Reading biographical texts: a gateway to historical disciplinary reading

We examined the response of high school students in Israel to biographical texts. Students were exposed to three sub-genres of biographical texts (a literary-biographical text, an autobiographical text and a scientific-biographical text). These texts all differ from the conceptual schema of ordinary school texts. The data were collected from 64 participants from three classes in two different public schools in Israel. The ability of students to apply historical disciplinary reading skills was evaluated for each text, with an emphasis on ‘sourcing’ and ‘corroboration’. The basic premise was that the texts the students are exposed to influence not only their level of knowledge but also their disciplinary concepts and skills.

We contend that it might be that biographical texts, and especially autobiographical and literary-biographical texts, evoked historical reading in students, and strengthened their disciplinary reading abilities.     

Summary versus argument tasks when working with multiple documents: Which is better for whom?

This article reports on two experiments where undergraduates read five documents on a scientific topic and afterwards answered comprehension questions and wrote either summaries or argument essays on the topic. In the first experiment, students who were instructed to work with the documents for the purpose of summarizing their contents displayed better comprehension and integration of document contents than did students instructed to construct arguments from the documents. In the second experiment, focusing on whether the effects of task instructions on multiple-documents comprehension and integration could be moderated by students’ prior knowledge, it was found that only students with high prior knowledge were able to take advantage of instructions to construct arguments while reading, whereas low-knowledge readers seemed to be more hindered than helped by such task instructions. Theoretical as well as educational implications of these findings are discussed.     

The Effects of a Summary Writing Strategy on the Literacy Skills of Adolescents with Disabilities

Many adolescents, particularly adolescents with disabilities, have difficulty with literacy tasks such as reading and writing. Yet research has found that when students with disabilities receive appropriate instruction, they typically are able to improve their overall writing outcomes. This study explored the effectiveness of a summary writing strategy taught through a mnemonic device (WINDOW) with prompts for self-regulation on the summary writing and reading comprehension of high school students with disabilities. Results indicated that the students who received the intervention wrote longer and higher quality summaries and improved their reading comprehension scores after learning the strategy when compared to a control group. These outcomes indicate that the WINDOW strategy may have the potential to improve reading and writing outcomes for high school students with disabilities. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

Effects of knowledge of semantic roles on summarizing written prose

College students wrote summaries of eight short passages as a test of their ability to identify important information. After pairing naive summaries according to length and original passage, those summaries which judges identified as “better” were found to contain significantly more of the major semantic roles, such as Agent and Instrument, than did summaries judged “not as good.” It was also found that students wrote significantly better summaries when instructed to base the summaries on the major semantic roles within the passage. These summaries were significantly better than summaries based upon the traditional paragraph analysis of “topics” and “main ideas,” and they were significantly better than summaries written without any special instructions.     

Effects of student‐generated diagrams versus student‐generated summaries on conceptual understanding of causal and dynamic knowledge in plate tectonics

This research examines the beneficial effects of student‐generated diagrams versus student‐generated summaries on conceptual understanding in the domain of plate tectonics. Fifty‐eight Grade 5 students read a brief expository text about plate tectonics. During their reading of the text, students were asked to either draw diagrams, produce written summaries, or simply read the text (control). Conceptual understanding was measured by the diagrams and summaries which were generated during students' reading of the text, as well as by a posttest which assessed students' understanding of both spatial/static and causal/dynamic knowledge of the domain. Results indicated that the summaries generated during the reading of the text contained more domain‐related information than the diagrams which were generated during the reading of the text. However, on the posttest measures, the diagram group outperformed both the summary and text only groups in terms of understanding both the spatial/static as well as causal/dynamic aspects of the domain. Results are discussed with regard to the differential effects that generating diagrams as compared to generating summaries or simply reading has on both on‐line comprehension during reading and resulting conceptual understanding of the domain. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 39–53, 1999.     

Elementary teachers’ use of content knowledge to evaluate students’ thinking in the life sciences

Science learning environments should provide opportunities for students to make sense of and enhance their understanding of disciplinary concepts. Teachers can support students’ sense-making by engaging and responding to their ideas through high-leverage instructional practices such as formative assessment (FA). However, past research has shown that teachers may not understand FA, how to implement it, or have sufficient content knowledge to use it effectively. Few studies have investigated how teachers gather information to evaluate students’ ideas or how content knowledge factors into those decisions, particularly within the life science discipline. We designed a study embedded in a multi-year professional development program that supported elementary teachers’ development of disciplinary knowledge and FA practices within science instruction. Study findings illustrate how elementary teachers’ life science content knowledge influences their evaluation of students’ ideas. Teachers with higher levels of life science content knowledge more effectively evaluated students’ ideas than teachers with lower levels of content knowledge. Teachers with higher content exam scores discussed both content and student understanding to a greater extent, and their analyses of students’ ideas were more scientifically accurate compared to teachers with lower scores. These findings contribute to theory and practice around science teacher education, professional development, and curriculum development.     

Development of software to support argumentative reading and writing by means of creating a graphic organizer from an electronic text

This paper describes the development of a software program that supports argumentative reading and writing, especially for novice students. The software helps readers create a graphic organizer from the text as a knowledge map while they are reading and use their prior knowledge to build their own opinion as new information while they think about writing their essays. Readers using this software can read a text, underline important words or sentences, pick up and dynamically cite the underlined portions of the text onto a knowledge map as quotation nodes, illustrate a knowledge map by linking the nodes, and later write their opinion as an essay while viewing the knowledge map; thus, the software bridges argumentative reading and writing. Sixty-three freshman and sophomore students with no prior argumentative reading and writing education participated in a design case study to evaluate the software in classrooms. Thirty-four students were assigned to a class in which each student developed a knowledge map after underlining and/or highlighting a text with the software, while twenty-nine students were assigned to a class in which they simply wrote their essays after underlining and/or highlighting the text without creating knowledge maps. After receiving an instruction regarding a simplified Toulmin’s model followed by instructions for the software usage in argumentative reading and writing along with reading one training text, the students read the target text and developed their essays. The results revealed that students who drew a knowledge map based on the underlining and/or highlighting of the target text developed more argumentative essays than those who did not draw maps. Further analyses revealed that developing knowledge maps fostered an ability to capture the target text’s argument, and linking students’ ideas to the text’s argument directly on the knowledge map helped students develop more constructive essays. Accordingly, we discussed additional necessary scaffolds, such as automatic argument detection and collaborative learning functions, for improving the students’ use of appropriate reading and writing strategies.

     

Prompted Journal Writing Supports Preservice History Teachers in Drawing on Multiple Knowledge Domains for Designing Learning Tasks

Becoming a history teacher requires the integration of pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and content knowledge. Because the integration of knowledge from different disciplines is a complex task, we investigated prompted learning journals as a method to support teacher students’ knowledge integration. Fifty-two preservice history teachers participated in the experimental study. They read a text about a historical event, a text about teaching history, and a text about cognitive learning processes. Then they wrote a learning journal entry about the three texts. To support the journal writing, the participants in the experimental condition received four integration prompts, whereas the participants in the control condition received no prompts. In the prompted condition, the students engaged more often in integration strategies at the cost of rehearsal and organization strategies. Rehearsal and integration strategies predicted students’ recall of knowledge and their ability to evaluate learning tasks. Integration strategies as elicited in the journals predicted preservice teachers’ performance when designing a learning task for history education. In solving this task, the prompted preservice teachers used the information from the three texts in a more balanced way than the unprompted students who strongly focused on content knowledge. The study illustrates the potentials of learning journals as a method to support knowledge integration in history teacher education.     

Critique in academic disciplines and active learning of academic content

This article argues for increased theoretical specificity in the active learning process. Whereas constructivist learning emphasizes construction of meaning, the process articulated here complements meaning construction with disciplinary critique. This process is an implication of how disciplinary communities generate new knowledge claims, which is comprised by an interaction of roles – authors construct claims and peers critique them. Because disciplinary critique drives and shapes generation of knowledge claims, specialized features of these claims both justify and define their meaning. Here science is offered as an example, in which critique drives measurement of key concepts, thereby anchoring their meaning in operational definitions. The account of active learning proposed sheds new light on both historical and contemporary characterizations of active learning in terms of taking a critical stance toward content, in which the learner questions and challenges content. Thus students, rather than teachers, should actively challenge their emerging understanding of content.     

Exploring the relations between epistemic beliefs,emotions, and learning from texts

Conflicting claims about important socio-scientific debates are proliferating in contemporary society. It is therefore important to understand the individual characteristics that predict learning from conflicting claims. We explored individuals’ beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing (i.e., epistemic beliefs) and their emotions as potentially interrelated sets of learner characteristics that predict learning in such contexts. Undergraduate university students (N = 282) self-reported their topic-specific epistemic beliefs and were given three conflicting texts about climate change to read. Immediately after each of the three texts, participants self-reported the emotions they experienced. Following reading and self-report, participants wrote summaries of the conflicting texts. Text-mining and human coding were applied to summaries to construct two indices of learning from conflicting texts that reflected which source’s information is privileged in memory. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that epistemic beliefs were consistent in their predictions of emotions, which in turn variously predicted different learning outcomes. In particular, a belief that knowledge is justified by inquiry predicted surprise and curiosity, which at times facilitated learning. In contrast, confusion, predicted by passive reliance on external sources, related to impaired memory of conflicting content. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed for research on the relations between epistemic beliefs, emotions, and learning about controversial topics.     

经世致甩传统与乾嘉时期的历史编纂学

在中国史学史上,经世致用思想源远流长。然而其内容和参照系,却因时代不同而表现互异。各个历史时期经世致用思想的演变,直接影响着历史编纂学的内容和形式,显示出不同的时代特征。乾嘉史家编撰史书,注重考辨史料真伪,撰写考史札记,而不在于编纂大部头叙事著作。客观地说,清代历史编纂学及其成就,与汉唐时期相比各有千秋,具有同等重要的价值,不应彼此轩轾。     

论师范专业大学生学科知识交融能力及其培养

学科知识交融能力是指学生在学习本学科专业知识的基础上,学习和了解其他相关学科的知识,把这些知识交叉融合在一起,形成具有综合性知识的能力。作为今后从事教师职业的师范专业大学生,其知识结构和专业能力对教育教学有重要影响。加强学科知识交融能力是解决客观实际问题的现实需要,是目前高考改革的必然要求,是弥补目前分科教育所致缺陷的必要措施,也是发达国家在人才培养的重要方面。对师范专业大学生而言,这种能力的培养应该从学生个人层面的博采众学、善于思考和学校层面的在培养目标、课程设置和学科建设以及教学模式上的转向来实施。     

What teachers don't know and why they aren't learning it: addressing the need for content and pedagogy in teacher education

This article discusses the lingering problem of poor and inappropriate preparation of professional teachers of reading and learning disabilities – why it exists and what we can do about it. Because most students classified as having learning disabilities experience primary difficulties with language-based learning, teachers must know how to teach the forms and processes of language on which literacy depends, but most teacher preparation programs fail to teach this content at a level that supports teachers' implementation of effective instruction. The evidence suggests that teachers may cling to unproductive philosophies of teaching not only because science-based instruction is neglected in many teacher training programs, but also because the requisite insights are elusive and the content is difficult for many to grasp, even with some exposure. While ideologies can be blamed for much resistance to explicit, systematic methodologies, we must ask why they develop in the first place. Although there is a substantial body of research on the relationship between teacher knowledge, practice, and student outcomes in reading on which to build reform in teacher training and mentoring, more thought should be given to how prospective teachers are taught. First, the disciplinary knowledge base required to teach students with reading and related difficulties must be unambiguously explained in the standards by which teachers are educated and evaluated, and then programs must be set up to build teachers' insight as well as their knowledge of basic reading psychology, language structure, and pedagogy. Those who teach teachers in university settings or who provide professional development must be included in a supportive educational process, as wars of ideology are having only limited positive effects.     

Changing What We Might Have Done on Our Own: Improving Classroom Culture and Learning through Teacher Collaboration

Abstract

Student achievement is not always the equivalent of what students learn, especially when educators use their feedback to shape daily instruction. When students share their classroom experiences, we can determine better ways to create interdisciplinary partnerships, manage workload, enhance historical understandings, and communicate conclusions. Being able to trust in what students are doing in class, how well they are doing it, and what they will be able to do motivated the authors, who are two veteran educators, to reevaluate when their own teaching seemed most effective. What they discovered is incongruent with the traditional delivery of instruction by a single teacher. The authors found that their collaboration as co-teachers not only benefited their students but increased their own professional learning in terms of pedagogy, content knowledge, and the use of disciplinary literacy.     

Fostering topic knowledge: essential for academic writing

Several researchers emphasize the role of the writer’s topic knowledge for writing. In academic writing topic knowledge is often constructed by studying source texts. One possibility to support that essential phase of the writing process is to provide interactive learning questions which facilitate the construction of an adequate situation model by initiating macro-strategies. In order to examine whether the provision of interactive learning questions during studying source texts leads to better results in academic writing both writing process and performance of a group supported by interactive learning questions was compared to a study-only group which read the source texts without learning questions. Results revealed that students provided with interactive learning questions wrote longer essays and spend significantly more time prewriting and writing/revising their essays than did the students of the study-only group. Studying source texts with learning questions resulted in text products of better readability and partly better accuracy and coverage of content. These findings suggest that engaging students in answering learning questions when reading source texts can positively affect both writing process and performance.     

Prospective Elementary Teachers’ Analysis of Children’s Science Talk in an Undergraduate Physics Course

We investigated how prospective teachers used physics content knowledge when analyzing the talk of elementary children during special activities in an undergraduate physics content course designed for prospective teachers. We found that prospective teachers used content knowledge to reflect on their own learning and to identify students’ science ideas and restate these ideas in scientific terms. Based on this research, we inferred that analyzing children’s ideas through videos provides a meaningful context for applying conceptual physics knowledge in physics courses. Activities that are embedded within a disciplinary curriculum, such as those studied here, may help prospective teachers learn to use disciplinary knowledge in exactly the type of activity in which their content knowledge will be most useful: listening to and interpreting children’s science ideas.     

Information Technology in Higher Education: Tensions and Barriers

This study examined the effects of an intervention in writing with digital interactive books. To improve the writing skills of seventh- and eighth-grade students with a learning disability in reading, we conducted a quasi-experimental study in which the students read interactive digital books (i-books), took notes, wrote summaries, and acted as reviewers of a set of i-books. A repeated-measures analysis of variance indicated that the intervention group of students significantly outperformed the control group on the following measures of writing: the holistic text quality and the summarization text quality, with large effect sizes.     

Teachers’ literacy-related knowledge and self-perceptions in relation to preparation and experience

After rating their own literacy-related knowledge in three areas (knowledge about reading/reading development, phonemic awareness/phonics, and morpheme awareness/structural analysis), graduate teacher-education students completed five tasks intended to measure their actual disciplinary knowledge in these areas. Teachers with high levels of prior background (i.e., course preparation and experience) rated themselves as significantly more knowledgeable than did low-background teachers in all areas; high-background participants also significantly outperformed low-background participants on all tasks. However, even high-background teachers scored well below ceiling on the tasks. Regression analyses indicated that teachers’ self-perceptions and knowledge were positively influenced by both level of preparation and teaching experience, although the influences on teachers’ knowledge differed by task. Teachers had some accurate perceptions of their own knowledge, especially in the area of phonics. Results suggest that differentiating levels of preparation may be useful in studying teacher knowledge, and also support the notion of a substantial gap between research on reading and teacher preparation in reading.     

Children with dyslexia are slow writers because they pause more often and not because they are slow at handwriting execution

It is commonly assumed that children with dyslexia are slower at handwriting than other children. However, evidence of slow handwriting in children with dyslexia is very mixed. Thirty-one children with dyslexia, aged 9 years, were compared to both age-matched children and younger spelling-ability matched children. Participants completed an alphabet-writing task and a composition task on the surface of a digital writing tablet. Children with dyslexia wrote the same amount of letters per minute in the alphabet task but wrote fewer words per minute when composing their texts than children of the same age. Crucially, no differences were found between children with dyslexia and their same age peers for speed of handwriting execution, measured by the tablet, when writing the alphabet or composing their texts. However, children with dyslexia were found to pause within their compositions as often as the spelling ability matched group. Thus handwriting execution is not impaired in children with dyslexia. The slow writing that is typical of children with dyslexia is due to pausing more often when composing and is related to spelling ability. This may reflect processing problems in response to high cognitive load through having to contend with spelling and composing concurrently.