Carrying Forward the Uses and Grats 2.0 Agenda: An Affordance-Driven Measure of Social Media Uses and Gratifications

The notion of social media affordances has not been fully integrated into the uses and gratifications literature. Building on the MAIN (modality, agency, interactivity, and navigability) model, this study develops and tests a social media uses and gratifications scale with a sample of 393 college students. Results of the study support the MAIN model, as conceptualizing social media uses and gratifications as a second-order factor structure with 4 different types of affordances displays similar goodness-of-fit to a single-order factor structure. A confirmatory factor analysis with a second sample of 313 adults further confirms the applicability of the scale among the general population.     

Disruptive silence: deepening experiential learning in the absence of technology

Technology plays an integral role in the lives of the majority of the US population. As technology becomes integrated into young people’s lives, questions arise regarding its effects on learning. This exploratory study draws on interviews with students who attend university in the United States to determine how separating students from technology deepens experiential learning. Participants were interviewed following a study abroad course to New Zealand, during which they were disconnected from technologies such as cell phones, the Internet and social media. In the interviews, students discussed their feelings of being disconnected and describe how disconnecting impacted their overall experience. Participants agreed that disconnecting from technology had positive effects on experiential learning and the global experience. Major themes that emerged include students’ enhanced immersion and engagement, the value of disconnection in providing opportunities for personal growth and the difficulty of initial separation from technology as a result of conditioning.     

Issues in researching the perspectives of deaf children

Research on children's perspectives has traditionally been neglected, influenced by adults' assumptions of children's vulnerability and incompetence. These assumptions produce methodological and ethical concerns about research with children, such as the need to protect the child from unethical research, validity of the data, and unequal research power relations. This paper reviews these points, with particular consideration to children who are deaf1. The first section examines the assumptions about children in research. These assumptions, as shown in the second section, have further implications for children with disabilities. Section III examines the challenges and issues that need to be taken into account when researching deaf children. Section IV then describes the methodological issues encountered in a study that examined the perspectives of 23 young deaf children in the US and UK.     

Brain Engagement During a Cognitive Flexibility Task Relates to Academic Performance in English Learners

English Learners (ELs), students from non-English-speaking backgrounds, are a fast-growing, understudied, group of students in the U.S. with unique learning challenges. Cognitive flexibility—the ability to switch between task demands with ease—may be an important factor in learning for ELs as they have to manage learning in their non-dominant language and access knowledge in multiple languages. We used functional MRI to measure cognitive flexibility brain activity in a group of Hispanic middle school ELs (N = 63) and related it to their academic skills. We found that brain engagement during the cognitive flexibility task was related to both out-of-scanner reading and math measures. These relationships were observed across the brain, including in cognitive control, attention, and default mode networks. This work suggests the real-world importance of cognitive flexibility for adolescent ELs, where individual differences in brain engagement were associated with educational outcomes.     

Factors Associated with High Standards of Spelling in Years R-4

This article is based on a discussion document written for all schools in Suffolk, England by the English advisory team. It resulted from a small-scale survey of nine schools where results for National Curriculum test AT4 (Spelling) in 1994 and 1995 were particularly high. This in turn stemmed from concerns raised by monitoring local education authority results in this aspect of English and aimed to uncover common factors in these schools' approaches to teaching spelling and supporting pupils' development in this skill. The key factors indicated by the survey included the systematic teaching of both spelling patterns and phonics; the fostering of early independence in writing and reading; regular learning of spellings at home and effective partnership with parents in this; regular testing; effective short teaching sessions on spelling, and differentiation based on high expectations of all pupils.     

A process for the critical analysis of instructional theory

Some have argued for a common language in the field of instructional design in an effort to reduce misunderstandings and simplify a multitude of synonymous terms and concepts. Others feel that this goal is undesirable in that it precludes development and flexibility. In this article we propose an ontology-building process as a way for readers to compare and analyze terms and concepts across theories. This process entails the development of categories that emerge from the literature, and the comparison of theories across categories. Such a process can reveal broader concepts that exist beyond specific theoretical terminology, differences in meanings behind common terms used by theorists, a greater understanding of the theorists’ intent, and discontinuities and gaps within the theoretical literature.     

Messy learning: Preservice teachers’ lesson-study conversations about mathematics and students

Research about lesson study and other forms of collaborative, practice-based professional development has tended to focus on identifying structures that support teacher learning. This study builds on this work by examining preservice elementary teachers’ efforts to conduct lesson studies in mathematics. Analysis showed that the structures of the lesson study project supported some groups in developing mathematical and equity lenses for looking at teaching; however, the use of these lenses simultaneously led to productive and problematic learning. This finding suggests that future research focus on challenges present in collaborative, practice-based work even when productive structures are in place.