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The gamification of learning has increased in popularity in recent years as a tool for enhancing student engagement and attainment. In undergraduate chemistry courses, hybridization is a fundamental concept that students need to master in order to understand introductory organic and inorganic topics. This study focused on the development of a card game for use as a revision tool (i.e., a learning resource that can be used by students to engage with a topic they have previously encountered and develop their understanding of the topic in advance of an assessment) based on the topic of hybridization for students taking introductory chemistry courses. The game was designed to both engage students and support their learning. Covering the core concepts of hybridization, including molecular geometry, orbital character, and hybridization states, the speed-based game requires students to answer "question cards" before their opponents by placing down the correct "hybridization card". The game was implemented with chemistry cohorts at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, and Xi'an Jiatong-Liverpool University, China. The impact of the game on student learning was evaluated through pre- and postintervention quizzes, as well as a survey based on student impressions of the game play experience. Students responded positively about the game play experiences, and a comparison of quiz scores suggests a positive impact on student understanding of the topic.

Understanding large number data is essential for making sense of real-world problems. For the research reported here, our intent was to find connections between quantitative cognitive science studies and our prior qualitative study about participants' understanding of the relative size of large numbers. While all 23 cognitive science research studies that we reviewed focused only on participants' placements of large numbers on number lines, our study focused on preservice teachers' (PSTs; n = 128) strategies -- placements "and explanations" for their placements -- of one billion on a number line bounded by zero and one trillion. Our intent was to answer the following question: What are the connections between three plausible placements substantiated by cognitive scientists -- linear; log-linear; and segmented linear -- of large numbers on number line tasks and the nine strategies identified in our qualitative study? We highlight exemplars from the nine PSTs' strategies to show connections between the three plausible placements. In doing so, we illustrate that asking participants to place large numbers on number lines only gives a partial picture of their understanding. Their explanations expand the placements by revealing inconsistencies among the placements and explanations. Implications for future research are also discussed.

Mathematics methods texts are important resources for supporting preservice teachers' learning. Methods instructors routinely assign readings from texts. Yet, anecdotally and also based on reading compliance literature, many students report that they do not read assigned readings. Within this paper we briefly describe the findings from a survey of 132 mathematics methods instructors about their customary use of texts and focus more closely on interviews of 16 preservice and first-year teachers about the reading strategies they used while reading methods texts. Research questions addressed the following: What strategies do preservice teachers use to make meaning of mathematics methods texts? What recommendations do preservice teachers suggest for instructors about the usage of texts? Findings suggest that most preservice and first-year teachers, at first, hesitated, not seeming to understand the first question and then struggled to explain their strategies. According to preservice and first-year teachers, instructors need to: balance reading with other ways to interact with the texts; discuss text readings in class; give them a purpose for reading; and, hold them accountable for the readings. Perhaps, both general content area literacy strategies and disciplinary literacy strategies need more emphasis in methods coursework.

Mathematics methods textbooks/texts are important components of many courses for preservice teachers. Researchers should explore how these texts are selected and used. Within this paper we report the findings of a survey administered electronically to 132 members of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE) in order to answer the following research questions: What criteria do mathematics teacher educators use when they select texts? How do they use the texts in their methods courses? What strategies (e.g., literacy strategies, reflection strategies, etc.) do mathematics teacher educators use in order to help preservice teachers engage with the texts? Findings suggest that mathematics teacher educators use varied criteria to select methods texts and they use texts in a variety of ways. Some use texts to show and tell about standards-based practices and some want to help preservice teachers use texts to shape their own visions of standards-based practices. Additionally, results indicate that mathematics teacher educators ask preservice teachers to participate in discussions about the texts they select and use in their courses. We propose additional research related to the literacy strategies that mathematics teacher educators use in their methods courses in order to help preservice teachers engage with the texts that they select and use.

Recent theories propose that autism is characterized by an impairment in determining when to learn and when not. We investigated this by estimating learning rate in environments varying in volatility and uncertainty. Specifically, we correlated autistic traits (in 163 neurotypical participants) with modelled learning behaviour during probabilistic reward learning under the following three conditions: a Stationary Low Noise condition with stable reward contingencies, a Volatile condition with changing reward contingencies and a Stationary High Noise condition where reward probabilities for all options were 60%, resulting in an uncertain, noisy environment. Consistent with earlier findings, we found less optimal decision-making in the Volatile condition for participants with more autistic traits. However, we observed no correlations between underlying adjustments in learning rates and autistic traits, suggesting no impairment in updating learning rates in response to volatile versus noisy environments. Exploratory analyses indicated that impaired performance in the Volatile condition in participants with more autistic traits, was specific to trials with reward contingencies opposite to those initially learned, suggesting a primacy bias. We conclude that performance in volatile environments is lower in participants with more autistic traits, but this cannot be unambiguously attributed to difficulties with adjusting learning rates.

The COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic in 2020 has had a lasting impact on all areas of personal life. However, the political, economic, legal and healthcare system, as well as the education system have also experienced the effects. Universities had to face new challenges and requirements in teaching and examinations as quickly as possible in order to be able to guarantee high-quality education for their students. This study aims to examine how the German-speaking medical faculties of the Umbrella Consortium of Assessment Network (UCAN) have dealt with the challenges but also the opportunities that the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic created in medical education and whether digitalisation has been driven forward as a result. In an initial online-survey we focused our questions on the current teaching situation with regard to digitised teaching content, the support or establishment of adequate framework conditions by the medical faculties and IT facilities and also the execution of examinations during the summer semester 2020. Between August and September 2020, a total of 88 examiners, educators, dean of study and/or technical admins from 32 partner faculties took part in the survey. Students were not included in our survey. Most respondents stated that a switch to a digital semester had worked, the use of e-learning increased compared to previous semesters and that most courses could be converted, with the exception of practical courses, which were largely cancelled. The respondents also indicated that most examinations could still be taken, with the exception of practical examination formats, like Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs). However, in the case of face-to-face examinations, strict distance and hygiene conditions had to be obeyed or there had to be a switch to distance-online examinations, which raised many open issues such as equal opportunities of students (technical equipment, internet access, premises) and attempts at deception (third-party help with the exam, mutual exchange between students, web search). In conclusion, we identified several issues regarding the rapid transition to a digital semester due to COVID-19 which were categorised into the following topics: (1) face-to-face teaching could not take place; (2) know-how of educators; (3) integrity aspects; (4) technical aspects; (5) additional personnel required; and (6) additional time and effort required for implementation of digital teaching. Our study shows that a switch to digital teaching and distance online examinations is feasible, but many problems were encountered concerning academic integrity and basic ethical principles still need to be solved. In order to investigate whether above mentioned issued could be solved one year after the transition to a digital semester, we conducted a second survey in which the 32 initially surveyed institutions were questioned again.

This essay maps some of the ways in which the professional knowledge of English teaching has been defined and positioned in the present moment in the United States. The first part of the essay traces multidisciplinary shifts in English education/literacy research that have expanded and shifted the discursive boundaries of teacher education and ordered new ways for English educators to understand the English language arts, to structure methods courses, and to fashion themselves as teacher educators. The second education through professional standards, national assessments, corporate managerialism, and free market competition. The essay then highlights some of the ways part of the paper traces neoliberal policies that aim to reform teaching and teacher in which these discourses and practices have worked together to create new conditions of possibility in English education, to intensify old divisions in the field, and constitute new forms of professional knowledge and subjectivity. My goal is to heighten English educators' sense of this contested moment to provoke more informed and strategic engagements with the possibilities, constraints, tensions and transformations facing the English teaching professions.

In this article, a beginning teacher, experienced teacher, and teacher educator reflect upon their experiences with qualitative self-studies of language and literacy in teacher education courses. The goal of these course projects was to introduce teachers to sociocultural theories, qualitative research, and "new" literacies. Sharing excerpts from teachers' self-studies of blogging and a massively multi-player on-line role-playing game, we illustrate how small-scale self-studies may help teachers begin to develop notions of language and literacy as social practices, demystify educational research, and bridge perceived "theory" and "practice" divides in teacher education. We offer individual and collective reflections on our work to help teacher educators consider how qualitative self-study might make sociocultural perspectives and new literacies more accessible and tangible to practicing teachers.

Unlike other animals, humans have the unique ability to share and use verbal instructions to prepare for upcoming tasks. Recent research showed that instructions are sufficient for the automatic, reflex-like activation of responses. However, systematic studies into the limits of these automatic effects of task instructions remain relatively scarce. In this study, the authors set out to investigate whether this instruction-based automatic activation of responses can be context-dependent. Specifically, participants performed a task of which the stimulus-response rules and context (location on the screen) could either coincide or not with those of an instructed to-be-performed task (whose instructions changed every run). In 2 experiments, the authors showed that the instructed task rules had an automatic impact on performance-performance was slowed down when the merely instructed task rules did not coincide, but, importantly, this effect was not context-dependent. Interestingly, a third and fourth experiment suggests that context dependency can actually be observed, but only when practicing the task in its appropriate context for over 60 trials or after a sufficient amount of practice on a fixed context (the context was the same for all instructed tasks). Together, these findings seem to suggest that instructions can establish stimulus-response representations that have a reflexive impact on behavior but are insensitive to the context in which the task is known to be valid. Instead, context-specific task representations seem to require practice.

This investigation examined the thinking of 128 pre-service teachers about the magnitude of large numbers and the relationships between large numbers. These pre-service teachers responded to a written task asking them to place one billion on a number line that included zero and one trillion and to provide an explanation for their placement. One billion was placed proportionately to zero and one trillion on the number line in only 20% of responses. The data revealed nine distinct strategies that emerged and different conceptions the pre-service teachers used for making the placements. The authors discuss possible reasons for the different conceptions.

The 1966 Anglo-American Seminar at Dartmouth certainly stands as a landmark event in the history of English teaching. For the purposes of this Special Issue, however, I want to unsettle some familiar interpretations of Dartmouth by reading with and against a range of American responses to the conference published in the late 1960s and 1970s. As an American now working in Australia, I hope that my perspectives on Dartmouth will both complicate English educators' views of the past and sensitise us to historical struggles from the (post)Dartmouth-era that have influenced present struggles over the teaching of English in several countries, including Australia

This article explores Foucault's counterintuitive views on intellectuals and activism through conceptual arguments, teacher inquiry, and qualitative data to create space to consider alternative approaches to political action in teacher education. After contrasting CEE's political action agenda with Foucault's critical project, I outline my early attempts to put Foucault's ideas to work in a master's level curriculum course. I then explore the case of two English teachers who attributed their professional renewal and local activism to moments of the course that were influenced by Foucault's genealogies.

The principles of biochemistry are core to understanding cellular and tissue function, as well as the pathophysiology of disease. However, the clinical utility of biochemical principles is often obscure to clinical trainees. Resident's Morning Report is a common teaching conference in which residents present clinical cases of interest to a faculty member for discussion. This venue provides an opportunity to illustrate how basic biomedical principles facilitate an understanding of the clinical presentation, the relevant pathophysiology, and the rationale for diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. A discussion of biochemical principles can easily be incorporated into these case discussions, with the potential to reinforce these concepts and to illustrate their application to clinical decision making. This approach maintains the effort to teach basic biomedical sciences in the context of clinical application across the educational continuum.

In this article the author explores Foucault's counter-intuitive views on intellectuals and political activism--a stance he once described as "a hyper- and pessimistic activism" (Foucault, 1983). After contrasting the activist stance of critical pedagogy with Foucault's writing on political activism, the author outlines early attempts to put Foucault's ideas to work in a master's level curriculum course and then explores the case of two English teachers who represented pivotal moments in the course as "critical and effective" in a Foucauldian sense (Dean, 1994). Conceptual and empirical arguments are also explored to consider ethical positions available to curriculum scholars that do not presume that academics should necessarily produce more truth, correct untruth, or align teachers' subjectivities with critical theories that presently hold academic currency.

Explores different ways individuals conceptualize quality learning in physics. Uses semi-structured interviews that explore aspects of learning that respondents regard as worth fostering in their classrooms. Discusses different respondent conceptions with regard to four significant aspects of physics learning: doing experimental work; linking physics to the real world; students taking responsibility for their own learning; and being confident. (Author/SOE)

What can traditional social science disciplines offer to contemporary nonprofit management education? We argue that the focus on context provided by traditional disciplines contrasts with operations-oriented approaches common to management education. Drawing on a sample of 110 courses from 22 programs, we illustrate the operations-oriented focus of current nonprofit management programs and discuss the likely rationales behind that tendency. We argue that nonprofit management education would benefit from greater emphasis on context-based approaches and suggest how traditional social science disciplinary approaches can be used to create distinctive nonprofit management courses. We suggest ways to integrate such courses into nonprofit management programs and consider what it would take to move the field of nonprofit management instruction toward a more integrated model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]