Search

What are the meanings and aims of social sciences in a global social environment marked by ever-growing processes of exchange, connection, inequality and conflict? How do we contend with the social sciences as the science of modernization? How do we account for the Western-centered biases ingrained in their proclamations? And in what ways are the social sciences useful to scholars and professionals in different societies? These questions figure at the heart of IDEAS (International Digital Exchange between Africa and Switzerland), a project that aimed to examine them across continents and generations. [This article was written by the IDEAS Collective. Note: The publication date (2023) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct publication date is 2024.]

Automatic grading models are valued for the time and effort saved during the instruction of large student bodies. Especially with the increasing digitization of education and interest in large-scale standardized testing, the popularity of automatic grading has risen to the point where commercial solutions are widely available and used. However, for short answer formats, automatic grading is challenging due to natural language ambiguity and versatility. While automatic short answer grading models are beginning to compare to human performance on some datasets, their robustness, especially to adversarially manipulated data, is questionable. Exploitable vulnerabilities in grading models can have far-reaching consequences ranging from cheating students receiving undeserved credit to undermining automatic grading altogether--even when most predictions are valid. In this paper, we devise a black-box adversarial attack tailored to the educational short answer grading scenario to investigate the grading models' robustness. In our attack, we insert adjectives and adverbs into natural places of incorrect student answers, fooling the model into predicting them as correct. We observed a loss of prediction accuracy between 10 and 22 percentage points using the state-of-the-art models BERT and T5. While our attack made answers appear less natural to humans in our experiments, it did not significantly increase the graders' suspicions of cheating. Based on our experiments, we provide recommendations for utilizing automatic grading systems more safely in practice.

Colleges of Education are witnessing a decline in elementary teacher preparation programs creating an urgent need to recruit students. Part of these efforts means initiating recruitment efforts in junior and high schools. Included in these recruiting efforts is work around changing the narrative around teaching as a potential career. Here we share working with junior high school students to examine their perceptions of teachers in order to work towards closing the parity gap with recruiting efforts.

Background: New York City is one of the most segregated school districts in the country, but between 2012 and 2021, school integration moved from a marginal to a central education policy. Existing narratives have emphasized the efforts of parents and school and political leaders, with less attention given to the significance of citywide coalitions of activists, especially youth activists. Purpose: We examine how grassroots activists contributed to advancing school integration policy, and the opportunities and challenges that resulted, through urban regime theory, and specifically "civic capacity," which highlights how various constituencies build a shared agenda for policy change. Research Design: Working in partnership with four youth interviewers at two integration activist organizations, we conducted 72 semi-structured interviews with New York City student, parent, and community activists. We also observed 36 hours of public meeting observations and collected publicly available documents, including 360 newspaper articles and policy documents, to triangulate our findings. Conclusions: We found that activist coalitions made progress in developing civic capacity through increased collaboration among diverse stakeholders, notably youth, toward a shared definition of integration. However, growing tensions with rival coalitions and the fragmented political landscape of NYC limited the strength and durability of civic capacity.

A frequent observation in the school context is that opportunities to learn from errors are often missed. However, a positive error climate may support learning from errors. For the school subject of mathematics, some findings about characteristics of the error climate already exist. But, a comparison of the error climate between different school subjects is still pending. In the present study, it is analyzed whether the error climate differs in different school subjects and whether the same interrelations between the ways in which individuals deal with errors can be found in these different school subjects. In a study with 937 students from 48 classrooms from grades 5 to 7, in different secondary schools in Germany and Austria, we assessed the error climate and individual reactions following errors in mathematics, German, and English. Small mean differences between mathematics and the two language subjects were yielded. In addition, we found medium-sized correlations between the error climate measures in the three school subjects. However, the same pattern of interrelations between error climate and the way individuals deal with errors for all three school subjects could be shown. The results suggest that the perception of the error climate is rather similar in different school subjects. This has implications, for instance, for interventions that aim at fostering the error climate.

Purpose: This study aims to provide an example of how higher education institutions (HEIs) can use a successful campus infrastructure project to fund a student- and faculty-led, community-success platform that advances the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Design/methodology/approach: The authors applied conceptual models for systems thinking and creating virtuous cycles to analyze Millersville University's work to establish a community-impact, micro-grant fund using cost savings and utility rebates associated with a new campus zero-energy building. The analysis provides a case study that other HEIs can implement to create university and community virtuous cycles that advance the SDGs. Findings: The case study suggests that as HEIs face increasing financial challenges, opportunities exist to capitalize on philanthropic giving and other funding sources to support community prosperity and increase university vitality through a shared responsibility paradigm centered on the SDGs. Practical implications: This case study identifies specific funding sources that HEIs can use to fund campus and community sustainability projects using the SDG framework, mechanisms for establishing shared purpose around that impact and a conceptual model for thinking about opportunities to leverage philanthropic giving to create a virtuous cycle that increases university vitality through community impact. Social implications: Constructing a campus zero energy building funded in part through philanthropic giving provided a unique opportunity to explore how a project's success can be leveraged to create additional community successes. This case study offers an example for how to convert one success into a platform that funds projects that have direct community impact in one or more of the SDG goal areas. Originality/value: This paper aims at bridging the gap between theoretical frameworks for community sustainable development and descriptive-only case studies by using a case study to demonstrate a conceptual model or framework for advancing community sustainability (Karatzoglou, 2013). The case study provides a unique model for using utility rebates associated with an infrastructure project that was funded through philanthropic giving to establish a fund for projects that support the community. Utility rebates associated with campus energy efficiency projects are often otherwise overlooked, used to fund additional energy efficiency projects or simply returned to a university's operating budget. For some HEIs, this model may connect the work of facilities staff to student success in ways that have not previously been explored. For others, this alternative use of utility rebates may offer an opportunity to increase the investment value of utility rebate dollars by creating virtuous cycles within their communities that contribute to university vitality.

Errors bear the potential to improve knowledge acquisition, provided that learners are able to deal with them in an adaptive and reflexive manner. However, learners experience a host of different--often impeding or maladaptive--emotional and motivational states in the face of academic errors. Research has made few attempts to develop a theory that focuses on learning from errors (with the exceptions of the theory of impasse-driven learning and the theory of negative knowledge) and, in particular, a theoretical framework that focuses on antecedent motivational processes. By integrating theories of self-regulated learning, volition, attributions, and appraisals, we propose a model that highlights individual processes that are characteristic of this specific learning phenomenon. More precisely, our theoretical framework aims to explain how emotional, motivational and self-regulatory processes--influenced by personal and contextual conditions--interact in order to facilitate or impede adaptive dealing with errors and appropriate metacognitions and cognitive activities. Our objective is to provide a framework that allows for the systematic integration of various aspects that have been targeted in previous research and to guide and stimulate future research on learning from errors. As a first evidence for validation, we summarise research findings that address specific parts of the proposed model.

Research on learning from errors gives reason to assume that errors provide a high potential to facilitate deep learning if students are willing and able to take these learning opportunities. The first aim of this study was to analyse whether beliefs about errors as learning opportunities can be theoretically and empirically distinguished from adaptive reactions to errors in an affective-motivational sense (including the maintenance of motivation and activating emotions), and in terms of learning behaviour and metacognitive activities specifically adjusted in response to a specific error. The second aim was to validate the proposed distinction across different domains. The third aim was to investigate the added value of beliefs about errors besides domain-specific self-concept and mastery goal orientation for understanding the preconditions for adaptive reactions to errors at school. We assessed all variables in three different school subjects (N = 614 students, Grades 5-7). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated distinctness and a moderate domain specificity of error-related reactions. Positive error-related beliefs predicted students' affective-motivational and action adaptivity of error reactions, above and beyond self-concepts and goal orientations. Taken together, the current findings provide a more complete understanding of the intra-personal mechanisms of adaptive responses to errors in different school subjects.

Effective regulation of motivation can be theoretically explained by both the extent of motivational regulation strategies used (quantity) and their optimal implementation (quality). Researchers have not yet analysed the significance of both aspects for learning success simultaneously. In the present study, 188 students were presented with different descriptions of prototypical learning situations paired with specific causes for poor motivation and were asked to report both the quantity and key aspects of the quality of motivational regulation strategies they would implement. Regression analyses revealed that the quantity of strategy use was a moderate positive predictor of both self-reported regulatory effectiveness and self-reported effort while studying. These two dependent variables were significantly better predicted by including the quality of strategy use. Moreover, only the quality of strategy use correlated with academic achievement. Structural equation modelling indicated that the effect of strategy quality on academic performance was mediated by regulatory effectiveness and effort.

A global characteristic of higher education is the opportunity and necessity for students to self-regulate their learning. In contrast to considerable research focusing on self-regulated learning (SRL) from a behavioural perspective, little is known concerning the underlying competencies which enable students to succeed in SRL. A structural model is proposed that differentiates SRL competencies in terms of descriptive, procedural, and conditional knowledge regarding different types of self-regulation strategies in different phases of the learning process. Indications drawn from semi-structured interviews with N?=?108 experts (39 lecturers and 69 as excellent nominated students) from 4 fields of study are in line with core assumptions of the proposed model. Moreover, the results provide a basis to ensure the content validity of assessments of students' SRL competencies and from which to derive standards to judge these competencies.

Sales figures and recollections of psychologists indicate textbooks play a central role in psychology students' education, yet instructors typically must select texts under time pressure and with incomplete information. Although selection aids are available, none adequately address the accuracy of texts. We describe a technique for sampling textbooks' content and evaluating accuracy. Preliminary studies indicated multiple errors in texts we examined. We present a proposed taxonomy of such errors. We speculate that errors are more likely when textbook authors use "deductive" rather than "inductive referencing," but acknowledge that authors frequently are under pressure to use the former. Discipline-wide efforts to assess textbooks' scholarly quality could facilitate improvements in accuracy, providing fundamental benefits to the discipline. (Contains 3 tables.)

Provides an overview of the recent research concerning the application, benefits, and deficiencies regarding critical-reading skills and college instruction. Discusses how reading skills support cognitive processes necessary for acquiring psychological knowledge. Delineates the differences between narrative (story-like, believable) reading and paradigmatic (formal, logical) reading. (MJP)

Describes Assessment Center (AC) programs that are used in Germany to prepare university business graduates making job applications to large companies. The simulation of real-life application procedures is explained, problems associated with the validity of the AC are addressed, and the roles and attitudes of students and experts are discussed. (23 references) (LRW)

Defines virtual reality as a particular type of experience (in terms of "presence" and "telepresence") rather than as a collection of hardware. Maintains that media technologies can be classified and studied in terms of vividness and interactivity, two attributes on which virtual reality ranks very high. (SR)

This writing unit with a Halloween theme includes exercises and worksheets to develop prewriting, writing, and rewriting skills. (SJL)

No relationship was found between health ratings and depression scores, but a significant association emerged between a somatic symptom subscale and depression scores. Results indicated a factor structure based on the positioning of the positively and negatively worded items. (Author)

Examples of comprehension activities are presented in the areas of: context clues, literal comprehension, recall of details, main ideas, maps and charts, interpretive comprehension, sequence, and evaluative comprehension. This article is one of four in this issue comprising the Teacher's Reading Seminar 1979. (SJL)

An individualized reading process, utilizing task cards and individual conferences, is outlined. Additional ideas are given for using students' book selections in the language arts through discussion, dramatization, and composition. This article is one of four in this issue comprising the Teacher's Reading Seminar 1979. (SJL)

Teaching suggestions and game ideas are presented for teaching basic and more advanced decoding in the primary and intermediate grades. This article is one of four in this issue that comprise the Teacher's Reading Seminar 1979. (SJL)

A chronological review of the values that have been presented in American basal reading series from the McGuffey era of the 1840s to the present. This article is one of four in this issue comprising the Teacher's Reading Seminar 1979. (SJL)