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Background: The ability of outdoor educators and their participants to be present with each other and the natural and cultural histories of places can impact the realisation of learning outcomes and safety. Purpose: In this paper, we combine the findings of two separate research studies regarding the potential for digital technology to both distract and enhance the presence that both facilitators and their learners may experience in outdoor education programs. Methodology/Approach: Research Study One used a naturalistic inquiry to collect data via surveys and online interviews with 185 outdoor educators from 14 different countries. Research Study Two used a collective case study involving undergraduate outdoor education programs in Norway. Data were collected from 12 educators and 12 learners using semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews. Findings/Conclusions: Decisions on inclusion or exclusion of digital technology in outdoor education should be intentional, systematic, and evidence-based. The use of mobile technologies can pose barriers to learners' and educators' presence, their social interactions, and their experience of place. Implications: Digital technology can enhance or detract the experience of presence in outdoor education programs depending on how that technology is used, and the way the technology is managed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although women's representation in STEM fields and occupations has increased, science and math continue to be stereotyped as male domains. This paper links psychological and sociological explanations for gendered disparities in STEM by examining the relationship between the local "micro-situational" female learning environment and the gender gap in academic self-concept in math and science. We applied hybrid models to TIMSS 2015 data comprised of a pseudo-panel of repeated measures for individual student and peer achievement, academic self-concept, utility value, and interest-enjoyment value in math/science (at age 14). We analyzed data from three countries, including a subsample of students who were taught by the same teacher in both math and science, thus eliminating unobserved teacher heterogeneity. Results indicate that female peer climate in the classroom is important for understanding how girls' self-concept in math/science is formed, even though it was unrelated to the gender gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital models have become key sites of biological practice and science policy. This paper examines efforts to craft a digital salmon model for metabolic research. It traces the data configurations of feed, food, and health in Norway's bioeconomy aspirations—from cell culture studies in the lab to an integrated digital repository and public health nutrition trials in schools. A response to policy calls for more sustainable aquaculture, digital models become lynchpins for intensified data sourcing. I describe how datafication and digital model integration enact a particular mode of management, focused on profitability and human preferences, when optimizing fish feed to sustainability goals. Integrating molecular biology and mathematical functions, digital modeling promotes the idea of a prediction machine for preemptive optimization of feed and food across settings. Yet, unforeseen disruptions to aquaculture, for instance, by algae and lice, expose the complexity of marine food webs and the limitations of digital models. Even while in the making, the digital fish model becomes performative and shapes knowledge practices much beyond the lab. As knowledge infrastructures, models participate in the remaking of metabolic relations, recalibrating decision-making, while feeding back into and co-shaping the very entities and environments they were crafted to investigate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers are increasingly interested in why people want to participate in qualitative interview studies, particularly what they hope to gain from participating. The present paper contributes to this research agenda by analysing the motivations of victims of interpersonal violence: a group that is considered ethically challenging to involve in research, given their history of being intruded upon. The analysis is based on 174 qualitative interviews from three separate studies: two on intimate partner violence and one on sexual assault. A key finding is that many victims welcome the opportunity to participate and often use the interviews for their own purposes. We identified three different 'participant orientations', or ways victims relate to the interview and the research, including 'telling for oneself', 'telling for others' and 'telling for the researcher'. We discuss how these orientations imply different ethical contracts between the participant and researcher and their links to recruitment methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]