Investigating faculty decisions to adopt Web 2.0 technologies: Theory and empirical tests

While students are increasing their use of emerging technologies such as text messaging, wikis, social networks, and other Web 2.0 applications, this is not the case with many university faculty. The purpose of this study was to assess faculty's awareness of the benefits of Web 2.0 to supplement in-class learning and better understand faculty's decisions to adopt these tools using the decomposed theory of planned behavior (DTPB) model. Findings indicated that while some faculty members feel that some Web 2.0 technologies could improve students' learning, their interaction with faculty and with other peers, their writing abilities, and their satisfaction with the course; few choose to use them in the classroom. Additional results indicated that faculty's attitude and their perceived behavioral control are strong indicators of their intention to use Web 2.0. A number of implications are drawn highlighting how the use of Web 2.0 could be useful in the classroom.     

Developmental Students: The Challenge of Peer Relationships

Despite increased program offerings at many community colleges, the retention and success of developmental students are often extremely low. Research has indicated that a complex set of challenges complicates developmental student success, but students' experiences with these variables are not well understood. In this paper, I report findings from a qualitative study that was conducted at a community college in New York City to explore the ways in which developmental students describe and understand their experiences with education. Findings indicated that students viewed their decision to attend college as a separation from high school peers whom they associated with academic failure; they continued to differentiate themselves from their peers when they entered college and were wary of developing college friendships because they viewed peers as a hindrance to educational success. However, relationships with like-minded college peers might prove to be a necessary source of support that is essential to their retention and success. These results indicate that students may need great assistance to develop the peer support networks that could assist them in pursuit of their educational goals. I offer recommendations for future research as well as specific suggestions to address developmental students' possible resistance to peer interaction including tutoring and learning community designs and collaborative/cooperative learning approaches.     

Explaining Variation in How Classroom Communities Adapt the Practice of Scientific Argumentation

Research and practice has placed an increasing emphasis on aligning classroom practices with scientific practices such as scientific argumentation. In this paper, I explore 1 challenge associated with this goal by examining how existing classroom practices influence students' engagement in the practice of scientific argumentation. To do so, I present discourse data from 2 middle school classes engaged in argumentation activities. For each class, I compare existing classroom practices to a discussion designed to facilitate argumentation. My analysis reveals that the existing classroom practices influenced the way in which students responded to the disparate ideas being discussed and that the immediate learning environment influenced the frequency with which students justified their ideas and directly responded to one another. This study suggests that the goal structures that aligned with the existing classroom practices carried over to students' argumentative interactions, influencing how they responded to the disparate ideas. However, the immediate learning environment—including activity structure, software tools, and teaching strategies—seemed to foster student-to-student interactions and justification of ideas.     

Cultural diversity in online learning: A study of the perceived effects of dissonance in levels of individualism/collectivism and tolerance of ambiguity

Online learning courses are hypothesized to be influenced by the instructors' and students' cultural values. This study collected survey data from online instructors and students to analyze the effects that Hofstede's individualism/collectivism and ambiguity (in)tolerance cultural dimensions exert on online courses offered from an individualist/ambiguity tolerant perspective. Results revealed that the students' cultural dimensions relate significantly to some of their perceptions of culture in the online classroom. Contrary to their individualist peers, collectivist learners felt that their individualist instructors were not usually aware of cultural differences in the online classroom and that their culture was not being considered to make learning relevant to their cultural context. Ambiguity intolerant students, in contrast with their ambiguity tolerant peers, felt that cultural background consideration is important and would appreciate being informed about relevant cultural differences they might experience taking an online course based on a different cultural perspective. Students from ambiguity intolerant cultures also reported less motivation to participate than their counterparts. In addition, language was found to influence the participation patterns when the ambiguity (in)tolerance values of the students were studied. However, language was not found to influence participation patterns for the individualist/collectivist dimension. The results of the study suggest that cultural differences do affect how students perceive the online classroom.     

Teachers' framing of argumentation goals: Working together to develop individual versus communal understanding

For students to meaningfully engage in science practices, substantive changes need to occur to deeply entrenched instructional approaches, particularly those related to classroom discourse. Because teachers are critical in establishing how students are permitted to interact in the classroom, it is imperative to examine their role in fostering learning environments in which students carry out science practices. This study explores how teachers describe, or frame, expectations for classroom discussions pertaining to the science practice of argumentation. Specifically, we use the theoretical lens of a participation framework to examine how teachers emphasize particular actions and goals for their students' argumentation. Multiple-case study methodology was used to explore the relationship between two middle school teachers' framing for argumentation, and their students' engagement in an argumentation discussion. Findings revealed that, through talk moves and physical actions, both teachers emphasized the importance of students driving the argumentation and interacting with peers, resulting in students engaging in various types of dialogic interactions. However, variation in the two teachers' language highlighted different purposes for students to do so. One teacher explained that through these interactions, students could learn from peers, which could result in each individual student revising their original argument. The other teacher articulated that by working with peers and sharing ideas, classroom members would develop a communal understanding. These distinct goals aligned with different patterns in students' argumentation discussion, particularly in relation to students building on each other's ideas, which occurred more frequently in the classroom focused on communal understanding. The findings suggest the need to continue supporting teachers in developing and using rich instructional strategies to help students with dialogic interactions related to argumentation. This work also sheds light on the importance of how teachers frame the goals for student engagement in this science practice.     

Knowing When You've Brought Them in: Scientific Genre Knowledge and Communities of Practice

Increasingly, researchers in the learning sciences are appealing to notions of community to shape the design of learning technologies and curricular innovations. Many of these designs, including those in the area of project-based science, show strong promise; but, it is a challenging matter to understand the influences of these innovations in a detailed enough fashion to refine them over time. This work demands sensitive, theoretically grounded ways to assess the depth to which particular facets of innovations help enculturate students into communities of discourse and practice. Taking genre theory and the sociology of science as points of departure, I demonstrate a unique approach to the problems of developing and assessing students' understanding of persuasive practices in the scientific community. The research I discuss revolves around students' use of a professional scientific genre of scientific writing, the Research Article or Introduction, Methods, Results, Discission (IMRD) report (Swales, 1990), as they compose reports about their own original research. Using data from an innovative project-based high school science class, I demonstrate how genre use provides a window on the effectiveness of a learning environment in helping use discipline-specific tools of persuasion. In the classroom studied here, students developed e-mail mentoring relationships with volunteer scientists across the United States and Canada. Working in partnership with the teacher, these "telementors" served not only as inquiry guides for students, but also as a critical audience that helped shape the arguments they made about their research. Detailed analysis of the final reports produced by teams of students in the class revealed a significant relation between their fulfillment of the customary persuasive functions of a scientific research article and sustained correspondence with their telementors. A significant relation was also observed between sustained dialogue with telementors and careful hedging of knowledge claims. I situate these findings within a body of theory that suggests the value of telementoring relationships consists not only the ongoing advice and guidance they furnish, but in the ways that a professional audience shapes students' ideas about the sorts of arguments that are called for in science class. Because the analysis of genre use is a relatively noninvasive way to examine students' understandings of scientific persuasion (as compared with survey instruments or pull-out interviews), this method can serve as a useful tool for reformers wishing to compare the outcomes from iterations or conditions of design experiments that aim to develop students' understanding of persuasive practices in the scientific community. It may also make a useful transfer measure for a wide range of classroom innovations that aim to cultivate scientific reasoning and persuasion, such as science-oriented tools for computer-supported collaborative learning.     

Self‐modeling as a treatment for increasing on‐task behavior

The study investigated the effectiveness of self‐modeling as a treatment to increase on‐task behavior. A multiple baseline design across 3 students was employed to determine the treatment effects. In addition, classroom peers' on‐task behavior was employed as comparison data. The results indicated immediate, substantial, and durable changes in students' on‐task behavior that generalized across academic settings. The 3 students evidenced an increase of on‐task behavior from an average of 33% of the intervals observed at baseline to 86% during treatment. At 6‐ and 8‐week follow‐up, the students' percentages of on‐task behavior was essentially indistinguishable from their classroom peers. Consumer data indicated that the teachers and students were satisfied with the procedure. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Good Readers Get Smart: Reading Orientations in a Second-Grade Classroom

The primary goal of this research is to better understand my students' reading orientations – what they believe it means to be a successful reader. I also seek to identify the relationship between those beliefs and my teaching. The data come primarily from six focal students in my second-grade classroom in an urban public charter elementary school in Oakland, California. Focal students were observed, interviewed, and asked to discuss and rank vignettes of readers with varying reading behaviors, skills, and habits. In addition, I drew on systematic reflections about my own teaching and students. Results showed that focal students shared reading orientations toward aspects of fluency, such as accuracy, and knowledge-level comprehension skills, such as retelling events from a story. Results also showed that students' responses correlated closely with teaching points emphasized both within my classroom and around the school. These results, in combination with data from observations, led me to discover that students' reading orientations may have both public and private aspects. In other words, their stated preferences might differ from their private inclinations. These findings suggest that teachers need to be organized and intentional around the messages that they send to students about successful reading. They also suggest that teachers create environments in which various purposes and reading behaviors are valued.     

Why do students exhibit different attention-related behavior during instruction? Investigating effects of individual and context-dependent determinants

To determine the success of their instruction, teachers need to rely on observable cues in students' behavior. However, students exhibit different attention-related behavior within one lesson as well as compared with their peers. It is not yet clear to what extent these differences result from the design of classroom instruction and how individual and contextual factors determine students' behavior during instruction. In the present study, we applied a continuous behavior-rating system to 10 classroom videos and based our analysis on 1200 1-s intervals of N = 199 students. Using dynamic structural equation modeling, students' attention-related behavior was primarily determined by contextual factors, stressing the important role of teachers but also the impact of factors that are unique in individual classrooms.     

Improvement in Student Performance and Perceptions through a Flipped Anatomy Classroom: Shifting from Passive Traditional to Active Blended Learning

One of the major challenges facing anatomy educators is delivering the anatomy materials in fewer hours with a reduction of anatomy courses in the integrated curricula. The flipped classroom modality may be an innovative solution. However, its effectiveness remains under debate due to a lack of outcome-based research and the mixed results of students' performance. The present study aimed to determine the outcome of the flipped classroom based upon the level of student cognition. The study investigated performance on 17 multiple-choice anatomy questions as a part of the final examination of the musculoskeletal system module. The results were compared between the first-year female students of Qassim Medical College, specifically the flipped classroom group (46 students) of the academic year (2018–2019) and the traditional group (49 students) of the academic year (2017–2018). The mean differences in the students' grades on the anatomy questions at the level of knowledge, application, and analysis using Cohen's d test were 0.43, 1.41, and 1.01, respectively. These results suggest the positive impact of flipping the students' classrooms on improving their levels of thinking according to Bloom's taxonomy. Perception surveys also revealed students' enthusiasm for the pre-class activities, leading to a better performance in the class with more engagement with their peers and teachers. The present study suggested that the flipped classroom modality can be performed to compensate for the reduction of anatomy educational hours. However, further studies are recommended to investigate the best practices of the flipped classroom that fit with the students' needs and workloads.     

Using metaphor to probe students' conceptions of chemistry learning

Changing students' views of themselves as learners and the learning strategies they use requires methods to make their views regarding teaching, learning and their roles as learners explicit to themselves and to teachers. This was an interpretive study that investigated students' metaphors for themselves as learners within a Year 11 chemistry classroom. Students' metaphors were found to be congruent with their views of learning and their learning processes as evidenced from multiple data sources. In making students' views explicit, metaphors can provide valuable information for practicing teachers and researchers who aim to investigate and enhance students' learning processes and encourage metacognition.     

Teacher's and Students' Understanding: The Role of Tools and Inscriptions in Supporting Effective Communication

The 2 episodes featured in this issue provide a rich setting in which to investigate not only the influence but also the confluence of students' and teacher's understandings on the quality of whole class discussions. In particular, I focus on the communication between the students and myself as the teacher in the classroom. This unique perspective allows me to offer insights into the teacher's decision-making process and how those decisions influenced the opportunities for learning. As part of the analysis I consider the role of tools in both supporting and constraining communication in the classroom. The analysis therefore makes explicit the tensions in teaching by highlighting the importance of the teacher's understanding of the students' offered explanations and justifications and the mathematics that is to be taught.     

Positive error climate promotes learning outcomes through students’ adaptive reactions towards errors

Errors are an integral part of the learning process and an opportunity to increase skills and knowledge, but they are often discouraged, sanctioned and derided in the classroom. This study tests whether students' perceptions of being part of an error-friendly classroom context (i.e., a positive classroom error climate) is positively related to students' learning outcomes via students' adaptive reactions towards errors. A total of 563 Italian middle school students from 32 mathematics classes completed a questionnaire on their perceptions of classroom error climate and their reactions towards errors. Students' math grades were used as indicators of their level of learning outcomes. A multilevel model showed that perceived classroom error climate was positively related to math grades via increased adaptive reactions towards errors. Our findings revealed that an error-friendly classroom context is associated with students’ adaptive adjustment to errors and to better learning outcomes in mathematics.     

From passive to active: The impact of the flipped classroom through social learning platforms on higher education students' creative thinking

This study aimed to investigate the impact of the flipped classroom on the promotion of students' creative thinking. Students were recruited from the Faculty of Education at King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia during the first semester of 2014. A multiple method research design was used to address the research questions. First, a two‐group quasi‐experimental design was implemented. The first group utilised the lecture‐based strategy (n = 28), while the second group utilised the flipped classroom (n = 27). Second, a survey questionnaire was distributed to assess the students' views about the flipped classroom, its role in the promotion of creativity and the difficulties students experienced with this strategy. The findings suggest that the flipped classroom may promote students' creativity, especially with regard to fluency, flexibility and novelty. Furthermore, the students viewed the flipped classroom as an approach that may significantly facilitate their creativity. However, several difficulties were associated with the flipped classroom, especially the students' limited preparation for this strategy. Accordingly, students must be prepared to utilise the flipped classroom and be provided with adequate e‐learning tools. In addition, it is important to consider students' study load and to provide meaningful in‐class activities.     

Elementary students' views of explanation,argumentation, and evidence,and their abilities to construct arguments over the school year

Science includes more than just concepts and facts, but also encompasses scientific ways of thinking and reasoning. Students' cultural and linguistic backgrounds influence the knowledge they bring to the classroom, which impacts their degree of comfort with scientific practices. Consequently, the goal of this study was to investigate 5th grade students' views of explanation, argument, and evidence across three contexts—what scientists do, what happens in science classrooms, and what happens in everyday life. The study also focused on how students' abilities to engage in one practice, argumentation, changed over the school year. Multiple data sources were analyzed: pre‐ and post‐student interviews, videotapes of classroom instruction, and student writing. The results from the beginning of the school year suggest that students' views of explanation, argument, and evidence, varied across the three contexts with students most likely to respond “I don't know” when talking about their science classroom. Students had resources to draw from both in their everyday knowledge and knowledge of scientists, but were unclear how to use those resources in their science classroom. Students' understandings of explanation, argument, and evidence for scientists and for science class changed over the course of the school year, while their everyday meanings remained more constant. This suggests that instruction can support students in developing stronger understanding of these scientific practices, while still maintaining distinct understandings for their everyday lives. Finally, the students wrote stronger scientific arguments by the end of the school year in terms of the structure of an argument, though the accuracy, appropriateness, and sufficiency of the arguments varied depending on the specific learning or assessment task. This indicates that elementary students are able to write scientific arguments, yet they need support to apply this practice to new and more complex contexts and content areas. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 793–823, 2011     

The impact of interactive engagement methods on students' academic achievement

Interactive engagement (IE) is a process that promotes students' conceptual understanding through activities, combined with immediate feedback from peers and/or instructors. The present study investigates the impact of IE on students' academic performance, using the comprehensive model of educational effectiveness. Engineering students (n?=?158), randomly divided into three groups (self-assessment, collaborative learning, and control) provided the study data on questionnaires as well as with their test scores. Analyses of covariance reveal significant differences across groups, along with significant interaction effects. These findings have notable implications for improving students' academic achievement.     

Teacher–student talk in Singapore Chinese language classrooms: a case study of initiation/response/follow-up (IRF)

In this article, I analyse the initiation/response/follow-up (IRF) exchanges between teachers and students in teacher-fronted instruction by using transcribed classroom data. Adopting a social constructivist position, I examine ways in which teachers construct or reduce students' learning opportunities in these communications. Furthermore, I demonstrate how language is used to serve the functions of mediation and to provide learning opportunities. Although teachers talk most of the time and control most of the turns, I argue that teachers can improve their talk and control in their fronted instruction to optimise student contributions and to facilitate students' learning.     

When genres meet: Inquiry into a sixth‐grade urban science class

In this study, we explore oral and written work (plays and rap songs) of students in a sixth‐grade all African‐American urban science class to reveal ways affective and social aspects are intertwined with students' cognition. We interpret students' work in terms of the meeting of various genres brought by the students and teachers to the classroom. Students bring youth genres, classroom genres that they have constructed from previous schooling, and perhaps their own science genres. Teachers bring their favored classroom and science genres. We show how students' affective reactions were an integral part of their constructed scientific knowledge. Their knowledge building emerged as a social process involving a range of transactions among students and between students and teacher, some transactions being relatively smooth and others having more friction. Along with their developing science genre, students portrayed elements of classroom genres that did not exist in the classroom genre that the teacher sought to bring to the class. Students' work offered us a glimpse of students' interpretations of gender dynamics in their classrooms. Gender also was related to the particular ways that students in that class included disagreement in their developing science genre. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 579–605, 2002