The relation between students’ motivational beliefs and their use of motivational regulation strategies

The goal of this study was to investigate the relation between a set of pre-decisional beliefs including students’ task value, self-efficacy, and learning and performance goal orientations and five post-decisional, implementation strategies students use to regulate their effort and persistence for the academic tasks assigned for a specific class. A group of eighth grade students (N=114) completed a self-report survey that assessed these four motivational beliefs and the frequency that they used five motivational regulation strategies including self-consequating, environmental control, interest enhancement, and mastery and performance self-talk. Results from a series of multiple regressions indicated that the motivational beliefs, as a group, could be used to explain students’ reported use of each of the regulatory strategies examined. Further, results indicated that task value, learning goal orientation, and performance goal orientation individually explained three or more of the regulatory strategies, whereas self-efficacy was not related significantly to any of the five regulatory strategies studied. Findings are presented and interpreted in light of their significance for models specifying both motivational and volitional aspects of self-regulation.     

University students’ grasp of inflection points

This paper describes university students’ grasp of inflection points. The participants were asked what inflection points are, to mark inflection points on graphs, to judge the validity of related statements, and to find inflection points by investigating (1) a function, (2) the derivative, and (3) the graph of the derivative. We found four erroneous images of inflection points: (1) f ′ (x)?=?0 as a necessary condition, (2) f ′ (x)?≠?0 as a necessary condition, (3) f ″ (x)?=?0 as a sufficient condition, and (4) the location of “a peak point, where the graph bends” as an inflection point. We use the lenses of Fischbein, Tall, and Vinner and Duval’s frameworks to analyze students’ errors that were rooted in mathematical and in real-life contexts.     

E-learning with multiple-try-feedback: Can hints foster students’ achievement during the semester?

Educational technology research and development - E-learning opportunities have become an increasingly important component of university education. Various laboratory studies have shown that...     

Science and engineering students’ use of diagrams during note taking versus explanation

The use of diagrams in learning and communication is generally considered efficacious and an important skill to cultivate, especially among science students. At the same time, previous research has revealed many problems in student diagram use, including a lack of spontaneity in such use, but the extent to which these problems persist into the tertiary level had not been investigated. The present study examined science and engineering university students’ use of diagrams in note taking to learn information from a written passage, and in a subsequent task of constructing an explanation of that information for another person. The results showed that the students used significantly fewer diagrams in explaining compared to when they were note taking, suggesting that many students may lack awareness of the usefulness of diagrams in effectively communicating information to others. The results also revealed that the students used significantly more diagrams in taking notes from and explaining a passage with higher imageability (i.e. easier to visually imagine) compared to one with lower imageability. Educational implications of the findings are discussed.     

Dissonance in students’ regulation of learning processes

In this article, dissonance in students’ way of learning is explored from a regulation of learning perspective. First, consonant patterns of interrelations among learning elements are sketched. These patterns were identified in studies with university students by means of a diagnostic instrument, the Inventory of Learning Styles (ILS), that assesses four learning components: cognitive processing strategies, metacognitive regulation strategies, mental models of learning, and learning orientations. Consonant patterns of linkages among these components result in four qualitatively different ways of learning or learning styles: undirected, reproduction-directed, meaning-directed and application-directed learning. Next, several studies that used the ILS as a research instrument were examined for indications of dissonant patterns of interrelations among these learning components. The students in these studies ranged from early secondary school to adult university students. Five phenomena of dissonance could be identified: lack of differentiation within learning components, lack of integration between learning components, incompatibility of learning strategies, models and orientations, missing learning style elements, and a lack of distinct application-directed learning. These phenomena are described and documented. Finally, the results are discussed in relation to other recent studies on dissonant study orchestrations and in terms of their practical meaning. A developmental explanation for the occurrence of some manifestations of dissonance is offered.     

University students’ meta-modelling knowledge

Background: As one part of scientific meta-knowledge, students’ meta-modelling knowledge should be promoted on different educational levels such as primary school, secondary school and university. This study focuses on the assessment of university students’ meta-modelling knowledge using a paper–pencil questionnaire.

Purpose: The general purpose of this study was to assess and to describe university students’ meta-modelling knowledge. More specifically, it was analysed to what extent the meta-modelling knowledge, as expressed in a questionnaire, depends on the scientific discipline to which university students relate their answer and the concrete model to which they refer while answering.

Sample: N = 184 students from one German university voluntarily participated in this study.

Design and methods: The questionnaire was developed based on a theoretical framework for model competence and includes constructed response items asking about the purpose of models, ways for testing models and reasons for changing models. Students written answers were first analysed qualitatively based on the theoretical framework to decide whether they expressed advanced understandings or not. Further analyses then were conducted quantitatively.

Results: Findings suggest that only few university students possess an advanced meta-modelling knowledge. However, significant more students who relate their answers to the STEM-disciplines expressed advanced understandings than those who referred to social sciences or linguistics/philology. Furthermore, university students who expressed an advanced meta-modelling knowledge referred to rather abstract kinds of models in order to explain their view.

Conclusions: The present study supports the assumption that meta-modelling knowledge may be situated and contextualised. Both the scientific discipline and the concrete model to which university students refer seem to be relevant item features influencing university students’ expressed meta-modelling knowledge. Implications for assessment and teaching are discussed in the article.     

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.     

Multilingual students’ use of translanguaging in science classrooms

ABSTRACT

This study describes multilingual students’ authentic use of their first and second languages in a translanguaging science classroom, from a sociocultural perspective. The study is ethnographic, and has followed some lessons each month in a translanguaging science classroom at a primary school for three years. The observed lessons were documented by four video cameras and four audio recorders, while field notes and different types of students’ texts and other teaching materials were also collected. In order investigate how language operates, and to realise the meaning semantically, we analysed the students’ use of both first and second language to tie paradigmatic relations, and how they move in linguistic loops between languages and discourses. The results illustrate the ways in which a translanguaging science classroom constitutes a resource in joint negotiations of the scientific content and its related language for multilingual students, and benefits the students’ ability to relate and contextualise the science content to prior experience. The creation of translanguaging science classrooms, in which students’ experiences and diverse cultural and linguistic resources interweave with school science, and in which multilingual students are enabled and encouraged to use all available language resources, has important implications for science education.     

University students’ perceptions of summative assessment: The role of context

We report on a mixed-method study that compared students’ perceptions of summative assessment across two distinct disciplines – education and mathematics, at two research-intensive institutions in the UK. The disciplines chosen represent opposing positions in Biglan’s classification of academic disciplines, as well as having very different assessment practices. Results suggest that these education students prefer to be assessed by methods they perceive to discriminate on the basis of academic abilities. Moreover, they perceive the traditional closed-book examination as inadequate to assess the capabilities which are key to being successful in their subject, which fits some but not all of the general findings in the literature. However, comparing these results with those of an identical study with mathematics students, we find that the perceptions of summative assessment are very different. We account for that difference by suggesting that students’ epistemic beliefs play a role in shaping these perceptions and conclude that, in designing summative assessment in higher education, generalised and centralised forces for change need to be tempered by contextual and disciplinary factors.     

Prompting secondary students’ use of criteria,feedback specificity and feedback levels during an investigative task

This study investigates the effects of prompting on secondary students’ written peer feedback in chemistry investigation reports. In particular, we examined students’ feedback features in relation to the use of criteria, feedback specificity, and feedback levels. A quasi-experimental pre-test post-test design was adopted. Reviewers in the prompted condition were provided with question prompts that asked them to pose written feedback to their peers on what they did or did not do well and suggestions for improvement, while reviewers in the unprompted condition gave written peer feedback without prompts. The findings showed that prompted peer feedback has a significant effect on the number of comments related to Knowledge of errors, Suggestions for improvement and Process level feedback. This study supports the view that prompting peer feedback in the use of criteria, feedback specificity and feedback levels opens up opportunity for reviewers to engage more meaningfully with peer feedback in report writing tasks.     

University faculty members’ and students perceptions of university academic systems

There are no provisions for routine evaluations or rankings of the universities in the Federal Republic of Germany. Consequently, it has become a matter of magazines to carry out inquiries into the opinions of students and faculty members in order to assess the quality of education at German universities. One of the first studies of this type was carried out by one of Germany's most respected magazines, Der Spiegel. The results of this study, particularly the questionnaires and validity of the given response categories, were subject to vehement criticism. In this context the exploratory study described in this chapter was conceived. Students and faculty were asked to give their personal and individual views about the academic system at their given universities. In order to guarantee the subjectivity of each individual's frame of reference, the responses of students and faculty were recorded, analyzed, and compared by means of computer-assisted content analysis. The results will be used to validate quantitative instruments of inquiry and to formulate proposals for their improvement.     

Doctoral students’ use of examples in evaluating and proving conjectures

This paper discusses variation in reasoning strategies among expert mathematicians, with a particular focus on the degree to which they use examples to reason about general conjectures. We first discuss literature on the use of examples in understanding and reasoning about abstract mathematics, relating this to a conceptualisation of syntactic and semantic reasoning strategies relative to a representation system of proof. We then use this conceptualisation as a basis for contrasting the behaviour of two successful mathematics research students whilst they evaluated and proved number theory conjectures. We observe that the students exhibited strikingly different degrees of example use, and argue that previously observed individual differences in reasoning strategies may exist at the expert level. We conclude by discussing implications for pedagogy and for future research.

University students’ and teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning in the biosciences

In this study we compare university teachers’ and first-year students’ conceptions of teaching and learning at the Faculty of Environmental and Biological Sciences. The conceptions were analysed using data from open-ended questionnaires. The results showed that at the beginning of studies the gap between teachers’ and students’ conceptions of teaching and learning is substantial. This finding has important implications for the educational process. In order to enhance successful studying from the beginning of students’ university careers, it is important for teachers to become aware of the differences between students’ and teachers’ conceptions of learning.     

University students’ success: A psycho-sociological approach

The aim of this paper is to propose a basic model to analyse processes of change in educational institutions taking into account both individual and contextual variables. It aims to identify the basic factors of change in order to contribute to reduce the dispersion of research projects, both from close subjects and one subject alone within human sciences, in order to make scientific accumulation easier and to guide social practice better. This proposal is based on Cryer and Elton’s (Studies in Higher Education, 1: 75–86, 1990) contributions, in this case applied to the learning processes of university students. They may account for static and dynamic aspects. To prove its coherence, it has been statistically compared with the data of a survey carried out among university students in Catalonia (Spain).     

The influence of students’ cognitive and motivational variables in respect of cognitive conflict and conceptual change

In this study, the relationships among students’ cognitive/motivational variables, cognitive conflict, and conceptual change were investigated. Subjects were 159 seventh graders in Korea. Tests regarding logical thinking ability, field dependence/independence (FDI), meaningful learning approach, failure tolerance, mastery goal orientation, and self‐efficacy were administered to examine students’ cognitive/motivational characteristics. A preconception test and a test of responses to discrepant event were also conducted to examine the degree of students’ cognitive conflict induced by a discrepant event. Computer‐assisted instruction, designed to change an undifferentiated weight‐density concept into a scientific density concept, was then provided to students as a conceptual change intervention. A conception test was administered as a post‐test. The results indicated that FDI was the only statistically significant variable correlated with the degree of cognitive conflict. A stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that logical thinking ability, FDI, and failure tolerance were statistically significant predictors of the conception test scores. Educational implications are discussed.     

Students’ and teachers’ monitoring and regulation of students’ text comprehension: Effects of comprehension cue availability

For regulation of text learning to be effective, students need to accurately monitor their text comprehension. Similarly, to provide adaptive instruction, teachers need to accurately monitor and regulate students’ text comprehension. Performing generative activities prior to monitoring has been suggested to provide students with diagnostic cues, improving monitoring accuracy; an open question is whether this would also help teachers. We investigated whether two generative activities, diagram completion and diagram drawing, improved secondary education students’ (n = 248) monitoring and regulation accuracy of text comprehension (Experiment 1) and whether viewing students’ diagrams improved teachers’ (N = 18) monitoring and regulation of students’ text comprehension (Experiment 2). Students’ monitoring and teachers’ regulation accuracy was higher in the diagramming conditions than in the no-diagramming condition. Students and teachers used diagnostic cues when judging students’ text comprehension: Improving students’ monitoring and teachers’ regulation of students’ text comprehension relies on improving accessibility of diagnostic cues.     

Examining Hong Kong students’ motivational beliefs,strategy use and their relations with two relational factors in classrooms

This study examines Hong Kong students’ motivational beliefs, strategy use and their relations with two relational factors in classrooms – student learning community and teacher support and involvement. A total of 2206 Grade Four to Grade Nine students responded to a questionnaire that comprised three instruments, including two scales measuring student learning community and teacher support and involvement in classroom, respectively, and the Chinese version of the Motivated Strategy for Learning Questionnaire. Our findings suggest that the two relational factors could play an important role in facilitating students’ intrinsic value, self‐efficacy, and strategy use, reflecting some culture‐specific features of students’ self‐regulated learning in Hong Kong classrooms. The implications of these findings for understanding Hong Kong students’ motivational beliefs and strategy use are discussed. Finally, suggestions for future research are put forward.     

Exploring the role of assessment criteria during teachers’ collaborative judgement processes of students’ portfolios

Student portfolios are increasingly used for assessing student competences in higher education, but results about the construct validity of portfolio assessment are mixed. A prerequisite for construct validity is that the portfolio assessment is based on relevant portfolio content. Assessment criteria, are often used to enhance this condition. This study aims to identify whether assessment criteria can improve content, argumentation and communication during teacher moderation while judging student portfolios. Six teachers scored 32 student portfolios in dyads with and without assessment criteria. Their judgement processes were qualitatively analysed. Results indicated that the quality of their judgement processes was low, since teachers based their judgements mainly on their own personal opinion and less on evidence found in the portfolio. Teachers barely paid attention to quality checks and easily agreed with each other. When teachers used assessment criteria, the quality of their judgements slightly improved. They based their judgements more on relevant evidence, used less personal experiences and more often checked the quality of their judgement processes. It is concluded that the quality of teacher portfolio judgement is low, and that the use of assessment criteria can enhance its quality.     

What GATE Did: an exploration of the effects of the CATE criteria on students’ use of information technology during teaching practice

ABSTRACT

Information technology (IT) has assumed an increasingly important role in the English primary school curriculum. The CATE criteria (DES, 1989b) require that student teachers develop competencies in teaching with IT if courses are to be accredited. Consequently, colleges have modified their policies and practices. To explore the effects of these changes, the experiences of a group of students were monitored over their four year course at Edge Hill College, and related to the experiences of students from a pre‐CATE cohort The CATE group made more use of IT in each of their teaching practices, with every respondent reporting some use of IT. Word processing was the most common IT based activity; uses of LOGO and simulations were disappointingly low. Students’ accounts of the benefits to pupils from using IT focused largely on improving skills in specific subject areas and computer skills, increasing motivation, and facilitating group and social skills. Little emphasis was placed on the development of thinking skills. Very few tutors offered help with IT on teaching practice; tutor skills, and in‐school mentoring both appear to be barriers to development These data are related to on‐going developments in the College. CATE has had, and continues to have, a direct effect upon College practices and these effects are visible in the classroom experiences of student teachers. Yet more progress is needed in developing student teachers’ abilities to use IT in class; we conclude that IT development should be seen as the focus for long term development, like other professional skills.