Effects of reviewing annotations and homework solutions on math learning achievement

Previous studies have demonstrated that making annotations can be a meaningful and useful learning method that promote metacognition and enhance learning achievement. A web‐based annotation system, Virtual Pen (VPEN), which provides for the creation and review of annotations and homework solutions, has been developed to foster learning process among students. In order to explore the effects of reviewing annotations and homework solutions on learning achievement, a quasi‐experiment was conducted with VPEN in a math class over a period of 4 months. It was found that reviewing own text annotations has a significant influence on learning achievement; while on the contrary, reviewing peers' text annotations has no significant influence on learning achievement. Our results show that students gain more from reviewing their own annotations than from reviewing the annotations made by peers, a contrast which reveals that annotations hold additional meaning for their creators. Further investigation revealed that only the quantity of text annotations among all other variables can significantly predict students' learning achievement. This finding may suggest that text annotations play more important roles to learning achievement than other variables, like homework. The reason is because text annotations are created by learners actively on voluntary base whereas homework is usually assigned by the teachers. Based on our findings, we suggest that teachers may consider incorporating learning activities that can foster metacognitive development into the learning process, like making annotations, solving homework and reviewing them, whereas peer learning should be encouraged only for reviewing the homework solutions of their peers with good learning achievement.     

Is the Whole Worth More than the Sum of the Parts? Studies of Examiners' Grading of Individual Papers and Candidates' Whole A-level Examination Performances

Typically, students are assessed on elements of their performance, and it is assumed that the sum of marks for these elements will be just as impressive as the students' whole performances. Examiners might expect more for a particular grade if they only see parts of the students' work separately. Two experiments were carried out comparing examiners' judgements of the grade-worthiness of candidates' A-level examination work at question paper level and at subject level. The results of both studies suggested that examiners may have compensated to some extent for the different aspects of the subject tested in different question papers when they made holistic judgements, but did not make this compensation when they made question paper judgements. Tunnel vision effects are likely to be greater in the AS/A2 examinations than those found here, because the examinations will be broken into smaller parts.     

Computer-aided authoring of assessment instruments: An activity-theoretical approach

Abstract

Various researches have been conducted on the role and importance of assessment in education as well as its impact on the learner and the overall learning process. In fact, the way assessment is formulated in a particular subject shapes the way students learn. They focus their learning to comply with assessment requirements that they anticipate. In this article, the study is focused on the written examination papers (teacher-made tests) that are normally prepared at the end of a semester or an academic year to assess students of secondary and tertiary levels. The study also investigates how well papers are set and balanced according to the cognitive levels defined by Bloom (1956) and the learning outcomes/objectives as defined for the subjects. A collaborative process model as a framework for the design of such tests that can enhance the evaluation process is proposed. A brief argument is made for a case for a computer-supported collaborative environment to implement such a framework and which is based on activity theory. Such a framework is implemented in the form of MYSTIC; a collaborative authoring software for assessment instruments. The software allows stand-alone as well as collaborative authoring of examination papers and also helps academics' decision-making concerning the examination paper balancing and moderating process by graphically displaying and comparing marks allocated per question paper against the learning objectives     

Analysing argumentative writing

This article presents a framework which has proven helpful in analysing senior secondary academic writing from a linguistic and cognitive perspective, revealing a connection between those two aspects, consistent with a Vygotskian view of the development of thinking through language. It involves a close examination of linguistic and cognitive features of students' writing for features of intentional design, which are borrowed from Design Theory, namely Contingency, Complexity and Specification. Writers' means of inserting their views into their writing is also investigated. The framework is given at the end of the article and annotations for its application and several illustrations are given in the body of the article. Its use is intended to assist teachers in identifying, very specifically, which particular aspects of a student's writing need attention.     

Les élèves et l'histoire dans l'examen français du certificat d'études primaires entre 1918 et 1926

This article presents the method used to study examination papers written by young pupils. This sort of pupils’ work can give information on who are involved in examinations.

‐ The pupils: what they learn in history and how they produce answers;

‐ The teachers: what they teach in their class and how;

‐ The juries: how they assess by means of a grade the minimum knowledge of most of the pupils who are to leave school.

The problem here is to follow the route from laws and decrees to real teachers and real pupils. Therefore, this research relies on source material such as annual primary inspector reports, annual local teachers’ meetings with model lessons, and, above all, examination papers. For this last source, a popular examination in France at that time was used: the Certificat d'Etudes, which was given at the end of the primary curriculum for 13‐year‐old pupils. By chance, the Departmental Archives of the Somme region still has 4058 history test examination papers from 1918 to 1926.     

有关试卷数据库管理系统的设计

为了跟上信息社会的发展，提高教育中教与学的成效，试卷数据管理系统的设计是十分必要的。试卷数据管理系统收集各学科、各门课试卷。它可供教师随时了解教学情况，改变教学进度和教学方法。供学生随时检查自己的薄弱环节，及时补缺。     

黄侃佚文十二篇辑考

黄侃诗文几经整理,搜罗大备,然尚有遗漏。通过爬梳载籍,发现黄侃佚文十二篇,凡序跋题辞五篇、释文二篇、书信四通、箴一篇,为当世已刊所未及,可补其阙。兹加以整理,并略加考释。     

JEWISH TEXTS,EDUCATION AND IDENTITY: INSEPARABLE

The study of traditional Jewish texts is perhaps the single most critical and engaging activity in Jewish education. Students spend the greater part of their classroom time delving into this source material, much of it ancient, some of it recent, in order to gain a better understanding of their heritage and how it relates to them in profound and in routine ways. Jewish educators are deeply aware of the importance of textual study in the curriculum, and it is their concern and their children's needs that were addressed by the 1987 Conference on Jewish Texts, sponsored by the Melton Center at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. More than 20 educators and psychologists were invited to Jerusalem from widely scattered sites, mostly North American and Israeli, to attend a series of meetings where some presented and all discussed the papers that appear in the present volume. The statements range in substance from the philosophical to the pedagogical and from the original to the traditionally derivative interpretation of textual sources in educational contexts. All are intended to bring a fresh perspective on issues that are as old and vital as Jewish education per se.     

Between Routines and Anarchy: preparing teachers for uncertainty

This paper argues that examinations have a complex role in creating and defining gender differences in performance in public examinations. To illustrate this argument three aspects of examining are reviewed: styles of examinations and how they define achievement; coursework and the role it plays in contributing to gender differences in performance; and tiered entry systems in examinations and how they provide unequal opportunities for boys and girls to be successful. It presents the context in which research into gender, achievement and examining is now located by initially reviewing the recent media hype around gender and achievement. It then takes an historical look at gender and achievement and goes on to describe new gender stereotypes that influence current understandings of boys' and girls' achievement. There is much information that is ‘hidden’ behind examination results as they are commonly reported. This hidden information has more to do with how differences in performance are obtained, how subjects are assessed and how we choose to assess students. How all this interacts with students' perceptions and expectations alongside those of their teachers must impact on how boys and girls perform in examinations. This ‘hidden’ information has vital implications for whom we perceive to be under or overachieving.     

学术论文参考文献著录失范问题探析——基于编辑控制的视角

当下学术论文参考文献部分不规范现象较为严重,主要表现在:其一,引用了已发表的内容却不加标注,完全无视参考文献著录的规定;其二,对引用已发表内容虽然进行了标注,但格式混乱、要素缺乏或者错误百出;其三,抄袭他人的参考文献。这些不规范现象不仅恶化了中国学术环境,而且有可能引发各种法律纠纷。学术期刊编辑应该从两方面着手杜绝不规范现象:自身从思想上重视参考文献的地位和作用,对不规范现象实行"零容忍";在编辑实践中,根据作者群体的不同,实行不同的对待方法,双管齐下消灭不规范现象。     

《论语》“《诗》学”及其对古代文学理论的影响

《论语》虽然不是纯粹的理论,但是由于孔子地位和其为“经”的影响,《论语》中对于《诗经》的解读给后世提供了范例;不仅如此,即使与文学无关的一些言语也进入到后世学者的批评中,从而被纳入到文学理论的范畴之内,并产生了深远的影响。     

《三国演义》建阳繁本小字注的特点探析

与《三国演义》嘉靖本的小字注相比,建阳繁本小字注的特点是：第一,数量较少。第二,建阳繁本有些小字注混入了正文,而嘉靖本则将所据抄本中的很多正文降为了小字注。第三,建阳繁本的音义注极少,而嘉靖本较多;建阳繁本有些小字注错误较多,而嘉靖本的小字注错误较少。就建阳繁本与嘉靖本相同的小字注来说,看不出它们是罗贯中《三国演义》原稿就有的迹象,罗贯中原稿中没有小字注。小字注不能作为判断《三国演义》成书年代的依据。     

University Admissions and the Prediction of Degree Performance: an Analysis in the Light of Changes to the English Schools’ Examination System

The United Kingdom's Department for Education has recently changed the nature of the AS‐level examinations normally taken by students aspiring to enter higher education degree courses one year into their post‐compulsory education. In the face of protests from universities and other institutions that this would both harm students’ progression towards the A‐level qualifications, on which entry to English universities is normally based, and make it difficult for universities determining which of their applicants were best placed to benefit from their degree courses, the Department conducted research which it claimed showed that degree outcome could be predicted as well from the results of GCSE examinations taken one year before AS‐levels as from AS‐levels themselves. This paper critiques those analyses and their conclusions showing, through a re‐analysis and extended interpretation of the Department's data, that AS‐levels provide a more reliable predictor of degree performance in 2011 than GCSEs and that many students who performed better at AS‐level than at GCSE gained a place, and performed well, at a university with high entrance standards.     

Infusing technology into a mathematics methods course: any impact?

The short report reviews the research on the factors that influence young people's higher education choices. It considers the main messages that have emerged from empirical studies, looking in particular at: the sources of information young people use; the relative importance of factors in their decisions; and their judgements about the 'feasibility' of an application. The paper concludes by suggesting that, although much of the literature is underpinned by an assumption that if young people's access to information improves they will make 'better' decisions about their futures, the picture is rather more complex due to the socially embedded nature of decision-making. Both research and policy need to recognize that young people's access to, and interpretation of, information is often patterned by their gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status.     

Reading with a Crayon: Pre-conventional Marginalia as Reader Response in Early Childhood

Child-produced marginalia, annotations written or drawn in the margins of a text by a young reader, have been stigmatized as devaluing the book on which it was created and often dismissed as “graffiti.” Recent historical studies of marginalia created by older children, those who have mastered conventional writing and drawing, have challenged this notion by looking at extratextual annotations as a means to understanding children’s diverse uses of books as both intellectual and physical objects. However, pre-conventional scribbles on books by very young children have not been explored as artifacts of emergent literacy practices or reader response. Yet, scholarship in the fields of literacy education, art education, early childhood education and theories of place suggest that children can develop expectations for books in the first few years of life and that their earliest drawing experiences show evidence of intentionality. This reader response study draws from video data of three-year-old Elijah and his eighteen-month-old sister, Hannah, to explore the production, of pre-conventional marginalia in early childhood. The findings of this study suggest that toddlers and preschool-aged children can understand books as distinct and pleasurable artifacts in their immediate environments, that the marks they make in their picturebooks are evidence of reader response, that the act of drawing enables them to engage in a fictional landscape, and that pre-conventional marginalia can provide us with insight into very young children’s earliest aesthetic responses to texts.     

口译笔记有效理论的初步分析

从口译笔记的构成出发,提出有效口译笔记理论研究的论证假设,并通过相关信息论、语言学和心理学的知识对口译过程进行微观分析,特别是对口译中信息解码过程运用语义三角形模型加以探究扩展,探究理论上不同效率的口译笔记。经逻辑分析综合论证得出结论：经完整信息加工过程并选择“路标式”提示符号记录下的笔记是有效笔记;“速记主义”或信息加工不完整而直接记录下的笔记不是无效也不是错误的笔记,只是次有效笔记;因各主客观原因未使得信息加工为成品直接进入思维而对之记录会导致低效甚至无效笔记。     

《说文》“某，某某也”释语研究

《说文解字》（以下简称《说文》）是我国传统语言文字学的不朽名著,它在文字学、训诂学、词汇学以及语音学等方面都具有重要的学术价值,至今仍然值得深入研究。现以《说文》中的“某,某某也”释语为切入点,对采取这种释义格式的语料,从双字释语与被释字之间复杂的形、义关系以及双字释语本身的形态结构两个方面进行全面的分析、比较和说明。这种研究可以为《说文》的深入探讨提供新的角度,进而加深对其精神内涵的理解。     

宋代儒家经书版本的文本类型

从今存宋代儒家经书版本实物看,宋代经书版本的文本类型,大体可分为白文本、经注本、单疏本、注疏合刻本四类,其中经注本又可划分为单经注本、经注附释文本及重言重意本三类;注疏合刻本又可分为不附释文注疏合刻本与附释文注疏合刻本两类。     

英汉文化局限词的释义特点和词义表达式的调适与整合

如何使目的语对应词与原语词目的指称意义、语用意义和文化附加义上相一致，是双语词典文化局限词释义中的一大难题，可以从文化认知的角度揭示词义的同中之异，对英汉文化局限词目的释义特征进行深入的理论分析，并在实践中探讨释语词义表达方式调适和整合的具体方法和技巧，如实释解词目的文化信息，以妥善解决双语词典等值释义的问题。