Global patterns in students’ views of science and interest in science

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.International studies have shown that interest in science and technology among primary and secondary school students in Western European countries is low and seems to be decreasing. In many countries outside Europe, and especially in developing countries, interest in science and technology remains strong. As part of the large-scale European Union funded ‘Science Education for Diversity’ project, a questionnaire probing potential reasons for this difference was completed by students in the UK, Netherlands, Turkey, Lebanon, India and Malaysia. This questionnaire sought information about favourite courses, extracurricular activities and views on the nature of science. Over 9,000 students aged mainly between 10 and 14 years completed the questionnaire. Results revealed that students in countries outside Western Europe showed a greater interest in school science, in careers related to science and in extracurricular activities related to science than didWestern European students. Non-European studentswere also more likely to hold an empiricist viewof the nature of science and to believe that science can solve many problems faced by the world. Multilevel analysis revealed a strong correlation between interest in science and having such a view of the Nature of Science.This publication received funding from the European Union Science in Society Framework 7 Programme (FP7/2007/2013) under grant agreement 244717. We would like to thank the following people for collecting data and contributing to this research project: Roel Janssen, Huseyin Bag, Lindsay Hetherington, Alun Morgan, Keith Postlethwaite, Rupert Wegerif, Ng Swee Chin, Choy Siew Chee, Oo Pou San, Chin Fui Chung, Teh Lee Wah, Sugra Chunawala, Chitra Natarajan and Beena Chok

Challenge clusters facing LCA in environmental decision-making—what we can learn from biofuels

Purpose Bioenergy is increasingly used to help meet greenhouse gas (GHG) and renewable energy targets. However, bioenergy’s sustainability has been questioned, resulting in increasing use of life cycle assessment (LCA). Bioenergy systems are global and complex, and market forces can result in significant changes, relevant to LCA and policy. The goal of this paper is to illustrate the complexities associated with LCA, with particular focus on bioenergy and associated policy development, so that its use can more effectively inform policymakers. Methods The review is based on the results from a series of workshops focused on bioenergy life cycle assessment. Expert submissions were compiled and categorized within the first two workshops. Over 100 issues emerged. Accounting for redundancies and close similarities in the list, this reduced to around 60 challenges, many of which are deeply interrelated. Some of these issues were then explored further at a policyfacing workshop in London, UK. The authors applied a rigorous approach to categorize the challenges identified to be at the intersection of biofuels/bioenergy LCA and policy. Results and discussion The credibility of LCA is core to its use in policy. Even LCAs that comply with ISO standards and policy and regulatory instruments leave a great deal of scope for interpretation and flexibility. Within the bioenergy sector, this has led to frustration and at times a lack of obvious direction. This paper identifies the main challenge clusters: overarching issues, application and practice and value and ethical judgments. Many of these are reflective of the transition from application of LCA to assess individual products or systems to the wider approach that is becoming more common. Uncertainty in impact assessment strongly influences planning and compliance due to challenges in assigning accountability, and communicating the inherent complexity and uncertainty within bioenergy is becoming of greater importance. Conclusions The emergence of LCA in bioenergy governance is particularly significant because other sectors are likely to transition to similar governance models. LCA is being stretched to accommodate complex and broad policy-relevant questions, seeking to incorporate externalities that have major implications for long-term sustainability. As policy increasingly relies on LCA, the strains placed on the methodology are becoming both clearer and impedimentary. The implications for energy policy, and in particular bioenergy, are large

Genomics and scientific literacy

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Re-theorising the student dialogically across and between boundaries of multiple communities

Both cognitive and sociocultural traditions have customarily theorised learning in terms of processes of progression within single communities. More recently, educational scholars have started to focus on learning as a horisontal process of boundary crossing between multiple communities. A problem of this approach is that boundaries are often laid out analytically on a system level, without explaining whether and how boundaries relate to discontinuities at the level of an individual student’s learning process. The latter requires theoretical elaboration on how an individual learner can, simultaneously, be part of more than one practice. By drawing on a dialogical approach to self, we intend to theorise learners as participants in practices, and as transcendent selves. In doing so, we point out that boundaries are dynamically evolving discontinuities that mediate or obstruct potential hybridisations of school and everyday life experiences in learning

Fullness of life as minimal unit: Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning across the life span.

Challenged by a National Science Foundation–funded conference, 2020 Vision: The Next Generation of STEM Learning Research, in which participants were asked to recognize science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning as lifelong, life-wide, and life-deep, we draw upon 20 years of research across the lifespan to propose a new way of thinking about and investigating the topic. We propose Fullness of Life (or Total Life) as the minimal unit of analysis that allows people generally and researchers specifically to make sense of cognition. This move reverses traditional perspectives: Rather than understanding life from the position of STEM activities, we understand STEM learning from the perspective of life taken as a whole. We propose three attendant concepts that do not focus on stable knowledge content but on (a) the ability to mobilize and augment knowledge (knowledgeability), (b) the necessity to develop the disposition of the débrouillard/e and bricoleur, and (c) the necessity to conceive knowledgeability as collective property, outcome of collective praxis. We conclude by commenting on five dimensions suggested as need requirements for implementing a 2020 vision for STEM learning research

Cultural diversity in science education through Novelization: Against the Epicization of science and cultural centralization.

Science educators are confronted with the challenge to accommodate in their classes an increasing cultural and linguistic diversity that results from globalization. Challenged by the call to work towards valuing and keeping this diversity in the face of the canonical nature of school science discourse, we propose a new way of thinking about and investigating these problems. Drawing on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, we articulate epicization and novelization as concepts that allow us to understand, respectively, the processes of (a) centralizing and homogenizing culture and language and (b) pluralizing culture and language. We present and analyze three examples that exhibit how existing mundane science education practices tend, by means of epicization, towards a unitary language and to cultural centralization. We then propose novelization as a way for thinking the opening up of science education by interacting with and incorporating alternative forms of knowing that arise from cultural diversit

River advocacy as a case of/for novelizing discourse in science education

Tina Williams Pagan addresses stream studies that environmental educators commonly use to develop their students’ and river advocates’ understanding of the interrelationships of the natural world. She provides these individuals with an authentic context for investigating problems associated with resources. Her critique focuses on educators’ aim of collecting and analyzing numerical water-quality data, which reduces the complexity of a river to the degree that it limits how students relate to and understand biological systems. She suggests that we shift toward river advocacy as an overarching aim of reform involving stream-based activities. Accordingly, curricula should be designed in ways which enable students to identify and associate with attributes of the river that speak to them and educators should help students connect with rivers to identify injustices and analyze their underlying assumptions regarding river rights

Facilitating the learning process in design-based learning practices: an investigation of teachers' actions in supervising students

Background: In research on design-based learning (DBL), inadequate attention is paid to the role the teacher plays in supervising students in gathering and applying knowledge to design artifacts, systems, and innovative solutions in higher education. Purpose: In this study, we examine whether teacher actions we previously identified in the DBL literature as important in facilitating learning processes and student supervision are present in current DBL engineering practices. Sample: The sample (N=16) consisted of teachers and supervisors in two engineering study programs at a university of technology: mechanical and electrical engineering. We selected randomly teachers from freshman and second-year bachelor DBL projects responsible for student supervision and assessment. Design and method: Interviews with teachers, and interviews and observations of supervisors were used to examine how supervision and facilitation actions are applied according to the DBL framework. Results: Major findings indicate that formulating questions is the most common practice seen in facilitating learning in open-ended engineering design environments. Furthermore, other DBL actions we expected to see based upon the literature were seldom observed in the coaching practices within these two programs. Conclusions: Professionalization of teachers in supervising students need to include methods to scaffold learning by supporting students in reflecting and in providing formative feedbac

Exploring instantaneous speed in fifth grade

This paper illustrates the development of a prototypical instructional sequence on instantaneous speed for 5th grade in terms of the researchers' own learning process. The development of this instructional sequence in a design research project is tracked from the starting-up phase through three subsequent design experiments in terms of a framework that encompasses both the design decisions and the theoretical and experiential foundations for those decisions. Such a framework of reference may take the form of a local instruction theory that offers a rationale for the instructional sequence on the basis of which teachers and educational designers may adapt the instructional sequence to their own needs