Seda CAVUS, Nihal DOGAN and Savas GUNGOREN
ABSTRACT
This study aimed to investigate pre-service science and mathematics teachers‟ views about theories and laws and compare their beliefs about them. The participants were 75 pre-service teachers (32 science and 43 mathematics). Participants were engaged in different NOS activities through one semester that explicit reflective approach to improve their views. For data collection, Views of Nature of Science (VNOS-C) questionnaire [6] was used for pre and post tests to determine participants‟ initial views. Semi-structured interview was undertaken with 8 participants as post tests in order to help uncover the participants‟ views. Each of the participants‟ pre and post tests responses were analyzed and coded as “naïve”, “have merit“ and “informed”. The results revealed that majority of both groups have naive view according to pre-test results. Meanwhile, the post test results indicated that science teachers‟ views were more informed than mathematics teachers‟ views after explicit reflective approach.
Roelien GOEDE and Estelle TAYLOR
ABSTRACT
Self-directed learning is a concept introduced by Malcolm Knowles in 1975. Key to this concept is moving the responsibility of learning away from the teacher to the learner. The learner should take control of the learning experience and the teacher should only facilitate this process. However, selfdirectedness in a learner develops in stages. Learners need to be guided to become more self-directed over time. In order to guide learners the lecturer or facilitator should understand the level of self-directedness also referred to as the readiness for self-directed learning of the students. This paper reports on the process of understanding the readiness for self-directed learning of 4th year Information Systems students. Methods representing the positivistic and interpretive research paradigms are applied and compared to achieve this goal.
Peng-Jen Lai
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we demonstrate how our research findings regarding fractal tilings arose through the teaching of a geometry course, and describe the mathematical relationships between the content of the geometry course and our research results. We share this delightful experience and demonstrate how research can be closely related to teaching activities in university.
Ferenc ERDÉLYI and Tibor TÓTH
ABSTRACT
In the last 150 years a rapid progress and several big paradigm-changes have happened in the field of technical sciences. Information Science (IS) has a great impact on today’s industrial practice. IS is not only a special branch of sciences considering that the principles, means and methods of information acquisition, processing and transfer are indispensable for every engineer, moreover, for our society as a whole. Today’s richness of IS has derived from the enormous area of applications (applied informatics, Information Technology (IT), Information Engineering (IE)). In mechanical engineers’ training, Production Information Engineering (IT for Manufacturing) has a key role. These aspects justified the foundation of the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Miskolc. The subjects of IE have already appeared in BSc, MSc and PhD education. Applied informatics has facilitated the introduction and education of engineering systems approach. In the new approach IT has played the most important role because complex, large systems can neither be planned nor be controlled without IT. The demands of industrial enterprises in this field have permitted a consortiumbased cooperation of universities, research institutes and enterprises. The paper gives a summary on the results of R&D works connected with an industrial project realized.
Alan H. McGowan
ABSTRACT
This paper describes a new intermediate course given in the Environmental Studies Program at The New School. It incorporates research activities by the class as a whole, in the process of which the class learns a great deal about the science and technology of non-fossil fuels, their promises and difficulties. Since ameliorating human influenced global climate change, educating and training students in the skills necessary to accomplish the necessary transition is essential. The course embodies a class project on which everyone works, entitled “Fueling America,” whose purpose is to determine what technologies deployed in what manner and in what quantities can eliminate the use of fossil fuels in the United States by a date certain. Knowing that it was impossible, we nevertheless chose an early date, 2030, so that it seemed reachable for the students. The project resulted in a technical paper, which included an economic analysis. In addition to alternative energy technologies, the technologies of energy efficiencies were also included.
Virda K. LESTER
ABSTRACT
You have heard your colleagues say many times, “my students have no idea what I presented in class today” or “they did not understand the concepts that I demonstrated”, and/or “they just can’t read”. These comments are heard over and over nation-wide, causing concern for educators at all levels and in many disciplines. Additionally, you have heard your students comment, “I can’t understand what Dr. X is saying”, or “she may know what she is presenting, but I don’t understand a thing she is saying”, and/or “she just doesn’t know how to get the material across to us so that we somewhat understand”. Is education in many schools failing? Is there cause for alarm in the statements, “If the child hasn’t learned, the teacher hasn’t taught?” All of the aforementioned comments have some legitimacy. However, with effective teaching models, methods, strategies, and tactics through collaboration with disciplines across the curriculum, the statements can be “stamped” out.
Fernando ORNELAS MARQUES and Maria Teresa MARQUES
ABSTRACT
The motivation to carry out this study stemmed from the generalized perception that nowadays youth lacks the skills for the 21st century. Especially the high-level competences like critical thinking, problem solving and autonomy. Several tools can help to improve these competences (e.g. the SCRATCH programming language), but as researchers and educators we are mostly concerned with the skill to recognize problems. What if we do not find problems to solve? What if we do not even feel the need to find or solve problems? The problem is to recognize the problem; the next step is to equate the problem; finally we have to feel the need to solve it. No need? No invention. Recognizing a problem is probably the biggest problem of everyday life, because we are permanently faced with problems (many ill-defined problems), which we need to identify, equate and solve.
Josiane CARON-PARGUE
ABSTRACT
A first part gives a rough picture of some difficulties encountered in research, in education, and in problem solving, for integrating them to one another. One can notice a much too global characterization of cognitive processes and a lack in the characterization of semiotic aspects. A second part analyses some theoretical limits to this integration. They are mainly due to the current conception of memories unable to take into consideration the micro-cognitive-processes at work under the reorganizations of knowledge when actualized within the situation. A third part presents a way toward the integration research-education-problem solving, relying on a cognitive approach of Culioli‟s enunciative theory of language, and presents some of the author‟s data. microcognitive-processes are depicted in terms of the construction of aggregates (declarative versus procedural ones, standing at different levels of internalization and externalization), and of different processes of detachment from the situation. Then several kinds of interactions allow an on-line identification of the constraints of the task. The characterization of these constraints seems basic for each of the considered areas, research, education, and problem solving.
Heljä MÄNTYLÄ, Kai PIETILÄ, Tiina JOKINEN, Johanna OLKANEN and Helena VENNONEN
ABSTRACT
This article describes a learning process between students, teachers, entrepreneurs and partners based on the output of the first year students in HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences, Porvoo unit. The students carried out a research project which gave students opportunities to learn the business processes of the local small and medium sized companies. The project provided extensive hands-on material for further use for the students and the researchers and trained the team working and project management skills of the students. The research was the base for a further co-operation with the companies in the field of business developing tasks. This article consists of the following parts: the inquiry-based learning method, the progress of the project, the research questions, the main results of the interviews, the beneficiaries and the benefits of the project, and conclusions.
Precious Vida Yamaguchi and Mr. Enrique Legaspi
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the utility of engaging middle school students living in the inner city of East Los Angeles with undergraduate college students at a women’s liberal arts college in Eastern Pennsylvania. This collaborative intergenerational and interregional research project involves social media and the use of the Apple app, FaceTime, as a method of experiential and virtual learning.
Education, Informatics, and Cybernetics 