Investigating students' perceived cognitive needs in university academic reading: a latent variable approach

Although there have been extensive theoretical discussions on the various reading skills needed in academic situations, empirical investigations on this topic are scarce. There is even much less research on the latent structure underlying those skill needs. This study attempts to fill this gap by investigating the perceived factorial structure of academic reading skills and the relative importance of each factor based on questionnaire responses by 221 undergraduates from an English‐medium university in New Zealand. A series of factor analyses and hierarchical model testing revealed that the respondents' perceived needs in academic reading consisted of five distinguishable subdomains, which could be further divided into non‐expeditious reading and expeditious reading. It was also found that the subdomain of textbase comprehension (e.g., understanding explicit details and main ideas) was needed significantly more than other subdomains, although all subdomains were reported to be needed more than half of the time. These findings not only support previous major theoretical discussions about reading types from a novel perspective (i.e., students' perceived needs) but also help specify the skill areas that academic reading curricula and assessments may need to cover and prioritise.     

The effect of peer feedback for blogging on college students' reflective learning processes

Reflection is an important prerequisite to making meaning of new information, and to advance from surface to deep learning. Strategies such as journal writing and peer feedback have been found to promote reflection as well as deep thinking and learning. This study used an empirical design to investigate the interaction effects of peer feedback and blogging on college students' reflective thinking skills and their learning approaches. Forty-four first- and second-year undergraduate students participated in the study. Students kept blogs each week throughout a whole semester. Two journals were sampled at the beginning and end of the semester for each student. A repeated measure one-way ANOVA suggested that students' reflective thinking level increased significantly over time; however, peer feedback was found to negatively affect students' reflective thinking skills. The result of the study suggests more carefully designed uses in the future.     

Initial teacher training students' attitudes to use of information technology and individual locus of control

ABSTRACT

In England and Wales initial teacher education (ITE) is becoming more school‐based. This study considers some implications for information technology (IT) in the primary school years (4–11). The results of a survey of primary school teaching practice placements are examined and the outcomes are related to other recent findings. The pattern which emerges is of a wide variability in teacher expertise, of outdated hardware and software still in use in a substantial proportion of classrooms and of many students – themselves lacking in IT capability – not receiving informed and effective support for their IT activities in schools. As these problems appear to be widespread and not capable of easy or rapid solution, the utility of the move to greater school‐based training is called into question at least for IT.     

Gender differences in reading achievement and enjoyment of reading: The role of perceived teaching quality

The authors examined the extent to which classroom-specific relationships between students’ gender and their reading achievement and enjoyment of reading are associated with student-perceived teaching quality. Based on a sample of 10,543 ninth-grade students from 427 classrooms, multilevel analyses revealed that effective classroom management, adequate pacing, and a strong focus on language competencies were related to a less pronounced increase of girls’ advantage in reading achievement during Grade 9. High levels of teacher support and focus on language competencies were related to smaller gender differences in enjoyment of reading at the beginning of Grade 9, though not associated with change of these differences over the school year. Our findings suggest that high teaching quality is not only related to higher reading achievement and reading enjoyment in classrooms as a whole, but may also help to mitigate the increase of gender gaps in reading achievement and motivation commonly observed in secondary school.     

Investigating the allocation and corroboration of individual grades for project-based learning

Concerned with grade allocation, contribution and an emphasis on final product production in a project-based class, a study was conducted in order to investigate methods in which to address these issues. The researcher of the study, also the teacher, utilised a technical action research approach with two cycles in order to investigate his own classroom practice at a private university. The researcher created and ran two projects with the class to coincide with each cycle. Results were collected in the form of passive observation, a questionnaire, reflections, self-assessments, group-evaluations, and wiki logs. Results from the study yielded a number of aspects for practitioners to consider when developing project-based assessment, and a discussion on aspects of group assessment including free-riders, co-created assessment, and weightage, and validation.     

浅论面向全体与注重个体差异统一性

小学教学属于义务教学的范畴，是在学生能掌握一定的数学基础知识和基本技能前提下，为提高全民族素质，为经济、社会、科技等发展培养各级各类人才打下良好的基础。所以在教学中既要面向全体学生，使每个学生都得到最大可能的发展，实现全体学生素质的提高，又必须正视学生的个别差异，因材施教，使每个学生的才能都得到充分的发展。     

Explaining systems: Investigating middle school students' understanding of emergent phenomena

Science, as with all cognitive activities, is fundamentally a matter of interpretation, sense‐making, and explanation. This study focused on a small group of middle school students as they developed understanding of a particular type of phenomena: emergent systems. Such systems are notable in that macro‐level properties emerge as the result of micro‐level interactions between system components. I describe students' initial understanding of emergent systems, as well as the ways in which their thinking came to reflect the following heuristics: (a) recognition that there may not be a singular causal force underlying the system; (b) distinguishing between micro‐ and macro‐levels of analysis; and (c) comprehending that even small changes at the micro‐level can have significant effects at the macro‐level (Resnick, 1994 ). I conclude by considering some implications for science education. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 784–806, 2000     

Applications of blogging in problem based learning

The context of the study presented in this paper is a sixth-semester undergraduate course on “Relational database management system” that was held in session 2009–2010. The course is part of the bachelor’s degree curriculum of Computer Science and Engineering branch at Punjab Technical University, Punjab, India. It consists of a lecture course and a concurrent lab course. The common approach has been to divide the course into lectures, tutorials, and practicals. To conduct practical sessions, lab plan is prepared beforehand by the faculty. The course duration is 14–16 weeks. Here the lab course was conducted in a blended learning mode, starting with syllabus related tasks, then subject specific projects, and presenting team project results. Problem based learning (PBL) and Blogging have been introduced for practical sessions. This paper describes this novel approach in which problems are designed to cover the syllabus topics, and blogging is used to bridge the communication gap. A significant difference was seen between performance and attitude of the treatment group (PBL with blogging) and control group (only PBL) for Lab sessions. Additionally teamwork and communication skills were also significantly improved in the case of PBL with blogging class.     

Developmental and individual differences in conditional reasoning: effects of logic instructions and alternative antecedents

In Study 1, 10-, 13-, and 16-year-olds were assigned to conditions in which they were instructed to think logically and provided alternative antecedents to the consequents of conditional statements. Providing alternatives improved reasoning on two uncertain logical forms, but decreased logical responding on two certain forms; logic instructions improved reasoning among adolescents. Correlations among inferences and verbal ability were found primarily when task conditions created conflict between automatic and controlled inferences. In Study 2, when the cognitive demands of the logic instructions were reduced, 10-year-olds made more logically correct inferences, but only when a conditional's consequents were strongly associated with alternative antecedents. Discussion focuses on the ability to inhibit invited inferences and the role of automatically activated memories.     

Gifted students' individual differences in distance-learning computer-based calculus and linear algebra

We examine student performance in computer-based calculus and linear algebra courses offered by Stanford University to pre-college students of high mathematical ability. Our analysis puts special emphasis on modeling student performance over time and on capturing long-term trend effects. The sequential nature of students' responses to course exercises is characterized through the use of stochastic and nonlinear models. We find that student performance varies widely within this group for a variety of different measures, including error rates, times to completion, progress rates, and latency of response. In addition, we measure the informational efficiency of the courses through a Markov order analysis of student response sequences. For the performance measures studied, the 75th and the 25th percentile of sampled values differ by a factor of approximately two. We also find that there is little correlation among the performance measures, which suggests that student performance in this ability range may not be well characterized by any single performance measure or ability parameter.     

Improving high school students' understanding of potential difference in simple electric circuits

This paper reports two studies into the understanding of the concept of potential difference in the current-potential difference-resistance context among 8th-12th graders (Study 1), and the efficiency of a learning device derived from Social Judgment Theory (Study 2). These two studies showed that: (a) when asked to infer potential difference from resistance and current information, most participants only relied on current and ignored or greatly underestimated the importance of resistance information; (b) exposure to an electricity course did not much alter the way participants infer potential difference from resistance and current information; (c) a simple learning device considerably improved the way participants infer potential difference from resistance and current information; and (d) this observed improvement promised to be durable, at least in the short term.     

The impact of English-language proficiency on international graduate students' perceived academic difficulty

This study presents an empirical test of the impact of English proficiency as indicated by student self-ratings and TOEFL scores, and selected nonlinguistic variables on the level of academic difficulties perceived by international graduate students. A simple random sample of 450 international graduate students from three large universities in upstate New York were contacted by mail in the fall of 1988. With two mailings, 245 completed the Survey of International Students' Academic Language Needs. It was found that Self-rated English Proficiency was the most significant predictor of the perceived level of academic difficulty. In addition, Length of Prior English Training and Age were also significant predictors. TOEFL score was found to be a nonsignificant predictor of students' academic difficulty. Implications of the research for English-language educators, ESL program and curriculum design, and U.S. university recruitment policy on international students were discussed.     

探索基于学员自主创新能力培养的开放实验教学模式

基础实验教学对于学员自主创新能力的培养,对整个军队人才培养模式的转换,起着举足轻重的作用。论文针对传统实验教学模式陈旧的问题,通过优化实验教学内容,改革传统实验教学方式,创新开放实验考核办法等做法,建立适合创新人才培养的机制,从而更加有利于军校学员自主创新能力的培养。     

An attributional analysis of students' interactions: The social consequences of perceived responsibility

Recent research on why some children are disliked by their classmates, why students do or do not help one another, and how children manage to get along with teachers and classmates is reviewed in this article. A motivational approach focusing on attribution theory is used to examine these questions. Inferences of responsibility and feelings of anger and sympathy are documented to impact students' negative social responses (rejection and neglect) as well as their willingness to help their classmates. Students' understanding of the responsibility-emotion-behavior links is proposed to influence their self-presentation strategies, such as excuse giving and seeking social approval.     

Autonomy-supportive teaching and its antecedents: differences between teachers and teaching assistants and the predictive role of perceived competence

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Research predicated on self-determination theory (SDT) has established a positive relationship between autonomy-supportive teaching and a range of...     

Investigating the extent and use of peer support initiatives in English schools

This survey aims to give a broad overview of the way peer support is currently used in English primary and secondary schools, and to highlight common patterns. Regional strata samples of schools were selected from an online database. Questionnaire data were obtained from 240 schools (130 primary and 110 secondary), of which 186 had peer support schemes. An adjusted estimation (which makes some correction for non‐response error) suggests that 62% of schools are using a structured peer support scheme. The survey results also give an indication of some common patterns and commonalities in the characteristics of existing schemes, as well as some differences between primary and secondary schools. The implementation of peer support is often multi‐dimensional, particularly in secondary schools after a scheme had been running for some time. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research and in terms of the nature of school‐based peer support programmes.