An exploration of secondary students' mental states when learning about acids and bases

This study explored factors of students’ mental states, including emotion, intention, internal mental representation, and external mental representation, which can affect their learning performance. In evaluating students’ mental states during the science learning process and the relationship between mental states and learning achievement, valid, reliable, and scalable measures of students’ mental states and learning achievement are needed. This paper presents the development of the Mental State Conceptual Learning Inventory (MSCLI) to identify students’ mental states before and after learning about acids and bases. This instrument is time efficient and convenient and can be administered to large student samples so that teachers and researchers can gain profound insights into their students’ learning of acids and bases in science class. The results of this study indicate that students’ mental states are highly correlated with their achievement. As a whole, low-achieving students tended to have negative emotions and low intentions, were not good at internal visualization, and were unable to interpret graphics and draw pictures. In contrast, high-achieving students had positive emotions and intentions when learning life-related topics about acids and bases, and were good at internal visualization and drawing and interpreting graphics

Predicting Transitions in Low and High Levels of Risk Behavior from Early to Middle Adolescence: The TRAILS Study

The present study examined the joint development of substance use and externalizing problems in early and middle adolescence. First, it was tested whether the relevant groups found in previous studies i.e., those with an early onset, a late onset, and no onset or low levels of risk behavior could be identified, while using a developmental model of a single, underlying construct of risk behavior. Second, departing from Moffitt’s taxonomy of antisocial behavior, it was tested if early, but not late, onset risk behavior is predicted by a problematic risk profile in childhood. Data were used from TRAILS, a population based cohort study, starting at age 11 with two follow-ups at mean ages of 13.6 and 16.3 years. Latent transition analyses demonstrated that, both in early and middle adolescence, a single underlying construct of risk behavior, consisting of two classes (labeled as low and high risk behavior), adequately represented the data. Respondents could be clearly classified into four possible transition patterns from early to middle adolescence, with a transition from high to low being almost non-existent (2.5 %), low to low (39.4 %) and low to high (41.8 %) being the most prevalent, and high to high (16.2 %) substantial. As hypothesized, only the high-high group was characterized by a clear adverse predictor profile in late childhood, while the low-high group was not. This study demonstrates that the development of substance use is correlated with externalizing problems and underscores the theory that etiologies of early and later onset risk behavior are different

‘Even though it might take me a while, in the end, I understand it’: a longitudinal case study of interactions between a conceptual change strategy and student motivation, interest and confidence

Although there have been many investigations of the social, motivational, and emotional aspects of conceptual change, there have been few studies investigating the intersection of these factors with cognitive aspects in the regular classroom. Using a conceptual change approach, this case study reports experiences of a student of low to average prior attainment who achieved high levels of conceptual gains in five science topics over a two-year period. Her experience in the cognitive, social and affective domains was probed through analysis of interviews, student artefacts, video recordings of classroom learning, pre/post-tests and questionnaire results. For this student, peripheral or incidental persuasion of belonging to a supportive small group initially led to greater engagement with the construction of understanding through production of multiple student-generated representations, resulting in improved self-confidence and high levels of conceptual change. Evidence of transfer from performance to mastery approach goals, adoption of positive activating emotions and increased interest in science were observed. This study highlights that adoption of a multidimensional conceptual change approach with judicious organisation of small groups to support construction of verbal, pictorial and written representations of understanding may bring about changes in motivational stance, self-confidence and emotions to maximise conceptual change

Assessing the feasibility of adaptation options: methodological advancements and directions for climate adaptation research and practice

The Paris Agreement put adaptation prominently on the global climate action agenda. Despite a surge in research and praxis-based knowledge on adaptation, a critical policy roadblock is synthesizing and assessing this burgeoning evidence. We develop an approach to assess the multidimensional feasibility of adaptation options in a robust and transparent manner, providing direction for global climate policy and identifying knowledge gaps to further future climate research. The approach, which was tested in the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 °C (SR1.5) to assess 23 adaptation options, is underpinned by a systematic review of recent literature, expert elicitation, and iterative peer review. It responds to the challenge of limited agreement on adaptation indicators, lack of fine-scale adaptation data, and challenges of assessing synergies and trade-offs with mitigation. The findings offer methodological insights into how future assessments such as the IPCC Assessment Report (AR) six and regional, national, and sectoral assessment exercises could assess adaptation feasibility and synthesize the growing body of knowledge on climate change adaptation

A new Hardy–Mulholland-type inequality with a mixed kernel

By the use of weight coefficients and techniques of real analysis, we establish a new Hardy–Mulholland-type inequality with a mixed kernel and a best possible constant factor in terms of the hypergeometric function. Equivalent forms, an operator expression with the norm and reverses are also considered

Robot-assisted gait training in individuals with incomplete spinal cord injury: a case report

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