Although first-generation students represent a substantial proportion of doctoral students, few studies have examined their experiences and outcomes. We contribute to this nascent area of inquiry by comparing experiences and outcomes of first-generation and continuing-generation students during the first 3 years of doctoral education. Contrary to expectations, the results based on a national sample of PhD students in biology revealed remarkable similarity in experiences and outcomes between first-generation and continuing-generation students. One notable exception to this overall pattern of similarity was research productivity in the second year. By examining the relationships between students' experiences and outcomes over time, the findings illuminate the unique ways in which socialization experiences are related to specific outcomes and the extent to which those relationships change across years. Thus, this study offers initial insights into the nuanced ways in which students' socialization experiences contribute to various outcomes of doctoral education.

This study investigated how managers, entry-level employees, and hiring professionals in the optics and photonics industry socialize each other to enact the communication norms and expectations in their workplaces. A qualitative analysis of transcripts from interviews conducted with 33 employees at 15 companies produced five prevalent themes related to what optics and photonics employees consider competent communication (proactive questioning, efficient decision-making, familial-like humor, tactful translation, and fluent modality switching) and three socialization processes (presumed competence, informal mentoring, and structured training). These competencies and processes necessitate what we term cross-occupational communication: an interactive, iterative process involving communicative needs assessment, information exchange, and rhetorical/situational flexibility with groups distinct in background, training, and occupational role. It is difficult to create workplace-like experiences that truly capture the field-specific communication practices involved in organizational socialization within traditional classrooms; therefore, we argue for systematic and intentional communication in the disciplines instruction that considers cross-occupational communication needs in the workforce.

Establishing nuanced interpretations of student thinking is central to formative assessment but difficult, especially for preservice teachers. Learning progressions (LPs) have been proposed as a framework for promoting interpretations of students' thinking; however, research is needed to investigate whether and how an LP can be used to support preservice teachers' interpretations. This article reports a study of two pairs of preservice physics teachers (PSPTs) working with video-based evidence of student thinking with and without an LP for force and motion. The PSPTs' discussions were video-recorded and investigated in terms of PSPTs' interpretations of student thinking: how they analyzed evidence of student thinking and identified implications for future learning. The PSPTs used the LP to focus attention on relevant aspects of student thinking and to begin to think about implications for student learning in a more step-like fashion, but did not use the LP to make sense of confusing student thinking or to draw specific implications for future learning. Recommendations for use of LPs in preservice teacher education are discussed.

Learning progressionsparticularly as defined and operationalized in science educationhave significant potential to inform teachers' formative assessment practices. In this overview article, I lay out an argument for this potential, starting from definitions for formative assessment practices and learning progressions (both in science education and more subject-general literature). By aligning the challenges that teachers face in enacting formative assessment practices with the affordances of learning progressions, I explain how learning progressions may support these practices. Finally, I preview how the articles in the special issue address this hypothesis.

This paper proposes three new measures of components STEM career preferences (affinity, certainty, and goal), and then explores which dimensions of "science learning activation" (fascination, values, competency belief, and scientific sensemaking) are predictive of STEM career preferences. Drawn from the ALES14 dataset, a sample of 2938 sixth and eighth grade middle-school students from 11 schools in two purposefully selected diverse areas (Western Pennsylvania & the Bay Area of California) was used for the analyses presented in this paper. These schools were chosen to represent socio-economic and ethnic diversity. Findings indicate that, overall, youth who are "activated" towards science learning are more likely to have affinity towards STEM careers, certainty about their future career goals, and have identified a specific STEM career goal. However, different dimensions of science learning activation are more strongly correlated with different aspects career preference across different STEM career foci (e.g. science, engineering, technology, health, etc.). Gender, age, minority status, and home resources also have explanatory power. While many results are consistent with prior research, there are also novel results that offer important fodder for future research. Critically, our strategy of measuring affinity towards the specific disciplines that make up STEM, measuring STEM and health career goals separately, and looking at career affinity and career goals separately, offers interesting results and underscores the value of disentangling the conceptual melting pot of what has previously been known as 'career interest.' Study findings also have implications for design of science learning opportunities for youth.

In this article we expand on ideas of making and maker spaces to develop Indigenous making and sharing. We draw from an ArtScience participatory design project that involved Indigenous youth, families, community artists, and scientists in a summer Indigenous STEAM program designed to cultivate social and ecologically just nature-culture relations grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and making. In this article we focus specifically on clay making and the ways in which onto-epistemic heterogeneity can be engaged to create transformative maker spaces. We present findings from an analysis of the pedagogies of walking, observing and talking lands and waters to outline principles of Indigenous making and sharing in youth-based learning environments.

A highly controlled laboratory experiment was conducted that suggested computer-based image training of rock classifications can provide a useful supplement to physical rock training. Two groups of participants learned to classify samples of 12 major types of rocks during a training phase. One group was trained using computer images of the rock samples, and another group was trained with physical rock samples. A third group that was familiarized with images of the samples but did not receive initial classification training served as a control. The participants’ ability to generalize their training to the classification of novel, physical rock samples from the 12 types was then assessed in a test phase. All groups received trial-by-trial feedback during this test phase; still, the image-based and physical rock training groups maintained a significant performance advantage (75.2% correct) compared to the control group (37.5% correct). The group that received physical rock training performed only slightly better overall (77.8% correct) than the image-based training group (72.5% correct), although the advantage for the physical rock training group was substantial for some specific types of rocks from the complete set. The results provide documentation for the potential benefits of using image-based classification-training methods as a means of supplementing physical rock classification-training methods. © 2018 National Association of Geoscience Teachers.

School-entry math achievement is a strong predictor of math achievement through high school. We asked whether reciprocal relations among math achievement, math anxiety, and entity motivational frameworks (believing that ability is fixed and a focus on performance) can help explain these persistent individual differences. We assessed 1st and 2nd graders' (N=634) math achievement, motivational frameworks, and math anxiety 2 times, 6months apart. Cross-lagged path analyses showed reciprocal relations between math anxiety and math achievement and between motivational frameworks and math achievement. Entity motivational frameworks predicted higher math anxiety. High math achievement was a particularly strong predictor of lower math anxiety and less entity-oriented motivational frameworks. We concluded that reciprocal effects are already present in the first 2 years of formal schooling, with math achievement and attitudes feeding off one another to produce either a vicious or virtuous cycle. Improving both math performance and math attitudes may set children onto a long-lasting, positive trajectory in math.

SIGNIFICANCE: Touchscreen-based, multimodal graphics represent an area of increasing research in digital access for individuals with blindness or visual impairments; yet, little empirical research on the effects of screen size on graphical exploration exists. This work probes if and when more screen area is necessary in supporting a pattern-matching task. PURPOSE: Larger touchscreens are thought to have distinct benefit over smaller touchscreens for the amount of space available to convey graphical information nonvisually. The current study investigates two questions: (1) Do screen size and grid density impact a user's accuracy on pattern-matching tasks? (2) Do screen size and grid density impact a user's time on task? METHODS: Fourteen blind and visually impaired individuals were given a pattern-matching task to complete on either a 10.5-in tablet or a 5.1-in phone. The patterns consisted of five vibrating targets imposed on sonified grids that varied in density (higher density = more grid squares). At test, participants compared the touchscreen pattern with a group of physical, embossed patterns and selected the matching pattern. Participants were evaluated on time exploring the pattern on the device and their pattern-matching accuracy. Multiple and logistic regressions were performed on the data. RESULTS: Device size, grid density, and age had no statistically significant effects on the model of pattern-matching accuracy. However, device size, grid density, and age had significant effects on the model for grid exploration. Using the phone, exploring low-density grids, and being older were indicative of faster exploration time. CONCLUSIONS: A trade-off of time and accuracy exists between devices that seems to be task dependent. Users may find a tablet most useful in situations where the accuracy of graphic interpretation is important and is not limited by time. Smaller screen sizes afforded comparable accuracy performance to tablets and were faster to explore overall. Copyright (C) 2018 American Academy of Optometry