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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Applied Computing For Behavioral And Social Sciences (Acbss) Minor, Farshid Marbouti, Valerie Carr, Belle Wei, Morris Jones, Amy Strage
Applied Computing For Behavioral And Social Sciences (Acbss) Minor, Farshid Marbouti, Valerie Carr, Belle Wei, Morris Jones, Amy Strage
Faculty Publications
The growing digital economy creates unprecedented demand for technical workers, especially those with both domain knowledge and technical skills. To meet this need, an ACBSS (Applied Computing for Behavioral and Social Sciences) minor degree has been developed by an interdisciplinary team of faculty at San José State University (SJSU). The minor degree comprises four courses: Python programming, algorithms and data structures, R programming, and culminating projects. The first ACBSS cohort started in Fall 2016 with 32 students, and the second cohort in Fall 2017 reached its capacity of 40 students, 62% of whom are female and 35% are underrepresented minority …
Public Education For Democracy: Teaching Immigrant And Bilingual Children As Equals, Luis E. Poza, Sheila M. Shannon
Public Education For Democracy: Teaching Immigrant And Bilingual Children As Equals, Luis E. Poza, Sheila M. Shannon
Faculty Publications
This theoretical essay offers a genealogical analysis (Foucault, 1975) that problematizes the idea of “public” with respect to schooling immigrant and bilingual students. “Public” has been reconfigured in ways that privilege hegemonic whiteness, resulting in policies and practices such as standardized testing, for example, that primarily evaluate, sort, and penalize (Foucault, 1975) schools serving these students. We contend that testing’s pernicious impacts stem from a raciolinguistic project of American identity (Flores & Rosa, 2015). Educators, adapting to the tests (Freire, 1974), cement linguistic and racial hierarchies. Referencing classrooms from our teaching and empirical work, we argue for teacher education that …
En Busca Del Diamante: Using Tasks To Mitigate Word Reduction In Spoken Learner Spanish, Sergio Ruiz-Pérez, Lorena Alarcón, Avizia Long
En Busca Del Diamante: Using Tasks To Mitigate Word Reduction In Spoken Learner Spanish, Sergio Ruiz-Pérez, Lorena Alarcón, Avizia Long
Faculty Publications
A common feature of second language Spanish, particularly in the case of native English-speaking learners, is to shorten or reduce segments within words (Schwegler & Kempff, 2007). This is particularly noticeable with multi-syllabic words (e.g., ingeniería, floristería, cafetería), and mispronunciations during second language interaction influence speech intelligibility. To address this pronunciation challenge and provide learners with opportunities for practice of words that demonstrate this reduction, we designed a two-way information gap task to draw learners' attention to these words in second language Spanish interaction. We specifically used principles of task-based language teaching and learning (e.g., Ellis, 2009; M. H. Long, …
¿Vera O Verra? Using Principles Of Task-Based Language Teaching To Practice Spanish Rhotics, Avizia Long
¿Vera O Verra? Using Principles Of Task-Based Language Teaching To Practice Spanish Rhotics, Avizia Long
Faculty Publications
Research on task-based language teaching and learning has demonstrated that tasks may encourage second/foreign language development, specifically by facilitating conditions believed to engage processes that are important for second language acquisition to occur (Robinson, 2011; Skehan, 2014). Recent studies conducted by Solon, Long, and Gurzynski-Weiss (2014, 2015) have demonstrated that tasks designed to make pronunciation task essential do encourage learner attention to pronunciation, and increasing task complexity leads to greater accuracy in the production of the Spanish vowels [o] and [u]. This micro-teaching lesson, inspired by Solon et al., will showcase a task designed to make the pronunciation of the …
Teaching Argument Writing And "Content" In Diverse Middle School History Classrooms, Chauncey Monte-Sano, Susan De La Paz, Mark Felton
Teaching Argument Writing And "Content" In Diverse Middle School History Classrooms, Chauncey Monte-Sano, Susan De La Paz, Mark Felton
Faculty Publications
Monte-Sano et al describe a program in which they worked with curriculum leaders in an academically and culturally diverse school district to develop materials and techniques that would strengthen middle school students' skills in making arguments and using evidence in historical essays. They outline the Shays' Rebellion investigation activity, which enable students to develop inquiry and literacy practices as they integrate critical reading, historical thinking, and argument writing.
Comparing Interaction And Use Of Space In Traditional And Innovative Classrooms, Laura Gurzynski-Weiss, Avizia Long, Megan Solon
Comparing Interaction And Use Of Space In Traditional And Innovative Classrooms, Laura Gurzynski-Weiss, Avizia Long, Megan Solon
Faculty Publications
Despite myriad changes to language teaching methods over time, university-level classroom spaces have largely remained the same—until now. Recent innovations in classroom space design center on technological advances, include movable furniture and coffee-shop style rooms, and are believed to facilitate language learning in several ways. Specifically, compared to traditional classrooms, innovative spaces are designed in the hope of decreasing pre-task set up, increasing student-centered interaction, and facilitating collaborative work with multiple partners—features believed to be important for classroom learning. However, whether or not such features are present in these innovative spaces, or more so than in traditional classrooms, has yet …
Alienating Students: Marxist Theory In Action, Megan Thiele, Yung-Yi Diana Pan, Devin Molina
Alienating Students: Marxist Theory In Action, Megan Thiele, Yung-Yi Diana Pan, Devin Molina
Faculty Publications, Sociology
Karl Marx is one of the most significant and widely known sociologists. Although he is largely credited for his macro perspectives, he made important contributions by detailing the micro experiences of the worker in a capitalist system. This piece details a hands-on learning activity that allows students to experience both alienation and non-alienation in the classroom. By offering an experiential activity to pair with readings on the topic, students will be better able to grasp this fundamental, yet often difficult to understand, core concept of Marxist theory.
The Effect Of Argumentative Task Goal On The Quality Of Argumentative Discourse, Merce Garcia-Mila, Sandra Gilabert, Sibel Erduran, Mark Felton
The Effect Of Argumentative Task Goal On The Quality Of Argumentative Discourse, Merce Garcia-Mila, Sandra Gilabert, Sibel Erduran, Mark Felton
Faculty Publications
In argumentative discourse, there are two kinds of activity-dispute and deliberation-that depend on the argumentative task goal. In dispute the goal is to defend a conclusion by undermining alternatives, whereas in deliberation the goal is to arrive at a conclusion by contrasting alternatives. In this study, we examine the impact of these tasks goals on the quality of argumentative discourse. Sixty-five junior high school students were organized into dyads to discuss sources of energy. Dyads were formed by members who had differing viewpoints and were distributed to one of two conditions: 31 dyads were asked to discuss with the goal …