Short Form IQ; and the Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA) in Study Four. The COIT in Study Three provided a framework to measure field dependence – field independence using a verbal modality through the medium of text. Therefore, this enabled comparisons to be made within a verbal modality through the medium of words and non-sense words by the SWT and NSWT, as well as a spatial modality by the EST. The inclusion of the GPCT, in Studies Three and Four enabled the process of measuring field dependence – field independence to be compared with a process that appeared to be opposite to it, i.e. an integration – synthesis process, or putting together pieces of information, instead of a segregated – analytical process, or taking apart a piece of information, respectively. The BASI/Short Form IQ was included in Study Four to provide a measure of cognitive ability. Since an argument directed at the concept and measurement of field dependence – field independence is that it is measuring cognitive ability rather than cognitive style, a comparison was made between field dependence – field independence and cognitive ability/intelligence as measured by the BASI/Short Form IQ. A further comparison with measurements of field dependence – field independence was made possible by the inclusion of the CSA in terms of a Wholistic or Analytic perception of information, as well as a propensity, on the part of the individual, to think spatially or verbally, i.e. in the Imager or Verbaliser mode of the CSA. The inclusion of school subject performance/attainment levels, in each of the four studies, was to enable comparisons to be made between the various measurements of field dependence – field independence, i.e. EST, SWT, NSWT and COIT, and GPCT, BASI/Short form IQ, CSA, and the characteristics of the different school subjects themselves. This enabled the exploration as to whether or not the characteristics of particular school subjects have an affinity to field dependence – field independence in terms of cognitive style and/or cognitive ability. This exploration was augmented in Study Three by the inclusion of GCSE subject grades for the sample members. In Chapter 14 (Comparisons of the Outcomes from the Four Studies), Witkin’s Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) was introduced to provide a comparison of reliability between the EST3, SWT2 and NSWT1, using the Cronbach Alpha statistic. The sample used for each of the pilot studies and studies consisted of Year 8, male and female, students of mixed ability, from Comprehensive and Middle Schools. The sample sizes for each of the two pilot studies were thirty, but varied for the four studies from 62 to 224 to increase the statistical validity and to decrease the standard error. Within each of the four studies, means; standard deviations; Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA); correlations (Pearson Product Moment) and Cronbach Alpha statistics were used to analyse the data. The EST3, SWT2 and NSWT1 were used in each of the four studies and produced a high level of construct validity across the four studies. A number of significant F ratios and correlations were obtained between the variables in each of the four studies. In particular, significant F ratios were obtained for EST3; Sex; Test Type (SWT2 and NSWT1), e.g. (F = 4.00; df 2, 56; p = 0.05 – Study 1); School Subjects and GCSE Subjects; and significant correlations between EST3 and Science (General), e.g. r = 0.4006; p = 0.05 – Study 1; Modern Language (French); COIT A and S; COIT B and S; and IQ within the corresponding that included these variables. Correlations (r) between EST3, SWT2 and NSWT1 within each study produced a number of high reliability values (See Chapter 14, Table 14.4 for full details). In addition, the Cronbach Alpha values for the EST3, SWT2 and NSWT1 gave a high reliability, i.e. 0.84263, 0.92799, 0.91946 for Study One; 0.90281, 0.93720, 0.88725 for Study Two; 0.89441, 0.94493, 0.92713 for Study Three; and 0.84942, 0.93779, 0.91099 for Study Four, respectively. The Cronbach Alpha value for the EST3 was greater than that for the GEFT, i.e. 0.93544 and 0.89234, respectively. Similar values were obtained for the SWT2 and NSWT1 when compared to the GEFT, i.e. 0.97891 and 0.96411, respectively

Mission Effectiveness and Social Entrepreneurship: Theoretical insights and case-study evidence from three Christian charities in England

This research thesis examines mission effectiveness within three cases of Christian charities in England. It does so within the context of social entrepreneurship, and is occasioned by an attempt to facilitate social service capacity building in order to meet increasing social needs during a period of decreasing government funding. The research evaluates mission effectiveness through the lens of two managerial theories – Resource Based Theory (RBT) and Dynamic Capabilities Theory (DCT). Accordingly, three key objectives underpin this research: to evaluate RBT and DCT for social entrepreneurship in charities, to evaluate the relevant case study evidence and, consequent to an analysis and evaluation of that evidence, to develop/present an appropriately customised theory of mission effectiveness primarily for application within Christian social action charities. RBT and DCT theoretical and empirical literatures provide several insights into the optimisation of organisational resources and capabilities. An analysis of this literature enables two dimensions to emerge - performance and scalability. These dimensions are explored through six themes: business services, governance, resource investment, collaboration, social enterprise and growth. However, little engagement of these two theories (both developed for and within the For-Profit sector) in the charities (Not-for-Profit) sector is observed. This gap in the literature both provokes and justifies the research. Given that a key objective of the research is to develop a sectorally customised theory, methodologically it adopts an inductive approach to building theory from relevant theoretical-empirical data, empirical literature, their analyses and emergent evidence-based arguments. Appropriate meaningfully-linked RBT and DCT case-specific data are ethically collected using standard methods including questionnaires, interviews, observation, and evaluation of some internal case documentation and public records. Thereupon, the data are evidentially analysed and customised by reference to the relevant mission statement and categorised across the six themes. They are then analysed using traditional case study analytical techniques including pattern matching, explanation building and synthesis in order to enable key findings to emerge. Finally, the emergent research findings are evaluated-interpreted in terms of mission effectiveness, so as to assert causal and/or associated links between relevant theoretical constructs and the findings. The empirical findings suggest that all six identified themes varyingly affect performance and scalability. Further, they indicate that mission effectiveness is enhanced when resource based and dynamic capabilities are exercised within strategic management disciplines, especially where entrepreneurial means are deployed. This would suggest that Christian social action charities have potential to play a more positive and impactful role in providing social services in England, by systematically improving mission effectiveness via strategic use of RBT and DCT, combined suitably with entrepreneurial means. Overall, drawing on the empirically identified deficiencies and/or inadequacies of RBT and DCT when applied to the effective accomplishments of social enterprise missions, the findings suggest a hybrid theory of both of them, tentatively named ‘Dynamic Resource Theory’ (DRT). This argues that social action practitioners are more effective when optimising key resources and capabilities using SE means in order to achieve missional impact results. Such a tentative theory will likely influence policies to incentivise improvements in governance, inter-firm collaboration and capacity building. Such policies would be of real practical benefit to practitioners. This theory makes an original contribution to knowledge in terms of social entrepreneurial mission effectiveness - probably most applicable within faith-based charities

An investigation of the use of compliments by Saudi Arabian students

This study investigates, from a sociolinguistic comparative perspective, the use of compliments by a group of twenty Saudi English speakers, twenty Saudi Arabic speakers and twenty native English speakers. The aim of the research is to identify evidence of the discourse features that suggest that language transfer is occurring. Finally, the research attempts to determine how religiosity affects the form of compliments for Saudi English speakers. A discourse completion test was used comprising six situations to collect data from the participants. The comparative analysis of the compliments from the three groups identified that transfer was not occurring in respect to the use of unbound formulas as this is not a culturally specific semantic form. Transfer was identified as occurring for bound semantic formulas. Two further findings are worthy of mention. The first is that learning English appears to be increasing the assertiveness of Saudi Arabian women as evidenced by a decline in the use of implicit compliments. The second is that there is a decline in the frequency of religious inclusions in the compliments of Saudi English speakers

Teaching tools and techniques for efficient teaching and learning of computer programming for beginners using JAVA

Despite the educational research that has been carried out considering demographic, cognitive and social factors to improve teaching programming in the last decades, finding an effective teaching method is still a debatable issue among Java programming tutors. There are a number of basic concepts to be understood in learning a programming language. The teaching styles to be used to teach different concepts could vary due to the complexity and nature of the concept. This study was aimed at identifying such concepts and the preferred teaching style for teaching such concepts in the Java language. The results of a survey of the students who recently completed introductory level Java programming language revealed such concepts, and also the most preferred teaching style for each concept.This study also investigated the preferred learning styles for learners with artistic abilities and logical abilities. In addition, there have been many research projects based on Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) to investigate better ways of handing germane, intrinsic, and extraneous memory loads on the working memory of learners. The mental modeling technique has been found to be associated with most of the fundamental principles of the Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). This research also included the findings of classroom experiments using activities based on mental modeling, such as analogies, worked examples, and scaffolding, and adhering to the principles of CLT. The context for this research involved teaching Java programming concepts at the introductory level using low cost teaching tools. The study reports on the effects of such activities in teaching Java programming principles

Proceeding The 3rd International Seminar on Linguistics (ISOL-3): Language and Social Change

It is undeniable that, like a human being, language also changes. The lexicon once used in a language may no longer be used in the next few years. In contrast, a lexicon that did not exist before appeared and was widely used in the next period. The pronunciation of a word may change from time to time. Social change in a society is triggered by various factors. In Indonesia, reform is one of the causes of change in various aspects of social life, including government, politics, economy, and culture. All these changes are recorded by or reflected in language

Proceeding The 3rd International Seminar on Linguistics (ISOL-3): Language and Social Change

It is undeniable that, like human being, language also changes. The lexicon once used in a language may no longer be used in the next few years. In contrast, a lexicon that did  not  exist  before  appeared  and  was  widely  used  in  the  next  period.  The pronunciation of a word may change from time to time.  It is undeniable that, like human being, language also changes. The lexicon once used in a language may no longer be used in the next few years. In contrast, a lexicon that did  not  exist  before  appeared  and  was  widely  used  in  the  next  period.  The pronunciation of a word may change from time to time.  Social change in a society is triggered by various factors. In Indonesia, reform is one of  the  causes  of  change  in  various  aspects  of  social  life,  including  government, politics,  economy  and  culture.  All  these  changes  are  recorded  by  or  reflected  in language.&nbsp

Exploring the communication difficulties, strategies and pragmatic competence among the Sudanese learners of English and their peer English native speakers in the United Kingdom

Difficulties obstructing communications between different interlocutors, the strategies to overcome them and the language learners’ pragmatic competence have been investigated extensively in research, both in the classroom context and in other institutional settings. However, far less is known about the oral communication difficulties between native and non-native speakers of English in the informal context in the free social space. For practical reasons, this project is designed to include two separate studies, both relevant to the same problem: oral communication difficulties (CDs) between Sudanese EFL speakers in the UK and their peer English native interlocutors in their daily conversations. Firstly, in the first study, twenty Sudanese learners of English were interviewed to report the communication difficulties that they encounter during their daily conversations with English native speakers; and the communications strategies (CSs) they use to overcome these difficulties. Likewise, twenty English native speakers were also interviewed to report their communication difficulties they encounter and the strategies they adopt during their informal conversations with Sudanese participants as EFL speakers. The results indicate that the common oral communication difficulties reported by the Sudanese participants are limited vocabulary size, technical vocabulary, phrasal vocabulary, phonological variation of accent, regional dialects variations and perceived speech rate. Upon encountering these problems, the Sudanese learners reported that they employ communication strategies like appeal for assistance, asking for repetition, clarification request, asking for lengthening of words, body language, circumlocution, message abandonment, appeal for literal translation, preparatory strategies and guessing. On the other hand, English native speakers reported that they encounter communication difficulties such as suprasegmental features, inappropriate vocabulary use, cross-cultural variations, etc. As a result, they reported that they employ various strategies to overcome communication problems with Sudanese interlocutors such as appeal for assistance, asking for repetition, body language, clarification request, circumlocution, guessing, message abandonment, appeal for paraphrasing in standard English, asking for confirmation and longer-term developing communication strategy. Secondly, investigating the communication difficulties and strategies in the first study led to the emergence of specific themes such as the Sudanese learners’ inability to use vocabulary within the appropriate context. Accordingly, this led to some new focused questions used to examine the Sudanese learners’ pragmatic competence, that is to test their ability to use language forms to realise different communicative situations with different functions. In addition, these questions were used to examine their knowledge of appropriate use of the linguistic forms in certain social contexts. In this study, twenty Sudanese learners were individually asked to complete twelve Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) scenarios with variety of functions; and then their responses to these scenarios were double rated by eight English native speakers to find out whether they were acceptable or unacceptable, their justifications for these ratings and what communication difficulties they highlighted. The results indicate that the pragmatic competence of the Sudanese learners is satisfactory when realising DCT situations. However, English native speakers highlighted various communication difficulties such as insufficient explanation, irrelevant response to the given situation, inappropriate explanation, absence of explanation, incomprehensive response, inconsistent content, irrelevant response to context, inappropriate lexical use and unfamiliar pronunciation. Finally, the study considers the pedagogical implications of the findings for teaching and learning the second language, and syllabus design research and for non-native speakers everywhere. This may provide such learners with better opportunity to develop communication strategies practice and raise their socio-pragmatic awareness

Pensamiento divergente y el aprendizaje en estudiantes de confección industrial de la Institución Educativa “María Auxiliadora”, Breña, 2019

La investigación tuvo como objetivo general, determinar la relación entre el pensamiento divergente y aprendizaje en los estudiantes de confección industrial de la CETPRO María Auxiliadora, Breña, 2019. En el aspecto metodológico, este estudio responde al enfoque cuantitativo, diseño no experimental, transaccional, tipo explicativo causal a nivel descriptivo – correlacional. La población de estudio fue conformada por 260 estudiantes de confección industrial de la CETPRO María Auxiliadora, matriculados en el ciclo medio de manera regular en año académico 2019 y una muestra conformada por 36 estudiantes. Se aplicó un instrumento para la variable pensamiento divergente cuyo índice de fiabilidad del alfa de Cronbach fue 0,854 y una prueba para medir el aprendizaje cuyo índice de fiabilidad Kr20 fue 0,912. Los resultados han demostrado que ningún estudiante obtuvo la calificación “bajo”, un 30,6% está en un rango “medio” y el 69,6% de los datos muestra un nivel “alto” en la capacidad del pensamiento divergente. Las conclusiones determinaron la relación entre el pensamiento divergente y el aprendizaje en los estudiantes de confección industrial de la CETPRO María Auxiliadora, Breña 2019. Se rechazó la hipótesis general, al 5% del nivel de significancia, se obtuvo un coeficiente de correlación de Rho de Spearman = 0,112 lo cual indica una baja relación entre ambas variables