Arnold, Julia
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On the complex relationship between resilience and hair cortisol levels in adolescence despite parental physical abuse. a fourth wave of resilience research
Introduction: To understand the family’s role in adolescents’ mental health development and the connection to neurodevelopmental disorders related to experienced parental physical abuse, we first explored resilience pathways longitudinally and secondly, connected the identified patterns to adolescents’ hair cortisol levels that are rooted in the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis as the main stress response system and connected brain structure alterations. Methods: We analyzed longitudinal online questionnaire data for three consecutive high school years (from seventh to ninth grade) and four survey waves from a representative sample of n = 1609 high school students in Switzerland on violence–resilience pathways. Furthermore, we collected students’ hair samples from a subsample of n = 229 at survey wave 4. About 30% of the participating adolescents had been physically abused by their parents. Out of the overall sample, we drew a subsample of adolescents with parental abuse experiences (survey wave 1 n = 509; survey wave 2 n = 506; survey wave 3 n = 561; survey wave 4 n = 560). Results: Despite the odds, about 20–30% of adolescents who have experienced parental physical abuse escaped the family violence cycle and can be called resilient. By applying a person-oriented analytical approach via latent class and transition analysis, we longitudinally identified and compared four distinct violence–resilience patterns. We identified violence resilience as a multidimensional latent construct, which includes hedonic and eudaimonic protective and risk indicators. Because resilience should not solely be operationalized based on the lack of psychopathology, our latent construct included both feeling good (hedonic indicators such as high levels of self-esteem and low levels of depression/anxiety and dissociation) and doing well (eudaimonic indicators such as high levels of self-determination and self-efficacy as well as low levels of aggression toward peers). Discussion: The present study confirmed that higher cortisol levels significantly relate to the comorbid pattern (internalizing and externalizing symptoms), and further confirmed the presence of lasting alterations in brain structures. In this way, we corroborated the insight that when studying the resilience pathways and trajectories of abused adolescents, biological markers such as hair cortisol significantly enhance and deepen the understanding of the longitudinal mechanisms of psychological markers (e.g., self-determination, self-esteem, self-efficacy) that are commonly applied in questionnaires.
Exploring core ideas of procedural understanding in scientific inquiry using educational data mining
Background: Scientific thinking is an essential learning goal of science education and it can be fostered by inquiry learning. One important prerequisite for scientific thinking is procedural understanding. Procedural understanding is the knowledge about specific steps in scientific inquiry (e.g. formulating hypotheses, measuring dependent and varying independent variables, repeating measurements), and why they are essential (regarding objectivity, reliability, and validity). We present two studies exploring students’ ideas about procedural understanding in scientific inquiry using Concept Cartoons. Concept Cartoons are cartoon-like drawings of different characters who have different views about a concept. They are to activate students’ ideas about the specific concept and/or make them discuss them. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to survey students’ ideas of procedural understanding and identify core ideas of procedural understanding that are central for understanding scientific inquiry. Design and methods: In the first study, we asked 47 students about reasons for different steps in inquiry work via an open–ended questionnaire using eight Concept Cartoons as triggers (e.g. about the question why one would need hypotheses). The qualitative analysis of answers revealed 42 ideas of procedural understanding (3-8 per Cartoon). We used these ideas to formulate a closed-ended questionnaire that contained the same Concept Cartoons, followed by statements with Likert-scales to measure agreement. In a second study, 64 students answered the second questionnaire as well as a multiple-choice test on procedural understanding. Results: Using methods from educational data mining, we identified five central statements, all emphasizing the concept of confounding variables: (1) One needs alternative hypotheses, because there may be other variables worth considering as cause. (2) The planning helps to take into account confounding variables or external circumstances. (3) Confounding variables should be controlled since they influence the experiment/the dependent variable. (4) Confounding variables should be controlled since the omission may lead to inconclusive results. (5) Confounding variables should be controlled to ensure accurate measurement. Conclusions: We discuss these ideas in terms of functioning as core ideas of procedural understanding. We hypothesize that these core-ideas could facilitate the teaching and learning of procedural understanding about experiments, which should be investigated in further studies.
MaSter-Bio - Messinstrument für das akademische Selbstkonzept zum technologiebezogenen Professionswissen von angehenden Biologielehrpersonen
Digitale Technologien können – sinnvoll eingesetzt – das Lernen befördern. Ob jedoch die Potenziale digitaler Technologien im Regelunterricht tatsächlich genutzt werden, hängt zu einem relevanten Maß von der Lehrperson und ihrer Bereitschaft zur Nutzung ab. Hierbei ist nicht zuletzt das akademische Selbstkonzept der Lehrpersonen in Bezug auf das technologiebezogene Professionswissen (technological pedagogical content knowledge – TPACK) von Bedeutung. Um dieses Konstrukt in seiner Tiefe zu verstehen oder den Erfolg von Förderangeboten abschätzen zu können, ist die valide und reliable Messung des akademischen Selbstkonzeptes zum technologiebezogenen Professionswissen wichtig. In diesem Beitrag wird der MaSter-Bio als ein Messinstrument für das akademische Selbstkonzept zum technologiebezogenen Professionswissen von angehenden Biologielehrpersonen vorgestellt. Bei seiner Entwicklung wurden die aktuelle Forschung zum akademischen Selbstkonzept und zum technologiebezogenen Professionswissen, die Nutzbarkeit im deutschsprachigen Raum sowie eine spezifische Ausschärfung für den Biologieunterricht berücksichtigt. Reliabilität und Validität wurden an einer Stichprobe von 403 angehenden Biologielehrpersonen überprüft. Mit dem Instrument können die sieben angenommenen Subskalen des Konstrukts reliabel erfasst werden und es liegen Hinweise für diskriminante und konvergente Validität vor.
The three-talk model. Getting both evidence and preferences into a pre-service teacher health workshop
We describe a pre-service teacher workshop about sustainable health decisions in school. This one-week workshop had two goals: to improve the ability of students to cope with health and illness as teachers in daily school life, and to improve scientific literacy in health contexts. In this way, the workshop aimed at creating a situation of mutual benefit between science education and health education, as it is suggested in the new science pedagogy called Science|Environment|Health. To reach this aim, the workshop was structured by the evidence-preference approach and the three-talk model, both originally developed for shared-decision making in medicine. In the evidence-preference approach, the experts (the physician, here the teacher) provide the best evidence available, while the laypersons (the patient, here the teacher students) bring in their preferences and, together with the experts, find their personal standpoint. This process is structured by the three-talk model, which is conceived as a characteristic succession of choice talk, option talk, and decision talk. We describe how the pre-service teacher workshop embraced this new approach, compare it to a scientific literacy point of view, and suggest how it could be applied in many other educational contexts, particularly in many issues of education for sustainability.