Mechanics and optics

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Unterrichtsforschung und Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung: Das Überbrücken der Kluft zwischen Forschung und Praxis

A few thousand years ago, Aristotle pointed out a gap between academic (research) knowledge and practical knowledge. The former is abstract, a generalization based on careful reasoning from evidence. The latter is specific, context-specific. Consequently, factors other than research knowledge come into play when teaching and when preparing teachers. A brief history of research on teaching highlights some of its rich contributions to the understanding of teaching. However, its contribution to educating teachers has, following Aristotle, limitations. Much more is involved in contextualized decisions about teaching action than research can address. Research knowledge is limited, for example, in its ability to inform teachers when and how to act in a situation. It is also limited in its ability to inform teachers as to how they should act considering the moral and ethical consequences of that action. Teachers need and use practical knowledge. Imparting that kind of knowledge is central to educating teachers. The job of teacher educators is to bridge the research-practice gap in preparing new teachers and enhancing capacity of practicing teachers. In a sense, teacher-educators are brokers in a trading zone between research and practice. Brokers should be recognized and trained in that role to advance the education of teachers. This said, preparing brokers fluent in teaching practice and scientific research has its challenges. These challenges include convincing the public and policymakers that more than scientific evidence is needed in preparing and supporting teachers, and convincing higher education institutions that doing so is legitimate and should be respected along with other professional programs such as medicine, law, business, and architecture. (DIPF/Orig.)Vor einigen Tausend Jahren verwies bereits Aristoteles auf die Kluft zwischen akademischem bzw. wissenschaftlichem Wissen und praktischem Wissen. Ersteres ist abstrakt, da es eine sorgfältig vorgenommene Generalisierung von empirischer Evidenz darstellt. Letzteres hingegen ist (kontext)spezifisch. Infolgedessen spielen noch andere Faktoren als forschungsbasiertes Wissen eine Rolle, wenn es um Unterricht und die Aus- und Weiterbildung von Lehrpersonen geht. Ein kurzer Überblick über die Geschichte der Unterrichtsforschung soll ein paar ihrer bedeutenden Beiträge zum Verstehen von Unterrichtshandlungen hervorheben. Allerdings ist der Beitrag der Unterrichtsforschung zur Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung, Aristoteles folgend, insgesamt beschränkt. Denn kontextualisierte Entscheidungen, die sich auf konkrete Lehrhandlungen im Unterricht beziehen, umfassen mehr, als Forschung miteinzubeziehen vermag. Das in der Forschung generierte Wissen ist limitiert, weil es Lehrpersonen beispielsweise nicht sagen kann, wann und wie sie in einer konkreten Unterrichtssituation handeln sollen. Ebenfalls limitiert ist dieses Wissen in Bezug darauf, welches Verhalten angesichts der moralischen und ethischen Konsequenzen einer Handlung angemessen ist. Lehrpersonen benötigen Praxiswissen und wenden dieses an. Die Vermittlung dieses Wissens ist eine zentrale Aufgabe der Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung. Dozierende an Institutionen der Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung haben die Kluft zwischen Forschung und Praxis zu überbrücken, und dies sowohl in der Ausbildung als auch in der Weiterbildung von Lehrpersonen. In gewissem Sinne fungieren sie dabei als «brokers», die in einer Handelszone zwischen Forschung und Praxis vermittelnd tätig sind. Solche Brokerinnen und Broker sollten in ihrer Rolle anerkannt und geschult werden, damit sie die Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung weiterbringen können. Dies ist jedoch nicht ganz einfach, denn die fundierte Vorbereitung der Brokerinnen und Broker auf Lehre und wissenschaftliche Forschung ist herausfordernd. Diese Herausforderungen bestehen nicht zuletzt darin, die Öffentlichkeit und die politischen Entscheidungsträgerinnen und Entscheidungsträger davon zu überzeugen, dass Vorbereitung und Unterstützung von Lehrpersonen mehr erfordern als die Vermittlung wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse. Hochschulen wiederum müssen davon überzeugt werden, dass dieser Anspruch legitim ist und ebenso anerkannt werden sollte wie in Ausbildungsprogrammen anderer Professionen, z.B. in Medizin, Recht, Wirtschaft und Architektur

Steps in Designing an Indicator System

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What Are Educational Indicators and Indicator Systems?

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Adolescents’ Self-concept Short Scale: A version of PHCSCS

Problem Statement: The adolescents’ self-concept has remained as a powerful issue in educational context. The lack of assessment instruments, especially in shorted version and with studied psychometric characteristics, has constituted a problem. Purpose of Study: This study presents the construction of “Adolescents’ Self-concept Short Scale” (ASCSS), using the Portuguese adaptation (Veiga & Domingues, 2012) of the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale (Piers & Hertzberg, 2002). Research Methods: The study involved 440 adolescent students. The dichotomous responses (yes/no) of the original 60 items PHCSCS version has been changed to 1-6 responses (completely disagree - completely agree). The psychometric qualities, internal consistency and the external validity were analyzed. Factorial analyses carried out highlighted six factors — behaviour, anxiety, intellectual status, popularity, physical appearance, and happiness —, each having 5 items. The analysis allowed to find a short scale with 30 items that, exceeding the percentage of variance explained in total versions, has best levels of reliability. In the study of external validity, the results in the “Adolescents’ Self-concept Short Scale” appeared significantly related to the academic achievement. Findings: The results allowed to find that this short scale presents psychometric qualities and can be used in research and psychoeducational practice, to assess the multidimensional adolescents’ self-concept. Conclusions: The future use of the “Adolescents’ Self-concept Short Scale” is considered and proposed. This scale may be a useful opportunity for psychologists, teachers and other education professionals. Recommendations: to deepen the study of multidimensionality of adolescents’ self-concept and extend the external validity can constitute important fields of research

Modeling and Measuring Domain-Specific Quantitative Reasoning in Higher Education Business and Economics

Quantitative reasoning is considered a crucial prerequisite for acquiring domain-specific expertise in higher education. To ascertain whether students are developing quantitative reasoning, validly assessing its development over the course of their studies is required. However, when measuring quantitative reasoning in an academic study program, it is often confounded with other skills. Following a situated approach, we focus on quantitative reasoning in the domain of business and economics and define domain-specific quantitative reasoning primarily as a skill and capacity that allows for reasoned thinking regarding numbers, arithmetic operations, graph analyses, and patterns in real-world business and economics tasks, leading to problem solving. As many studies demonstrate, well-established instruments for assessing business and economics knowledge like the Test of Understanding College Economics (TUCE) and the Examen General para el Egreso de la Licenciatura (EGEL) contain items that require domain-specific quantitative reasoning skills. In this study, we follow a new approach and assume that assessing business and economics knowledge offers the opportunity to extract domain-specific quantitative reasoning as the skill for handling quantitative data in domain-specific tasks. We present an approach where quantitative reasoning – embedded in existing measurements from TUCE and EGEL tasks – will be empirically extracted. Hereby, we reveal that items tapping domain-specific quantitative reasoning constitute an empirically separable factor within a Confirmatory Factor Analysis and that this factor (domain-specific quantitative reasoning) can be validly and reliably measured using existing knowledge assessments. This novel methodological approach, which is based on obtaining information on students’ quantitative reasoning skills using existing domain-specific tests, offers a practical alternative to broad test batteries for assessing students’ learning outcomes in higher education

Research on teaching and the education of teachers: Brokering the gap

A few thousand years ago, Aristotle pointed out a gap between academic (research) knowledge and practical knowledge. The former is abstract, a generalization based on careful reasoning from evidence. The latter is specific, context-specific. Consequently, factors other than research knowledge come into play when teaching and when preparing teachers. A brief history of research on teaching highlights some of its rich contributions to the understanding of teaching. However, its contribution to educating teachers has, following Aristotle, limitations. Much more is involved in contextualized decisions about teaching action than research can address. Research knowledge is limited, for example, in its ability to inform teachers when and how to act in a situation. It is also limited in its ability to inform teachers as to how they should act considering the moral and ethical consequences of that action. Teachers need and use practical knowledge. Imparting that kind of knowledge is central to educating teachers. The job of teacher educators is to bridge the research-practice gap in preparing new teachers and enhancing capacity of practicing teachers. In a sense, teacher-educators are brokers in a trading zone between research and practice. Brokers should be recognized and trained in that role to advance the education of teachers. This said, preparing brokers fluent in teaching practice and scientific research has its challenges. These challenges include convincing the public and policymakers that more than scientific evidence is needed in preparing and supporting teachers, and convincing higher education institutions that doing so is legitimate and should be respected along with other professional programs such as medicine, law, business, and architecture

The complex relationship between students’ critical thinking and epistemological beliefs in the context of problem solving

The study utilized a multi-method approach to explore the connection between critical thinking and epistemological beliefs in a specific problem-solving situation. Data drawn from a sample of ten third-year bioscience students were collected using a combination of a cognitive lab and a performance task from the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). The cognitive-lab data were analysed using thematic analysis. The findings showed that students’ epistemological beliefs were interwoven into their critical thinking: students used critical thinking as a tool (1) for enhancing understanding and (2) for determining truth or falsehood. Based on this classification, students could be placed in one of two qualitative profiles, either (1) thorough processing or (2) superficial processing. The results indicated that students who showed superficial processing palmed off justification for knowing on authoritative figures. In contrast to previous studies these students did not consider knowledge to be absolutely certain or unquestionable. The findings also show that students with thorough processing believed knowledge to be tentative and fallible, but did not share the relativist view of knowledge where any claim counts because all knowledge is relative. All ten students shared a fallibilist view of knowledge.Peer reviewe

Student help seeking from pastoral care in UK high schools: a qualitative study

Background Little is known about high school students' perceptions of school-based pastoral support. This study aimed to explore this in the context of a high school–based emotional support project. Methods Qualitative interviews explored perspectives on help seeking of students (N = 23) and staff (N = 27) in three UK high schools where a pastoral project was introduced. Data were analysed thematically. Results Student peer groups perceived help seeking as a sign of weakness. However, students valued learning skills in managing emotions and friendships. Staff expressed concerns about students' ability to help seek proactively, and highlighted organisational influences on pastoral support. Conclusions Increasing student control over the process, and involving trusted staff, could encourage help seeking in high school. It is possible to access the views of students who do not help seek, to improve understanding of help-seeking behaviour