Beliefs About Thought Probability: Evidence for Persistent Errors in Mindreading and Links to Executive Control

Four‐ to 10‐year‐olds' and adults' (N = 263) ability to inhibit privileged knowledge and simulate a naïve perspective were examined. Participants viewed pictures that were then occluded aside from a small ambiguous part. They offered suggestions for how a naïve person might interpret the hidden pictures, as well as rated the probability that a naïve person would think of several different pictures (with one picture being the actual item). Results indicated a significant increase between ages 4 and 7 years in attributing novel interpretations; however, all age groups overestimated the probability that a naïve person could guess the actual pictures. Individual differences in working memory and inhibitory control predicted participants' thought suggestions as well as aspects of their probability judgments.     

Visual analyses and discriminations: one approach to measuring students' metacognition

THE METACOGNITIVE performance of four groups of students was examined. The students' processes of visual analysis and discrimination of real-life pictures were used to measure metacognition. There were 61 participants: 18 hearing students, 18 deaf and hard of hearing students, 16 students with mild mental disabilities, and 9 students with physical disabilities. Analysis revealed no significant differences among hearing students, deaf and hard of hearing students, and students with physical disabilities. The performance of these three groups of students was significantly better than the performance of students with mild mental disabilities. It appears that students with mild mental disabilities encountered difficulties with pictures that required complex visual analyses and discriminations. These difficulties were manifested in a form of deficient simultaneous visual processing along with a low level of knowledge acquisition.     

Measuring students' metacognition in real-life situations

Metacognitive performance of four groups of students (hearing high-achieving, hearing average-achieving, hearing under achieving, and deaf and hard of hearing) in first through third grade in the United Arab Emirates was examined and compared. Metacognition was measured using analyses of pictures depicting real-life problematic events, situations, and behaviors. Participants drew on their ability to apply problem solving and logical reasoning through visual analysis and discrimination of test materials rather than through verbal analysis. Results revealed that metacognition is influenced by students' age. Older students scored significantly higher on the metacognitive measure than younger students. Further analysis indicated that hearing high-achieving students scored significantly higher on the test than the other three groups when the age variable was controlled for. Deaf and hard of hearing students performed similarly to age-matched hearing students in applying reasoning skills to real-life situations.     

Metacognitive Performances of Hearing Students and of Students who are Deaf and Hard‐of‐Hearing on Two Types of Measures: Visual–voiced and visual–visual stimuli

A small sample of 20 hearing students and 20 students who are deaf and hard‐of‐hearing participated in this study, which compared their performances on two measures of metacognition. The first measure required participants to visually analyse real‐life pictures and then to choose a response from four options (voiced or signed) indicating which was the best explanation of what was depicted. The second measure required participants to look at five pictures and then to point to the picture that was different. Results identified no significant differences between the performances of the two groups of students on either measure. Males in both groups performed at comparable levels on the two measures, whereas females who were hearing and those who were deaf or hard‐of‐hearing performed significantly better on the visual–voiced measure than on the visual–visual measure. Limitations of this study and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Metacognitive ability from a theory-of-mind perspective: a cross-cultural study of students with and without hearing loss

Theory of Mind (see, e.g., Bartsch & Estes, 1996) is a concept that can help educators understand how students think about their state of mind and that of others involved in various life situations. To examine the impact of culture and the impact of hearing loss on metacognition as explained by Theory of Mind, two samples of students with and without hearing losses who were from two different cultures were compared on their ability to choose pictures representing their perspectives on specific life situations. The two groups did not differ in their metacognitive interpretations of the experiences when they were from the same culture, although students from different cultures did differ, indicating that culture may have a greater impact on metacognition as explained by Theory of Mind than hearing loss. Data collected in the present study affirmed previous research showing that students with hearing losses could make metacognitive decisions about life situations just as ably as their hearing peers from the same culture.     

高、低考试焦虑者的工作记忆刷新功能:任务负荷与刺激材料的影响

以考试相关和中性图片为刺激材料,采用n-back实验范式,考察高、低任务负荷条件下,高、低考试焦虑者的工作记忆刷新表现。结果表明:高、低负荷任务中,高考试焦虑者对考试相关图片的反应时都显著长于低焦虑者;高负荷任务中,高考试焦虑者对考试相关图片的反应正确率显著低于低考试焦虑者,而在低负荷任务中无差异。对中性图片的反应时及正确率两组均无差异。研究认为,高负荷条件下,高考试焦虑者对考试相关图片的工作记忆刷新功能较低考试焦虑者有显著缺陷。     

Teacher education pedagogy: disrupting the apprenticeship of observation

Teacher educators are challenged to enact a pedagogy that helps facilitate conceptual transitions in preservice teachers away from the naïve notions formed during their long apprenticeships of observation. This study examines one ‘educative experience purposefully embedded in meaningful pedagogical experiences’ using the three-level model of teacher learning. Findings indicate preservice teachers derived a range of learning from the educative experience, and most were found to be surfacing, confronting, and beginning to replace naïve notions of teaching, learning, and assessment. Findings also suggest several characteristics of teacher education pedagogy that disrupt the apprenticeship of observation, including the presentation of dramatically new ideas to elicit the awareness of unexamined assumptions about teaching and learning; the usefulness of affect in awakening that awareness; and opportunities to develop metacognition and process reactions through writing that surfaces prior ideas and articulates new understandings.     

The truth,but not yet: avoiding naïve skepticism via explicit communication of metadisciplinary aims

ABSTRACT

Introductory students regularly endorse naïve skepticism – unsupported or uncritical doubt about the existence and universality of truth – for a variety of reasons. Though some of the reasons for students’ skepticism can be traced back to the student – for example, a desire to avoid engaging with controversial material or a desire to avoid offense – naïve skepticism is also the result of how introductory courses are taught, deemphasizing truth to promote students’ abilities to develop basic disciplinary skills. While this strategy has a number of pedagogical benefits, it prevents students in early stages of intellectual development from understanding truth as a threshold concept. I argue that we can make progress against naïve skepticism by clearly discussing how metadisciplinary aims differ at the disciplinary and course levels in a way that is meaningful, reinforced, and accessible.     

THE EFFECTS OF COGNITIVE STYLES ON NAÏVE IMPETUS THEORY APPLICATION DEGREES OF PRE-SERVICE SCIENCE TEACHERS

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a relationship between pre-service science teachers’ Field Dependent or Field Independent (FD/FI) cognitive styles and the application of degrees of naive impetus theory. The sample consisted of 122 pre-service science teachers (97 females and 25 males) who were enrolled in the Introductory Physics course required by the Science Education program. Data were collected in two successive years, after the completion of the required Introductory Physics undergraduate courses, in 2008 and 2009. The Group Embedded Figure Test and Impetus Theory Application Test (a two-tier-type test) were administered to assess the FD/FI tendency of students and to determine the degree students applied the naïve impetus theory, respectively. Initial results showed that a majority of students had made use of the native impetus theory repeatedly. The results also indicated that the degree to which students applied the naïve impetus theory was statistically related to their FD/FI cognitive styles. The findings of this research showed that there existed a statistically significant difference between the FI and FD students’ degree of applying the naïve impetus theory in favor of FI students. However, the test score gap between FI and FD students remained almost constant regardless of the testing instruments utilized in this study.     

Naïve and informed views on the nature of scientific inquiry in large-scale assessments: Two sides of the same coin or different currencies?

Many models in the field of epistemic cognition conceptualize students' views as being on a continuum between the poles of naïve and informed views. Against this background, the aim of the present study was to find out whether views on the nature of scientific inquiry (NOSI views) should be conceptualized and quantitatively assessed in a more multiplistic manner, considering naïve and informed views in their own, separate dimensions. Based on a competence model defining three inquiry methods, we developed a Likert-scaled questionnaire containing 10 scales, each assessing one NOSI view. We administered the questionnaire to a sample of 802 students in the lower and upper levels of secondary school. Based on structural equation modeling, the analyses confirmed a 10-dimensional model, distinguishing between each naïve and informed views as the only adequate representation of the data. Latent class analysis and interview data revealed four profiles of NOSI views in the data, which differed with regard to their agreement or disagreement with different naïve and informed views. We interpret these findings as evidence that supports more multiplistic models, with relevance to conceptualizing, measuring, and fostering NOSI views. We derive future directions of nature of science and NOSI research linking basic and applied research using experimental studies.     

Teachers’ beliefs systems about improving transfer of algebraic skills from mathematics into physics in senior pre-university education

Senior pre-university education (SPE) students experience difficulties applying mathematics to physics. This paper reports the outcome of an online explorative quantitative study of teachers' belief systems about improving transfer of algebraic skills from mathematics into physics, conducted among 503 mathematics and physics teachers working in SPE. We used a questionnaire with 16 beliefs about improving transfer, and asked teachers to select a top 5 and distribute 50 points among them. We used agglomerative hierarchical clustering to cluster qualified SPE teachers with more than 10 years of teaching experience. We found 3 large clusters, each containing naïve and desirable beliefs about transfer. These clusters turned out to be rather coherent sets of beliefs. Hence, these clusters can be interpreted as belief systems, to a certain extent justifying Ernest's [(1991). The philosophy of mathematics education. London: Falmer.] idea to cluster teachers based on their belief systems. We found relations between our groups and those of Ernest. Since naïve beliefs turn out to be weak in each cluster, science teacher educators can help science teachers to change their harmful naïve beliefs, into desirable transfer enhancing beliefs. Furthermore, we discuss some implications of our results for science teacher educators, curricula, teachers and textbooks.     

Implementation of Ethical Higher Education Marketing

Tertiary Education and Management - With consumerism changing students to customers and teachers to service providers, ever more vulnerable and naïve students enrol and, instead of...     

三种学业成绩水平学生元认知、学习动机的比较

对学业成绩优、中、差三类学生的元认知、学习动机水平进行比较发现:与学习优秀生相比,学习中等生的元认知水平明显落后,其学习动机水平则与学优生基本相当,未表现出显著偏低的态势。而学习困难生在元认知与学习动机这两因素上都显著低于学习优秀生。与学习中等生相比,学习困难学生有着与中等生较为一致的元认知水平,但学困生的学习动机水平显著偏低。这对教育的启示是:对学困生的干预补救应以激发和培养学习动机为重点,而对中等生的促进则应以元认知水平的提高为关键。     

Empathy Development in Teacher Candidates

Using a grounded theory research design, the author examined 180 reflective essays of teacher candidates who participated in a ‘Learning Process Project,’ in which they were asked to synthesize and document their discoveries about the learning process over the course of a completely new learning experience as naïve learners. This study explored (1) the use of grounded theory as a systematic and exploratory research tool, (2) the transformative insights of the teacher candidates as they discovered the impact of the naïve learner perspective on their teaching philosophies, and (3) the role of the naïve learner perspective in effective refinement of teaching and learning ability. Further discussion in this study examined the potential of the ‘Learning Process Project’ to assist post secondary instructors as mentors in supporting empathic teacher candidates who will in turn support and mentor the children in their care.     

Item feature effects in evolution assessment

Despite concerted efforts by science educators to understand patterns of evolutionary reasoning in science students and teachers, the vast majority of evolution education studies have failed to carefully consider or control for item feature effects in knowledge measurement. Our study explores whether robust contextualization patterns emerge within particular evolutionary reasoning contexts, and the implications of these patterns for instruction, assessment, and models of cognition. We test four hypotheses regarding item feature effects on undergraduate biology majors' evolutionary reasoning using a sample of 1,200 open response explanations of evolutionary change across items differing in context and scale but standardized by taxon and trait. Evolutionary explanations were atomized into a series of scientific and naïve biological elements and tallied among prompts and their features. We documented clear, significant, and predictable item feature effects on evolutionary explanations. Tasks involving evolutionary trait loss elicited a significantly greater number of naïve biological elements than evolutionary trait gain tasks in all contexts, including: within species comparisons, between species comparisons, animal prompts, and plant prompts. Tasks involving between species evolutionary comparisons, regardless of gain or loss, animal or plant, always produced significantly more naïve biological explanatory elements than within species comparisons. For items prompting explanation of trait gain, the use of the core concepts of natural selection were not influenced by the hierarchical level of the task (within or between species). Explanations of trait gain were also the least sensitive to scale and context. Core concepts of natural selection were always deployed less frequently in cases of evolutionary trait loss (within and between species, in animals and plants). We discuss a series of implications of these findings for curriculum, instruction, and assessment. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 237–256, 2011     

Effects of Model‐based Teaching on Pre‐service Physics Teachers’ Conceptions of the Moon,Moon Phases,and Other Lunar Phenomena

The purpose of this study was twofold. First, it was aimed to identify Turkish pre‐service physics teachers’ knowledge and understanding of the Moon, Moon phases, and other lunar phenomena. Second, the effects of model‐based teaching on pre‐service teachers’ conceptions were examined. Conceptions were proposed as mental models in this study. Four different questionnaires including 22 generative, explanation, and factual questions were used through the study. The pre‐service physics teachers’ mental models generated in response to lunar phenomena might be representations of their naïve knowledge as a result of their causal observations and experiences with the world, and their misconceptions as a result of inconsistencies between their naïve knowledge and scientific knowledge. Therefore, the pre‐service teachers’ mental models were categorized based on the work by Chi and Roscoe. Some of the pre‐service teachers’ mental models shifted from flawed or incomplete mental models to correct mental models of the Moon and lunar phenomena with the facilitation of model‐based teaching. The conclusions of the study carry implications for curriculum developers and teacher education.     

Epistemic Beliefs,Online Search Strategies,and Behavioral Patterns While Exploring Socioscientific Issues

Online information searching tasks are usually implemented in a technology-enhanced science curriculum or merged in an inquiry-based science curriculum. The purpose of this study was to examine the role students’ different levels of scientific epistemic beliefs (SEBs) play in their online information searching strategies and behaviors. Based on the measurement of an SEB survey, 42 undergraduate and graduate students in Taiwan were recruited from a pool of 240 students and were divided into sophisticated and naïve SEB groups. The students’ self-perceived online searching strategies were evaluated by the Online Information Searching Strategies Inventory, and their search behaviors were recorded by screen-capture videos. A sequential analysis was further used to analyze the students’ searching behavioral patterns. The results showed that those students with more sophisticated SEBs tended to employ more advanced online searching strategies and to demonstrate a more metacognitive searching pattern.     

University students’ conceptions of learning across multiple domains

Research on students’ conceptions of learning is a growing and complex area of interest in the field of psychology of education. Even though much of the investigation addressed to explore conceptions of learning at the university level, still less research has considered how naïve (i.e. ‘learning as reduction of deficit knowledge through individual effort’) and sophisticated (i.e. ‘learning as opportunity and self-efficacy’) conceptions of learning are related to personal and contextual factors. This research investigated how gender, academic area, and level of study influence university students’ conceptions of learning. Three hundred forty-six university students participated in the study. They were either from humanities (240) or technical-scientific (106) areas of study and they were attending either a Bachelor (140) or Master’s degree (206) course. Conceptions of learning were explored using a self-report instrument (Learning Conceptions Questionnaire; LCQ). A MANOVA revealed that females show conceptions of learning more related to social and motivational aspects of learning with a greater personal involvement, compared with males. No typical pattern of conceptions of learning was found for humanities students or for technical-scientific students. Increasing with the level of study, students showed both naïve and sophisticated conceptions of learning increased, since both ‘learning as reduction of deficit knowledge through individual effort’ and ‘learning as opportunities and self-efficacy’ were more likely. Implications of these results and future lines of research will be discussed.     

A Look into Students’ Retention of Acquired Nature of Science Understandings

Having the learning and retention of science content and skills as a goal of scientific literacy, it is significant to study the issue of retention as it relates to teaching and learning about nature of science (NOS). Then, the purpose of this study was to investigate the development of NOS understandings of students, and the retention of these understandings four months after being acquired through explicit reflective instruction in relation to two contexts. Participants were 24 tenth-grade students at a private high school in a city in the Middle East. Explicit NOS instruction was addressed within a six-week unit about genetic engineering. Three NOS aspects were integrated and dispersed across the unit. A questionnaire, together with semi-structured interviews, was administered as pre-, post-, and delayed post-test to assess the retention of participants’ NOS understandings. The questionnaire had two open-ended scenarios addressing controversial socioscientific issues about genetically modified food and water fluoridation. Results showed that most students improved their naïve understandings of NOS in relation to the two contexts following the six-week unit with the explicit NOS instruction. However, these newly acquired NOS understandings were not retained by all students four months after instruction. Many of the students reverted back to their earlier naïve understandings. Conclusions about the factors facilitating the process of retention as the orientation to meaningful learning and the prolonged exposure to the domain were discussed in relation to practical implications in the classroom.     

Theories of mind and personal epistemology: their interrelation and connection with the concept of metacognition

This paper seeks to highlight the links and discrepancies between three contemporary theoretical fields. The first part is devoted to theories of mind and personal epistemology. Both fields deal with naïve theories relating to the nature of knowledge and can be integrated within the concept of folk epistemology (Kitchener New Ideas Psychol 20:89–105, 2002). We argue that analyzing both domains from a developmental perspective may provide evidence for the origins of epistemological beliefs and the reasons for their evolution. The second part of the paper extends the discussion to the concept of metacognition and to its potential links with the two previously mentioned fields. In the past, theories of mind and metacognition have mainly developed as independent fields, but recent studies have highlighted a possible developmental lineage between them that needs further investigation. As the influence of the procedural component of metacognition (the regulation process) seems obvious in the personal epistemology perspective, we suggest that conducting more in situ studies will enable us to deepen our understanding of the links between the multiple components of the epistemological perspective and the reasons for epistemic change.