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1. Investigating students' views about the role of writing in physics lab classes

   https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2020.pr.hoehn  

   Hoehn, Jessica R.; Lewandowski, H. J. (September 2020, 2020 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings)

   null (Ed.)

   Writing is an important aspect of experimental physics. Physics laboratory classes typically engage students in scientific documentation and writing in the forms of lab notebooks, reports, or proposals. Instructors of these classes may have a variety of motivations for incorporating writing. We previously developed a framework for thinking about the role of writing in physics lab classes that lists and categorizes possible goals instructors may have for writing. Here, we use that framework as a research tool to investigate students' views about, and experiences with, writing in lab classes, and experimental physics more generally. We present results of an analysis of student responses to weekly reflection questions throughout one semester of an advanced lab class. The results suggest that students think about writing in a variety of ways, and that the context and framing of the course may impact student thinking about the purpose of writing. 

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2. Teaching Ethnographic Methods for Cultural Anthropology: Current Practices and Needed Innovation

   https://doi.org/10.22582/ta.v11i2.634  

   Ruth, Alissa; Woolard, Katherine; Sangaramoorthy, Thurka; McKinley Jones Brayboy, Bryan; Beresford, Melissa; Brewis, Alexandra; Bernard, H. Russell; Glegziabher, Meskerem Z.; Hardin, Jessic; Harper, Krista; et al (March 2022, Teaching Anthropology)

   Historically, ethnographic methods were learned by cultural anthropology students in individual research projects. This approach creates challenges for teaching in ways that respond to the next generation’s calls to decenter anthropology’s White, heteropatriarchal voices and engage in collaborative community-based research. Analyzing syllabi from 107 ethnographic methods training courses from the United States, we find the tradition of the “lone researcher” persists and is the basis of ethnographic training for the next generation. There is little evidence of either active reflection or team-based pedagogy, both identified as necessary to meet career opportunities and diversification goals for the wider field of cultural anthropology. However, we also find that, by centering the completion of largely individual research projects, most ethnographic methods courses otherwise adhere to best practices in regard to experiential and active learning. Based on the analysis of syllabi in combination with current pedagogical literature, we suggest how cultural anthropologists can revise their ethnographic methods courses to incorporate pedagogy that promotes methodologies and skills to align with the needs of today’s students and communities. 

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3. Biosciences Proposal Bootcamp: Structured peer and faculty feedback improves trainees’ proposals and grantsmanship self-efficacy

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243973  

   Botham, Crystal M.; Brawn, Shay; Steele, Latishya; Barrón, Cisco B.; Kleppner, Sofie R.; Herschlag, Daniel (December 2020, PLOS ONE)

   Cameron, Carrie (Ed.)

   Grant writing is an essential skill to develop for academic and other career success but providing individual feedback to large numbers of trainees is challenging. In 2014, we launched the Stanford Biosciences Grant Writing Academy to support graduate students and postdocs in writing research proposals. Its core program is a multi-week Proposal Bootcamp designed to increase the feedback writers receive as they develop and refine their proposals. The Proposal Bootcamp consisted of two-hour weekly meetings that included mini lectures and peer review. Bootcamp participants also attended faculty review workshops to obtain faculty feedback. Postdoctoral trainees were trained and hired as course teaching assistants and facilitated weekly meetings and review workshops. Over the last six years, the annual Bootcamp has provided 525 doctoral students and postdocs with multi-level feedback (peer and faculty). Proposals from Bootcamp participants were almost twice as likely to be funded than proposals from non-Bootcamp trainees. Overall, this structured program provided opportunities for feedback from multiple peer and faculty reviewers, increased the participants’ confidence in developing and submitting research proposals, while accommodating a large number of participants. 

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4. Music as a coevolved system for social bonding

   https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X20000333  

   Savage, Patrick E.; Loui, Psyche; Tarr, Bronwyn; Schachner, Adena; Glowacki, Luke; Mithen, Steven; Fitch, W. Tecumseh (January 2021, Behavioral and Brain Sciences)

   Abstract Why do humans make music? Theories of the evolution of musicality have focused mainly on the value of music for specific adaptive contexts such as mate selection, parental care, coalition signaling, and group cohesion. Synthesizing and extending previous proposals, we argue that social bonding is an overarching function that unifies all of these theories, and that musicality enabled social bonding at larger scales than grooming and other bonding mechanisms available in ancestral primate societies. We combine cross-disciplinary evidence from archeology, anthropology, biology, musicology, psychology, and neuroscience into a unified framework that accounts for the biological and cultural evolution of music. We argue that the evolution of musicality involves gene–culture coevolution, through which proto-musical behaviors that initially arose and spread as cultural inventions had feedback effects on biological evolution because of their impact on social bonding. We emphasize the deep links between production, perception, prediction, and social reward arising from repetition, synchronization, and harmonization of rhythms and pitches, and summarize empirical evidence for these links at the levels of brain networks, physiological mechanisms, and behaviors across cultures and across species. Finally, we address potential criticisms and make testable predictions for future research, including neurobiological bases of musicality and relationships between human music, language, animal song, and other domains. The music and social bonding hypothesis provides the most comprehensive theory to date of the biological and cultural evolution of music. 

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5. Case Study Pedagogy in Disaster Education: Integrating Knowledge While Cultivating Epistemic Reflexivity

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-024-00598-w  

   Srigyan, Prerna; Fortun, Kim (January 2025, Science & Education)

   Abstract Research in cultural anthropology and the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies (STS) has demonstrated that environmental disasters are not only techno-scientifically and socio-politically complex but also epistemically complex -- involving perspectival diversity; multiple, often conflicting forms of evidence; data gaps and disinformation; and role transitions and confusions. Disasters, this research has demonstrated, are highly fraught knowledge problems that nevertheless call for pragmatic response. In this article, we describe an approach to disaster education that stems from this premise, mobilizing an Environmental Injustice Case Study Framework that draws out multiple dimensions of disaster, foregrounding the need for interdisciplinarity while immersing students in the challenges and paradoxes of disaster knowledge production. We offer both an instructional approach and a theoretical perspective on what case study pedagogy in disaster education accomplishes, and can contribute to science education writ large. Our argument is that critical approaches to case study pedagogy can scaffold many kinds of learning in both disaster and science education, helping students integrate diverse kinds of data, analysis, interpretation, and judgment, while building metacognition and epistemic reflexivity. 

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