Testing two path models to explore relationships between students’ experiences of the teaching–learning environment,approaches to learning and academic achievement

The study explores the relationships between students’ experiences of the teaching–learning environment and their approaches to learning, and the effects of these variables on academic achievement. Two three-stage models were tested with structural equation modelling techniques. The Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) and the Experiences of Teaching and Learning Questionnaire (ETLQ) were used to assess approaches to learning and student’s experiences of the teaching–learning environment, respectively. These two constructs were then used as either first- or second-stage variables within the path analysis. The model using approaches to learning as a mediating variable showed the best fit with our data; variations in our students’ experiences of the teaching–learning environment appear to give rise to their approaches to studying, which subsequently affect their achievement. The deep approach shows no detectable influence on academic achievement in this sample, neither there are any direct effects of experiences of the teaching–learning environment on it. The indirect effects of these experiences on achievement, acting through the strategic and the surface approaches, are related to two aspects of the teaching–learning environment only, namely congruence and coherence in course organisation, and integrative learning and critical thinking. The finding of a reciprocal relation between approaches to learning and experiences of the teaching–learning environment supports previous conclusions about the association between these constructs. The indirect effect of experiences of the teaching–learning environment on achievement, acting through approaches to learning, shows those approaches as a dynamic construct that varies in line with experiences of the teaching-learning environment, and so influences achievement.     

Early Second Language Learning through SparkLing™: Scaling up a Language Intervention in Infant Education Centers

Infancy (0–3 years) represents a unique time for language learning. Previous research shows that infants' second language (L2) learning advances rapidly in early education centers, through a research‐based method and curriculum delivered by native‐speaking language tutors. Here we test the potential of this method for broad application, through an interactive online tool, SparkLing?, which trains and certifies language tutors to implement the program in infant education centers. Intervention infants (n = 168) from families of predominantly low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds in Madrid, Spain, experienced 18 or 36 weeks of L2 (English) exposure, through daily, 45‐min, group sessions led by SparkLing?‐trained tutors and were compared to a matched Current Practice Comparison (CPC) group of peers (n = 72). Intervention children outperformed the CPC group and showed rapid gains in English comprehension and production. SES was not a significant factor in learning. Infants' L2 skills advance quickly using this research‐to‐practice, scalable program for play‐based infant L2 instruction.     

Teachers’ collaborative learning – development of teaching in group discussions

Teacher learning and the development of in-service education for teachers are both an active area of research and a broad challenge. In working as teachers, theory and practice are often seen as divided, or problems in teaching and the requirements of development are solved on the basis of experience. This study focuses on collaborative teacher learning as part of an in-service education course that supports teachers in connecting learning theories with practical knowledge and that aims to create new knowledge and practices for teaching. The starting points for the study are the changes of the curriculum and theories of learning. The aim is to analyse developing of teaching in teachers’ collaborative group discussions and how the theoretical knowledge of learning theories is connected with developing teaching practices. The research method of the study was data driven, systematic and qualitative analysis of the content of the discussion. The research data consist of video recorded group discussions of two teacher teams from the in-service education course meeting. The analysis focused on developing talk and further, on finding interconnections between the developing talk and the theories of learning. The analysis shows three different ways how the learning theories emerged in method developing talk. The findings indicate that theoretical knowledge can be used or left unused and imply that creating and changing teaching practices is challenging. However, the findings show that theoretical, research-based knowledge on learning theories can be applied to developing teaching practices in the teachers’ collaborative knowledge creation process. Long-term in-service education based on collaborative knowledge creation and supporting the interconnection of theoretical knowledge of learning and experience knowledge of teaching is a promising way to arrange and develop in-service education.     

Transfer of learning in Swedish technical vocational education: student experiences in the energy and industry programmes

One of the most important issues in vocational education is the interaction between learning at school and at different workplaces. Students need to transfer what they have learned in and between these different learning arenas. However, little agreement exists among researchers on how to conceptualise and empirically study transfer of learning. This article aims to enhance our understanding of this process in technical vocational education by adding a new perspective on transfer: the phenomenological lifeworld approach. Eleven interviews with students enrolled in the Energy and Industry programmes at a Swedish upper-secondary school were conducted. Three transfer themes emerged from the data: learning for new situations, variation and integration of theory and practice. The student perspective, based on the lifeworld approach shows that the different learning arenas – the school and workplaces – can complement each other. The learning arenas offer different opportunities for learning, and learning in both arenas is necessary in order to prepare for an unknown future, according to the students in this study.     

Do learning stories tell the whole story of children’s learning? A phenomenographic enquiry

This study compares the stances of practitioners, parents and the quality assurance authority on the assessment of learning in New Zealand (NZ) early childhood education (ECE). The phenomenographic interview participants include practitioners (24) and parents (11) from 11 ECE settings. The reports issued by the Education Review Office (ERO) on all the sampled ECE settings are also analysed. The study shows that: (1) The practitioners and parents emphasize the importance of teacher–parent communication, listening to the child, progression and team assessment for assessment of learning in general, while the ERO attaches the importance of the same categories specifically to learning stories; (2) Irrespective of the strengths and limitations of learning stories, the practitioners and parents affirm that learning stories are not the only approach to assessment of learning, which is in contrast with the ERO’s implied position that learning stories are the only and best approach to the assessment of learning. The findings call for research that explores the implementation of a comprehensive approach to the assessment of learning in ECE in NZ.     

Erstad,Ola (2013) Digital learning lives Peter Lang (New York & Bern) isbn 978‐1‐4331‐1163‐1 280 pp € 30.75 (paper and e‐book) http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=78334&cid=448

Digital learning lives aims to describe a set of practices in school education and beyond that are well developed and based on digital technology. With rich examples from our digital lives, the author shows that digital natives should be able to go beyond spaces and places with which they are familiar. People closely interested in broadening the scope of digital learning and creativity should think of buying this. Gi‐Zen Liu     

Supporting Communication in a Collaborative Discovery Learning Environment: the Effect of Instruction

We present a study on the effect of instruction on collaboration in a collaborative discovery learning environment. The instruction we used, called RIDE, is built upon four principles identified in the literature on collaborative processes: Respect, Intelligent collaboration, Deciding together, and Encouraging. In an experimental study, a group of learners (ages 15–17) receiving this instruction was compared to a control group. The learners worked in dyads on separate computers in a shared discovery learning environment in the physics domain of collisions, communicating through a chat channel. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of the logged actions in the learning environment and the chat protocols showed that the RIDE instruction can lead to more constructive communication, and improved discovery learning activities, as expected, although no direct effect on discovery learning results was found. This study shows the benefits of providing instruction on effective communication and the learning process in a collaborative discovery learning situation.     

Medium-based design: Extending a medium to create an exploratory learning environment

This article introduces medium-based design – an approach to creating exploratory learning environments using the method of extending a medium. First, the characteristics of exploratory learning environments and medium-based design are described and grounded in related work. Particular attention is given to extending a medium – medium-based design's core method. Then, the product and process of two environments are detailed to show how medium-based design enables the creation of exploratory learning environments. Finally, a study compares medium-based design to a conventional design process to test the hypothesis that medium-based design is particularly effective in creating exploratory learning environments.     

Teachers’ professional development: a theoretical review

Background and purpose:?The article reviews studies that focus on the professional development of teachers after they have completed their basic teacher training. Teacher professional development is defined as teachers’ learning: how they learn to learn and how they apply their knowledge in practice to support pupils’ learning. The research question addressed in the article is: How do experienced teachers learn?

Main argument:?The review is framed by theories within the constructivist paradigm. From this perspective, knowledge is perceived as the construction of meaning and understanding within social interaction. The social surroundings are seen as decisive for how the individual learns and develops. It is argued that courses and lectures, or ‘times for telling’, and teachers’ development of a metacognitive attitude are decisive factors for teachers’ learning within a constructivist frame of reference.

Sources of evidence and method:?To attempt to answer the research question, a search was conducted of the subject of pedagogy in the ISI WEB of Science (search undertaken 9 August 2011) using the search strings ‘teacher learning’, ‘teacher development’ and ‘teacher professional development’, and covering the period from 2009 to 2011 to probe the most recent decade of research. Articles that dealt with basic education, primary and secondary school, were selected, and articles that dealt with learning using digital tools and the internet and newly trained teachers were rejected. A set of 31 articles was selected from this search. To ensure width and depth of coverage, this was supplemented by a selection of review studies and research on further education in respect of teachers’ learning. The texts were analysed by means of open and axial coding, developing main and sub-categories.

Conclusions:?The review of articles shows that both individual and organisational factors impact teachers’ learning. Teacher co-operation has importance for how they develop, and some of the teachers can lead such learning activities themselves. Moreover, a positive school culture with a good atmosphere and understanding of teachers’ learning, in addition to co-operation with external resource persons, may impact the professional development of teachers. The article concludes with the reflection that learning in school is the best arena for further development of teachers.     

Enhancing student engagement in pre-vocational and vocational education: a learning history

Interest in student engagement has increased over the past decade, which has resulted in increased knowledge about this concept and about the aspects that facilitate engagement. However, as yet, only a few studies have focused on engagement from the perspective of the teacher. In this study, we capture the experiences of teachers who were explicitly working with their teams on fostering student engagement. We used the learning history method to capture those experiences and at the same time to stimulate learning within the participating teams. A learning history includes the voices of the different participants involved in order to stimulate reflection and learning. Three teams of teachers participated in the writing of this learning history. Several teachers (n = 10), students (n = 10), and managers (n = 5) from or related to the teams were interviewed. The learning history shows that, on the one hand, teachers emphasized positive relationships and structure in relation to student engagement, yet, on the other hand, students continued to provide examples of negative relationships and mentioned a lack of structure, although they also mentioned improvements. Furthermore, the learning history showed that teachers in all teams reflected on their experiences and learned from the activities employed to foster student engagement, which included taking a more positive approach, conversations about a skills form, and being more consequent. These results taken together indicate that it is possible for teachers to do a better job of engaging their students and that their repertoire can be expanded to include more engagement-related actions. Finally, the learning history produced offers insight into the difficulties experienced by the teams. An important limitation mentioned by all teams was that teachers found it difficult to address each other’s behavior when someone did not act as agreed upon.     

The Gain-Loss Model: A Probabilistic Skill Multimap Model for Assessing Learning Processes

Within the theoretical framework of knowledge space theory, a probabilistic skill multimap model for assessing learning processes is proposed. The learning process of a student is modeled as a function of the student's knowledge and of an educational intervention on the attainment of specific skills required to solve problems in a knowledge domain. Model parameters are initial probabilities of the skills, effects of learning objects on gaining and losing the skills, and careless error and lucky guess probabilities of the problems. An empirical application shows that the model is effective in assessing knowledge and effectiveness of educational intervention at both classroom and student levels. Practical implications for teaching and learning are discussed.     

A Study of General Education Astronomy Students’ Understandings of Cosmology. Part V. The Effects of a New Suite of Cosmology Lecture-Tutorials on Students’ Conceptual Knowledge

This is the final paper in a five-paper series describing our national study of the teaching and learning of cosmology in general education astronomy college-level courses. A significant portion of this work was dedicated to the development of five new Lecture-Tutorials that focus on addressing the conceptual and reasoning difficulties that our research shows students have with frequently taught cosmology topics, such as the expansion of the universe, the Big Bang, and dark matter. We conducted a systematic investigation of the implementation of these new Lecture-Tutorials and resulting learning gains in order to test the efficacy of these new Lecture-Tutorials. Our investigation included classroom observations, results from pre–post testing using four conceptual cosmology surveys, and comparisons between classes in terms of the class time spent on cosmology topics and other instructional strategies used to teach cosmology. We used this combination of qualitative and quantitative research results to evaluate the conceptual understandings of students who used the new cosmology Lecture-Tutorials compared to those students who did not. The analysis of our data shows that, in many cases, classrooms that used the cosmology Lecture-Tutorials saw a greater increase in their students’ conceptual cosmology knowledge compared to classrooms that did not use the cosmology Lecture-Tutorials. However, our results also indicate how instructors implement the Lecture-Tutorials into their classrooms strongly influences their students’ learning gains.     

Examining the linguistic coding differences hypothesis to explain individual differences in foreign language learning

In this paper, it is suggested that foreign language learning problems result from difficulties with native language learning and hypothesized that difficulties with phonological processing may be the locus of foreign language learning difficulties for some poor foreign language learners. Evidence is described that supports these positions. It is argued that conceptualizing foreign language learning problems as alanguage problem allows researchers to more clearly specify deficits related to the learning of a foreign language. Research evidence which shows that good and poor foreign language learners exhibit significantly different levels of native language skill and phonological processing is summarized. Finally, potential challenges to my hypotheses as an explanation for foreign language learning problems are reviewed.     

Student perceptions of a culturally diverse classroom environment

The research in the paper involves an application of the actual and preferred versions of a previously‐validated learning environment instrument: the What is Happening in This Classroom (WIHIC) instrument in a complex multi‐cultural university‐level environment. Statistical analyses suggest the instrument is valid in this setting (with Cronbach alpha above 0.80 for all scales), and data analyses using ANOVA point to relatively few differences between preferred and actual environments. The research findings suggest all students would prefer a more interactive and equitable classroom, the latter issue of particular importance for one cohort, namely Indo‐Fijians (descendents of ethnic Indian indentured labourers). With the exception of this, there are few differences based on ethnicity and further analysis also suggests no differences in perceptions vis‐à‐vis collaborative versus competitive learning environments, excepting that analysis based on gender shows females have a slight preference for a more cooperative learning environment.     

Students’ assessment preferences and approaches to learning: can formative assessment make a difference?

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the relationships between hands‐on experiences with formative assessment, students’ assessment preferences and their approaches to learning. The sample consisted of 108 university first‐year Bachelor’s students studying criminology. Data were obtained using the Revised two‐factor study process questionnaire (R‐SPQ‐2F) and the Assessment preferences inventory (API). The study shows that differences in assessment preferences are correlated with differences in approach to learning. Students’ preferences for assessment methods with higher‐order thinking tasks are significantly lower after actual experience with a formative assessment. Moreover, students also changed their approaches to learning after hands‐on experience with a formative mode of assessment. Surprisingly, this change evinced a more ‘surface approach’ to learning. Nevertheless, this is in line with other recent research findings. The paper ends with some possible explanations, and new directions for research are proposed.     

Why first language learning is not second language learning — Wittgenstein's rejection of St. Augustine's conception of learning

The Philosophical Investigations starts with a quotation from St. Augustine on language learning. The usual reconstruction of Wittgenstein's criticism of St. Augustine's view on language focusses on meaning — that is, the picture theory which he had in common with Wittgenstein's own earlier views. This paper shows that Wittgenstein in discussing ostensive definition, understanding, and the private language argument also attacks St. Augustine's notion of learning. In recent years the Augustinian conception has been resurrected in cognitive theories postulating an innate language of thought (e.g., Fodor), making Wittgenstein's claims that this conception of learning is paradoxical very relevant.     

A Meta‐Analysis of the Relationship Between Experiential Learning and Learning Outcomes

Experiential learning activities have been used for over 40 years with the hope that they increase students learning. However, a definitive study that showed their overall effectiveness has not been produced. The purpose of this study is to address this gap in the literature. This meta‐analysis examined a 43‐year span and identified 13,626 journal articles, dissertations, thesis articles, and conference proceedings written about experiential learning and found only 89 of these studies contained empirical data with both a treatment and control group. Meta‐analysis of these studies show that students experienced superior learning outcomes when experiential pedagogies were employed. Further, learning outcomes were almost a half standard deviation higher (d = .43) in classes employing experiential learning pedagogies versus traditional learning environments. This review definitively, and quantitatively, shows the importance of experiential learning activities. We use these results to discuss future research areas that need to be addressed based on our analysis of potential moderators and provide recommendations on how to best employ experiential learning pedagogies.     

WebIntera-classroom: an interaction-aware virtual learning environment for augmenting learning interactions

Interaction is critical for successful teaching and learning in a virtual learning environment (VLE). This paper presents a web-based interaction-aware VLE – WebIntera-classroom – which aims to augment learning interactions by increasing the learner-to-content and learner-to-instructor interactions. We design a ubiquitous interactive interface that integrates a pen-and-paper interface with a web-based whiteboard to promote effective learner-to-content interactions. We develop a learning analytics tool that instantly shows learners’ learning interactions, with which instructors can supervise learner-to-instructor interactions. We implement a high-granularity Learning Analytics Engine (hgLAE) to broadcast, record and play a lecture recording. The hgLAE identifies hotspots in a lecture recording and raises students’ awareness of the hotspots when they watch the recording. WebIntera-classroom has been deployed in 11 universities in China. The system obtained high satisfaction in the questionnaires (N?=?464) and face-to-face interviews (N?=?60) conducted with the users from China Jiliang University. We compared the students’ performance, respectively, achieved in traditional classroom and in WebIntera-classroom at China Jiliang University during 2012–2013. The result demonstrates that the students could gain performance improvement by using WebIntera-classroom.