Becoming a successful scientist : strategic thinking for scientific discovery

Craig Loehle’s opening sentence captured my attention and set the scene for this interesting and well-constructed volume. It is challenging and pro-vocative throughout and is at its strongest when its frequent assertions initiate thoughts, contemplation, and reflection. Although its intended audience is students and researchers, I suggest that it would be a worthwhile read for everyone in the scientific community – researchers, academics, teachers, students from undergraduate stages onwards, technicians, engineers, managers and entrepreneurs, as well as interested observers

Podcasting, pupils and pre-service-teachers

This Action Research conforms to Cohen's definition (2000) as "small scale intervention in the functioning of the real world and a close examination of the effects of such an intervention." It is a pilot study that uses a small, but representative group of students with a view to establishing generalisations about the wider applicability of the methods explored. (Burns, 2000, pp. 460-461) The authors examine the use of podcasting - a popular contemporary method of delivering audio content through computers and portable media players. Many rationales for their use in education can be advanced, for example Freedman (2006) lists sixteen reasons including the potential for students to access the podcasts at their own convenience. See also Maag (2006) and Kollar (2006). The study group included six undergraduate, pre-service science teachers who were completing a BSc (Honours) in Bioscience with Teaching. They had previously undertaken course assessments which incorporated presentations to peers and tutors. The pre-service science teachers had already completed block and serial school placements and were considered as being skilled in planning and delivering short presentations as part of their classroom practice. Their presentations had invariably been supported with well constructed and illustrated PowerPoint presentations. The Benchmark Standards for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) (General Teaching Council for Scotland & Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, 2006) relate to classroom to whole school standards for ITE in Scotland. They make specific reference to the significance and the expectations for Information and Communication Technology (ICT). ICT is viewed (paragraph 3.1) as a "Core professional interest" and student teachers should be "undertaking a range of approaches to teaching to facilitate the learning of pupils, including the appropriate use of information and communications technology". Also, ICT provides the potential "to contribute to a process of change". Boud (2000) was critical of assessment practices in higher education institutions and suggested "The purposes of assessment should be extended to include the preparation of students for sustainable assessment". Draper and Maguire (2006) explored the use of podcasts in campus based teaching with first year undergraduates in the Re-engineering Assessment Practices (REAP) project. These considerations helped motivate the authors to explore podcasts as a means of promoting sustainable assessment with fourth year undergraduates and consider their potential within professional graduate courses. The research explored the following questions: - Did the process of preparing podcasts extend their professional learning? - Can pre-service teachers deliver a well planned, coherent and well organised presentation to demonstrate their understanding of principles of learning and teaching? - Can pre-service teachers prepare a podcast to describe their own action research findings? Pre-service science teachers found the process challenging and rewarding. Pre-service teachers prepared podcast presentations that described their own action research findings. Pre-service teachers delivered well planned, coherent and well organised presentations to demonstrate their understanding of principles of learning and teaching. The process of preparing podcasts extended their professional learning in a variety of ways - base level technical competence in managing the software; pedagogically in identifying and supporting a teaching and learning resource; and professionally in relation to the Benchmark Standards for ITE. The approach is transferable to further study with a larger group of PGDE pre-service teachers

Student teachers views on the nature of science: do they change during a one year pre-service programme?

The nature of science (NOS) remains a central issue of pre-service teacher education. We considered the student teacher as a scientist, their background from undergraduate, previous postgraduate and life experiences as well as monitoring changes in their responses to a short questionnaire derived from McComas et al (1998). The study aimed to map the students' understanding of (NoS) with a view to developing their pedagogical content knowledge as well as establishing baseline data to measure the effect of future interventions during the pre-service programmes (such as teaching about NoS or the Philosophy of Science) It is also anticipated that we will be well placed to promote ACfE aspirations as well as informing our programme in relation to developing Responsible Citizens and Effective Contributors who can contribute meaningfully to debates about controversial scientific issues

Smartphones, time-lapse and responsible use in the school laboratory

Reports how observing and recording simple biological phenomena over an extended timescale could be enhanced by digital technology, the journey took surprising turns and twists into questions relating to ethics, child protection and reviewing acceptable use policies on information and communication technology

Climate change, collaboration and pre-service teachers' emergent professional identity

The study group included 74 graduate, pre-service science teachers who were following the Professional Graduate Diploma of Education Secondary (PGDES) in all science subjects, biology with science, chemistry with science and physics with science. The strong tradition of integrated science in Scotland is reflected (Inspectorate of Schools (Scotland) 1994) in the structure of PGDES programmes (The Scottish Office Education and Industry Department 1998). Scottish School science departments are organised in a variety of ways and a strong collaborative element is often present in providing a common programme of study in science during the early years of secondary schooling. Collaborative coursework on climate change was selected due to its contemporary interest; consultation on the detail of a 'Curriculum for Excellence' (The Curriculum Review Group 2004) and the absence of reported depth of experience in this content area in Scottish school science. Issues associated with climate change conform to all ten qualities of socio-scientific issues (Ratcliffe M. and Grace M. 2003. ) p. 2-3. The purpose was to simulate the collaborative working environment (Watters J.J. and Ginns I.S. 2000); to establish a 'community of practice' as suggested by the (Lave J. and Wenger E. 1991)model of situated learning; involved aspects of problem based learning (Savin-Baden M. and Howell C.M. 2004) as well as authentic assessment (Wiggins G.P. 1993); and to initiate the formation of identities as science teachers rather than 'subject specialists'. The task was based on a constructivist framework. We sought to explore aspects relating to attitudes and knowledge in the context of climate change, to collaboration and the use of ICT. Students were allocated to mixed subject groups and expected to produce reading materials for 12-14 year olds and an associated teachers' guide on a given aspect of climate change over a seven week period. The product and collaborative aspects of the task were assessed using a combination of tutor and peer assessment, including two group debriefing sessions. Students' knowledge and confidence about global warming and information relating to their experiences of collaboration were assessed using a simple pre- and post-task questionnaire developed for this task. We found that the students experienced a number of benefits and frustrations of group work task. Overall, they found the process beneficial and collectively produced a high quality resource which is available as a basis for their own teaching. The resource could be adapted for use by other teachers. The students have become more knowledgeable about aspects of climate change. They may also have considered the challenges in teaching complicated socio-scientific issues in relation to their own professional attitudes and values. A generally positive attitudinal movement took place during the period and some variation was observed between students from different subject areas

A NOTE ON NONLINEARITY BIAS AND DICHOTOMOUS CHOICE CVM: IMPLICATIONS FOR AGGREGATE BENEFITS ESTIMATION

It is a generally known statistical fact that the mean of a nonlinear function of a set of random variables is not equivalent to the function evaluated at the means of the variables. However, in dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies a common practice is to calculate an overall mean (or median) by integrating over offer space (numerically or analytically) an estimated logit or probit function in which sample mean values for the concomitant variables are used. We demonstrate this procedure to be incorrect and we statically test the procedure against the correct method for nonlinear models. Using data resulting in a well-behaved logit model, we reject the hypothesis of congruence between the two means. Such a finding should be considered in future single response dichotomous choice CVM studies, particularly when aggregation is of interest.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Bringing human rights home: refugees, reparation, and the responsibility to protect

Human rights, it is often observed, have become a common global language for making moral claims. One consequence of this is that there is a huge range of ways in which states, organisations and other actors draw on, invoke and mobilise human rights in different locations and contexts. The vast array of campaigns, treaties, laws and policies which fall under the umbrella of human rights means that human rights talk will be continually contested and, to some extent, fragmented, contradictory, and inconsistent. In Richard Wilson’s phrase, human rights discourse will remain strongly marked by ‘ideological promiscuity’ (Wilson 2006). Given that human rights talk and practice are partly shaped by power, these inconsistencies will inevitably, at least to some degree, reflect power relations and dominant interests within and across states

Durable Solutions as Reparation for the Unjust Harms of Displacement: Who Owes What to Refugees?

This article examines some of the theoretical and practical implications of understanding durable solutions as potential forms of reparation that can be offered to refugees for the unjust harms of displacement. It begins by making a basic moral case that durable solutions can act as forms of reparation, exploring the ways in which the creation or restoration of effective citizenship in a state through one of the durable solutions can go some way to providing restitution, compensation and satisfaction for refugees. It then discusses some considerations which need to be taken into account when seeking to identify which state should offer which durable solution as reparation to which refugees in any given case, such as the refugees’ choice, their place of residence and social ties, their sense of group identity, and questions of state capacity and efficiency. Observing that bestowing a reparative function upon durable solutions would potentially create a tension with their classical humanitarian rationale, it moves to explore how this tension might be navigated, with particular reference to the question of how states with limited resources should prioritize the needs of refugees for whose flight they are morally responsible vis-à-vis refugees for whose flight they are not responsible