Review of "Conducting Educational Research: A primer for teachers and administrators"

Book Title: Conducting Educational Research: A primer for teachers and administrators Book Authors: Morrell, P.D. and Carroll, J.B. Publisher: Sense Publishers Reviewers: Steve Keirl (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Christine Edwards-Leis (St Mary's University College) ISBN: 978-94-6091-202-3 (paperback) ISBN: 978-94-6091-204-7 (e-book

Variations to Stimulated Recall Protocols to Enhance Student Reflection: I did, I saw, I remembered.

The project, Mental Models and Robotics and Middle Schooling, was an empirical qualitative study centred within information processing theory and linked with the introspection mediating process tracing paradigm. The study involved students and their teacher in a socioeconomically diverse urban primary school and aimed to establish how the identification of participants’ mental models can assist in the authentic assessment of learning through a richer understanding of the cognitive development taking place in a technology based learning experience. The strict protocols of Stimulated Recall methodology were used to externalise participants’ ‘in-action’ mental models, using the opening question ‘What were you thinking?’ The use of this rigid questioning technique elicited insufficient responses from the students. An additional opening question, ‘What were you doing?’ was added in the second episode of Stimulated Recall prior to the question, ‘What were you thinking while you were doing that?’ This change elicited increased quantity and quality of responses because students were able to link their thoughts and feelings with associated actions and reactions. Richer mental models of procedural knowledge but more crucially, conceptual knowledge, were evident in the recall of journaling activities. Social construction mental models were also richer as students more willingly linked thought to action

Distributed cognition in the middle years: using a forum format to elicit mental models of assessment.

The project, Mental Models and Robotics and Middle Schooling, was an empirical qualitative study centred within information processing theory and linked with the introspection mediating process tracing paradigm. The study involved students and their teacher in a socio-economically diverse urban primary school and aimed to establish how the identification of participants’ mental models can assist in the authentic assessment of learning through a richer understanding of the cognitive development taking place in a technology-based learning experience. Semi-structured and stimulated recall interviews, questionnaires, teach-back episodes, and teacher and student journals were used to externalise participants’ mental models. However, the effect of distributed cognition and the shared understanding of the nature, process, and response to assessment could not be determined by these instruments alone. A videoed forum of the student participants, held subsequent to an assessment episode designed by them, was used to elicit the mental models of assessment from teacher and learner points of view. Results of this forum indicates that middle years students can inform us of their understanding and need for authentic assessment practices that would clearly demonstrate their individual learning journey while adhering to systemic principles

Distributed cognition in the middle years: using a forum format to elicit mental models of assessment

The project, Mental Models and Robotics and Middle Schooling, was an empirical qualitative study centred within information processing theory and linked with the introspection mediating process tracing paradigm. The study involved students and their teacher in a socio-economically diverse urban primary school and aimed to establish how the identification of participants’ mental models can assist in the authentic assessment of learning through a richer understanding of the cognitive development taking place in a technology-based learning experience. Semi-structured and stimulated recall interviews, questionnaires, teach-back episodes, and teacher and student journals were used to externalise participants’ mental models. However, the effect of distributed cognition and the shared understanding of the nature, process, and response to assessment could not be determined by these instruments alone. A videoed forum of the student participants, held subsequent to an assessment episode designed by them, was used to elicit the mental models of assessment from teacher and learner points of view. Results of this forum indicates that middle years students can inform us of their understanding and need for authentic assessment practices that would clearly demonstrate their individual learning journey while adhering to systemic principles

Multiphoton microfabrication of conducting polymer-based biomaterials

We report the application of multiphoton microfabrication to prepare conducting polymer (CP)-based biomaterials that were capable of drug delivery and interacting with brain tissue ex vivo, thereby highlighting the potential of multiphoton lithography to prepare electroactive biomaterials which may function as implantable neural biointerfaces (e.g. electrodes)

Diversity from genes to ecosystems : a unifying framework to study variation across biological metrics and scales

This work was assisted through participation in “Next Generation Genetic Monitoring” Investigative Workshop at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, sponsored by the National Science Foundation through NSF Award #DBI-1300426, with additional support from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Hawaiian fish community data were provided by the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center's Coral Reef Ecosystem Division (CRED) with funding from NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program. O.E.G. was supported by the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTS). A. C. and C. H. C. were supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan. P.P.-N. was supported by a Canada Research Chair in Spatial Modelling and Biodiversity. K.A.S. was supported by National Science Foundation (BioOCE Award Number 1260169) and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. All data used in this manuscript are available in DRYAD (https://doi.org/dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qm288) and BCO-DMO (http://www.bco-dmo.org/project/552879).Biological diversity is a key concept in the life sciences and plays a fundamental role in many ecological and evolutionary processes. Although biodiversity is inherently a hierarchical concept covering different levels of organisation (genes, population, species, ecological communities and ecosystems), a diversity index that behaves consistently across these different levels has so far been lacking, hindering the development of truly integrative biodiversity studies. To fill this important knowledge gap we present a unifying framework for the measurement of biodiversity across hierarchical levels of organisation. Our weighted, information-based decomposition framework is based on a Hill number of order q = 1, which weights all elements in proportion to their frequency and leads to diversity measures based on Shannon’s entropy. We investigated the numerical behaviour of our approach with simulations and showed that it can accurately describe complex spatial hierarchical structures. To demonstrate the intuitive and straightforward interpretation of our diversity measures in terms of effective number of components (alleles, species, etc.) we applied the framework to a real dataset on coral reef biodiversity. We expect our framework will have multiple applications covering the fields of conservation biology, community genetics, and eco-evolutionary dynamics.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Nurturing the young shoots of talent: Using action research for exploration and theory building

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 19(4), 433-450, 2011, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1350293X.2011.623515.This paper reports the outcomes of a set of action research projects carried out by teacher researchers in 14 local education authorities in England, working collaboratively with university tutors, over a period of three years. The common aim of all the projects was to explore practical ways of nurturing the gifts and talents of children aged four–seven years. The project was funded by the Department of Education and Skills in England as part of the government's gifted and talented programme. The project teachers felt that their understanding of issues relating to nurturing the gifts and talents of younger children was enhanced through their engagement in the project. It was possible to map the findings of the projects to the English government's National Quality Standards for gifted and talented education which include: (1) identification; (2) effective provision in the classroom; (3) enabling curriculum entitlement and choice; (4) assessment for learning; (5) engaging with community, families and beyond. The findings are also analysed within the framework of good practice in educating children in the first years of schooling. Participating practitioners felt that action research offered them a suitable methodology to explore the complexity of the topic of giftedness through cycles of planning, action and reflection and personal theory building