Learning from their mistakes - an online approach to evaluate teacher education students\u27 numeracy capability

Teachers’ numeracy capability is essential for student learning in the classroom and important across all subject areas, not only within mathematics. This study investigated the use of online diagnostic tests as a form of assessment for learning, to evaluate and support teacher education students (TES) in developing their numeracy skills. Data was collected using the “Test” feature through the Blackboard learning management system at two Australian universities. In this paper, we report on trends amongst TES who showed growth in their numeracy capability through the repeated use of the diagnostic test

Best friends: children use mutual gaze to identify friendships in others

This study examined children’s ability to use mutual eye gaze as a cue to friendships in others. In Experiment 1, following a discussion about friendship, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds were shown animations in which three cartoon children looked at one another, and were told that one target character had a best friend. Although all age groups accurately detected the mutual gaze between the target and another character, only 5- and 6-year-olds used this cue to infer friendship. Experiment 2 replicated the effect with 5- and 6-year-olds when the target character was not explicitly identified. Finally, in Experiment 3, where the attribution of friendship could only be based on synchronized mutual gaze, 6-year-olds made this attribution, while 4- and 5-year-olds did not. Children occasionally referred to mutual eye gaze when asked to justify their responses in Experiments 2 and 3, but it was only by the age of 6 that reference to these cues correlated with the use of mutual gaze in judgements of affiliation. Although younger children detected mutual gaze, it was not until 6 years of age that children reliably detected and justified mutual gaze as a cue to friendship

Why do people lose their friends after a stroke?

Background: It is well-known that people lose friends after a stroke; what is less well understood is why this occurs. Aims: This study explored why people lose contact with their friends, and whether there are any protective factors. It also examined how friendship loss and change is perceived by the individual. Methods and Procedures: Participants with a first stroke were recruited from one acute stroke unit in the UK. In-depth qualitative interviews took place between 8 and 15 months post stroke. Outcomes and Results: 29 participants were recruited of whom 10 had aphasia. The main reasons given for losing friends were: loss of shared activities, reduced energy levels, physical disability, aphasia, unhelpful responses of others, environmental barriers, and changing social desires. The subset of participants who experienced the most extensive loss of friends were those who described a sense that they were ‘closing in’ on themselves leading to a withdrawal from social contact and a new preference for meeting only close friends and family. Those with aphasia experienced the most hurtful negative responses from others and found it more difficult to retain their friends unless they had strong supportive friendship patterns prior to the stroke. The factors which helped to protect friendships included: having a shared history, friends who showed concern, who lived locally, where the friendship was not activity-based, and where the participant had a ‘friends-based’ social network prior to the stroke. Conclusions and Implications: Given the link between depression and loss of friends post stroke, supporting an individual in maintaining a social network is likely to be beneficial. For intervention to be effective, however, it may need to take into account not only the impact of new physical and language disabilities, but also changing social desires

Children's Norm Enforcement in Their Interactions With Peers

This study investigates how children negotiate social norms with peers. In Study 1, 48 pairs of 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 96) and in Study 2, 48 pairs of 5- and 7-year-olds (N = 96) were presented with sorting tasks with conflicting instructions (one child by color, the other by shape) or identical instructions. Three-year-olds differed from older children: They were less selective for the contexts in which they enforced norms, and they (as well as the older children to a lesser extent) used grammatical constructions objectifying the norms (“It works like this” rather than “You must do it like this”). These results suggested that children's understanding of social norms becomes more flexible during the preschool years.Psycholog

Self-disclosure beyond 'vulnerability' : young people, musical biographies, technology and music-making

I sit across the table in a café, ready to begin my final interview with Julia, a young musician living with bipolar disorder who participated in this research. With a short-sleeved shirt on, her self-harm scars are obvious from the outset. As the interview continues, I begin to understand exactly how these scars are central to her music-making practice, one that involved disclosing personal stories of family mental illness. Often mediated through technology, music-making is used by Julia, as well as other young musicians, as a constructive means of engaging with personal vulnerability. Doing so enables processes of self-disclosure, which assist in the young person enacting a resilient identity. This thesis analyses the ways in which young musicians with experiences of vulnerability utilise both personal and musical biographies as part of a music-making practice that affords opportunities to manipulate, tailor and take charge of personal experience. The academic youth arts discourse assumes that young people with experiences of vulnerability are in deficit. As popularised by youth music-making initiatives, such an approach assumes that, through participating in an adult-run music-making program, the young person can move from vulnerability (deficit) to resilience (strength). Such programs elide the critical role music, as a cultural form, often plays in the lives and identities of vulnerable young people. Instead, programs position music merely as a youth engagement tool to govern and ultimately transform young people. This transformation narrative is in stark contrast with popular music discourse which romanticises stories of the tortured artist, celebrating musicians’ ongoing and continuous engagement with personal vulnerability as part of practice. This work entails a two-stage ethnographic methodology. Stage One consists of interviews with 13 young musicians with experiences of vulnerability and two youth arts professionals. Stage Two involves a series of three follow up case-study interviews with five of the young musicians who participated in Stage One. When speaking with young musicians, I utilised a ‘version of friendship as method’, an adaptation of Tillman-Healy’s ‘friendship as method’. Doing so generated experiences that could be situated in dialogue with existing youth arts discourse. This methodology also afforded new opportunities for understanding young musicians’ life worlds. Through an analysis of my empirical material, this thesis argues that young musicians with experiences of vulnerability use music-making as a means of self-disclosure; a practice that involves a continuous interplay of vulnerability and resilience as mediated through technology, personal experience and musical biography. To make this argument, I analyse the experiences of the young musicians with whom I worked through a dialogue with a range of literature, including youth arts, vulnerability and resilience studies, technology studies, and fandom and subcultures research. In particular, I build on Frith’s call for a focus within cultural studies on individual cultural practices, and I draw on Hesmondhalgh’s contention that music involves both individual and collective practices - often at the same time - to suggest that the neo-liberal focus on individualisation is deeply embedded in the lives of young musicians, especially those with lived experiences of vulnerability. However, as I demonstrate, these individual practices are embedded in strong social and collective networks. Within these contexts, young musicians with experiences of vulnerability engage in music-making practices, which afford opportunities for self-disclosure. These practices, in return, facilitate a fluid and non-linear engagement with vulnerability, which allow participants to enact a resilient self. Calling young musicians’ experiences into dialogue with the existing dominant discourse surrounding vulnerability and resilience, this thesis argues against the transformation narrative that characterises much youth arts practice. Such an approach also has implications for methodology, suggesting that specific and contextualised approaches need to complement the broad categorical approaches to understanding youth practice. In this way, this thesis complements and extends the existing youth arts discourse

Disrupting the Way We Work: An Honors Summer Vacation

Authors describe how a summer respite introduces alternative ways and spaces in which to work, positing how collaborative discourse and dismantled hierarchies can affect positive change and productive outcomes for honors programs. While some assume that the summer is our off-season, the team at the Sokolov Honors College at Youngstown State University knows that it is the time we have to be most “on,” tackling all that we don’t get to do in the semester and positioning us for a strong start to the upcoming fall. Summer 2021 seemed particularly daunting with a laundry list of items to catch up on and big projects to move forward. Through collaboration among staff and students, along with embracing creative ways to work, the honors college reached a new level of accomplishment. Rather than holing up in our individual offices trying to divide and conquer, we took a new approach: we set up shop in our honors classroom together, forgoing desks behind doors for laptops and constructive conversation. On nice days, we took our show on the road (or to the porch), continuing our collaboration by walking around campus or sitting outside in the sun

Reimagining the Airport as Classroom—Immediacy, Place, and Presence

This paper discusses a post-conference experience involving attendees who utilized airport space to debrief through face-to-face (FtF) communication. Their temporary spatial proximity led to an idea generation process of recalling, rethinking, and getting ready for what’s next. Literature about learning spaces, knowledge management, and the affordances and preferences of FtF communication are explored as they relate to using spaces for purposive conversation. The paper highlights a proposed debriefing model of immediacy, place, and presence. This framework allows organizations to leverage unique affordances of FtF communication and geography of the airport, or other similar spaces, to maximize engagement and benefit

Serving through Transcribing: Preserving History while Building Community

Community is a foundational element in honors education. During the global pandemic, students reimagined ways to connect in order to build community and serve one another. Authors describe a virtual collaboration in transcription, where honors students gathered to participate in digital transcribe-a-thons. These informal groupings evolved into a transcribing club that met three times a week (collectively logging more than 1,600 hours) and transcribed over 16,000 historical documents. A study of participating transcribers reveals enhanced historical knowledge, skill building, and opportunities for relationships with students of varying interests and backgrounds despite edicts for social distancing. While a common feature of the club is a connection to something beyond the student, authors maintain that the experience of transcribing also brings a sense of connectedness with fellow honors students and the honors college. Authors provide student insight and outcomes as well as detailed instructions for honors practitioners seeking to introduce historical transcription to their students

Data in support of three phase partitioning of zingibain, a milk-clotting enzyme from Zingiber officinale Roscoe rhizomes

AbstractThis paper describes data related to a research article titled “Three Phase Partitioning of zingibain, a milk-clotting enzyme from Zingiber officinale Roscoe rhizomes” (Gagaoua et al., 2015) [1]. Zingibain (EC 3.4.22.67), is a coagulant cysteine protease and a meat tenderizer agent that have been reported to produce satisfactory final products in dairy and meat technology, respectively. Zingibains were exclusively purified using chromatographic techniques with very low yield purification. This paper includes data of the effect of temperature, usual salts and organic solvents on the efficiency of the three phase partitioning (TPP) system. Also it includes data of the kinetic activity characterization of the purified zingibain using TPP purification approach