Some aspects of the individual-difference modelling of causal attribution

A review of some contemporary studies based on an individual-difference model of student learning is presented. The exploratory fitting of conceptual models of student learning to atypical individual-similarity data structures is discussed, and an experimental categorisation procedure for producing such structures is outlined. Insofar as the features of some established conceptual models of student learning do not fit such atypical structures, either by virtue of their conceptual parsimony, or their underlying conceptual assumptions, the fitting of a locus model to such structures is explored. It is argued that, within the student experience of learning framework, conceptual models of student learning need to incorporate such additional dimensions of variation if such models are to be employed in individual-difference studies of student learning.     

Towards an electronic independent learning environment for statistics in higher education

This study focuses on the feasibility of implementing independent learning in a traditional university and the feasibility of providing this independent learning by means of an electronic interactive learning environment. The target group contained students enrolled in an applied statistics course at the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences at the University of Gent (RUG). Three experimental variables were designed: learning environment, delivery and support. This created five different learning conditions to which subjects were assigned at random. The present study gives empirical evidence that an electronic-based independent learning environment with discernible support devices can take its place in a traditional university setting. Our results indicate that the cognitive outcomes of students' learning in a computer-based environment are neither fostered nor hindered by attitudes towards computers. The merely cognitive aspect of attitude towards computers, i.e., interest in learning about computers, affects the perception of structure in the materials; more interested students have a better perception of structure. Students with better prior knowledge and having fewer problems with statistics have a better perception of the learning access to the contents. In order to construct electronic learning environments, further investigation is needed into student characteristics interacting with learning environment characteristics, and this is currently in progress by our group.     

Sensing the Impact of Elementary School Science Reform: A Study of Stakeholder Perceptions of Implementation,Constructivist Strategies,and School–Home Collaboration

This case study of a midwestern school districts reform effort explored the treatment fidelity of the Science: Parents, Activities, and Literature (Science PALs) project. Data were collected from the perspectives of three stakeholders: students, school district, and parents. Students and school district supervisors perceptions indicated that teachers were implementing predicted curricular and instructional features promoted by the Science PALs project. Students perceptions of their current teachers classroom performance did not parallel the supervisors perceptions of the teachers implementation. Parents perceptions and comments indicated a high level of satisfaction with the implemented features. Collectively, the three perspectives suggest that the Science PALs project was successful in changing the classroom practices of K–6 teachers involved in the professional development. The results of this study appear to support the findings of other recent studies that indicate the need for extended professional development and support to fully implement changes in elementary school science instruction.     

Putting Thought in Accordance with Things: The Demise of Animal-Based Analogies for Plant Functions

Scientists' attempts to understand plant functions by ascribing animal functions to plants – the analogist tradition, derived from Aristotle – began to be superseded in Europe by an experimentalist tradition in the seventeenth century. In classrooms today, science students learning about plant functions (exemplified here by the topic of transpiration) face a parallel dilemma: the pitching of their own habitual mental processes of analogy building (enhanced by the suggestive morphology of plants)and the persuasiveness of everyday language (for example, about plants and water)against the new experimental evidence presented by the teacher. In the case oftranspiration, six practical suggestions whereby teachers can support students in thisstruggle to put their thoughts (especially everyday mental models) in accordance withthings (classroom experimental evidence) are advanced. The wider implications forhow we teach about Living Things, and how we view the status of analogies in sciencegenerally, are discussed.     

Scientific Understanding: Lacey's ‘Critical Self-Consciousness’ Seen as Echoes of J.D. Bernal

From a consideration of the nature of scientific understanding and the control of nature Lacey proposes a set of criteria by which the reform of science teaching might be guided. He uses the term critical self-consciousness to describe the development of learner's appreciation of the character of scientific activity, its applications, and the choices citizens face in society. By this latter he means responsible participation, presumably in the debates surrounding the character of scientific activity, its applications, and the choices inherent in these. In this paper I show that Lacey's vision of the schooling of science through the development of critical self-consciousness has been articulated by others at different epochs, and probably from different ideological perspectives. Knowledge of these will help Lacey in his search for an education in science which promotes citizens' participation rather than alienating them from decision-making in society.     

Making connections: the logical structuring of hypertext documents

The results from an experiment analysing hypertextual semantic linking is reported. In the study participants are asked to describe logical relationships between related, semi-related and unrelated paragraphs of text. It is concluded that existence and themes of relationships are (as expected) fairly consistently recognised, however, specific relationships do not readily fall into natural predicate like statements. Purely thematic relationships, or a palette of available relationships might be the more practical approach. Further work on dynamic linking in hypertext documents is also reported. Dynamic linking eliminates some of the problems associated with a mismatch between the mental models of authors and readers and allows the readers to construct their own hypertexts from linear documents. This approach offers useful data on logical connectivity in hypertext documents but also represents an alternative to conventional hypertext authoring and reading.     

Fairy-tale Retellings between Art and Pedagogy

In this article, it is shown how authors of fairy-tale retellings have incorporated ideas of feminist literary criticism into a fictional form. As such, these retellings display the tension between the pedagogic and aesthetic aspects of all childrens literature. Jane Yolens Sleeping Ugly is chosen as a case study: although it can be argued that the book serves as a mouthpiece for the ideology of the emancipation movement formulated in Marcia Liebermans key text Some Day My Prince Will Come, it is suggested that Sleeping Ugly teaches children to read against a texts authority and as such undermines its own didactic potential.Vanessa Joosen (1977) has a Masters degree in English and German Literature from the University of Antwerp, and an MA in Childrens Literature from the University of Surrey Roehampton. In 2003, she received an FWO scholarship to fund her PhD at the University of Antwerp. She researches the interaction between fairy-tale retellings and criticism on fairy tales in the period from 1970 to 2000. Recent publications include Translating Dutch into Dutch in Signal 100, and an article on Belgian childrens books in Peter Hunts International Companion to Childrens Literature.     

Self-teaching in normal and disabled readers

This study set out to investigate the self-teaching of good and poor readers in pointed Hebrew – a highly regular orthography. Four groups of children (three groups in Grades 4 to 6, and one group in Grade 2) were included in this study; poor readers with large discrepancies between IQ and reading (dyslexics), IQ-nondiscrepant poor readers (non-dyslexic or garden-variety poor readers), chronological-age matched normal readers, and a group of younger normal readers matched to the older garden-variety group on both reading and mental age. It was hypothesized that primary deficits in phonological recoding (decoding) would impair the identification of novel target words (fictitious names of fruits/towns/stars/coins, etc.) appearing in text, which, in turn, would lead to deficient orthographic memory for target spellings. Alternative predictions were derived with regard to the degree of orthographic deficiency. According to the compensatory processing hypothesis, orthographic learning was expected to be relatively less impaired among disabled readers compared to normal readers. The alternative dissociation hypothesis, on the other hand, predicts that disabled readers orthographic learning would be significantly more impaired than that of normal readers. Neither hypothesis was supported. Impaired orthographic learning, commensurate with levels of target decoding success, was evident in the post-test spelling and orthographic choices of both groups of poor readers. Indeed, a close link was observed between levels of target word decoding and the acquisition of orthographic information among all three older groups of children. No qualitative differences between dyslexics and garden-variety poor readers emerged in patterns of self-teaching. While the data from the three older groups supported a model of developmental delay rather than deviance, findings from the younger reading-age/mental-age controls revealed startling qualitative divergence in orthographic learning. No statistically reliable evidence was obtained for orthographic learning in these younger beginning readers who displayed an essentially surface pattern of non-lexical reading. A hybrid orthographic sensitivity hypothesis was proposed to account for these data, according to which an initially surface-style of word reading engendered by a highly regular orthography gives way to a highly specialized print-specific (orthographic) processing advantage that develops in the course of the second school year as an outgrowth of a critical volume of print experience.     

Career Development and the Needs of Young College-Educated Females in Taiwan

This interpretive study examined the lived experiences of young college-educated Taiwanese women employed as clerical workers. Using hermeneutic phenomenology as the research methodology, the study explored the meanings of the participants lived experiences. Systematic text analysis of the data revealed various experiences and expectations. Experience themes identified in the study were: (a) bored and busy; and (b) disrespected and mistrusted. Major expectation themes revealed are: (a) career dreams and aspirations; and (b) desire for meaningful work. The study emphasised the importance of career development education in young Taiwanese women. The experiences of Taiwanese female clerical workers as recorded in the study reflected a need for career development, which might provide insightful information for career development scholars and practitioners.     

Lexical priming of nonword spelling in the regular orthography of Italian

In pronounced contrast to English, Italian orthography contains extremely regular sound-to-spelling correspondences and therefore Italian words could, in principle, be spelled perfectly correctly using nonlexical phoneme-to-grapheme conversion rules alone. If this were so, then there should be no lexical influence upon nonword spelling. However, the present experiment reports lexical priming effects for two inconsistently spelled segments in Italian words: Italian participants were more likely to spell the nonword tece as TECIE if they had just heard the word specie rather than pece and were more likely to spell the nonword cuodo as QUODO if they had heard the word quota rather than cuoco. These results suggest that Italian, despite its regular orthography, is not spelled purely nonlexically. It is argued that a dual-route model of spelling production can be applied to Italian.     

‘‘O Bottom,Thou Art Translated’’: Directing a Bilingual <Emphasis Type="Italic">Dream</Emphasis> in the Marshall Islands

A unique production of Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream was staged in early 2004 by students of the Marshall Islands High School, Majuro, in the Central Pacific. The plays director, Andrew Garrod, describes the rehearsal process and performance of the play, in which the school students were supported by undergraduates from the Education Department of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, spending a term teaching in the islands schools. The nature and worth of the learning experienced by the young actors, and their community, are considered in a context where Shakespeare and any kind of dramatic production are little known.     

Occupational interests of Barbadian adolescents

A sample of 850 adolescents in the Caribbean island of Barbados indicated their general interest in 90 locally available occupations which were designated male, female or either sex in accordance with judgements of present employment of the sexes in these positions, and named up to three jobs for which they had particular preference. Results showed sex to have a pervasive influence on both general interest and particular job choice, although both males and females were most strongly attracted to modern sector, mid/high status managerial positions. Implications for career guidance in schools, and for further research, are discussed.     

“Without Contraries is no Progression”: Dust as an All-Inclusive, Multifunctional Metaphor in Philip Pullman's “His Dark Materials”

Drawing on John Milton's Paradise Lost and on motifs found within Gnostic mythology and the poetry of William Blake, this article explores Philip Pullman's reworking of the Judeo-Christian myth of the Fall. At the centre of this investigation is Dust: a conventional metaphor for human physicality inspired by God's judgment on humanity. This article suggests that Dust is re-presented in the trilogy in a more positive manner through the development of Milton's metaphor of the dark materials into a substance in which good and evil, and spirit and matter—conceptual opposites that form the basis of religious dualism—coexist.     

The cultural grid: A framework for multicultural counseling

The Cultural Grid suggests a structure for interpreting a person's behavior in the context of culturally learned expectations. When two persons' expectations are similar, but their behaviors are dissimilar, cross cultural misunderstanding is likely to result. When their expectations are dissimilar, the result is likely to be a personal misunderstanding even though their behaviors are similar. This article introduces a framework for differentiating personal and cultural differences in the interview which is essential for appropriate multicultural counseling. The alternatives are to allow apparent and obvious cultural differences to mask underlying personal differences or to incorrectly assume that two persons who appear culturally similar are having a personal disagreement.     

Counsellor education and the future: Cautious sailing

The future remains always elusive and yet by examining the present, some hints of what is to come may be seen by the discerning. In this article, six existing social forces (the baby boom, the new woman, the silicon chip, disenchantment, the monetary system and the increased tempo of modern life) are reviewed as well as some of the implications of these forces for counselling education programmes. The hope is that such an examination will help counsellors and counsellor educators to be better prepared for the future and therefore better able to influence it.University of Alberta     

A Reinvented Union: A Concern for Teaching, Not Just Teachers

The current school reform movement, with its emphasis on teacher professionalism, teacher empowerment, and shared decision making, has challenged teachers unions to develop more collegial relations with school boards. Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association, has called for the union to reinvent itself and to assume responsibility for improving school quality and the quality of the teaching force. This article discusses the development of teachers unions in the 1960s as adversaries of school boards. From the beginning the unions adopted an industrial model of labor relations, one tailored for factories and assembly lines rather than school environments. Today, there are signs that teachers unions are accepting Bob Chases vision of a more professional union, one in which union leaders and school leaders can become public allies in the struggle to improve schools.     

Conceptual knowledge in talk and text: What does it take to understand a science question?

What is referred to as conceptual knowledge is one of the mostimportant deliverables of modern schooling. Following the dominance of cognitive paradigmsin psychological research, conceptual knowledge is generally construed assomething that lies behind or under performance in concrete social activities. In the presentstudy, students' responses to questions, supposedly tapping conceptual knowledge,have been studied as parts of concrete communicative practices. Our focus has been onthe differences between talk and text. The most frequent approach for generatinginsight into conceptual knowledge is by means of written tests. However, the very mannerin which people handle the demands of this particular form of mediation is seldomattended to. This problem has been studied by means of two items taken from theinternational comparison of knowledge and achievement in mathematics and science, TIMSS.The results reveal that it is highly doubtful if the items test knowledge of scienceconcepts to any significant extent. In both instances, the difficulties students have, asrevealed in the interview setting, seem to be grounded in problems in understanding somedetails in the written questions. These difficulties are generally easily resolved in aninteractive setting. It is argued that the low performance on these items can to a largeextent be accounted for by the abstract and highly demanding form of communication that iswritten language.     

Roos and José, two children in a mixed ability group

One of the purposes of the Dutch research project Mixed ability groups in mathematics education 12–16 (S.V.O. 0647) is to support the mathematics department of the S.L.O., foundation for curriculum development, in the development of a mathematics for all curriculum. Two booklets on graphs are partially evaluated by pre- and posttests, interviews and classroom observations in a comprehensive school. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of observations and tests show considerable progress in most of the children. This progress is most pronounced in children with a low score on their pretest.

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Vicarious learning from dialogue and discourse -- A controlled comparison

This study examined learning in the domain of sentence parsing and syntax tree-diagram construction. The aim of the study was to assess whether subjects could learn vicariously from recordings of interactions between a previous student and a tutor.Four intervention conditions and a control condition were compared. Subjects in a dialogue group (DL) read printed tutorial notes and subsequently vicariously viewed dynamic (animated) recordings of tree diagrams being constructed by a previous student in the presence of a tutor.The discourse (DI) condition was similar except that subjects viewed recordings of tree diagrams being constructed by a tutor who concurrently verbalised instructional discourse.In a third condition (DO), subjects viewed tree-diagram construction animation clips which were not annotated with either dialogue or discourse. In a linear text (LT) condition, subjects were given only printed tutorial notes. A control (CO) condition involved pre and post testing without any intervention.Results indicated that the dialogue condition was as effective as the discourse condition. This provides support for contention that re-usable dialogue is a useful resource for the vicarious learner. Another finding was that un-annotated animated diagrams were surprisingly effective. Several reasons for their effectiveness are suggested from the literature on instructional animations.     

The interrelations between diagrammatic representations and verbal explanations in learning from social science texts

This study examined the instructional effectiveness of abstract diagrams and verbal explanations in learning from social science texts, which contained multi-thematic information and were new to the students. Two texts of about 4,000 words each were examined. Each text appeared in four versions, in which the verbal and schematic representations were manipulated. Unlike previous studies conducted on diagrams and other visual devices that are isolated from the broad research on verbal processing, this study incorporates the investigation of the diagrams' functional utility into the broad context of cognitive elaborations applied to text comprehension. 416 students of Everyman's University, the Open University of Israel, participated in the study. The main results indicate that: an explained diagram is more effective than an unexplained one in complex explanations; a diagram, in general, is more effective than a verbal explanation in representing sequential and hierarchical relations; a diagram has a significant effect on active recollection and passive retention; the mode of the text's design and presentation is more influential than the initial verbal and visual aptitudes; and finally, there are no differences between male and female in processing verbal and diagrammatic representations.