Test Takers and the Validity of Score Interpretations

This article argues that test takers are as integral to determining validity of test scores as defining target content and conditioning inferences on test use. A principled sustained attention to how students interact with assessment opportunities is essential, as is a principled sustained evaluation of evidence confirming the validity or calling into question the inferences for individual students. Three innovative assessment systems are highlighted to illustrate where and how the developers might handle diverse test taker needs and learning characteristics. ONPAR measures challenging content using multisemiotic methods and novel item types, designing items to handle multiple profiles so they are accessible for most students. Dynamic Learning Maps has built an innovative network of learning maps, and multiple pathways designed to model how diverse students acquire knowledge. To support their assessments, the National Center and State Collaborative has built an exemplary web of educator resources such as content modules and guides in order to support differentiated learning.     

Biological constraints on instrumental and classical conditioning: Retrospect and prospect

The adequacy of traditional approaches to the study of animal learning to account fully for learning phenomena has been seriously questioned during the past decade. Critics of traditional analyses advocated a biological orientation to the interpretation of associative processes and introduced a variety of concepts intended to provide a new framework for the study of animal learning. This promise of a reorientation of the field has not been realized. The concepts of biological constraints, adaptive specializations, and situation specificity of learning have had a less profound influence on the general process approach to instrumental and classical conditioning than anticipated. The present paper makes explicit the conceptual bases of the original biological approaches to learning, identifies reasons why they failed to change fundamentally the study of instrumental and classical conditioning, and proposes an alternative approach to the use of ecological and evolutionary principles in studies of conditioning. We suggest a renewed comparative approach to the study of learning phenomena that avoids many of the difficulties inherent in earlier formulations by providing (1) a strategy for the discovery of adaptive specializations in learning, (2) an ecological framework for the discussion of these adaptive specializations, and (3) a renewed emphasis on the study of species differences in learning.     

Look Again: Pedagogical Demonstration Facilitates Children’s Use of Counterevidence

In learning about the world children must not only make inferences based on minimal evidence, but must deal with conflicting evidence and question those initial inferences when they appear to be wrong. Four experiments (N = 144) found that young children were significantly more likely to revise their initial inferences when conflicting evidence was explicitly demonstrated for them. Four- and five-year-old children saw deterministic evidence about which objects had causal powers, and then saw counterevidence conflicting with that initial pattern. Critically, the conflicting evidence was either demonstrated communicatively and pedagogically, or produced in an intentional but nonpedagogical manner. Only when evidence was explicitly demonstrated for them did children revise their initial hypothesis and use a subtle clue to infer the correct rule.     

Releaser-induced recognition learning by amphibians and reptiles

This review evaluates the bases of the widely held assumption that amphibians and reptiles possess impoverished learning abilities. Procedurally defined forms of learning (instrumental conditioning, Pavlovian conditioning and autoshaping, imprinting, and social learning) are reviewed, as well as evidence for the involvement of learning in various behavioral phenomena, including aversive stimulus and predator avoidance, noxious and palatable food recognition, conditioned aversion formation, search image, conspecific recognition, habitat recognition, and cultural transmission of stimulus recognition. The evidence reviewed suggests that amphibian and reptilian learning, for the most part, consists of a releasing-stimulus-induced redirection of innately organized released responses. Amphibians and reptiles appear to learn what stimulus to respond to rather than how to respond to a particular stimulus.     

Applying methods to evaluate construct validity in the context of A level assessment

Validity is a central principle of assessment relating to the appropriateness of the uses and interpretations of test results. Usually, one of the inferences that we wish to make is that the score reflects the extent of a student’s learning in a given domain. Thus, it is important to establish that the assessment tasks elicit performances that reflect the intended constructs. This research explored the use of three methods for evaluating whether there are threats to validity in relation to the constructs elicited in international A level geography examinations: (a) Rasch analysis; (b) analysis of processes expected and apparent when students answer questions; and (c) qualitative analysis of responses to items identified as potentially problematic. The results provided strong evidence to support validity with regard to the elicitation of constructs although one question part was identified as a threat to validity. Strengths and weaknesses of the methods can be identified.     

The effectiveness of self-regulated learning scaffolds on academic performance in computer-based learning environments: a meta-analysis

This meta-analysis examined research on the effects of self-regulated learning scaffolds on academic performance in computer-based learning environments from 2004 to 2015. A total of 29 articles met inclusion criteria and were included in the final analysis with a total sample size of 2648 students. Moderator analyses were performed using a random effects model that focused on the three main areas of scaffold characteristics (including the mechanism, functions, delivery forms, mode, and number of scaffolds; how to promote self-regulated learning by scaffolds); demographics of the selected studies (including sample groups, sample size, learning domain, research settings, and types of computer-based learning environments); and research methodological features (including research methods, types of research design, types of organization for treatment, and duration of treatment). Findings revealed that self-regulated learning scaffolds in computer-based learning environments generally produced a significantly positive effect on academic performance (ES = 0.438). It is also suggested that both domain-general and domain-specific scaffolds can support the entire process of self-regulated learning since they demonstrated substantial effects on academic performance. Different impacts of various studies and their methodological features are presented and discussed.     

Effects of Immediate Awareness of Success and Failure upon Objective Examination Scores

In determining whether or not students learned more effectively in different learning environments, experimental and control classes were conducted over a 2-year period in a basic statistics course that involved ten faculty members and 1,172 students. Grades, common examinations, and a checklist were the basic criterion measures used; mathematics background and overall grade point (GPA) served as control mechanisms. Major conclusions were: students preferring some type of independent study consistently underachieved; instructor types, which produced high achievement levels for specific types of students, were identified in behavioral terms; it probably will take drastic manipulations of the learning environment beyond the normal constraints of the university in order to produce effective changes in the learning pattern.     

Challenges and Opportunities in the Applied Assessment of Student Social and Emotional Learning

Interest in school-based strategies to support student social and emotional learning (SEL) is strong. Although SEL policies and programs designed to support the development of student competencies have advanced significantly, less work has been done to develop methods of assessing student social and emotional competence. This article briefly reviews developments in the field of social and emotional competence assessment and examines challenges and opportunities in their applied use, including (a) balancing the priorities of assessment developers and educators; (b) ensuring that the inferences and decisions made from SEL assessment scores are supported by evidence of the assessment’s psychometric merit; (c) establishing conditions for SEL assessment and data use that maximize benefit while mitigating risks; (d) coordinating standards, assessment, programs, and professional learning; and (e) balancing highly focused assessments that by design do not vary in content or format, and the varied cultural contexts in which they may be used.     

Perceptual learning and representational learning in humans and animals

Traditionally, perceptual learning in humans and classical conditioning in animals have been considered as two very different research areas, with separate problems, paradigms, and explanations. However, a number of themes common to these fields of research emerge when they are approached from the more general concept of representational learning. To demonstrate this, I present results of several learning experiments with human adults and infants, exploring how internal representations of complex unknown visual patterns might emerge in the brain. I provide evidence that this learning cannot be captured fully by any simple pairwise associative learning scheme, but rather by a probabilistic inference process called Bayesian model averaging, in which the brain is assumed to formulate the most likely chunking/grouping of its previous experience into independent representational units. Such a generative model attempts to represent the entire world of stimuli with optimal ability to generalize to likely scenes in the future. I review the evidence showing that a similar philosophy and generative scheme of representation has successfully described a wide range of experimental data in the domain of classical conditioning in animals. These convergent findings suggest that statistical theories of representational learning might help to link human perceptual learning and animal classical conditioning results into a coherent framework.     

A new model of concept teaching and learning

Current models of instructional design assume that concepts are (a) classifying rules, (b) components of a more complex network or schema in memory, and (c) evaluated/taught by classification performance. Based on current research and theory, however, concepts should be viewed as conceptual tools rather than classification rules. Concepts may be schemas or networks in themselves, as a complex arrangement of declarative, procedural, and inferential knowledge. Concept learning may be measured by concept use and inferences as well as classification and taught via analogies, learning strategies, use/inference practice, and rational-set generators.     

Social learning about predators: a review and prospectus

In comparison with social learning about food, social learning about predators has received little attention. Yet such research is of potential interest to students of animal cognition and conservation biologists. I summarize evidence for social learning about predators by fish, birds, eutherian mammals, and marsupials. I consider the proposal that this phenomenon is a case of S-S classical conditioning and suggest that evolution may have modified some of the properties of learning to accommodate for the requirements of learning socially about danger. I discuss some between-species differences in the properties of socially acquired predator avoidance and suggest that learning may be faster and more robust in species in which alarm behavior reliably predicts high predatory threat. Finally, I highlight how studies of socially acquired predator avoidance can inform the design of prerelease antipredator training programs for endangered species.     

Mind,Language and Artworks as Real Constraints on Students' Critical Reasoning about Meaning in Art

To engage in discussions of artwork meaning is to engage in critical reasoning, a factor that is central to the interpretation of artworks in the art classroom. While this may appear as a common‐sense claim that reflects the tacit assumptions most art educators have about students' critical dispositions in art, it is also evident that little is known about the deeper structures underlying students’ critical reasoning and how such structures shape students’ interpretations of artworks. Drawing on my research on students’ theories of critical meaning in art, this article explores the nature of practical and theoretical constraints on students’ critical reasoning about the meaning of artworks. I account for how intentional beliefs, language and representational artefacts function as a nexus of real constraints that condition students’ advance into interpretations of the social meaning of art. After briefly outlining the design and methodology of my study, I examine students’ critical reasoning performances during the formative period of development between middle to late childhood. The findings reveal that with increasing age students gradually learn to exercise their own critical intentions and represent inferences that acknowledge the significance of constitutive rules and force of a collective intentionality in the artworld on their interpretations of artworks as artefacts. I then make some conclusions about the relationship of domain‐specific shifts in art understanding, the role of intentionality, representational understanding, beliefs about art and reasoning skills to the linguistic, theoretical and artefactual constraints conditioning students’ intuitive advance into real understandings of art.     

Learning From “Thinkers”: Parent Epistemological Understanding Predicts Individual Differences in Children’s Judgments About Reasoners

Four-, 5-, and 6-year olds (N = 102) observed agents perform a reasoning task that required gathering hidden evidence. An agent who made sound inferences was contrasted with an agent who made either unsound inferences (UI; failed to base conclusion on gathered evidence) or guesses (failed to gather evidence). Four-year olds attributed knowledge to all agents and endorsed their conclusions widely. However, 5- and 6-year olds’ knowledge attributions were mitigated by UI, and 6-year olds neither attributed knowledge to a guesser nor endorsed his conclusions. Notably, parents’ tendency to make evaluativist epistemological judgments—which place value in evidence as a basis for belief—predicted children’s reluctance to learn from and credit knowledge to poor reasoners. Parents’ evaluativist judgments also predicted children’s selective learning about object functions.     

Facilitating active social presence and meaningful interactions in online learning

Online learning has minimized many barriers and constraints that are common in traditional learning environments. However, due to the absence of face-to-face contacts, students and instructors are usually faced with the lack of active social presence and meaningful interactions in online learning. This article explores a review of the literature on social presence and various types of interactions in online learning environments in the context of a class project. The findings suggest need for online instructors to explore effective ways to design and facilitate active social presence and meaningful interactions in online learning.     

Young Children's Concept of Color and Its Relation to the Acquisition of Color Words

Many children experience great difficulty in learning their first color word. In contrast, once children have learned 1 color word, they learn additional color words more easily. This striking fact raises the question of whether children who do not know color words have conceptual color categories capable of supporting inferences about word meaning. In 3 experiments 2-year-olds were provided with tasks that required them to base inferences on color or to map things onto color. Half the children comprehended at least 1 color word, and the remaining children comprehended none. In all experiments, the children in both groups succeeded on the color tasks. It was argued that children who do not know color words have the conceptual foundation necessary to base inferences on color but have specific constraints against basing inferences about word meaning on color.     

Reopening Inquiry into Cognitive Processes in Writing-To-Learn

Writing produces generally positive, but inconsistent, effects on learning. The reasons for this inconsistency are unknown. This review examines four hypotheses about writing-to-learn: Writers spontaneously generate knowledge at the point of utterance (Britton, 1980/1982); writers externalize ideas in text, then reread them to generate new inferences (Young and Sullivan, 1984); writers use genre structures to organize relationships among elements of text, and thereby among elements of knowledge (Newell, 1984); and writers set rhetorical goals, then solve content problems to achieve these goals (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1987; Flower and Hayes, 1980a). These four hypotheses invoke different aspects of writing, and so are mutually compatible. The genre hypothesis has been supported by empirical research; the other three hypotheses have been tentatively supported by research concerning writing-to-learn, or indirectly supported by other research concerning learning or writing. Further investigation is needed concerning: The empirical validity of the four hypotheses, and interactions among the processes that they identify; the declarative and procedural knowledge that underpins writing-to-learn; and the educational effectiveness of applying cognitive strategy instruction to learning through writing.     

移动学习的系统服务环境研究

文章在对移动学习内容和学习活动(两者统称为移动学习服务环境)分类及其相关理论分析的基础上,给出了移动学习服务环境设计的一般模式及移动学习应用于语言学习,生物科学及医学领域的典型系统服务环境,并对不同类型的移动学习与各种移动学习内容及学习活动间的匹配关系进行了分析。最后,对国内外典型的移动学习案例中所涉及到的学习内容及学习活动进行了归纳和总结,以期对移动学习服务环境的设计起到基础性作用,最终提升学习者移动学习的绩效。     

Theorising teaching and learning: pre-service teachers’ theoretical awareness of learning

We examine pre-service teachers’ theoretical learning during one five-week training module, and their educators’ learning about better lecture design to foster student learning. The study is iterative: interventions (one per group) were implemented sequentially in student groups A–C, the results of the previous intervention serving as the baseline for the design developed for the next. These learning study participants, 79 students from year three of a teacher training programme, studied the variation theory (VT) of learning. Three lesson cycles were completed, each comprising four steps: (1) a pre-test, (2) a 15-min intervention discussing VT, (3) a post-test and (4) a delayed post-test conducted eight weeks later. The results indicated learning differences between groups; qualitative analysis identified three categories of student answers, i.e. emergent, premature and unaware, regarding their theoretical understanding. Group C had more students with emergent knowledge (36%) than did groups A (20%) or B (17%) at post-testing.     

Linking the components of a university program to the qualification profile of graduates: The case of a sustainability‐oriented environmental science curriculum

A university Environmental Sciences curriculum is described against the background of requirements for environmental problem solving for sustainability and then analyzed using data from regular surveys of graduates (N = 373). Three types of multiple regression models examine links between qualifications and curriculum components in order to derive some conclusions about which qualifications are enhanced by which curriculum components. The underlying rationale of these models is that assessments of the importance of a certain component (and the time graduates think should be allocated to it) should increase with the workplace demand for the qualifications it provides. A comprehensive set of 19 qualifications was used, subdivided into three areas of environmental problem‐solving skills (A, basic scientific and technological skills; B, transformation‐oriented skills; and C, sociopolitical skills) and two areas of transferable skills (D, individual key skills and E, social and communication skills). Relationships identified by different regression models are discussed in terms of mutual consistency and with regard to the design, content, and learning goals of the curriculum components. Many plausible relationships were identified. Using such regression models is a promising indirect method that may be generally applicable for the explorative qualification‐oriented evaluation of university curricula and their fundamental components based on graduates' judgments. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 537–569, 2009