确立研究性学习课题的方式与策略

本文基于生成研究性学习课题的五种方式中容易出现的问题,提出了生成研究性学习课题的八个策略.     

Learning with collaborative inquiry: a science learning environment for secondary students

When inquiry-based learning is designed for a collaborative context, the interactions that arise in the learning environment can become fairly complex. While the learning effectiveness of such learning environments has been reported in the literature, there have been fewer studies on the students’ learning processes. To address this, the article presents a study of science learning in a computer-supported learning environment called Collaborative Science Inquiry (CSI), which integrates guided inquiry principles for activity design, employs modelling and visualisation tools for promoting conceptual understanding and incorporates key computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) elements for enabling students’ collaboration. With the aim of understanding the process of students’ conceptual changes supported by the CSI learning environment as used in a secondary school, data on students’ test achievements, responses to learning tasks and peer discussions in collaboration were collected, analysed and discussed. The results of the qualitative and quantitative data analysis indicated that guided inquiry coupled with CSCL elements facilitated by the CSI system can engage students in inquiry activities and promote their conceptual understanding in a progressive way.     

Connecting learning to the world beyond the classroom through collaborative philosophical inquiry

This study explored the impact of facilitating collaborative philosophical inquiry (CPI), in the tradition of “Philosophy for Children,” on connectedness pedagogies. The study employed an experimental design that included 59 primary teachers in 2 groups. The experimental group received an intervention that comprised training in CPI and the comparison group received training in Thinking Tools (graphic organisers), a subset of the CPI training. Lessons were coded on four variables of connectedness pedagogies, across the two groups, at three time-points. Teacher interviews were conducted to gather participants’ perspectives. Between-groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) on particular measures of pedagogy revealed that CPI significantly broadened teachers’ pedagogical repertoires, in ways that included drawing on students’ background knowledge and preparing a problem-based curriculum which connects students to the world beyond the classroom.     

Rethinking Learner Support: The challenge of collaborative online learning

The use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) as an integral part of the design of distance taught courses raises interesting challenges to our thinking about course design and learner support. These have typically been conceptualised as two complementary but distinct systems in distance education, characterised by different practices often carried out by different groups of staff. Where CMC is designed as an integral part of the course, with collaborative learning as essential to assessment and study, this separation breaks down. The design of online activities is integral to both learner support and the course content, with new possibilities for open and distance learning as a result. Where the learning group itself is a resource for study and personal development, it also becomes feasible to orientate courses and programmes towards local teams and communities. Online tutors play a key role and need to develop 'the technology of conversation' and expertise in the design of activities, as part of their facilitator role.     

Overview on agent application to support collaborative learning interaction

Collaborative learning involves students working together to aid their learning and is considered an effective method to implement learning goal. However, it involves complicated processes such as have inconvenient assistance to manage the increasing demand for information and support extension of interaction and how to activate collaboration interaction and communication between different types of interactions. A collaborative learning model based on agent can improve learaing effectiveness and give good impact to learning process. This paper discusses the definition, classification and roles of agent to support collaborative learning interaction in E-learning. It overviews the rapidly use of agents to support collaborative learning and describes the types of interaction and communication tools to enhance interaction between all participants. We identify three types of major agents used in collaborative learning interaction; interface agent, information and internet agent, and collaborative agent.     

Personal inquiry learning trajectories in geography: technological support across contexts

Student engagement in the design and implementation of inquiries is an effective way for them to learn about the inquiry process and the domain being studied. However, inquiry learning in geography can be challenging for teachers and students due to the complexity of scientific inquiry and the diversity of pupils' and teachers' knowledge and abilities. To address this, the Personal Inquiry project has designed a tool kit that includes nQuire, a Web-based tool to support students through the inquiry process. Here, we identify when, across five lessons comprising an inquiry into microclimates, nQuire was used by a teacher and a case study group of her 12 to 13-year-old students, and the ways in which they adopted nQuire as a tool to facilitate the creation of a coherent and cumulative inquiry learning experience over time. We found that students' use of nQuire supported them in capturing and representing their evolving understanding of inquiry, in defining and supporting their progression through the process of inquiry and in resourcing their cognitive engagement in data interpretation and representation. nQuire supported the students in accumulating and integrating new understandings across contexts and over time. In this way, nQuire successfully resourced and supported the students' learning journeys or trajectories. We conclude that nQuire can be an effective tool for supporting teachers' and students' understanding of the nature of inquiry and how to design and implement inquiries of their own.     

Task-related and social regulation during online collaborative learning

This study investigated how students collaborate in a CSCL environment and how this collaboration affects group performance. To answer these questions, the collaborative process of 101 groups of secondary education students when working on a historical inquiry task was analyzed. Our analyses show that group members devote most of their efforts to regulation of task-related activities. For example, by formulating plans or strategies or monitoring task progress. Group members also engaged in social activities often (e.g., disclosing personal information, joking). Less attention was paid to exchange of task-related information (e.g., asking task-related questions) and regulation of social activities (e.g., planning and monitoring the collaboration). Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the interrelationships between the different collaborative activities. This analysis showed that collaborative activities can be grouped in four broad categories: discussion of information, regulation of task-related activities, regulation of social activities, and social activities. These activities were then used to predict group performance using multiple regression analysis. No effect of discussion of information and regulation of task-related activities on group performance were found. Regulation of social activities positively affected group performance, whereas social interaction negatively affected group performance. As in this study no inferences could be made about the causal relation between collaboration and performance, future research should attempt to focus on this relationship, for example by investigating more closely how different individual and group factors affect collaboration and group performance.     

Unraveling the influence of domain knowledge during simulation-based inquiry learning

This study investigated whether the mere knowledge of the meaning of variables can facilitate inquiry learning processes and outcomes. Fifty-seven college freshmen were randomly allocated to one of three inquiry tasks. The concrete task had familiar variables from which hypotheses about their underlying relations could be inferred. The intermediate task used familiar variables that did not invoke underlying relations, whereas the abstract task contained unfamiliar variables that did not allow for inference of hypotheses about relations. Results showed that concrete participants performed more successfully and efficiently than intermediate participants, who in turn were equally successful and efficient as abstract participants. From these findings it was concluded that students learning by inquiry benefit little from knowledge of the meaning of variables per se. Some additional understanding of the way these variables are interrelated seems required to enhance inquiry learning processes and outcomes.     

Making inquiry-based science learning visible: the influence of CVS and cognitive skills on content knowledge learning in guided inquiry

ABSTRACT

Many science curricula and standards emphasise that students should learn both scientific knowledge and the skills associated with the construction of this knowledge. One way to achieve this goal is to use inquiry-learning activities that embed the use of science process skills. We investigated the influence of scientific reasoning skills (i.e. conceptual and procedural knowledge of the control-of-variables strategy) on students’ conceptual learning gains in physics during an inquiry-learning activity. Eighth graders (n?=?189) answered research questions about variables that influence the force of electromagnets and the brightness of light bulbs by designing, running, and interpreting experiments. We measured knowledge of electricity and electromagnets, scientific reasoning skills, and cognitive skills (analogical reasoning and reading ability). Using structural equation modelling we found no direct effects of cognitive skills on students’ content knowledge learning gains; however, there were direct effects of scientific reasoning skills on content knowledge learning gains. Our results show that cognitive skills are not sufficient; students require specific scientific reasoning skills to learn science content from inquiry activities. Furthermore, our findings illustrate that what students learn during guided inquiry activities becomes visible when we examine both the skills used during inquiry learning and the process of knowledge construction. The implications of these findings for science teaching and research are discussed.     

Open educational resources in support of science learning: tools for inquiry and observation

This article focuses on the potential of free tools, particularly inquiry tools for influencing participation in twenty-first-century learning in science, as well as influencing the development of communities around tools. Two examples are presented: one on the development of an open source tool for structured inquiry learning that can bridge the formal/informal spaces for inquiry learning. This is contrasted with an example of the use of free tools and community development for observation of scientific phenomena supported by open educational resources (OER) with a citizen science perspective. The article provides an assessment of how the availability of the resources has a potential for shaping the communities using OER for science learning and a discussion of the means of supporting inquiry.     

Analyzing student thinking reflected in self-constructed cognitive maps and its influence on inquiry task performance

Instructional Science - Higher-order thinking is crucial to inquiry learning. It is important to investigate how students think in inquiry contexts. Given the tacit nature of higher-order thinking,...     

Metacognitive and multimedia support of experiments in inquiry learning for science teacher preparation

ABSTRACT

Promoting preservice science teachers’ experimentation competency is required to provide a basis for meaningful learning through experiments in schools. However, preservice teachers show difficulties when experimenting. Previous research revealed that cognitive scaffolding promotes experimentation competency by structuring the learning process, while metacognitive and multimedia support enhance reflection. However, these support measures have not yet been tested in combination. Therefore, we decided to use cognitive scaffolding to support students’ experimental achievements and supplement it by metacognitive and multimedia scaffolds in the experimental groups. Our research question is to what extent supplementing cognitive support by metacognitive and multimedia scaffolding further promotes experimentation competency. The intervention has been applied in a two-factorial design to a two-month experimental course for 63 biology teacher students in their first bachelor year. Pre-post-test measured experimentation competency in a performance assessment. Preservice teachers worked in groups of four. Therefore, measurement took place at group level (N?=?16). Independent observers rated preservice teachers’ group performance qualitatively on a theory-based system of categories. Afterwards, experimentation competency levels led to quantitative frequency analysis. The results reveal differing gains in experimentation competency but contrary to our hypotheses. Implications of combining scaffolding measures on promoting experimentation competency are discussed.     

Design experiments in Japanese elementary science education with computer support for collaborative learning: hypothesis testing and collaborative construction

This paper reports design experiments on two Japanese elementary science lesson units in a sixth‐grade classroom supported by computer support for collaborative learning (CSCL) technology as a collaborative reflection tool. We took different approaches in the experiments depending on their instructional goals. In the unit ‘air and how things burn’, we designed the unit where groups of students engaged in building theories on ‘how a candle stops burning in a closed jar’. In the unit ‘characteristics of various solutions’, groups of students collaboratively constructed a pH scale as knowledge artefact. In both studies, the CSCL technology was implemented mainly for facilitating collaboration between groups. Results showed that: (1) students were more likely to engage in symmetric communication (i.e. between groups as well as within groups) in the second unit, and (2) they were also more idea‐centred and more frequently shared their ideas in the second unit. The results were discussed from the perspectives of the scientific practices students engaged in and task structure.     

高校学生工作队伍的标杆学习流程

高校学生工作队伍依赖社会发展的资源结构的变迁必然会引发管理方式的变革。本文提出高校学生工作队伍标杆学习的内涵、作用,结合目前国内企业引进国外先进标杆学习的优秀实践模式,描述了高校学生工作队伍标杆学习流程,旨在提升高校学生工作队伍核心竞争力。     

Designing and building an on-line community: The struggle to support sociability in the inquiry learning forum

In this paper we describe the sociotechnical structures of the Inquiry Learning Forum (ILF), a Web-based professional development tool designed to support a community of inservice and preservice mathematics and science teachers creating, sharing, and improving inquiry-based pedagogical practices. Founded in our previous research and consistent with our pedagogical commitment, the technical structures of the ILF have been designed around a “visiting-the-classroom” metaphor. This decision was based on our belief that teachers need to be full participants in, and owners of, their virtual space for meaningful interaction to occur. The hallmark of this environment is that teachers with a broad range of experience and expertise can come together in an on-line environment to observe, discuss, and reflect on pedagogical theory and practice anchored to actual teaching vignettes. The goal of this paper is to share how we instantiated our pedagogical commitments and to describe the challenges we faced during the design, development, implementation, and analysis of the ILF. Toward this end, we walk the reader through our design and implementation process, highlighting our change in focus from usability to sociability issues, and movement from conceiving the ILF as an electronic structure to a sociotechnical interaction network. The ILF Design Team consists of Brian Beatty, Tom Duffy, Geraldine Haas, Chris Keslin, Sun-Myung Lee, Justin Marquis, and Kirk Sluder     

Improving classroom dynamics to support students' learning and social inclusion: a collaborative approach

In this article, Mary Doveston and Marian Keenaghan discuss their work with teachers and students in developing more effective and satisfying interpersonal relationships in the classroom. Their approach focuses on increasing the capacity of a classroom community to address and measure its progress in the social and emotional competencies which that community has identified as being important. The principles of Appreciative Inquiry and Solution Focused Thinking underpin their approach to working with students and teachers, with the researchers supporting teachers to facilitate student participation in a process which they have described as ‘Growing Talent for Inclusion’ (GTi).     

BTI口译教学中的研究性学习和研究性教学

随着翻译学科的发展和"翻译专业本科教学质量国家标准"的出台,翻译本科专业人才培养的目标进一步明确。这对教师的教和学生的学都提出了新要求。本文以BTI的口译课程实践为研究对象,探讨把研究性学习和研究性教学方法引入口译课程之中,以期改变传统教学中以知识传授为主的教和学的方式,调动学生的主观能动性,依托学生的实践,使其理解口译工作的过程特点,提高学生口译能力。