Inquiry as well as argumentation are both central to scientific reasoning. Most educational studies tend to focus exclusively either on the inquiry process or on argumentation. The present study aims to examine the development of inquiry skills and argumentation in conjunction with one another. A sample of 50 Chinese students, aged 10-12, participated in an entirely remote intervention due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions, each an equivalent two weeks in duration and four hours each day from Monday to Friday. One condition focused on argumentation and the other on inquiry-enriched argumentation. The results demonstrate that an online intervention can produce comparable positive cognitive outcomes to in-person interventions. Additionally, students who received a supplemental inquiry activity exhibited fruitful outcomes in argumentive development and were capable of recognizing that multiple factors can work in concert to affect an outcome. However, the half-hour daily inquiry practice may not be sufficient to render full mastery of multivariable causal inference skills. Students in the inquiry-enriched argumentation condition employed more evidence in their essays as a result of targeted practice in evaluating claims in relation to evidence, a critical feature of the inquiry intervention.

In healthcare, cultural competence is an essential skill identified as one of the most modifiable factors in resolving health disparities. Through the lens of multiple frameworks, including the Process of Cultural Competence in the Delivery of Healthcare Services, multicultural education, and reflective practitioner, this study seeks to explore how students understand the concept of cultural competence in an entry-level physical therapy program and where in the curriculum they locate their learning experiences of the idea. Third-year students from a single entry-level physical therapy program are recruited to participate in individual interviews, online questionnaires, and focus group discussions. The study used a qualitative case study approach with a constructivist grounded theory data collection and data analysis methodology. The cyclical data collection and analysis methods with an initial, focused, and theoretical coding scheme were adopted to generate themes to answer the research questions. Drawing on participants’ understanding of cultural competence, this study illustrates that, although students exhibit analogous motivations and definitions of cultural competence, there exists a variation in their skills and knowledge pertinent to cultural competence. Moreover, the results advocate for continuous integration of classroom learning with practical clinical experiences, complemented by intentional learning experiences, to enhance students’ cultural competence. The findings implicate the critical need for curricular revisions that emphasize cultural competence, ensuring students are adequately equipped to navigate society’s rapidly diversifying demographic landscape.

Traditional explanations for the lack of scientific activity in the antebellum South are not sufficiently inclusive. Past accounts generally consider religion, climate, lack of urbanization, and deficiency of intellectual activity as the major causative factors. I assert that scientific activity was proceeding along "normal" developmental lines; that is, it was following the national pattern established by the Northern universities whose proximity to urban centers provided the impetus for the earlier start of intellectual activities of various sorts. In this thesis I present as a case study the scientific program at the University of Mississippi developed by John Millington and Frederick Barnard - - with a central focus on Barnard's efforts - - from 1848 to 1861. The case study provides evidence of a Southern academic institution's ability to hire qualified and ambitious scientists, to promote a sophisticated curriculum in science, and to procure the instruments necessary to support a full-fledged scientific effort. An Appendix provides a detailed inventory of the ante-bellum instruments at the University of Mississippi. / Master of Science

In this thesis, I attempt to develop the rudiments of a ’practice’ conception of scientific knowledge and activities as the basis for a suitable methodology for Science and Technology Studies. In order to do this, I examine the methodologies proposed by two sociologists who can be very broadly construed to be working within the tradition of the "Sociology of Scientific Knowledge’, Harry Collins and Steve Woolgar in the context of their application to a specific case, and attempt to develop an alternative conception by contrast. The thesis is structured as follows. I begin by describing Collins’ and Woolgar’s methodologies for the analysis of scientific knowledge development in some detail in Chapter One. In Chapter Two, I examine the application of these methodologies to the ’computer models of scientific discovery’ case (the case is of some interest because it is held to ’refute’ the possibility of the sort of analysis of scientific activities that Collins and Woolgar propose). I then use the material of the first two Chapters in Chapter Three to diagnose the shortcomings of Collins’ and Woolgar’s methodologies as illustrated by their application to the computer models of discovery case. This sets the stage for an alternative analysis of the computer models case which does not suffer from these shortcomings in Chapter Four. Finally, I develop a practice-based conception of scientific knowledge development in Chapter Five (which I derive from the material of Chapters One through Four), contrast it with the methodologies of Collins and Woolgar, and use it to illustrate and evaluate my alternative analysis. / Master of Science

M.S.

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