The Significance of Outside-school Factors in Science Education: The Role of Families on the Attitudes that Turkish Children in London have to Science

The literature in science education highlights the potentially significant role of outside-school factors such as parents, cultural contexts and role models in influencing students’ science participation. Because a substantial portion of students’ science attitudes and inspirations develop within the context of their families, their cultural background and their daily lives, it is important to understand how outsideschool factors affect students’ formation and expansion of science capabilities. In addition, students from minority ethnic groups face unique challenges in their science participation where outside-school factors have been suggested to play a major role. Finally, there is growing concern and corresponding research interest in the UK on ethnic minority students’ science participation, but most studies have focused on ‘major’ minority ethnic groups (e.g., Black African/Caribbean, Pakistani students) and paid limited attention to other groups. This study investigates the role of outside-school factors in students’ formation and expansion of science capabilities in the context of Turkish minority students and their parents living in London. The study uses data from one independent Turkish school and one maintained school with a large Turkish student population in London including semi-structured student (n=16), parent (n=11) and teacher and staff (n=7) interviews, student questionnaires both from the two schools in London (n=93) and five additional schools in Istanbul, Turkey (n=383) to provide an analysis of how outside-school factors influence students’ science capability development. Building on and linking Bourdieu’s key concepts of habitus, cultural and social capital and field with Sen’s capability approach, the study develops a two-stage model of students’ science-related capability development. The findings suggest that the role of outside-school factors is twofold, first, in providing an initial set of science-related resources and then in conversion of these resources to science-related capabilities and functionings. Qualitative and quantitative analyses indicate that science-related capability development is a complex process driven by both structure and agency. Overall, the study advances our understanding of the mechanisms involved in formation and expansion of ethnic minority students’ science-related capabilities by introducing a new theoretical framework and by providing empirically based insights

Team Familiarity and Productivity in Cardiac Surgery Operations: The Effect of Dispersion, Bottlenecks and Task Complexity

Fluid teams are commonly used by a variety of organizations to perform similar and repetitive yet highly critical and knowledge-intensive tasks. Such teams operate for a limited time, after which they dissolve and some of their members may work together again as part of another team. Using a granular dataset of 6,206 cardiac surgeries from a private hospital in Europe over seven years, our study offers a new and detailed account of how team familiarity (i.e., shared work experience) influences team productivity. We highlight the role of nuanced team composition dynamics beyond average team familiarity. We observe that teams with high dispersion of pairwise familiarity exhibit lower team productivity, and the existence of a "bottleneckpair" may significantly hinder overall knowledge transfer capability, thus, productivity of fluid teams. In addition, we find that the higher the percentage of familiarity gained from complex tasks, the higher the productivity of the team. Finally, our results suggest that the positive effect of average team familiarity on productivity is enhanced when performing more complicated tasks. Our study provides new operational insights to improve productivity of fluid teams with better team composition strategies

The CoMac DescriptorTM and Psychosociolinguistic Tailored Communication to Promote Self-Management (TCPS) in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

poster abstractAbstract: Estimates show that between 35-50% of patients with chronic conditions do not adhere to medical prescriptions. Lack of adherence to treatment plans results in poor clinical/patient outcomes, higher healthcare costs, and lost productivity. Adherence is connected to health literacy and health communication. Health literacy includes the ability to comprehend medical information and make decisions about healthy behaviors. Much of the focus on health literacy has been on reading and numeracy; however, in the clinic setting, health information is most often exchanged through provider-patient verbal communication. Verbal exchange of information includes speaking and listening. Linguistic tactics can be used to draw individuals’ attention to messages, selecting specific words, phrases, and style of communicating, informed by linguistics, can create a psychological closeness between the message and the audience. Increasing attention to oral messages should be a key strategy in health communication to promote adherence and self-management. This presentation describes the effectiveness and the practicality of an innovative psychosociolinguistic intervention tool, based on previous research in linguistic analysis of patient talk, the CoMac DescriptorTM and the subsequent psychosociolinguistically informed communication (Connor et al., 2012; Connor & Lauten 2014). As an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the International Center for Intercultural Communication (ICIC) at IUPUI, we have used the CoMac DescriptorTM, a 12-question survey, to identify and segment patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) based on patients’ psychosociolinguistic characteristics. We have then offered healthcare providers psychosociolinguistically informed communication, matching the linguistic styles of patients. We will share the key findings such as 1) patients’ and healthcare professionals’ overall satisfaction with the CoMac DescriptorTM and psychosociolinguistically informed communication; and 2) statistically significant relationship between the health behaviors and health outcomes of patients using the CoMac Descriptor and psychosociolinguistically informed communication

Sequential Innovation in Mobile App Development

PROBLEM DEFINITION: In today’s highly dynamic and competitive app markets, a significant portion of development takes place after the initial product launch via the addition of new features and the enhancement of existing products. In managing the sequential innovation process in mobile app development, two key operational questions arise. (i) What features and attributes should be added to existing products in successive versions? (ii) How should these features and attributes be implemented for greater market success? We investigate the implications of three different types of mobile app development activities on market performance. ACADEMIC/PRACTICAL RELEVANCE: Our study contributes to the operations management literature by providing an empirically based understanding of sequential innovation and its market performance implications in mobile app development, an important industry in terms of size, scope and potential. METHODOLOGY: Using a novel data set of mobile apps in the Productivity category, we leverage text-mining and information retrieval techniques to study the rich information in the release notes of apps. We then characterize product development activities at each version release and link these activities with app performance in a dynamic estimation model. We also incorporate an instrumental variables analysis to substantiate our findings. RESULTS: We find that greater update dissimilarity (i.e., dissimilarity of the features and attributes of a new update from those of previous updates) is associated with higher performance, especially in mature apps. We also find that the greater the product update market orientation (i.e., the greater the similarity of the focal firm’s new features and attributes with respect to the recent additions of its competitors), the higher is the market performance. This finding suggests that the market rewards those developers who have a responsive policy to their competitors’ product innovation efforts. Our results also suggest that a rapid introduction of updates dampens the potential market benefits that the mobile app developers might gain from market orientation. We find no evidence of a beneficial effect of product update scope (i.e., incorporating features and attributes from other product subcategories) on market performance. MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS: Our study offers managerial insights into mobile app development by exploring the sequential innovation characteristics that are associated with greater market success in pursuing and implementing new features and attributes

Task Variety in Professional Service Work: When It Helps and When It Hurts

In a wide range of professional service firms, individuals perform a variety of tasks which are highly cognitive and knowledge intensive yet repetitive in nature, providing significant opportunities for learning. In addition, individuals in such environments tend to enjoy considerable discretion in managing when and how they perform their tasks. In light of these observations, we investigate task allocation and timing strategies that may enhance or inhibit learning and productivity for professional service workers. Specifically, we focus on the role of task variety. We use a detailed dataset of 3273 coronary artery bypass surgeries in a private European hospital over 7 years to examine the effect of concurrent and non‐concurrent exposure to task variety on learning and productivity on a focal task. We find that while concurrent exposure to variety has a positive impact on focal productivity, non‐concurrent exposure to variety has a negative impact on it. Our results also suggest that short‐term exposure to variety amplifies these relationships

Developing a targeted English-language curriculum and materials for Latino caregivers of infants with special needs as part of a NICU pre-discharge education program

poster abstractAbstract: Latino infants with special healthcare needs are at high risk of mortality and have difficulty obtaining specialty care. Poor English-language skills of the caregivers add an additional layer of vulnerability. Existing health-related English-language programs address adult, but not pediatric health concerns. A clear need exists for short-term health-related English-language education programs to develop survival communication skills in low-literacy Limited English Proficiency (LEP) caregivers. To fill this need for intervention, the International Center for Intercultural Communication (ICIC) at IUPUI collaborated with Family Voices Indiana, a family advocacy group, and created a grant-funded series of classes to be taught in a one-on-one setting at Riley Hospital for Latino LEP parents of Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) babies. The goal of the study is to provide these parents with the English language competency to take an active part in the medical decision making and care of their children. An additional goal of the program is to improve families' ability to enroll in local English as Second Language programs in the community. The findings will be discussed in three parts: We will first feature the needs-analysis period followed by the development of a curriculum, instructional materials, and pre-post intervention assessments based on the identified needs. Second, we will feature the actual intervention and will involve cases from working with low-literacy/low-proficiency caregivers. Third, we will discuss the post-intervention stage and feature data analysis with the purpose of assessing the viability of the curriculum and materials that would lead to revisions. The project is designed to ensure eventual adaptability of the curriculum for ESL caregivers of various language backgrounds, stronger language or literacy skills, a variety of healthcare contexts, and the larger pediatric population

How Temporary Assignments Boost Innovation

When front-line manufacturing employees are exchanged between company sites, they contribute more valuable ideas

Selling innovative products in the presence of externalities

When deciding whether to adopt an innovative product or service, consumers often experience different levels of anxiety (i.e., nervousness) that prompt them to resist purchase (e.g., fear of learning new technologies, disruption of established habits or beliefs). In such cases, consumers’ anxiety is mitigated by “validation” through externality (e.g., the number of early adopters). To reduce consumers’ anxiety, firms can also invest in “familiarization” through promotion (e.g., offering free trials). We conceptualize innovation as a product that engenders anxiety, and present a model that employs a consumer utility model focusing on the psychological dimension. We examine the firm's profit-maximizing promotion and pricing decisions when selling to forward-looking consumers in the presence of externality. Our equilibrium analysis reveals that, unlike the conventional wisdom for promoting new products, for anxiety-inducing innovations with externality, accelerating the speed of adoption through promotion can actually be detrimental to the firm.</p

The role of outside-school factors in science education: a two-stage theoretical model linking Bourdieu and Sen, with a case study

The literature in science education highlights the potentially significant role of outside-school factors such as parents, cultural contexts and role models in students’ formation of science attitudes and aspirations, and their attainment in science classes. In this paper, building on and linking Bourdieu’s key concepts of habitus, cultural and social capital, and field with Sen’s capability approach, we develop a model of students’ science-related capability development. Our model proposes that the role of outside-school factors is twofold, first, in providing an initial set of science-related resources (i.e. habitus, cultural and social capital), and then in conversion of these resources to science-related capabilities. The model also highlights the distinction between science-related functionings (outcomes achieved by individuals) and science-related capabilities (ability to achieve desired functionings), and argues that it is necessary to consider science-related capability development in evaluating the effectiveness of science education. We then test our theoretical model with an account of three Turkish immigrant students’ science-related capabilities and the role of outside-school factors in forming and extending these capabilities. We use student and parent interviews, student questionnaires and in-class observations to provide an analysis of how outside-school factors influence these students’ attitudes, aspirations and attainment in science