Qurʾan and Contemporary Analysis

Contemporary analysis of the Qurʾan is marked by a significant turn from source- and historical-critical into textual analytical approaches, allowing more than ever before for the literary and linguistic components of the text to be uncovered using systematic applications of the methodology derived from contemporary literary theory and linguistics. Such textual approaches existed in the classical Islamic period, such as in works of Ibn al-Anbari, ar-Rummani, Abu Bakr al-Bāqillānī, ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī, and al-Shāṭibī. While maintaining the Islamic theological principle of the Qurʾan’s divine inimitability, those authors analyzed the text from their contemporary literary and linguistic viewpoints. Alternatively, early Western works, dating back to the earliest translations of the Qurʾan into Latin in the 12th century by Robert of Ketton, were marked by polemical attitudes and attention to debating the message of the Qurʾan from Christian theological viewpoints. In the early 20th century, while reformists Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Rashid Ridda in the Middle East called for moving the stagnant waters of Islamic scholarship at the time to produce relevant modern interpretation of the Qurʾan, Western scholars continued to build on the efforts of 19th-century scholars such as Geiger, Hirschfeld, Weil, and Nöldeke, among others, to establish the sources of the Qurʾan’s Judeo-Christian materials through philological and biblical research, and to reproduce a revised Qurʾan based on the chronological order of revelations. However, in the second half of the 20th century, a considerable shift in approach took place, with contemporary scholars such as Montgomery Watt (b. 1909–d. 2006), Kenneth Cragg (b. 1913–d. 2012) and others calling for a change in Western academic attitudes in writing about Islamic topics. While older diachronic source- and historical-critical approaches did not entirely lose their appeal in the postmodern era, which can be seen particularly since the 1980s in the works of Griffith, Reynolds, Neuwirth, Sinai, Witztum, Crone, and Zellentin, the new more text-oriented synchronic approaches analyze the text of Qurʾan as used by Muslims from thematic, structural, linguistic and literary points of views. On the way to a more objective and increasingly systematized approach to the study of the Qurʾanic text, several complementary and competing theories are utilized, either developed within Qurʾanic studies or borrowed from linguistics, literary criticism, and critical discourse analysis approaches. Also, many scholars adopted a combination of historical and textual approaches in attempts to reach deeper and more contextualized understanding of this complex text. Areas such as the thematic unity of the text, coherence and textual relations, and literary analysis of various aspects of the text and its language and linguistics are gaining increasing popularity in recent publications among scholars both in the East and in the West.

The relation between home numeracy practices and a variety of math skills in elementary school children

A growing number of studies suggest that the frequency of numeracy experiences that parents provide at home may relate to children’s mathematical development. However, the relation between home numeracy practices and children’s numerical skills is complex and might depend upon both the type and difficulty of activities, as well as the type of math skills. Studies have also argued that this relation may be driven by factors that are not systematically controlled for in the literature, including socio-economic status (SES), parental math skills and children’s IQ. Finally, as most prior studies have focused on preschoolers, it remains unclear to what extent there remains a relation between the home numeracy environment and math skills when children are in elementary school. In the present study, we tested an extensive range of math skills in 66 8-year-olds, including non-symbolic quantity processing, symbolic number understanding, transcoding, counting, and mental arithmetic. We also asked parents to complete a questionnaire about their SES, academic expectations, academic attitudes, and the numeracy practices that they provide at home. Finally, we measured their arithmetic fluency as a proxy for parental math skills. Over and above differences in socio-economic status, parental arithmetic fluency, child’s IQ, and time spent with the child, we found a positive relation between the frequency of formal numeracy practices that were at or above grade level and two separate measures of mental arithmetic. We further found that the frequency of these advanced formal numeracy practices was related to parents’ academic expectations. Therefore, our study shows that home numeracy experiences predict arithmetic skills in elementary school children, but only when those activities are formal and sufficiently challenging for children.

“Squeezing the Life Out of Each Day”: Emerging Adult Women’s Work-Family Expectations in STEM

Work-family conflict can create challenges for women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers. Little is known, however, about how young women in STEM reason about future work-family conflict. The current study examines work-family conflict expectations among undergraduate and graduate women in STEM. Participants ( N = 156) responded to open- and closed-ended survey questions about work-family conflict and academic attitudes. Qualitative analyses revealed two orientations relative to work-family conflict. Women with a challenge orientation anticipated work and family strain, whereas women with an opportunity orientation anticipated that balancing work and family would enhance their lives. Women differed in the strategies they planned to employ to resolve future work-family conflict and in their levels of quantitative constructs such as STEM identity. Findings suggest avenues for improving STEM retention such as mentoring interventions with exposure to role models who are balancing work and family.

Short mindset intervention effective in attitude change but no evidence of transfer to improved cognitive outcomes of working memory capacity and standardized test performance

There has been extensive research conducted on mindset, involving both experimental and observational methods. However, the findings in the literature remain mixed. This should give educators and researchers pause from an intervention perspective —if we still do not have a good understanding of how mindset works, then more research is needed. To better understand how mindset interventions work, we looked at self-report measures as well as post-intervention behavior within and across individuals. We implemented a mindset intervention to improve cognitive performance measures relevant to academic performance—working memory capacity and standardized test performance in math. We also explored individual differences in academic attitudes (e.g., academic identification and sense of belonging in university) that might moderate students’ mindset and the effect of the mindset intervention on subsequent cognitive performance. We expected the malleable mindset intervention to significantly improve cognitive performance and to cause more positive academic attitudes and attitudinal change. The mindset intervention did change students’ beliefs about ability but also caused students to report higher grit (no condition difference), and to feel less belonging in terms of connection to their university—which was not in line with our hypotheses. We also found that the malleable mindset intervention had no significant effects on improving WMC or standardized test performance. We discuss the implications of these findings and make suggestions for future work in this area.

Connectedness as a Predictor of Academic and Youth Development Outcomes at a Summer Day Camp for Low-Income Youth

Organized camp programs impacted over 10 million youth in the United States in 2019 (American Camp Association, 2019). While residential camp programs have shown ample evidence of their potential to produce opportunities for growth and learning (Garst et al., 2011; Wilson et al., 2019), less is known about the benefits of summer day camp programs. Day camp programs have the potential to serve a more diverse group of campers than residential camps (Kimmelman, 2011), and have become popular formats for summer programs designed to enhance academic skills and prevent summer learning loss. This study sought to understand the factors that influenced self-perceptions of academic attitudes and positive youth development at a summer day camp program offering academic and recreational activities for economically vulnerable fourth to ninth graders (n=240). Specifically, the study was interested in the role that camp connectedness played in influencing perceptions of outcomes (Sibthorp et al., 2011). The study found that campers who participated in a summer day camp program reported that their interest in academic subjects increased over the course of the camp. Campers who had higher levels of connectedness to camp reported significantly stronger academic and youth development outcomes than those who had lower levels of connectedness. The study also found no significant differences in connectedness based on camper characteristics such as gender, age, race, ethnicity, school attended, or language spoken at home, suggesting that these variables were not salient in whether a camper felt connected to camp. These findings provide implications for the design and delivery of academically focused day camp programs to enhance feelings of connectedness, including the importance of using an intentional curriculum, offering a variety of academic and recreational activities, employing trained educators and youth development specialists, and being mindful of class and group sizes.

Using Guided Discovery to Improve Students’ Retention and Academic Attitudes to Financial Accounting Concepts

Financial Accounting is one of the specialised subjects in the Nigerian senior secondary school curriculum. It is no gain saying that without apposite comprehension of the subject, the goals of its inclusion in the curriculum might not be fully accomplished. Hence, the researchers are in quest of appropriate instructional strategies that entail students’ active participation and improve students’ learning outcomes (attitude and retention) through practice-oriented research. Consequently, this research determined the effectiveness of guided discovery instructional strategy, in relation to a conventional lecture, on learning outcomes of students in Financial Accounting concepts. This study adopted a nonrandomized pretest, posttest, control group quasiexperimental design with a 2 × 2 × 3 factorial design. 147 secondary school students in level 5 were selected from eight secondary schools in the northern part of a Southwestern state, Nigeria. The research instruments used were Teachers’ Instructional Guides on Guided Discovery, Students’ Attitude to Financial Accounting Questionnaire (r = 0.89) and a 30-item Financial Accounting Retention Test (r = 0.83). The analyzed data affirmed that the treatment improved students’ attitude (F(1,134) = 344.935; p < 0.05 ; η2 = 0.720) and retention (F(1,134) = 385.431; p < 0.05 ; η2 = 0.742) of accounting concepts. This study recommended that teachers should utilize the guided discovery strategy to develop attitudes and knowledge retention of learners in Financial Accounting.

The Bad Test-Taker Identity

There is widespread belief that test-taking ability is an influential component of academic success distinct from domain knowledge and comprehension. Most of today’s college students took many more tests over the course of their primary and secondary education than students of previous generations, and also participated in regular training to strengthen their test-taking skills. Although such training and experience should equalize students on any isolated test-taking ability, the present study reveals that the vast majority students in a college sample believe that students can simply be bad test-takers. Moreover, the majority of students believe that they themselves are bad test-takers, a perspective which is maladaptive in light of relevant research. Accordingly, the data show that students who identify in this way also tend to possess other maladaptive academic attitudes.