Who Prefers What? Disciplinary Differences in Students' Preferred Approaches to Teaching and Learning Styles

This study develops a tool for identifying students' preferred teaching approaches, with high internal consistency for the scales involved. We examined these preferences in relation to students' approaches to learning and to two academic disciplines with contrasting academic environments. The sample consisted of 175 engineering and education undergraduates at a major university in Israel. Responses to our questionnaire revealed students' preferences for four approaches that correspond to the four main instructional approaches that had been identified in research based on teachers' sources. Students' most favored teaching approach is the lecturer who is organized, clear, and interesting, and the second, with a large gap from the first, is the instructor who provides for students' needs in learning. The two approaches least favored are information-transmission and promotion of self-regulation. Students with different approaches to learning preferred teaching approaches that best served their learning approaches. There were few discipline-related differences in students' preferences, in spite of the very different learning environments. However, all participants preferred teaching approaches that they perceived as beneficial for learning but that they had not often experienced, if at all.     

What is Intended,What is Realized,and What is Learned? Teaching and Learning Biology in the Primary School Classroom

Within the framework of variation theory, 7- to 12-year-old students’ ways of understanding cellular respiration and photosynthesis were investigated against the background of their teachers’ teaching. Eighteen students were selected by the teachers and interviewed by the researcher. Lessons were observed and video recorded, and stimulated-recall interviews with the teachers were conducted. The students’ understanding of the function of oxygen and sugar in plants was described in four categories. The study concludes that young students can develop complex understanding if opportunities to learn are presented. The opportunities depended mainly on the language used by the teachers, such as metaphors, pointing out critical aspects of the object of learning. The study has implications for the relationship between teachers’ competence and students’ learning.     

Creativity:What Is It? Can You Assess It? Can It Be Taught?

This article takes the subject of visual arts in Sweden as the point of departure in a discussion of how, with the help of portfolios, assessments may extend to include both the unpredictable and the ambiguous. The notion that assessments of learning outcomes must be either limited to superficial knowledge or completely arbitrary is shown to be a misconception. The author has made a study of the progression of young people's creativity in the visual arts from preschool to upper secondary school. The assessment was based on both product criteria and process criteria (investigative work, inventiveness, ability to use models, capacity for self‐assessment). The materials assessed were portfolios of work containing sketches, drafts and finished works, log books, sources of inspiration and videotaped interviews with the students. Is there any progression in students' visual design, in their ability to work independently and assess their work? What is the degree of correlation in the assessments of different judges of student portfolios? These are some of the questions that this article attempts to answer, which concludes with a discussion of how schools can build a culture of learning that fosters the creative powers of young people.     

Please and Thank You: What Does It Cost to Be Polite to ChatGPT?

<正>很多人可能想不到,像ChatGPT这样的人工智能也需要良言相待。这一有趣现象背后隐藏的原因是什么？人类可以从中获得什么？对于人工智能公司,这可能不是一个好消息。简单的礼貌用语竟然会带来巨大的资源消耗。ChatGPT has rapidly become one of the most widely used tools in the world. Few tech companies have managed to become synonymous with their industries, such as Google with search engines or Apple with smartphones, but OpenAI has succeeded in doing so with arguably the most important technology in modern times: Artificial Intelligence.     

Modeling Retention at a Large Public University: Can At-Risk Students Be Identified Early Enough to Treat?

We examine the extent to which readily available data at a large public university can be used to a priori identify at-risk students who may benefit from targeted retention efforts. Although it is possible to identify such students, there remains an inevitable tradeoff in any resource allocation between not treating the students who are likely to exit without treatment and treating students who are likely not to exit in the absence of the treatment. At-risk students are found to remain at risk throughout their college career. Moreover, conditional on exiting the institution, the degree to which the student was at risk is predictive of whether the student subsequently re-enrolls elsewhere and the type of institution at which this re-enrollment occurs. In this context, we discuss how retention policies relate to insuring the initial match is appropriate, recognizing that some attrition can be in keeping with the broad social interest.     

Can Computer Use Hurt Science Achievement? The USA Results from PISA

A surprising result of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is that computer use was negatively associated with high student achievement in some countries. More specifically, the students from all three countries who indicated that they use computers in the classroom most frequently were those with the lowest achievement on the TIMSS in 1995. For the purpose of this study, a similar comparison was made for 15-year-old U.S.A. students, based on the data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The results of this study show that it is not computer use itself that has a positive or negative effect on the science achievement of students, but the way in which computers are used. For example, after controlling for the student's socioeconomic status in the United States of America, the results indicated that the students who used computers frequently at home, including for the purpose of writing papers, tended to have higher science achievement. However, the results of this study also show that science achievement was negatively related to the use of certain types of educational software. This indicates a result similar to that found in the TIMSS data, which might reflect the fact that teachers assign the use of the computer and of educational software to the lower achieving students more frequently, so that these students can obtain more personal and direct feedback through educational software.     

Is It Ethical for Patents to Be Issued for the Computer Algorithms That Affect Course Management Systems for Distance Learning?

Abstract

This article discusses the impact of patents for computer algorithms in course management systems. Referring to historical documents and court cases, the positive and negative aspects of software patents are presented. The key argument is the accessibility to algorithms comprising a course management software program such as Blackboard. The algorithms claimed in the Blackboard patent are critical to the development of distance learning. The impact of patenting these algorithms in the field of online education is evaluated using three ethical frameworks. As education moves online, it is important that distance learning be allowed to develop freely unencumbered by software patents.     

Can Test Scores Remain Authentic When Teaching to the Test?

Although some educators have suggested authentic tests as a solution to the problem of artificially inflated scores from teaching to paper-and-pencil tests, we argue that teaching to the test under high-stakes conditions could be more problematic with the new forms of assessment. The wide range of methods that can potentially be used in authentic assessments introduce a method variance that is not part of the construct to be measured. As a consequence, teaching the specific methods used in the assessment potentially invalidates the uses and interpretations that can be made from the test scores by narrowing the definition of the construct measured.     

Is Knowledge What It Claims to Be? Bernard Williams and the Absolute Conception

Abstract

As a response to what I see as the challenge posed by constructivist and narrative pedagogies, this paper seeks to sympathetically reconstruct Bernard Williams’ Absolute Conception from the scattered texts in which he briefly sketched it While ultimately defending the Absolute Conception or something close enough to it, the paper criticizes and distances itself from some aspects of Williams’ version, notably his conception of philosophy as insurmountably perspectival. Williams’ understanding of perspectival knowledge as contrasted to absolute knowledge is illustrated with the concrete, if fictional case of the Dr Manhattan character from Zack Snyder’s Watchmen (2009). Adrian Moore’s reading, and Hilary Putnam’s criticisms of Williams’ Absolute Conception are amongst the positions engaged with.     

Can Benefit Segmentation Analysis Be Applied to Continuing Education Professionals?

No abstract available for this article.     

Who is Responsible for the Racialized Practices Evident within (Special) Education and What Can Be Done to Change Them?

I pose a straightforward rhetorical question about disproportionality and endeavor to answer it with view to suggesting what can be done in terms of linking theory to practice. First, I frame disproportionality by asking where does it come from? Second, I describe multiple, interconnected historical phenomena to be considered when educators contemplate the complex topic of overrepresentation, ranging from the genesis of historical understandings of human difference becoming categorized into hierarchies of race, to the perceptions of race and dis/ability held by contemporary educators. Third, I argue that connections among these phenomena reified deficit-based understandings of vulnerable children and youth, creating a disabled population that, in turn, continues the status quo of disproportionality within schools. Fourth, invoking the concept of the personal is the professional, I discuss possible actions within an educator’s control to help counter overrepresentation, while listing areas outside of school that simultaneously need to be focused upon.     

How Can We Help? What We Have Learned From Recent Federal Dropout Prevention Evaluations

This article summarizes implementation and impact findings from a recent large evaluation of federally funded dropout-prevention programs. The findings suggest that two program models, alternative middle schools for younger students and GED programs for older students, have promise. The article also suggests that striving to understand the nature of academic, social, and personal problems affecting students and tailoring services to address these problems may be a useful systemic approach to reducing dropping out.