Are Students in Need of Reading Classics？

前段时间,长沙一所中学投票评选“我最喜欢的十本好书”,《哈利·波特》系列排名第一。一位中学党委书记用“切肤之痛”这四个字形容对于学生疏远经典的感受。许多中学生认为经典作品晦涩难懂,没有流行文学易于接受。你是怎么看的呢？     

Personal and Contextual Factors Associated With Students’ Cheating in Science

The authors conducted a correlational study to investigate the relations among seventh-grade Turkish students’ cheating behavior, academic self-efficacy beliefs, usage of self-handicapping strategies, personal goal orientations, and classroom goal structures specific to the science domain. The Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales was administered to 1,950 seventh-grade students enrolled in 12 public schools. The authors conducted hierarchical linear modeling analyses to measure to what extent personal and contextual factors can be used to predict students’ cheating behavior. Analyses revealed that although students’ cheating behavior was positively predicted by performance-approach goals, it was negatively predicted by mastery goals. Students who used more self-handicapping strategies and who were less self-efficacious were also more likely to demonstrate cheating behavior. The authors found that the mastery goal–structured science-learning environment, in which understanding the material and self-improvement was emphasized, discouraged cheating.     

Students’ Attitudes to Information in the Press: Critical Reading of a Newspaper Article With Scientific Content

This research analyses what happens when a critical reading activity based on a press article dealing with an energy-related problem is implemented with two groups of students of 13–14 years old and 16–17 years old in the same school (a total of 117 students). Specifically, the research analyses the students’ profiles from the standpoint of their attitudes to the information given in the news story and the use they make of it when writing an argumentative text. It also analyses the difficulties the students have when it comes to applying their knowledge about energy in a real-life context. Lastly, some strategies are suggested for helping students to critically analyse the scientific content of a newspaper article. Three reader profiles were identified (the credulous reader, the ideological reader and the critical reader). No significant differences were found in reading profiles in terms of age or scientific knowledge. The findings show that the activity helped to link science learning in school with facts relating to an actual context, particularly in the case of students with more science knowledge.     

On Developing College Students’ Ability of Reading Comprehension

Reading has become one of the four essential skills in English study,without reading,it is difficult for the students to support independent and self-directed learning.With the arrival of the Information Age,our reading materials gradually change from paper materials to electronic ones.So it becomes more and more important for college students to speed up their reading and develop a good reading habit in order to acquire as much information as possible.     

Challenges to Stereotypes of International Students’ Prior Educational Experience: undergraduate education in India

The discourse concerning teaching and learning for international students in Australia has been dominated by a cultural‐deficit approach. Proponents of this perspective argue that many international students bring with them learning experiences which are inadequate in the Australian context. These experiences have favoured rote, reproductive, surface, teacher‐centred and dependent approaches to learning; which lack analytical and critical perspectives; and which have occurred in contexts dominated by examinations and substantially lacking in educational resources. More recently, other research has challenged these stereotypes of international students, particularly regarding students from Confucian‐heritage cultures. This paper examines these stereotypes in relation to international students from India, through the use of a review of the available literature on Indian higher education and the analysis of the undergraduate learning experiences of a group of postgraduate students studying at a large Australian metropolitan university. It concludes that while some aspects of the stereotype may apply to Indian undergraduate education, most aspects of the cultural‐deficit perspective are problematic in that context, and a more contextualised approach is of greater use in understanding and describing the diversity of undergraduate learning in India.     

Shaping Students’ Attitudes Toward Diversity: Do Faculty Practices and Interactions With Students Matter?

Research in Higher Education - Scholars have advocated for further investigation of the campus climate for diversity and students’ attitudes and behaviors surrounding diversity, and there...     

Students as Consumers of Knowledge: Are They Buying What We’re Selling?

Academic entitlement, an attitude marked by students’ beliefs that they are owed something in the educational experience apart from what they might earn from their effort, has received attention recently in the literature. In previous work, academic entitlement has been shown to be related to parenting styles and personality constructs. The current study departs from previous research by taking a phenomenological approach to understanding academic entitlement. Focus groups were conducted with a total of 52 first-year students. Responses were coded into six facets of academic entitlement: product value of education, social promotion, role of professors, teaching assistants, administrators, and shoppers or scholars.     

Comparing Two Methods of Writing Instruction: Effects on Kindergarten Students’ Reading Skills

ABSTRACT

This experimental study directly compared the effects of two prevalent forms of classroom writing instruction, interactive writing and writing workshop, on kindergarten students’ acquisition of early reading skills. Repeated measures data was collected at four points over 16 weeks to monitor growth of 151 kindergarten students in phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and word reading. Results of this study showed students in both the interactive writing group and the writing workshop group demonstrated significant growth over time for each of the three outcome measures, with no statistically significant difference between groups for any of the outcome measures at any of the time points. This study provides evidence that, when consistently implemented during the first 16 weeks of kindergarten, interactive writing and writing workshop are equally effective in promoting acquisition of early reading skills.     

Multiple Outcomes of Class Visits to Natural History Museums: The Students’ View

The purpose of this study was to describe and understand the range of outcomes of class visits to natural history museums. The theoretical framework is based on the multifaceted process of learning in free choice learning environments, and emphasizes the unique and individual learning experience in museum settings. The study’s significance is in highlighting several possible cognitive as well as non-cognitive learning effects in museums class visits, by providing the student’s point of view. Data was collected by semi-structured interviews with 50 students in grades 6–8 on the day following the visit. We present evidence that students expressed several learning outcomes, connected directly and indirectly to the scientific content of the visit. Content oriented outcomes included acquiring scientific knowledge and making connections to prior knowledge; social oriented outcomes were identified in students’ statements regarding communicating knowledge and social aspects of learning; and interest oriented outcomes were evidenced by students’ expressions about emotions, interest and curiosity. The aggregate data addressed the common outcomes and the impact of class visits to natural history museums in the short term. Comparisons between two types of museums show significant differences in several aspects, regarding the exhibit and/or the activity type. Practical ideas for structuring the ultimate experience are included.     

A Discussion on Reading Ability of College Students

This article starts with the analysis of the essential factors that restrict the students' reading comprehension and talks about the causes of the problems in reading. Many students feel it difficult to improve their reading ability and don't know how to cope with thses problems. Ways are suggested in the artiue.     

Accumulating Knowledge: When Are Reading Intervention Results Meaningful?

Abstract

The three target articles provide examples of intervention studies that are excellent models for the field. They rely on rigorous and elegant designs, the interventions are motivated by attention to underlying theoretical mechanisms, and longitudinal designs are used to examine the duration of effects of interventions that occur. When studies are carefully designed, effect sizes tend to be modest. We argue that the meaningfulness of effect sizes should not necessarily be determined with reference to Cohen's rule of thumb, and that modest effect sizes can result in major change in performance if they cumulate.     

Are Students Becoming Consumerist Learners?

This article explores how consumerism is impacting education, with a special focus on the ‘student as consumer’ model. I begin by exploring the distinctive features of consumerism and school commercialism. The tension between consumer and citizen leads into a discussion of the distinction between education as/for a public good versus as/for private gain, leading to a discussion of the notion of ‘Me, Inc.’ as an instrumental and privatized conception of education as self-branding that redirects peoples’ attention from environmental issues to personal gain and consumption. Explanation of this phenomenon is provided through a discussion of economistic approaches to education, such as the creation of human capital and the commodification of knowledge, which minimizes the importance of environmental sustainability education (ESE). The political challenges that consumerism presents in confronting ESE are such that attention is directed away from the urgency of political change and civic engagement and instead towards consumer satisfaction. I explore how the promotion of critical thinking is compromised as a result. I conclude by suggesting that consumerism undermines how education involves risk in the sense that we don't always know what we're getting into or how we will be impacted, as consumerism promotes the assumption that education should be easy and palatable and not involve suffering or adversity.     

What Preschool Classroom Experiences Are Associated With Whether Children Improve in Visuomotor Integration?

Research Findings: This study examined the contribution of several class-room experience measures (classroom characteristics, teacher characteristics, and teacher–child interactions) to preschoolers’ improvement in visuomotor integration. Children (N = 467) ranged in age from 3 to 5 years old and were enrolled in 115 classrooms in 5 U.S. states. Children’s visuomotor integration was measured twice (on average 5.2 months apart) using the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration (visuomotor integration subtest). Hierarchical linear models controlling for background characteristics and inhibitory control showed that children improved more in visuomotor integration when they were in classrooms with fewer 3-year-olds, when their teacher had at least a bachelor’s degree, and when teachers demonstrated high quality in their interactions. Practice or Policy: Visuomotor integration, and specifically the ability to copy designs with a writing utensil, is a robust indicator of children’s school readiness and longitudinal achievement. U.S. preschoolers gained more on visuomotor integration in classrooms with fewer 3-year-old children that were taught by a college-educated teacher and when such classrooms provided high-quality organizational and instructional interactions. These results expand the outcomes linked to early childhood education experiences and emphasize the need for well-prepared early childhood teachers who interact with children effectively.     

Students’ Views of Scientific Models and Modeling: Do Representational Characteristics of Models and Students’ Educational Levels Matter?

The aim of this study was to examine the potential impact of the representational characteristics of models and students’ educational levels on students’ views of scientific models and modeling (VSMM). An online multimedia questionnaire was designed to address three major aspects of VSMM, namely the nature of models, the nature of modeling, and the purpose of models. The three scales of representational characteristics included modality, dimensionality, and dynamics. A total of 102 eighth graders and 87 eleventh graders were surveyed. Both quantitative data and written responses were analyzed. The influence of the representational characteristics seemed to be more salient on the nature of models and the purpose of models. Some interactions between the educational levels and the representational characteristics showed that the high school students were more likely to recognize textual representations and pictorial representations as models, while also being more likely to appreciate the differences between 2D and 3D models. However, some other differences between educational levels did not necessarily suggest that the high school students attained more sophisticated VSMM. For instance, in considering what information should be included in a model, students’ attention to particular affordances of the representation can lead to a more naive view of modeling. Implications for developing future questionnaires and for teaching modeling are suggested in this study.     

Validating NSSE Against Student Outcomes: Are They Related?

While there exist many examples of institutional use of the results of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), there is a relative paucity of research explicitly linking student outcomes to responses on the survey. A major Doctoral-Extensive institution in the Southeast recently conducted a large-scale implementation of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). We have linked multiple years of NSSE responses to several student outcomes: freshman retention, GPA, pursuit of graduate education, and employment outcome upon commencement/degree conferral. Our research finds minimal explanatory power in the NSSE benchmarks for these outcomes. A statistically derived model from the individual NSSE items shows greater promise, although there are difficulties in replicating the model for previous student cohorts.

Word Recognition Processes in College-Age Students’ Reading Comprehension Achievement

This paper presents a brief review of the previous research on word recognition skills of college-age adults. Unlike the general understanding in the reading field of diminished effects for word reading skills at the higher grades, findings show word reading processes continue to determine reading comprehension success in college-age adults. Instructional implications, based on the review of literacy interventions, are presented in favor of fluency-based activities designed to encourage careful processing of texts with familiar topics and language in the service of building strongly-amalgamated lexical representations.     

The Impact of Differentiated Instruction on Students’ Reading Comprehension Attainment in Mixed-Ability Classrooms

Interchange - This explanatory sequential quasi-experimental study investigated the impact of differentiated instruction on reading comprehension attainment in mixed-ability classrooms. Fifty-four...     

Context Effects on Students’ Gains in Reading Comprehension in Reading First Schools in Michigan

Reading First, Part B of Title 1 of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, provides support for states with approved programs to improve the reading achievement of early elementary students in high poverty, chronically low achieving schools. The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which the Reading First program in the state of Michigan is making progress in meeting this goal after five years of implementation. The study design makes use of the reading comprehension achievement test results for cohorts of students who entered the program in different years and who took the test two or three times while attending a Reading First school in Michigan between 2002 and 2006. The results indicate that overall the students showed significant gains in reading comprehension; further, students with three years in Reading First tended to score higher than those with two years in Reading First. However, students whose socio-demographic characteristics place them at an educational disadvantage (e.g., eligibility for subsidized lunch) made relatively modest gains in reading comprehension. In addition, any negative effects attributable to such student characteristics are compounded when the student body in the school is composed of a large percentage of students with the same characteristic. These results suggest that while a successful program overall, Reading First is not comprehensive enough to counteract the socio-demographic problems of extremely high poverty schools.      

National Evidence of the Impact of First-Year Online Enrollment on Postsecondary Students’ Long-Term Academic Outcomes

This study examines the influence of first-year online enrollment on the long-term academic outcomes of postsecondary students. Using a nationally representative sample and propensity score weighting, I find that enrolling in some online courses is associated with lower odds of dropping out of college. Additional results reveal a positive relationship between enrolling in some online courses and sub-baccalaureate indicators of long-term academic success, such as earning an associate’s degree and transferring from a community college to a 4-year institution.