Objective:Reading difficulties (RD) frequently co-occur with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and children with both RD + ADHD often demonstrate greater challenges in reading and executive functions (EF) than those with RD-only.Methods:This study examined the effect of a 4-week EF-based reading intervention on behavioral and neurobiological correlates of EF among 8–12 y.o. English-speaking children with RD + ADHD (n = 19), RD-only (n = 18), and typically developing children (n = 18). Behavioral and resting-state fMRI data were collected from all participants before and after 4 weeks of the EF-based reading computerized program. Group (RD + ADHD, RD-only, typical readers) x Test (pre- and post-intervention) repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted for reading, EF, and brain functional connectivity (FC) measures.Results:Across groups, reading (fluency, comprehension) and EF (inhibition, speed of processing) behavioral performance improved following the intervention. Exploratory subgroup comparisons revealed that children with RD + ADHD, but not RD-only, showed significant gains in reading comprehension, whereas inhibition improved in both RD groups, but not among typical readers. Furthermore, across groups, FC between the frontoparietal (FP) and cingulo-opercular (CO) networks decreased following the intervention. Exploratory subgroup comparisons revealed that children with RD + ADHD, but not RD-only, showed a significant decrease in FC of FP-CO and FP-dorsal attention network.Conclusions:These results support the differential response to an EF-based reading intervention of children with RD with and without comorbid ADHD at brain and behavioral levels.

Online Collaborative Writing (OCW) is a prevalent practice among undergraduate students, yet challenges arising from a lack of group awareness (GA) often hinder effective collaboration. To address such challenges, this study included three phases: (1) A preliminary study (n=9) aimed to identify challenges that undergraduate students face while engaging in asynchronous OCW. (2) A GA tool (i.e., SITU) was designed to address the identified challenges by allowing students to invite their peers to edit specific sections of the document and provide written feedback. (3) The effect of SITU on students’ online writing behaviors and peer editing outcomes was evaluated. Students in the experimental group (n=32) worked on an OCW task with SITU while students in the control group (n=30) worked without it. Employing a mixed-methods research design, data were collected via screen-capture recordings of students’ writing processes and group interviews. Results from the preliminary study revealed that students experienced discomfort in editing parts of the shared document written by peers and encountered difficulties in coordinating task-related activities. The main study revealed that collaborative writing with SITU led to an almost twofold increase in the time students spent on conducting major edits to paragraphs written by peers.

The prevalence of diseases stemming from poor nutrition emphasizes the importance of educating people about healthy eating habits. One approach to achieving this is through educational escape games, which embody the features of a situated learning environment. Utilized the situated learning theory as a theoretical and methodological framework, the goal of our study was to examine the role of science-based educational escape games in facilitating knowledge construction and awareness about healthy nutrition. The study was conducted in the setting of a science teacher preparation program, where 165 preservice science teachers were engaged in an escape game named Zombie Attack about proteins in food and the human body. The study applied the pretest-posttest design, in which quantitative and qualitative data were collected concurrently before and after game participation. The findings showed that the escape game experience had a positive effect on the participants’ knowledge gain associated with topics such as energy of macronutrients, protein percent daily value, and proteins in the body. With regards to awareness about healthy nutrition, the study identified five types: Health, Composition, Environment, Source, and Ethics, with a significant gain in all categories following the escape game experience. Overall, the study advocates the use of escape games as a method for fostering interactive learning of scientific concepts, encouraging collaborative problem-solving, and facilitating self-reflection activities.

The expanded Simple View of Reading model suggests language processing and word reading as contributors to reading comprehension and points at the participation of executive functions as supporting these abilities. Switching and inhibition are both executive functions (EF) contributing to reading, especially in languages with two writing systems—shallow and deep, such as Hebrew. Here, we aimed to determine the specific role of switching/inhibition both cognitively and neurobiologically in the Simple View of Reading model among 49 eight- to 12-year-old Hebrew-speaking children. Children underwent reading and cognitive behavioural testing as well as a five-min resting-state fMRI scan. Functional connectivity of the fronto-parietal network related to switching/inhibition was determined and included in a moderation model. Results suggest that both switching/inhibition abilities and functional connectivity within the fronto-parietal network moderate the relations between word reading and reading comprehension. This strengthens the contribution of switching/inhibition to facilitating reading comprehension and supports the need to include it as part of the expanded SVR model.

Background Although it has been suggested that peer interactions that are meaningful both mathematically and dialogically are rare, not much is known about them. We draw on commognition to suggest a unified definition of dialogic mathematics peer learning as a peer interaction including two features: (a) a shift from familiar ways and rules of doing mathematics to newer, more developed ones; (b) openness to and critical engagement with each other’s suggestions that involves reliance on the more developed rules. Method We empirically demonstrate the affordances of the suggested lens by micro-analyzing five dyadic interactions of middle-school students working on a geometric task designed to encourage a shift from familiar visual/configural ways of doing geometry to more developed deductive ones. Findings Only one out of the five interactions included both features of dialogic mathematics peer learning; three interactions lacked both features; and one interaction included the openness and critical engagement feature but still not the mathematical shift feature. Contribution The paper provides discursive conceptual and methodological tools for examining the intersection between two important strands of the learning sciences—mathematics learning and dialogic learning—as well as empirical and practical conclusions that foreground the complexity and fragility of this intersection.

Background

As artificial intelligence (AI) technology rapidly advances, it becomes imperative to equip students with tools to navigate through the many intricate ethical considerations surrounding its development and use. Despite growing recognition of this necessity, the integration of AI ethics into higher education curricula remains limited. This paucity highlights an urgent need for comprehensive ethics education initiatives in AI, particularly for science and engineering students who are at the forefront of these innovations. Hence, this research investigates the role of an online explicit-reflective learning module in fostering science and engineering graduate students' ethical knowledge, awareness, and problem-solving skills. The study’s participants included 90 graduate students specializing in diverse science and engineering research tracks. Employing the embedded mixed-methods approach, data were collected from pre- and post-intervention questionnaires with closed-ended and open-ended questions.

Results

The study's results indicate that the online explicit-reflective learning module significantly enhanced students' knowledge of AI ethics. Initially, students exhibited a medium–high level of perceived ethical awareness, which saw a modest but statistically significant enhancement following the participation. Notably, a more distinct increase was observed in students' actual awareness of ethical issues in AI, before and after the intervention. Content analysis of students’ responses to the open-ended questions revealed an increase in their ability to identify and articulate concerns relating to privacy breaches, the utilization of flawed datasets, and issues of biased social representation. Moreover, while students initially displayed limited problem-solving abilities in AI ethics, a considerable enhancement in these competencies was evident post-intervention.

Conclusions

The study results highlight the important role of explicit-reflective learning in preparing future professionals in science and engineering with the skills necessary for ethical decision-making. The study highlights the need for placing more emphasis not only on students’ ability to identify AI-related ethical issues but also on their capacity to resolve and perhaps mitigate the impact of such ethical dilemmas.

In this response, we summarize the affirmations, extensions, and critiques of the framework for science communication training that we presented in Lewenstein and Baram-Tsabari (2022. How should we organize science communication trainings to achieve competencies? International Journal of Science Education – Part B: Communication and Public Engagement, 12(4), 289–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/21548455.2022.2136985). We ask how the comments collected in this special issue can, at a practical level, help push our field forward, increasing long-term promise for science communication. To address this question, we have posted online a version of our original framework, and we invite the community to co-create a refined version of the document.

We investigated the advancement of self-regulated learning (SRL) in diverse educational settings, including science, mathematics, and humanities disciplines. We identified practices for assessing students' SRL and encouraging reflection. The research questions were: (1) Can sustained changes in students' perceptions of SRL over time be assessed, and if so how? and (2) What assessment strategies effectively influence students' perceptions of their SRL? Research tools included a specially-designed questionnaire and a graphic-facilitated focus group. We first compared the SRL of 184 high school students in science, mathematics, and humanities, followed by a closer look at the SRL development of 72 students in science and mathematics. Six students then engaged in a graphical facilitation assessment to identify shifts in their SRL perceptions and reflections. The findings showed that students' SRL skills consisted of multiple factors, with help-seeking being the highest and reflection skills the lowest. No significant differences were found between science, mathematics, and humanities students' SRL skills. Mathematics students exhibited significant SRL improvements after an intervention, while science students showed no change. However, the focus group of science students elicited shifts in SRL perceptions and reflection through the use of graphical facilitation. Despite limitations in generalizability, this research highlights the value of diverse assessment tools in promoting SRL. It underscores the importance of employing diverse tools during the promotion of self-regulation processes to foster meaningful advancements in students' SRL skills. Our study contributes by linking the cyclical SRL model with the timing of reflection and adopting a multimodal approach to SRL assessment.

This study explores whether the emphasis of science news websites on dissemination over dialogue corresponds to the actual preferences of their science-oriented audiences. Based on interviews with science news website administrators (n = 8) and readers (n = 20) and two reader questionnaires (n = 89; n = 55), we found that readers favor dissemination, yet certain readers may also desire interactive discussions. Readers perceive the ability to comment as beneficial for readers and administrators; however, they do not expect administrators to engage in dialogue. Younger audiences showed a somewhat greater preference for online dialogic communication than their older counterparts.

This chapter reviews the literature on identity in mathematics education by examining how the focus on identity has been used by researchers to question and critique certain practices and assumptions in the field. We concentrated on the most influential writings in the field of mathematics education (operationalized through a metric of above 100 citations in Google Scholar) and analyzed them according to the following questions: What was the controversial issue the authors were trying to make progress on or resolve? What dominant perspectives in mathematics education research are being critiqued through the lens of identity? We found four main themes of critique of the existing work through this analysis: one is critique against “traditional” forms of instruction, where authors turned attention to the harms of such types of instruction to the formation of students’ mathematical identity; the second critique was against forms of oppression, especially on the basis of race, gender, economic status, and linked anti-deficit research that ascribes deficit to learners (and teachers); the third critique (often overlapping with others) was against cognitivist frameworks or strands of research that only focus on the cognitive elements of learning and teaching mathematics; and the fourth is critique turned inward (critique on the field of mathematics identity research itself). We discuss the complementarity of these themes as well as the tensions between them. We conclude by considering the implications of our review for future prospective mathematics identity research.