Interpretation of the score reports from the Computer Program LOVS by teachers,internal support teachers and principals

Data-driven decision making, such as the decision making that is conducted through the use of pupil monitoring systems, has become increasingly popular in the Netherlands, as it is considered to have promise as a means of increasing pupils’ learning outcomes. The reports generated by the pupil-monitoring Computer Program LOVS (Cito) provide educators with reliable and objective data feedback; however, research has suggested that many users struggle with interpreting these reports. This study aims to investigate the extent to which the reports are correctly interpreted by educators, and to identify various potential stumbling blocks with regards to the interpretation of the reports. The results suggest that users encounter many stumbling blocks in these reports and often cannot interpret them entirely correctly.     

Integration of Gamification into Course Design: A Noble Endeavor with Potential Pitfalls

In this article, we provide a commentary on the current state of gamification in higher education by reviewing the research literature, noting a lack of research focused on the design of gamified postsecondary courses. To address this issue, we discuss four potential pitfalls instructors may encounter when designing gamified learning activities. We conclude with suggestions related to how instructors can avoid these common stumbling blocks.     

Entering the Fray: The role of outdoor education in providing nature-based experiences that matter

Abstract

This article draws on different bodies of knowledge in order to review the potential role of outdoor education in providing nature-based experiences that might contribute to sustainable living A pragmatic perspective is adopted to critique what outdoor education is,and then what it might be. Phenomenology is used to challenge the belief that there is a causal relationship between activities and learning outcomes but foremost to consider what it is to be in nature in the first place. Aspects of both realism and social constructionism are presented as essential to environmental philosophy and the concomitant, but contested, relationship between people and planet. Through these multiple realities the moral significance of nature emerges not only as a theoretical consideration but as a practical one too. In this way I challenge dualisms that provide stumbling blocks to practice and celebrate instead pluralistic thinking where starting points are based on real-life work settings where theory and practice can emerge together through place-specific solutions.     

Understanding of the Earth in the presence of a satellite photo: A threefold enterprise

To acknowledge both conceptual and situational factors, children’s understanding of the Earth was considered from three angles: 1, the perspective as the physical point or direction from which something is seen or depicted; 2. conceptual frameworks; 3. the relevance of explanations in a situation. Fourteen children were interviewed individually in front of a poster of a satellite photo of the Earth. The interviews were semi-structured and focused on what the children understood was depicted in the poster and if they had seen the Earth. The effect of choice of perspective was demonstrated by children who only talked about how the Earth could be seen from space. The need to relate different conceptual frameworks became apparent with children, who meant that the Earth was situated in the direction of the sky. Different understandings of the relevance of an explanation were detected when the interviewer talked from the perspective in the room, but children talked about the perspective in the present poster. The results indicate that not only both conceptual frameworks and understanding of perspectives play a part when students encounter questions related to the concept of Earth, but also the students’ judgments of the relevance of different explanations in a situation.     

Young Children's Use of Surface and Object Information in Drawings of Everyday Scenes

Pictorial symbols such as photographs, drawings, and maps are ubiquitous in modern cultures. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how children relate these symbols to the scenes that they represent. The present work investigates 4‐year‐old children's (N = 144) sensitivity to extended surface layouts and objects when using drawings of a room to find locations in that room. Children used either extended surfaces or objects when interpreting drawings, but they did not combine these two types of information to disambiguate target locations. Moreover, children's evaluations of drawings depicting surfaces or objects did not align with their use of such information in those drawings. These findings suggest that pictures of all kinds serve as media in which children deploy symbolic spatial skills flexibly and automatically.     

The Effects of Text Elaboration on Children's Aural Language Comprehension

For the present study it was hypothesised that there would be an effect of media on hierarchical aural comprehension and that older children would. possess the cognitive structures to take advantage of the symbols presented by different media. Eighty kindergarten and third grade children were randomly selected and assigned to three media treatments of a story (text and illustrations; text and flannel board figures; text and animated film) and a control (text alone). The subjects were tested for comprehension of the story using twenty questions which were derived from modifications of the Barrett and Pearson & Johnson taxonomies (10 questions for each of two hierarchical levels). A treatment by age MANOVA was used to analyse the data. Significant main effects were found for both treatment and age. Age accounted for more variance in the higher order questions than in the lower order questions. It is believed that the older children had the cognitive structures to take advantage of the appropriate symbols.

     

Which features make illustrations in multimedia learning interesting?

How can illustrations motivate learners in multimedia learning? Which features make illustrations interesting? Beside the theoretical relevance of addressing these questions, these issues are practically relevant when instructional designers are to decide which features of illustrations can trigger situational interest irrespective of individual differences. We analysed ratings of illustrations with respect to four potentially interest-triggering features (concreteness, personal relevance, ease of comprehension and unexpected information) and to situational interest. A methodological contribution was to show how multilevel modelling can be applied to take individual differences into account in several respects. Situational interest was predicted by 957 ratings of the four features on an intra-individual level (level 1). Inter-individual differences were controlled by modelling individuals on level 2 (N?=?82 high-school students). Concreteness, personal relevance and ease of comprehension of illustrations are what mainly triggered situational interest. Nearly, 55% of the situational interest variance was explained by inter-individual preferences, thus, highlighting the usefulness of multilevel modelling to control for individual differences.     

幼儿错误的教育价值

在日常教学过程中，幼儿难免会犯各种各样的错误。幼儿出现的错误具有重要的教育价值。教师应解放思想，充分利用幼儿错误带来的教育机会，在帮助幼儿纠正错误的过程中实现幼儿的发展。     

Reading Strategies in Children with Cerebral Visual Impairment caused by Periventricular Leukomalacia

Four children with cerebral visual impairment caused by periventricular leukomalacia were followed in an ethnographic clinical case study for two years during their process of learning to read in mainstream classes. When compared to children with ocular visual impairment, children with cerebral visual impairment often exhibit an uneven cognitive profile with visuo-spatial deficits but good verbal capacities. One main problem for children with deficits due to periventricular leukomalacia is decreased visual acuity with crowding, that is, an inability to identify symbols in a line, while single symbols of the same size may be identified. A question addressed in the study is what kind of strategies does the child with "crowding" problems develop in reading long words in print. Could Braille, as a sequential reading medium, be an alternative for the child with simultaneous visual problems? Two children were offered both Braille and print reading as reading media, one of whom preferred Braille after two years of training. The other two children read ordinary print without any special teaching. After two years, considerable differences in reading acquisition and reading strategies could be detected among the four children. No single factor seemed to account for the differences. Individual factors as well as teaching methods could be reasons for the differences.     

《水浒语词词典》补正

李法白、刘镜芙两位先生的《水浒语词词典》是一部重要的近代汉语专书词汇研究著作,但由于种种原因,这本书在收词、释义与义项上还存在一些缺憾,我们依据《水浒》及其它语料,对这些情况分别予以补正。     

Understanding technology: the development of a concept

Children's perceptions about technology were measured using a Writing/Drawing Activity and a Picture Quiz, administered to approximately 300 grade three to six children in six primary schools in the English Midlands. The results indicate that although many children associate technology only with computers and modern appliances, overall there is a variety of ideas, with the more complex and coherent among older children. Subsequently interviews were carried out with 81 of the children to explore their reasons for choosing items which they said were something to do with technology. The children were able to respond in a thoughtful and consistent manner. Even when the children professed not to know what technology is, they often used an alternative but consistent explanation. A tentative model describing the development of children's ideas about technology is presented.     

The pleasure of recognition: intertextuality in the talk of preschoolers during shared reading with mothers and teachers

Mature readers draw on a complex web of previous experiences when interpreting written and visual texts. Yet very little is known about how preschool children, who cannot yet read, make connections between texts. This study explores how 13 4‐year‐old children made intertextual connections during shared reading with their mothers (seven children) and their preschool teachers (six children). The findings indicate that very young children actively draw on their knowledge of other texts, and their personal lived experiences, to reflect on the meanings they encounter in unfamiliar picture books. The functions served by the children's intertexts ranged from the simple pleasure of recognition to more sophisticated comparisons between texts in terms of theme and plot. The extent to which the adults were able to integrate the children's intertexts into the discussions varied. An awareness of the important role played by intertextuality in children's interpretations of texts may provide early childhood professionals with a framework within which to plan systematically for the language and literacy development of young children in their care.     

Multimodality,learning and decision-making: children's metacognitive reflections on their engagement with video games as interactive texts

This study examines how 31 middle-school children conducted multimodal analyses of video games. Over four consecutive days, students played video games for 30 minutes and then wrote written reflections about the multimodal symbols within the game and how these symbols influenced their interpretation and decision-making processes during gameplay. Students produced 124 reflections in total, which were analysed via template analysis to determine how children metacognitively reflected on different types of multimodal symbols and used those symbols to comprehend the games and make decisions. Results illustrate how students engaged in metacognitive semantic and syntactic processes with a variety of multimodal symbols, such as written language, dynamic visuals and abstract symbols, during gameplay that aided their understanding of the games and influenced their decisions. This study contributes to the limited empirical research on video game literacies and illustrates children's meaning-making processes while engaged with video games as multimodal interactive texts.     

Graphic symbols as "the mind on paper": links between children's interpretive theory of mind and symbol understanding

Children gradually develop interpretive theory of mind (iToM)—the understanding that different people may interpret identical events or stimuli differently. The present study tested whether more advanced iToM underlies children’s recognition that map symbols’ meanings must be communicated to others when symbols are iconic (resemble their referents). Children (6–9 years; N = 80) made maps using either iconic or abstract symbols. After accounting for age, intelligence, vocabulary, and memory, iToM predicted children’s success in communicating symbols’ meaning to a naïve map‐user when mapping tasks involved iconic (but not abstract) symbols. Findings suggest children’s growing appreciation of alternative representations and of the intentional assignment of meaning, and support the contention that ToM progresses beyond mastery of false belief.     

Three- to four-year-olds' recognition that symbols have a stable meaning: pictures are understood before written words

In 4 experiments 120 three- to four-year-old nonreaders were asked the identity of a symbolic representation as it appeared with different objects. Consistent with Bialystok (2000), many children judged the identity of written words to vary according to the object with which they appeared but few made such errors with recognizable pictures. Children also made few errors when the symbols were unrecognizable pictures. In Experiments 2 to 4 this pattern of responses was preserved in conditions that made it unlikely or impossible for children to answer correctly by taking the symbol to refer to one of the objects with which it appeared. Instead, correct answers required children to appreciate that the symbol had a generic, abstract meaning.     

The role of topic‐related background knowledge in visual attention to illustration and children's word learning during shared book reading

The purpose of this study was to examine how background knowledge of a topic may influence children's attention to different elements of storybook illustrations and how that influences word learning. Forty‐one kindergarten students were administered a test about a familiar topic (i.e., birds). Participants were then read either a fictional story about a familiar topic (birds) or a fictional story about a novel topic (wugs) on an eye‐tracker monitor. Results suggest that, for children who heard the familiar story, those who knew more about the category were faster to orient to the illustration of the novel word than children with lower background knowledge. Accordingly, children who were faster to orient to the illustration were more likely to learn the word. These results may suggest that one mechanism by which background knowledge improves implicit learning in shared‐book reading contexts is by guiding attention to the named elements of the illustrations.     

The use of mathematical symbolism in problem solving: An empirical study carried out in grade one in the French community of Belgium

This article relates to an empirical study based on the use of mathematical symbolism in problem solving. Twenty-five pupils were interviewed individually at the end of grade one; each of them was asked to solve and symbolize 14 different problems. In their classical curriculum, these pupils have received a traditional education based on a “top-down” approach (an approach that is still applied within the French Community of Belgium): conventional symbols are presented to the pupils immediately with an explanation of what they represent and how they should be used. Teaching then focuses on calculation techniques (considered as a pre-requisite for solving problems). The results presented here show the abilities (and difficulties) demonstrated by the children in making connections between the conventional symbolism taught in class and the informal approaches they develop when faced with the problems that are put to them. The limits of the “top-down” approach are then discussed as opposed to the more innovative “bottom-up” type approaches, such as those developed by supporters of Realistic Mathematics Educations in particular.     

An Investigation of Media Influences on Elementary Students Representations of Scientists

Even long before children are able to verbalize which careers may be interesting to them, they collect and store ideas about scientists. For these reasons, asking children to Draw-A-Scientist has become an accepted method to provide a glimpse into how children represent and identify with those in the science fields. Years later these representations may translate into student’s career choice. Since 1995, children’s illustrations of scientists have been assessed by the Draw-A-Scientist Checklist (DAST-C). The checklist was created from the common aspects or features found in illustrations from previous studies and were based initially on the scientists, broken down into “stereotypical” and “alternative” images shown in the drawings. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development, field test and reliability of the modified Draw-A-Scientist Test (DAST) and The Draw-A-Scientist Rubric designed as an improvement of the DAST-C to provide a more appropriate method of assessing students’ drawings of scientists. The combination of the modified DAST and the DAST Rubric brings more refinement as it enables clarities to emerge and subsequently increased detail to what one could ascertain from students about their mental images of scientists.     

Computer science education as a cultural encounter: a socio-cultural framework for articulating teaching difficulties

This study demonstrates the power of the cultural encounter metaphor in explaining learning and teaching difficulties, using as an example computer science education (CSE). CSE is envisioned as an encounter between veterans of two computer-oriented cultures, that of the teachers and that of the students. Forty questionnaires administered to CS teachers, as well as in-depth interviews with four leading CS teachers, revealed those teachers perceived their students as having a different perspective on the domain, on what constitutes a beneficial approach to problem-solving and on the nature of satisfactory solutions. In fact, the teachers portrayed their teaching as a continual battle in which their success is limited. Yet, their instruction was characterized as a composite of enforcement and compromise, with few and isolated attempts at building on students’ cultural capital. The cultural encounter metaphor, while still viewing students as novices to the professional CS culture represented by their teachers, emphasizes that good teaching requires building upon students’ cultural capital to create zones of fertile cultural encounter.     

Trial by fire: One perspective for guessing

Guessing correct answers to test items is a statistical concept that has direct impact when interpreting test scores. Many published tests, however, do not account for guessing. This is an important issue in view of recent federal legislation in the United States and global attention mandating the provision of identification of at-risk children for educational services. Children may score within a normal range by chance alone, resulting in test scores that are not sensitive. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is: (a) to describe one process, random guessing, for estimating a “true blind guessing score” (range of scores) that, if known, would result in missing fewer at-risk children; and (b) to sensitize test administrators to tests that do not address or may have suspicious corrections for guessing answers on tests.