Effects of teacher feedback behavior on social acceptance in inclusive elementary classrooms: Exploring social referencing processes in a natural setting

Teacher feedback behavior is a key determinant of the social referencing processes that influence the social acceptance of pupils. The present longitudinal study explores how teacher feedback on academic performance and social behavior is related to social acceptance during classroom activities and recess in the natural setting of inclusive classrooms. Data come from a study with 32 teachers and their 546 first to third grade pupils in Switzerland. Teacher feedback behavior was videotaped and peer nominations and ratings were used to assess social acceptance. Multilevel regression analyses showed that feedback on incorrect social behavior was negatively correlated with feedback on correct academic performance. Teacher feedback on incorrect social behavior and on correct and incorrect academic performance predicted how pupils were accepted by their peers during classroom activities. However, teacher feedback did not affect social acceptance during recess. The effect of teacher feedback behavior on social acceptance appears to depend on context. Social acceptance during classroom activities is influenced by teacher feedback whereas social acceptance at recess is not.     

Preschoolers' Understanding of the Link between Thinking and Feeling: Congnitive Cuing and Emotional Change

In 3 studies we investigated 3- through 6-year-olds' knowledge of thinking and feeling by examining their understanding of how emotions can change when memories of past sad events are cued by objects in the current environment. In Study 1, 48 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds were presented with 4 illustrated stories in which tocal characters experience minor sad events. Later, each story character encounters a visual cue that is related to one of his or her previous sad experiences. Children were told that the character felt sad and they were asked ot explain why. Study 1 suggested considerable competence as well as substantial development in the years between 4 and 6 in the understandings of the influence of mental activity on emotions. Studies 2 and 3 more systematically explored preschoolers' understanding of cognitive cuing and emotional change with difterent types of situations and cues. Across these 2 studies, 108 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds listened to illustrated stories that featured story characters who each experienced a sad event and swho were later exposed to a related cue. Children were not only asked to explain why the characters suddenly felt sad, but in some stories, they were also asked to predict and explain how another character, who was never at the past sad event, would feel. Results of studies 2 and 3 showed an initial understanding of cognitive cuing and emotion in some children as young as 3, replicated and extended the evidence for significant developmental changes in that understanding during the preschool years, and revealed that the strenght and consistency of preschoolers' knowledge of cognitive cuing and emotion was affected by whether cues were the sme, or only similar to, parts of the earlier events.     

Contextual factors affect absent reference comprehension in 14-month-olds

How do infants come to understand references to absent objects? 14-month-old infants first learned a name for a novel toy, which was then placed out of view. The infants who listened to a story mentioning the nonvisible object, looked, pointed, and searched for it more often than did infants who heard a story using a different name. Their behavior was affected by minor changes in context; they responded to the name of the out-of-view toy less often when it was not easily accessible or after a delay. These findings indicate that the development of absence reference comprehension depends on the interaction of representational and contextual factors.     

Can We Learn From Student Mistakes in a Formative,Reading Comprehension Assessment?

This article describes an ongoing project to develop a formative, inferential reading comprehension assessment of causal story comprehension. It has three features to enhance classroom use: equated scale scores for progress monitoring within and across grades, a scale score to distinguish among low‐scoring students based on patterns of mistakes, and a reading efficiency index. Instead of two response types for each multiple‐choice item, correct and incorrect, each item has three response types: correct and two incorrect response types. Prior results on reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, and predictive utility of mistake subscores are briefly described. The three‐response‐type structure of items required rethinking the item response theory (IRT) modeling. IRT‐modeling results are presented, and implications for formative assessments and instructional use are discussed.     

Deriving word meanings from context: does explanation facilitate contextual analysis?

The ability to derive the meanings of words from supportive story contexts was studied in 45 7‐ to 8‐year‐olds. Children read short stories each containing a different novel word and defined the word at the end of each story. There were three intervention sessions. One group was asked to justify their definition and subsequently received feedback on its accuracy. A second group was given feedback first and asked to explain how the experimenter knew the correct answer. A third (control) received feedback only. In general, practice led to improved performance, with an increased number of children in all groups using the story context to derive meanings for the novel words in a post‐intervention test. Children in the two explanation groups made the greatest gains in definition accuracy. The implications for teaching vocabulary learning skills are discussed.     

Students' response to traditional and computer-assisted formative feedback: A comparative case study

The national movement towards progress files, incorporating personal development planning and reflective learning, is supported by lecturers providing effective feedback to their students. Recent technological advances mean that higher education tutors are no longer obliged to return comments in the ‘traditional’ manner, by annotating students' work with red pen. This paper considers some of the options currently available for returning computer‐assisted feedback, including the Electronic Feedback freeware. This MS Office application enables tutors to readily synthesise and email feedback reports to students. To further ascertain the value of this software, 169 1st‐year Pharmaceutical Science and Pharmacy students completed a questionnaire to gauge their reaction to formative feedback on an extended laboratory report. This included 110 responses from students graded by three tutors who marked work using either handwritten annotations or the Electronic Feedback program. Principle component analysis (PCA) of the Likert scale responses indicates that the identity of the marker did not significantly affect the response of students. However, the type of feedback was a factor that influenced the students' responses, with electronic feedback being rated superior. A Mann‐Whitney analysis of the satisfaction ratings (generated by PCA) indicates that four features of the assignment and feedback were considered significantly improved when the software was used to create feedback, namely; markscheme clarity, feedback legibility, information on deficient aspects, and identification of those parts of the work where the student did well. Modern academics face a number of challenges if they wish to return meaningful and timely feedback to students, among them large class sizes and infrequent face‐to‐face contact. It is pleasing to note, therefore, that assessors reported taking less time to mark when using the software. It is concluded that electronic formative feedback can be returned more quickly and may be used to synthesise relevant feedback that is both fair and balanced.     

Refutations in science texts lead to hypercorrection of misconceptions held with high confidence

Misconceptions about science are often not corrected during study when they are held with high confidence. However, when corrective feedback co-activates a misconception together with the correct conception, this feedback may surprise the learner and draw attention, especially when the misconceptions are held with high confidence. Therefore, high-confidence misconceptions might be more likely to be corrected than low-confidence misconceptions. The present study investigates whether this hypercorrection effect occurs when students read science texts. Effects of two text formats were compared: Standard texts that presented factual information, and refutation texts that explicitly addressed misconceptions and refuted them before presenting factual information. Eighth grade adolescents (N = 114) took a pre-reading test that included 16 common misconceptions about science concepts, rated their confidence in correctness of their response to the pre-reading questions, read 16 texts about the science concepts, and finally took a post-test which included both true/false and open-ended test questions. Analyses of post-test responses show that reading refutation texts causes hypercorrection: Learners more often corrected high-confidence misconceptions after reading refutation texts than after reading standard texts, whereas low-confidence misconceptions did not benefit from reading refutation texts. These outcomes suggest that people are more surprised when they find out a confidently held misconception is incorrect, which may encourage them to pay more attention to the feedback and the refutation. Moreover, correction of high-confidence misconceptions was more apparent on the true/false test responses than on the open-ended test, suggesting that additional interventions may be needed to improve learners' accommodation of the correct information.     

Performance,Perseverance, and the Full Picture of College Readiness

Although college readiness is a centerpiece of major educational initiatives such as the Common Core State Standards, few systems have been implemented to track children's progress toward this goal. Instead, college‐readiness information is typically conveyed late in a student's high‐school career, and tends to focus solely on academic accomplishments—grades and admissions test scores. Late‐stage feedback can be problematic for students who need to correct course, so the purpose of this research is to develop a system for communicating more comprehensive college‐readiness diagnoses earlier in a child's K‐12 career. This article introduces college‐readiness indicators for middle‐school students, drawing on the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS), a nationally representative longitudinal survey of educational inputs, contexts, and outcomes. A diversity of middle‐school variables was synthesized into six factors: achievement, behavior, motivation, social engagement, family circumstances, and school characteristics. Middle‐school factors explain 69% of the variance in college readiness, and results suggest a variety of factors beyond academic achievement—most notably motivation and behavior—contribute substantially to preparedness for postsecondary study. The article concludes with limitations and future directions, including the development of college‐readiness categories to support straightforward communication of middle‐school indicators to parents, teachers, and students.     

Does formative feedback on search behaviour help students in answering comprehension questions from an available text? / ¿Ayuda la retroalimentación formativa sobre el comportamiento de búsqueda a contestar preguntas de comprensión en lecturas con texto disponible?

This study analyses the efficacy of formative feedback to boost students’ search behaviour when answering comprehension questions in a with-text reading situation, which is a common reading situation in instructional and assessment settings. In these reading situations search strategies play an important role to predict students’ performance. Sixty-five high school students read two texts and answered eight multiple-choice comprehension questions per text using the software Read&Answer, which recorded all the students’ actions. After answering each question, students received either global-search-feedback or specific-search-feedback, which differed in the specificity of their information, or no-feedback. Participants who received any feedback had a second chance to correct their wrong answers. Specific-search-feedback increased students’ search decisions and improved their use of relevant information to repair wrong answers over global-search-feedback. Consequently, specific-search-feedback improved students’ performance when they corrected wrong answers over global-search-feedback. These results have implications for the design and implementation of formative feedback in computer-based systems aimed at improving students’ performance and teaching reading literacy skills.     

Young Children,Television & Learning: Part II. Comparison of the effects of reading and story telling by the teacher and television story viewing

Three groups of 6‐ to 7‐year old children were used to compare the effects of stories read by a teacher with stories viewed on educational television. Weekly, for ten weeks, a story was read to Group A while the same story was seen on television by Groups B and C, Group B being prepared for the story by the teacher and given appropriate follow‐on. Questioning for understanding and recall showed that, at the end of the ten weeks, the largest gains were made by the Group B children, who showed improvement in their classification ability and in application of their understanding to domains beyond the confines of the immediate story structure. Television was preferred by the children for its pictures, movement and action, and generated more detailed understanding and recall, but only when the stories were interpreted and rationalised by the teacher. Video recorder replay is helpful, and teachers need to be taught how best to manage story‐telling with young children     

Brain Regions for Perceiving and Reasoning About Other People in School-Aged Children

Neuroimaging studies with adults have identified cortical regions recruited when people think about other people's thoughts (theory of mind): temporo-parietal junction, posterior cingulate, and medial prefrontal cortex. These same regions were recruited in 13 children aged 6–11 years when they listened to sections of a story describing a character's thoughts compared to sections of the same story that described the physical context. A distinct region in the posterior superior temporal sulcus was implicated in the perception of biological motion. Change in response selectivity with age was observed in just one region. The right temporo–parietal junction was recruited equally for mental and physical facts about people in younger children, but only for mental facts in older children.     

An Exploration of the Interaction between Speech Rate,Gender, and Cognitive Style in their Effect on Recall

This paper explores how the interaction between cognitive style, gender, and type of task predicts task outcome, particularly when presentation speed is varied. A sample of 91 11‐year‐old pupils completed the Cognitive Style Analysis. Pupils were assigned to one of two groups balanced for gender and cognitive style. Group 1 listened to a recording of a passage presented at 84wpm; Group 2 listened to the same passage at 197wpm. Pupils were then required to comprehend and recall information from the passage that required assimilation of distantly positioned information. Male verbalisers and female imagers performed well in the slow condition but poorly in the fast condition. Female verbalisers showed improved performance in the fast condition. Results indicate that the interaction between verbal–imagery style and gender predicts the outcome of verbal tasks, especially when processing speed is restricted. These results support differences in information processing between genders and also suggest that this processing is mediated by verbal–imagery cognitive style.     

“挑战”与“应战”——以玛雅文明的盛衰为例

根据汤因比"挑战""应战"理论,文明的产生与发展缘于人群对外界"挑战"的正确"应战",而文明的衰亡则归因于"应战"的错误。中美洲玛雅人面对自然"挑战"时,正确地栽培了玉米,创制了水神,精研了天文历法,铸就了让世界为之惊叹的古老文明;却因古典期末期盲目扩张耕地、疯狂祭祀、频繁内战等一系列错误的"应战"措施而葬送了文明的辉煌。玛雅人的教训对于"全球化问题"日益严峻的21世纪有着深刻的启示意义。     

Preschoolers explore interactive storybook apps: The effect on word recognition and story comprehension

Two experiments explored the effects of reading digital storybooks on tablet computers with 25 preschoolers, aged 4–5. In the first experiment, the students’ word recognition scores were found to increase significantly more when students explored a digital storybook and employed the read-aloud function than when they were read to from a comparable print book. Their comprehension scores did not change significantly in the two conditions. In Experiment 2, the same students explored digital storybooks with more animation embedded in them. The students listened to the read aloud function on the tablet computer and explored digital storybooks in both conditions, but in one condition a teacher guided the talk about the story. Contrary to expectations, the students’ word recognition and story comprehension scores were higher in the independent condition than in the guided condition. One explanation for the higher word recognition scores when students were reading with the tablet computer is the effect of multimedia, like hotspots and/or text tracking. Although digital storybooks are not a substitute for adult interaction, these preschoolers learned surprisingly well on their own. The importance of digital storybook design, as well as what elements to look for in an e-book to encourage literacy learning are discussed.     

USING THE TELEPHONE CONFERENCE TO ENHANCE INDUSTRIAL EXPERIENCE

One use of the telephone as a supplement to face‐to‐face teaching is the telephone conference. This report describes the planning and evaluation of a conference designed to enhance the experience of undergraduate Business students on industrial placement. It begins with the sort of questions ‘that have to be asked when planning such a session and describes how they were answered in this instance. The feedback from the conference provides some useful pointers for those planning similar events.     

Audio Engagement and Learning

ABSTRACT

Sound effects and music can be used to complement instructional narrations in recorded media presentations. College students (n = 143) participated in a study examining the effects of music and sound effects on learning outcomes when compared to voice-only narration. Four groups of participants listened to a recorded short story and answered questions about the story. The control group’s story was a voice-only narration. The three treatment groups’ story was enhanced with one of the following: sound effects, music, or a combination of sound effects and music. Means for each group were not significantly different, and the difference of means between and within each of the groups was also found not to be significant. The results indicated that the presence of sound effects and music in an audio-only presentation did not significantly increase or decrease learning.     

6- and 8-year-olds’ performance evaluations: Do they differ between self and unknown others?

The current study investigated kindergarteners and second graders’ ability to monitor and evaluate their own and a virtual peer’s performance in a paired-associate learning task. Participants provided confidence judgments (CJs) for their own responses and performance-based judgments (judgments provided after receiving feedback on their performance) for both their own and a virtual peer’s responses. For the performance-based judgments, children were confronted with their own or the peer’s answer as well as the correct answer. Additionally, participants were asked to credit their own and the peer’s correct and incorrect answers while facing feedback. Results indicate an age-related progression in metacognitive monitoring skills, with second graders differentiating more strongly in their confidence judgments between correct and incorrect responses compared to kindergarteners. Regarding performance-based judgments, children of both age groups provided higher judgments for correctly compared to incorrectly recognized items as well as for their own responses in comparison to the responses of the unknown child. Similarly, when crediting, participants of both age groups gave more credits for correct recognition than for incorrect recognition and for their own responses than for the peer’s responses. The significant interaction between age group and recognition accuracy for the crediting shows that second graders gave more credits for correctly recognized items while kindergarteners gave more credits for incorrect answers than the older children – primarily for their own incorrect answers. In conclusion, the study provides new insights into 6- and 8-year-olds’ evaluations of their own and an unknown child’s performance in a paired-associate learning task by showing that children of both age groups generally judged and credited responses in their own favor. These results add to our understanding of biases in children’s performance evaluations, including metacognitive judgments and judgments provided after receiving feedback.     

Thinking about the past: early knowledge about links between prior experience, thinking, and emotion

In two studies the authors investigated the situations where 3- to 7-year-olds and adults (N = 152) will connect a person's current feelings to the past, especially to thinking or being reminded about a prior experience. Study 1 presented stories featuring a target character who felt sad, mad, or happy after an event in the past and who many days later felt that same negative or positive emotion upon seeing a cue related to the prior incident. For some story endings, the character's emotion upon seeing the cue matched, or was congruent, with the current situation, whereas for others, the emotion mismatched the present circumstances. Participants were asked to explain the cause of each character's current feelings. As a further comparison, children and adults listened to behavior cuing stories and provided explanations for characters' present actions. Study 2 presented emotional scenarios that varied by emotion-situation fit (whether the character's emotion matched the current situation), person-person fit (whether the character's emotion matched another person's), and past history information (whether information about the character's past was known). Results showed that although there were several significant developments with increasing age, even most 3-year-olds demonstrated some knowledge about connections between past events and present emotions and between thinking and feeling. Indeed, children 5 years and younger revealed strikingly cogent understanding about historical-mental influences in certain situations, especially where they had to explain why a person, who had experienced a negative event in the past, was currently feeling sad or mad in a positive situation. These findings help underwrite a more general account of the development of children's coherent understandings of life history, mind, and emotion.     

Affective-motivational effects of performance feedback in computer-based assessment: Does error message complexity matter?

The impact of computer-based performance feedback on students’ affective-motivational state may be very different, depending on the positive or negative direction of the feedback message and its specific content. This experiment investigated whether more elaborated error messages improve students’ affective-motivational response to negative (i.e., corrective) feedback. We systematically varied the presence and complexity of corrective feedback messages (1 × 4 between-subjects design) and analyzed the effects of the provided feedback on students’ emotions, task-related perceived usefulness, and expectancy-value beliefs. University students (N = 439) worked on a low-stakes test with 12 constructed-response geometry tasks. They received either no feedback or different complexities of immediate corrective feedback after incorrect responses (i.e., Knowledge of Results [KR], Knowledge of Correct Response [KCR], or Elaborated Feedback [EF]), paired with immediate confirmatory KCR feedback after correct responses (i.e., confirming their response). Our data showed that students’ task-level performance moderated the emotional impact of feedback (i.e., beneficial effects after correct responses; detrimental effects after incorrect responses). Students’ performance further moderated several feedback effects on students’ expectancy-value beliefs. Regarding error message complexity, we found that students reported higher levels of positive emotions after receiving EF or KCR compared to KR, while only EF decreased students' level of negative emotions compared to KR and increased students' task-related perceived usefulness compared to all other groups. Overall, our results suggest that performance feedback is likely to improve students’ affective-motivational state when the feedback confirms a correct response. Moreover, when reporting an error, EF (or KCR messages) were more beneficial to affective-motivational outcomes than simple KR notifications.