Five Strategies to Support all Teachers: Suggestions to Get Off the Slippery Slope of Cookbook Science Teaching

Many teachers shudder at the thought of implementing an inquiry curriculum. Perhaps they envision a rowdy classroom with little learning. Maybe they wonder, How will this connect to all the standards? Fortunately, these legitimate concerns can be addressed, and all students can engage in thoughtfully constructed inquiry science experiences. In this article, we outline five strategies that we have used with elementary school teachers as they moved from a cookbook approach in science to an approach that is inquiry-based. Having presented these five strategies in a linear format, we know that on the surface this may seem close to the slippery slope of cookbook science teaching, but we also know that thoughtful practitioners working in classrooms across the country will see these strategies as interactive, overlapping, and nonsequential

The effect of company performance and executive remuneration on employee's perceptions of fairness in the South African financial services industry

The main objective of the present study, which was conducted within the South African financial services industry was to establish whether executive remuneration (consisting of basic salary and short-term incentive bonuses) and company performance (in terms of return on equity) affects employees' perceptions of fairness. In the South African context there are many senior executives that in most peoples' opinion earn excessive salaries and bonuses, this while the organisations' that they lead perform poorly. As a consequence of their organisation performing badly, employees need to be retrenched, yet executives seemingly do not forego or even reduce their salaries or bonuses in order to retain employees and improve the organisation's bottom line. The widely publisicised (often extreme) examples of this, illustrate and are explained by the disconnect that is currently taking place globally, specifically in South Africa. This disconnect is that of inequality of wealth between the rich and the poor as measured by the Gini Coefficient, in which South Africa is now ranked the most inequal country in the world. The aim of the present study is to better understand some of the dynamics that influence perceptions of fairness in such scenarios. The present study has implications for organisations in terms of distributive justice outcomes, Human Resources practices and policies, as well various impacts on employee motivation and satisfaction

Fostering Transformative Learning, Self-reflexivity and Medical Citizenship Through Guided Tours of Disadvantaged Neighborhoods

Background and objectives: Medical school curricula increasingly seek to promote medical students’ commitment to redressing health disparities, but traditional pedagogical approaches have fallen short of this goal. The objective of this work was to assess the value of using community-based guided tours of disadvantaged neighborhoods to fill this gap. Methods: A total of 50 second-year medical students participated in a guided tour of disadvantaged public housing neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia. Students completed self-reflexive writing exercises during a post-tour debriefing session. Student writings were analyzed to assess the tour’s effect on their awareness of poverty’s impact on vulnerable populations’ health and wellbeing, and their personal reactions to the tour. Results: Student writings indicated that the activity fostered transformative learning experiences around the issue of poverty and its effects on health and stimulated a personal commitment to working with underserved populations. Themes from qualitative analysis included: increased awareness of the extent of poverty, enhanced self-reflexive attitude towards personal feelings, biases and misperceptions concerning the poor, increased intentional awareness of the effects of poverty on patient health and well-being, and, encouragement to pursue careers of medical service. Conclusions: This pilot demonstrated that incorporating self-reflexive learning exercises into a brief community-based guided tour can enhance the social consciousness of medical students by deepening understandings of health disparities and promoting transformative learning experiences

Observing Scenarios for the Next Decade of Early Warning Detection of Binary Neutron Stars

We describe representative observing scenarios for early warning detection of binary neutron star mergers with the current generation of ground-based gravitational wave detectors as they approach design sensitivity. We incorporate recent estimates of the infrastructure latency and detector sensitivities to provide up-to-date predictions. We use Fisher analysis to approximate the associated localizations, and we directly compare to Bayestar to quantify biases inherited from this approach. In particular, we show that Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo will detect and distribute ≲1 signal with signal-to-noise ratio greater than 15 before a merger in their fourth observing run provided they maintain a 70% duty cycle. This is consistent with previous early warning detection estimates. We estimate that 60% of all observations and 8% of those detectable 20 s before a merger will be localized to ≲100 deg 2 . If KAGRA is able to achieve a 25 Mpc horizon, 70% of these binary neutron stars will be localized to ≲100 deg 2 by a merger. As the Aundha–Hanford–KAGRA–Livingston–Virgo network approaches design sensitivity over the next ∼10 yr, we expect one (six) early warning alerts to be distributed 60 (0) s before a merger. Although adding detectors to the Hanford–Livingston–Virgo network at design sensitivity impacts the detection rate at ≲50% level, it significantly improves localization prospects. Given uncertainties in sensitivities, participating detectors, and duty cycles, we consider 103 future detector configurations so electromagnetic observers can tailor preparations toward their preferred models

Using Inquiry-Based Teaching and Kids Inquiry Conferences to Strengthen Elementary Science Instruction and to Encourage More Students to Pursue Science Careers

For the past 20 years, there has been a push to improve the teaching and learning of science in elementary schools. One strong reason for this was the release of the National Science Education Standards (NRC 1996). The Standards articulated not only what K-12 students should know (science content standards), but also how science teachers needed to teach (teaching standards) and be continuously supported (professional development standards). The Standards also considered ways to support inquiry-based and meaningful science learning for K-12 students (program and system standards). According to the NRC, one ot:·the four reasons underpinning all of this is because the goals for science education within the school day are to educate students who could increase their economic productivity through the use of knowledge, understanding and skills of the scientifically literate person in their careers (1996, p. 13). Additional reasons for this push include greater attention to the STEM fields, evolving and expanding global networks, and an ever-increasing list of accountability mechanisms thrust upon schools and teachers (Marx and Harris 2006). Clearly, in order to pursue a career in a scientific field, children need knowledge and skills very different from those traditionally taught in elementary schools. Unfortunately, what occurs in elementary schools is the opposite of what the Standards advocate

Have a Kids Inquiry Conference: Putting a Twist on the Typical Science Fair

In school, the traditional format for the formal sharing of science experiences has been the science fair. Although the format of science fairs may vary, the usual components consist of a step-by-step experimental process that students follow as they test different variables, construct a hypothesis, and collect data to support or disprove their hypothesis. Usually the science fair is conducted as a competitive event at which prizes are awarded for the best examples. Unfortunately, this type of science event has little connection to the real sharing that scientists do regularly. The National Science Education Standards (NSES) call for an approach to science that honors the scientific processes in which scientists actually engage (NRC 1996). A careful look shows that practicing scientists share informal talk daily and deliberately prepare for more formal sharing of their work through participation in professional conferences. Unlike the school science fair, the professional science conference is a noncompetitive place where scientists interact and share ideas. Work that is in process is often presented, and the giving and receiving of feedback is an integral part of the conference. One alternative to the traditional school science fair is a Kids Inquiry Conference (KIC; Saul et al. 2005). More along the lines of the professional science conference, a KIC encourages students to develop their own inquiry projects, carry them out using an inquiry-based model, and prepare for a public sharing event. In addition, preparing for and participating in a KIC can be a powerful professional development (PD) experience for teachers. In this article, we describe preparing for, implementing, and reflecting on the KIC that we--university faculty collaborating with elementary teachers--organized with 250 students and 12 teachers from two elementary schools. We\u27ll focus on the conference logistics--you bring the inquiry

Collaborating to improve inquiry-based teaching in elementary science and mathematics methods courses

This study examines the effect of promoting inquiry-based teaching (IBT) through collaboration between a science methods course and mathematics methods course in an elementary teacher education program. During the collaboration, preservice elementary teacher (PST) candidates experienced 3 different types of inquiry as a way to foster increased understanding of inquiry based teaching (IBT). The experiences included a PST driven science inquiry and a mathematics inquiry where PSTs were learners and a science inquiry where PSTs were teachers. During and following the semester of the collaboration, data were collected to assess the impact of the inquiry experiences on the PSTs’ understanding of IBT. Student work and teacher field notes suggest that PSTs were able to identify, confront and wrestle with the complexities of IBT

An asymptotic formula for integer points on Markoff-Hurwitz varieties

We establish an asymptotic formula for the number of integer solutions to the Markoff-Hurwitz equation x21+x22+⋯+x2n=ax1x2⋯xn+k. When n≥4, the previous best result is by Baragar (1998) that gives an exponential rate of growth with exponent β that is not in general an integer when n≥4. We give a new interpretation of this exponent of growth in terms of the unique parameter for which there exists a certain conformal measure on projective space