scholarly journals Developing Deep Understanding and Literacy while Addressing a Gender-Based Literacy Gap

Author(s):  
Yanqing Sun ◽  
Jianwei Zhang ◽  
Marlene Scardamalia

Online discourse from a class of 22 students (11 boys and 11 girls) was analysed to assess advances in conceptual understanding and literacy. The students worked over a two-year period (Grades 3-4), during which they contributed notes to an online Knowledge Building environment—Knowledge Forum®. Contributions revealed that both boys and girls produced a substantial amount of text and graphics, and that their written texts incorporated an increasing proportion of less-frequent, advanced words, including academic vocabulary and domain-specific words from grade levels higher than their own. Brief accounts of classroom discourse indicate how deep understanding and vocabulary growth mutually support each other in online and offline exchanges. The gender differences that were observed show boys doing slightly better than girls, suggesting that Knowledge Building has the potential to help boys overcome weaknesses in literacy.

Author(s):  
Edgars Rencis ◽  
Janis Barzdins ◽  
Sergejs Kozlovics

Towards Open Graphical Tool-Building Framework Nowadays, there are many frameworks for developing domain-specific tools. However, if we want to create a really sophisticated tool with specific functionality requirements, it is not always an easy task to do. Although tool-building platforms offer some means for extending the tool functionality and accessing it from external applications, it usually requires a deep understanding of various technical implementation details. In this paper we try to go one step closer to a really open graphical tool-building framework that would allow both to change the behavior of the tool and to access the tool from the outside easily. We start by defining a specialization of metamodels which is a great and powerful facility itself. Then we go on and show how this can be applied in the field of graphical domain-specific tool building. The approach is demonstrated on an example of a subset of UML activity diagrams. The benefits of the approach are also clearly indicated. These include a natural and intuitive definition of tools, a strict logic/presentation separation and the openness for extensions as well as for external applications.


Author(s):  
Joan Moss ◽  
Ruth Beatty

Three classrooms of Grade 4 students from different schools and diverse backgrounds collaborated in early algebra research to solve a series of linear and quadratic generalizing problems. Results revealed that high- and low-achieving students were able to solve problems of recognized difficulty. We discuss Knowledge Building principles and practices that fostered deep understanding and broad participation. Students used the online Knowledge Building environment Knowledge Forum® to conduct their work and we illustrate how Knowledge Forum supported a Knowledge Building culture for mathematical learning and problem solving. Analyses of participation patterns and note content revealed practices consistent with Knowledge Building principles, specifically democratization of knowledge, with students at all achievement levels participating, and epistemic agency, with students providing evidence and justification for conjectures and generating multiple solutions to challenging problems.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
Marwah Marwah ◽  
Citra Ayu Dewi ◽  
Ratna Azizah Mashami

The influence of cooperative learning type TAI based on chemoentrepreneurship to entrepreneurship motivation and conceptual understanding of students on colloidal system concept. Colloidal system concept was a concept that requires highly analysis with mastery of concepts that must be understood and require students practice in daily life. Learning will be more meaningful and provide a deep understanding of the learners when learning adapted to the characteristics of the subject matter. One effective solution was implement the cooperative learning type TAI based on chemoentrepreneurship. This study aimed to determine the influence of cooperative learning type TAI based on chemoentrepreneurship to entrepreneurship motivation and conceptual understanding of students. The study design used was pretest-posttest control group design, the sampling technique used cluster random sampling. The population in this study were all students of grade XII IPA SMA AL-Hamzar, Thatwas 50 students were divided into an experimental group of 26 students and a control group of 24 students. Entrepreneurship motivation analysis technique using multivariate test obtained scores of experimental group 63%, 74% and score of control group 66%, 68%. While conceptual understanding data using multivariate test with SPSS 16.0 for windows which scores obtained from initial test and final test on the conceptual understanding was no difference between the experimental group and control group that why used T test. Results obtained there was significant influences of cooperative learning type TAI based on chemoentrepreneurship to entrepreneurship motivation and it had no influence on students' conceptual understanding with sig = 0.304 > 0.05. So it can be concluded that there was no influence of cooperative learning type TAI based on chemoentrepreneurship to conceptual understanding of students.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cécile Tran Kiem ◽  
Paolo Bosetti ◽  
Juliette Paireau ◽  
Pascal Crépey ◽  
Henrik Salje ◽  
...  

AbstractThe shielding of older individuals has been proposed to limit COVID-19 hospitalizations while relaxing general social distancing in the absence of vaccines. Evaluating such approaches requires a deep understanding of transmission dynamics across ages. Here, we use detailed age-specific case and hospitalization data to model the rebound in the French epidemic in summer 2020, characterize age-specific transmission dynamics and critically evaluate different age-targeted intervention measures in the absence of vaccines. We find that while the rebound started in young adults, it reached individuals aged ≥80 y.o. after 4 weeks, despite substantial contact reductions, indicating substantial transmission flows across ages. We derive the contribution of each age group to transmission. While shielding older individuals reduces mortality, it is insufficient to allow major relaxations of social distancing. When the epidemic remains manageable (R close to 1), targeting those most contributing to transmission is better than shielding at-risk individuals. Pandemic control requires an effort from all age groups.


Author(s):  
Ralph Buchal ◽  
Emmanuel Songsore

The current study investigates students’ use of Microsoft Teams as a collaborative knowledge building platform for a group sustainability assessment project. Ashby’s sustainability assessment method was used to provide scaffolding. Surveys (n=16) were administered to assess the nature of student collaboration, including students’ experiences using collaboration tools in the past, the activities students engaged in while working on the group project in MS Teams, self-assessment of collaborative abilities, comfort with giving, receiving and sharing comments and feedback, assessment of the effectiveness of Ashby’s sustainability assessment method in developing these abilities, and their overall assessment of MS Teams as a collaborative knowledge building tool. Students rated their collaborative abilities to be good to excellent and felt that the project was effective in developing those abilities. They are comfortable providing and receiving feedback and sharing their contributions openly. They found MS Teams to be extremely useful, and better than alternative platforms for key tasks including messaging, file sharing and collaborative authoring.


2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 321-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Boden ◽  
Tilmann Rabl ◽  
Volker Markl

Abstract The last decade has been characterized by the collection and availability of unprecedented amounts of data due to rapidly decreasing storage costs and the omnipresence of sensors and data-producing global online-services. In order to process and analyze this data deluge, novel distributed data processing systems resting on the paradigm of data flow such as Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, or Apache Flink were built and have been scaled to tens of thousands of machines. However, writing efficient implementations of data analysis programs on these systems requires a deep understanding of systems programming, prohibiting large groups of data scientists and analysts from efficiently using this technology. In this article, we present some of the main achievements of the research carried out by the Berlin Big Data Cente (BBDC). We introduce the two domain-specific languages Emma and LARA, which are deeply embedded in Scala and enable declarative specification and the automatic parallelization of data analysis programs, the PEEL Framework for transparent and reproducible benchmark experiments of distributed data processing systems, approaches to foster the interpretability of machine learning models and finally provide an overview of the challenges to be addressed in the second phase of the BBDC.


Author(s):  
Dwi Sulisworo ◽  
Novitasari Sutadi

<span lang="EN-US">The aim of this study is to observe the application of SLC (science learning cycle) model on improving scientific literacy for secondary vocational schools at physics. Through this research, it will be known its influence of learning methods and contribution to the understanding of physics concepts and student independence learning. This research is a quasi-experimental design with pretest and posttest control group which the independent variable is learning the method and the dependent variable is the conceptual understanding. The result shows that there is an effect of teaching method on the dependent variable. It also shows that the conceptual understanding of the students in the treatment group who applied methods SLC is better than the control group.</span>


1998 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 57-65
Author(s):  
Marianne Hermans

The results of the pilot study reported on in this article indicate that the combination of children's books supplementary to the biology lessons does not diminish reading-achieve-ment test scores, and that there seems to be an advantage in domain-specific word knowledge. For 14 weeks, the time normally spent on unsustained silent reading in class was filled in by reading on particular subjects that were being discussed in biology lessons. The basic research assumption was that reading various texts on the same subject would not only positively affect the children's knowledge about this subject but would also improve their reading skills and their attitudes towards reading. The experimental group scored significandy better than their peer group on a domain-specific vocabulary test. This indicates that the books were used as stepping stones for building mental knowledge structures. Tests with respect to the other variables such as reading skills yielded no significant differences between the groups. However, post-hoc analysis showed an advantage for pupils from the lower social groups. Their attitude towards reading impro-ved considerably, in which respect they differed significandy from their peers. The results seem to confirm the ideas expressed in the international literature about content area reading and in aspects of schema theory. By reading the books in combination with the biology lessons, certain schemata could be activated which enable the pupils better to understand the new information and store it firmly in their memory. The redundancy of important words appearing in various contexts is a determinant of word knowledge.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 924-936 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Graulich ◽  
Sebastian Hedtrich ◽  
René Harzenetter

Learning to interpret organic structures not as an arrangement of lines and letters but, rather, as a representation of chemical entities is a challenge in organic chemistry. To successfully deal with the variety of molecules or mechanistic representations, a learner needs to understand how a representation depicts domain-specific information. Various studies that focused on representational competence have already investigated how learners relate a representation to its corresponding concept. However, aside from a basic connectional representational understanding, the ability to infer a comparable reactivity from multiple different functional groups in large molecules is important for undergraduate students in organic chemistry. In this quantitative study, we aimed at exploring how to assess undergraduate students’ ability to distinguish between conceptually relevant similarities and distracting surface similarities among representations. The instrument consisted of multiple-choice items in four concept categories that are generally used to estimate the reactivity in substitution reactions. This exploratory study shows that the item design for assessing students’ conceptual understanding influences students’ answering patterns. Insights and pitfalls gained from this investigation and future directions for research and teaching are provided.


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