Is there a drop in normative clearsightedness in sixth grade? Study of internality and normative clearsightedness in fourth to seventh graders

Numerous studies have demonstrated a decrease in the expression of internality in French sixth graders as compared to fifth graders. The present study examines normative clearsightedness in addition to internality across four French school grades (fourth to seventh). The results confirmed the sixth-grade drop in internality and showed that the decrease also applies to normative clearsightedness.     

Social utility, social desirability and scholastic judgments: Toward a personological model of academic evaluation

The aim of this article is to gain further insight into the determinants of scholastic judgments. On the basis of a previous study (Dompnier, Pansu, & Bressoux, 2006), we propose a model of the processes underlying teachers’ judgments. In addition to taking into account some of these determinants, the proposed model grants to pupils’ social utility, as perceived by their teacher, the status of central mediator between scholastic judgments and their determinants (pupils’ actual academic achievement, pupils’ scholastic history, classroom context, and internality perceived by teachers). The initial model was tested on a first sample of 250 pupils (3rd grade) and their teachers, and then improved. Next, the modified model was validated on a second sample of 249 pupils (3rd grade) and their teachers. The results obtained on this sample indicated that the modified model fit the data to a satisfactory extent, and that it is more parsimonious that alternative nonhierachical models.     

Scholastic achievement, academic self-schemata, and normative clearsightedness

This study based directly on Markus’s (1977) paradigm demonstrates the greater prevalence of an academic success self-schema in high academic achievers and of an academic failure self-schema in low academic achievers. The results also suggest that this achievementbased schema is modulated by clearsightedness (Py & Somat, 1991) in both good and poor students. Because more clearsighted individuals are probably better able to assess the arbitrariness of the reinforcement systems applied to their performance, they do not build the same schemata as less clearsighted individuals do.     

Internality-norm theory in educational contexts

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the socionormative approach of internality in the field of education, and more specifically regarding scholastic judgment. It describes the theoretical development and the main procedures used by researchers to show that internal causal explanations have more value than external ones because they are normative and convey social value. We present results that show that the preference for internal explanations is learned in school. We also demonstrate that internal explanations are often chosen for self-presentation purposes and have some bearing in evaluative practices (here, scholastic judgment). We also present results which show that certain internal explanations of school events, regardless of their valence (success or failure), enhance the social worth of the pupil producing them. This applies to effort-based explanations which are more highly valued than others (e.g., in terms of personological traits such as aptitudes or abilities). Such results lead us to discuss the role played by internal explanations in the evaluation practices. We underline the relevant aspect of the socionormative theory of internality by comparison to another sociocognitive approach namely Weiner’s attributional theory of motivation.     

Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Social valorization among pupils and the effect on teachers’ judgments

In this article, the concept of Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) is transposed from a work context, in which it was developed, to secondary school. Two studies test the assumption of a social valorization of OCB declaration in a school context. In Study 1, 445 pupils (sixth-graders to ninth-graders) answered an OCB questionnaire, specifically designed for this population, according to the three instructions of the self-presentation paradigm. The ANOVAs indicated (1) a higher frequency of declared OCBs for girls than for boys, which decreases with school grade, and is higher for the dimension of Organizational Compliance, and (2) a significant OCB clearsightedness, more significant when presenting oneself to teachers than to parents and peers, and higher for Individual Development, Altruism and Organizational Compliance dimensions. In Study 2, 46 teachers examined the report of a fictitious pupil expressing a high or low frequency of OCB (judge paradigm). The ANOVAs indicated that the teachers’ judgement was more favorable towards the pupil expressing high rather than low frequency of OCB. The normative component of OCB, the social and institutional function which the OCB can fulfill, and the evaluation devices in secondary school are then discussed.     

Recognising Health Care Assistants’ Prior Learning Through a Caring Ideology

This article critically appraises a process of recognising prior learning (RPL) using analytical tools from Habermas’ theory of communicative action. The RPL process is part of an in-service training program for health care assistants where the goal is to become a licensed practical nurse. Data about the RPL process were collected using interviews and observations. Through appraising RPL as a social practice, it is held that the process progresses through a ‘caring ideology’. The caring ideology is the foundation that makes it possible to build up health care assistants’ trust in teachers’ authority. In this process, the teachers, by means of strategic actions, become the possessors of (the validity claim) truth. From this starting point, the assistants’ prior experiences are strategically acknowledged in two ways: by affective comments ‘recognising’ their identity/personality and by generating a grade in the courses for which their prior learning is being accredited. The findings show that the lifeworld of these workers is assimilated and colonised through the RPL process and important issues such as power, gender and class are not accounted for. These matters should not be left out in research on caring practices performed by women from low socio-economic groups. These issues must be included if RPL processes are not merely assumed to systematically and uncritically reproduce an existing normative discourse. Based on the RPL practice analysed here, it is proposed that a more reflexive, emancipatory and communicative RPL process could play a central role in the development and enlightenment of health care assistants.     

Transformation through Language Use: Children’s Spontaneous Metaphors in Elementary School Science

This article examines the role elementary school children’s spontaneous metaphors play in learning science. The data consists of tape recordings of about 25 h from five different schools. The material is analysed using a practical epistemology analysis and by using Dewey’s ideas on the continuity and transformation of experience. The results show the rich and varied meanings that children put into their spontaneous metaphors. Their metaphors deal with facts as well as norms and aesthetics in relation to the science content taught and they influence learning both through what is made salient, as well as through their relations to the children’s possibilities of proceeding with their undertakings. Often one and the same metaphor encompassed all these cognitive, aesthetic and normative aspects at the same time. It is discussed how this rich meaning can be cultured in a productive way, and how the children’s spontaneous metaphors, with all their relations, can be used to enhance conceptual learning and also learning about the nature of metaphor use in science. Through their connection with various experiences of the children, it is also shown how children’s spontaneous metaphors have the potential to enliven and humanise the subject.     

A model of women’s educational factors related to delaying girls’ marriage

Delaying girls’ early marriage is a critical public health and education goal in developing countries, in which their own or their mothers’ education may play an important role. This paper reviews the existing evidence of any relationship between girls’ schooling or women’s literacy education and delayed marriage for themselves or their daughters. The majority of research reports focus on the correlation between girls’ schooling and brides’ age at first marriage. But it is conceivable that adult women’s/mothers’ literacy education also has considerable influence on the age at which their daughters are married. Since this aspect has hitherto not been explicitly investigated, the authors propose a model – based on relevant research about the outcomes of girls’ schooling and women’s literacy education – of the mechanisms that mediate between women’s education and delayed marriage for their daughters. The authors argue for research that will inform policy makers interested in helping girls complete secondary schooling about the potential contributions of adult women’s literacy education to this goal.     

The influence of video clubs on teachers’ thinking and practice

This article examines a model of professional development called “video clubs” in which teachers watch and discuss excerpts of videos from their classrooms. We investigate how participation in a video club influences teachers’ thinking and practice by exploring three related contexts: (a) teachers’ comments during video-club meetings, (b) teachers’ self-reports of the effects of the video club, and (c) teachers’ instruction across the year. Data analysis revealed changes in all three contexts. In the video-club meetings, teachers paid increased attention to student mathematical thinking over the course of the year. In interviews, teachers reported having learned about students’ mathematical thinking, about the importance of attending to student ideas during instruction, and about their school’s mathematics curriculum. Finally, shifts were also uncovered in the teachers’ instruction. By the end of the year, teachers increasingly made space for student thinking to emerge in the classroom, probed students’ underlying understandings, and learned from their students while teaching.     

‘Maintaining competence’: a grounded theory typology of approaches to teaching in higher education

This paper presents a contingency theory of approaches to teaching in Higher Education adopted by university academics who teach heterogeneous student cohorts within a changing university context. The study is located within the substantive context of academics within Australian universities who teach within the broad field of management studies. Orthodox grounded theory is employed to generate a contingency typology comprised of four separate teaching approaches: Distancing, Adapting, Clarifying, and Relating. The model demonstrates how academics utilise a variety of teaching approaches to address their ‘main concern’, namely maintaining their professional competence within the context of a rapidly changing university landscape and significantly heterogeneous groups of students. We have labelled this process ‘Maintaining Competence’. This model stresses the importance of the twin forces of structure and individual agency in determining teaching approaches. It emphasises the value of analysing what academics actually do in the classroom situation, rather than concentrating on normative assumptions of what they should do in terms of best practice.     

Students’ Adaptation of Study Strategies When Preparing for Classroom Tests

According to theories of students’ test preparation, students may optimize their test performance by paying special attention to important information and processing this information in ways that are appropriate to the type of questions included in the forthcoming test. However, research is unclear about the conditions under which students adapt study strategies to the demands of test preparation tasks. Moreover, little is known about the processes and abilities involved. In this article, we present a theoretical model that integrates various factors that seem relevant to strategy adaptation in test preparation, including the teacher’s intended task demands, students’ perceptions of these demands, students’ personal goals for studying, and their ability to adapt and implement strategies. The aim of our model is to stimulate further research on strategy adaptation, which may eventually provide evidence-based guidelines that could help teachers support the development of students’ strategy adaptability and use tests as learning tools.     

Rethinking historical and cultural source of spontaneous mental models of water cycle: in the perspective of South Korea

This review explores Ben-Zvi Assaraf, Eshach, Orion, and Alamour’s paper titled “Cultural Differences and Students’ Spontaneous Models of the Water Cycle: A Case Study of Jewish and Bedouin Children in Israel” by examining how the authors use the concept of spontaneous mental models to explain cultural knowledge source of Bedouin children’s mental model of water compared to Jewish children’s mental model of water in nature. My response to Ben-Zvi Assaraf et al.’s work expands upon their explanations of the Bedouin children’s cultural knowledge source. Bedouin children’s mental model is based on their culture, religion, place of living and everyday life practices related to water. I suggest a different knowledge source for spontaneous mental model of water in nature based on unique history and traditions of South Korea where people think of water in nature in different ways. This forum also addresses how western science dominates South Korean science curriculum and ways of assessing students’ conceptual understanding of scientific concepts. Additionally I argue that western science curriculum models could diminish Korean students’ understanding of natural world which are based on Korean cultural ways of thinking about the natural world. Finally, I also suggest two different ways of considering this unique knowledge source for a more culturally relevant teaching Earth system education.     

Is underestimation less detrimental than overestimation? The impact of experts’ beliefs about a layperson’s knowledge on learning and question asking

Although prior research has shown that experts tend to overestimate or underestimate what laypersons actually know, little is known about the specific consequences of biased estimations for communication. To investigate the impact of biased estimations of a layperson’s knowledge on the effectiveness of experts’ explanations, we conducted a web-based dialog experiment with 45 pairs of experts and laypersons. We manipulated the experts’ mental model of the layperson by presenting them either valid information about the layperson’s knowledge or information that was biased towards overestimation or underestimation. Results showed that the experts adopted the biased estimations and adapted their explanations accordingly. Consequently, the laypersons’ learning from the experts’ explanations was impaired when the experts overestimated or underestimated the layperson’s knowledge. In addition, laypersons whose knowledge was overestimated more often generated questions that reflected comprehension problems. Laypersons whose knowledge was underestimated asked mainly for additional information previously not addressed in the explanations. The results suggest that underestimating a learner during the instructional dialog is as detrimental to learning as is the overestimation of a learner’s knowledge. Thus, the provision of effective explanations presupposes an accurate mental model of the learner’s knowledge prerequisites.     

An integrative model of scholastic judgments: Pupils’ characteristics, class context, halo effect and internal attributions

This article proposes a model that integrates some of the determinants of scholastic judgment. The model is based on the assumption that a teacher’s judgment in a particular discipline is influenced by different variables: the pupil’s actual performance in the discipline, his/her actual performance in other disciplines (halo effect), the average performance of the class in the discipline (class context effect), the pupil’s individual characteristics such as whether he/she has ever repeated a grade and the teacher’s perception of the pupils’ causal explanations. Furthermore, the model proposes that a teacher’s perceptions are related to the pupil’s spontaneous expression of causality, which in turn is influenced by the pupil’s knowledge of the social value of causal explanations. In order to test the validity of the proposed model, the authors conducted a study in a real classroom setting on a population of 663 pupils from 38 classes (3rd grade) and their respective teachers. Path analyses showed that the theoretical model fit the data to a satisfactory extent. However, a comparison of the fit indexes of the theoretical model and two alternative models (one nonhierarchical and one hierarchical) showed that the initial theoretical model could be significantly improved by additional paths.     

Comment on Perry & Winne’s “Learning from Learning Kits: gStudy Traces of Students’ Self-Regulated Engagements with Computerized Content”

The comment starts with a review of the authors’ four phase model of SRL as metacognitive, motivated, and strategic where it is suggested to complete the model with aspects of motivation, emotion, and attribution. Furthermore, integrating theories about “online motivation” within the model’s internal regulatory part and framing it with elements of interest theory could increase the explanatory power in view of the dynamics in the regulatory component. The authors’ critics of methodological shortcomings and their preference of “in vivo” indicators about learners’ tactics is acknowledged although their meaning of “validity” needs further elaboration, especially with regard to a precise definition of adequate parameters that depict significant characteristics of traces and of time-related changes. With respect to the Learning Kit Project, a parallel on-line measure of concurrent motivational and emotional states is suggested as well as an emphasis on regulatory aspects having their source in dynamic interactions between cognition, motivation, and emotion. Regarding the accompanying software, considering the difference in perspectives, roles, and needs of teachers and researchers and to integrate project and software into a more explicit instructional concept could help to realize its promising and challenging target even more efficiently.     

Students’ perceptions about peer assessment for writing: their origin and impact on revision work

We investigate students’ negative perceptions about an online peer assessment system for undergraduate writing across the disciplines. Specifically, we consider the nature of students’ resistance to peer assessment; what factors influence that resistance; and how students’ perceptions impact their revision work. We do this work by first examining findings from an end-of-course survey administered to 250 students in ten courses across six universities using an online peer assessment system called SWoRD for their writing assignments. Those findings indicate that students have the most positive perceptions of SWoRD in those courses where an instructor graded their work in addition to peers (as opposed to peer-only grading). We then move to an in-depth examination of perceptions and revision work among 84 students using SWoRD and no instructor grading for assessment of writing in one university class. Findings from that study indicate that students sometimes regard peer assessment as unfair and often believe that peers are unqualified to review and assess students’ work. Furthermore, students’ perceptions about the fairness of peer assessment drop significantly following students’ experience in doing peer assessment. Students’ fairness perceptions—and drops in those perceptions—are most significantly associated with their perceptions about the extent to which peers’ feedback is useful and positive. However, students’ perceptions appear to be unrelated to the extent of their revision work. This research fills a considerable gap in the literature regarding the origin of students’ negative perceptions about peer assessment, as well as how perceptions influence performance.     

Teacher judgments and pupils’ causal explanations: Social valorization of effort-based explanations in school context

Achievement evaluation in school contexts may be considered as a kind of social judgment, which is affected by social and moral determinants since it is not merely an estimation of pupils’ accomplishment (Dompnier, Pansu, & Bressoux, 2006; Weiner, 2003). Teachers’ judgments have been investigated starting from the analysis of two theoretical approaches: the norm of internality (Dubois, 2003), and the attributional approach to social motivation (Weiner, 2006). In order to study the social valorization of internal explanations referring to effort in school context, an empirical research has been conducted. Our study investigates how teachers evaluate fictitious pupils, which are supposed to explain events by means of different types of causal explanations. According to our results, pupils providing effort-based explanations receive more positive judgments. Findings are discussed by considering effort as a key principle of school environments.