Beliefs about justification for knowing when ethnic majority and ethnic minority students read multiple conflicting documents

We examined the role of justification for knowing beliefs in learning and comprehension when ethnic majority and ethnic minority students from the same school classes read five conflicting documents on the scientific issue of sun exposure and health. Results showed that the more ethnic minority students trusted scientific authorities and the less they relied on personal opinion when validating knowledge claims in the domain of science, the more they learned from and the better they comprehended the documents. In contrast, justification for knowing beliefs did not seem to play a role in learning and comprehension among ethnic majority students. These results may reflect that the documents represented more of a challenge to the ethnic minority students, with justification beliefs affecting learning and comprehension processes to a greater extent when the task is perceived as an ill-structured problem. This study is probably the first to indicate different relationships between various justification beliefs and performance in different language and cultural groups, having theoretical as well as educational implications.     

Sourcing in professional education: Do text factors make any difference?

The present study investigated the extent to which the text factors of source salience and emphasis on risk might influence readers’ attention to and use of source information when reading single documents to make behavioral decisions on controversial health-related issues. Participants (n = 259), who were attending different bachelor-level professional programs at a university college, generally disregarded source information irrespective of textual manipulations, especially sources cited or embedded within other documents, and mainly relied on their own personal experiences and opinions when making behavioral decisions on the issues. Theoretical as well as educational implications of the findings are discussed.     

To click or not to click: investigating conflict detection and sourcing in a multiple document hypertext environment

This study investigated whether accessing conflicting claims in other documents by means of hyperlinks embedded within currently read documents may facilitate conflict detection and source-content integration. Norwegian undergraduates (n?=?85) read multiple conflicting documents on a controversial health-related issue, with half of the conflicting claims across documents hyperlinked and the other half not. Moreover, half of the participants were told that they would get more information by clicking on the links (weak prompting condition) while the other half were additionally told that clicking on the links was necessary to get a more complete understanding of the issue (strong prompting condition). Results indicated that the extent to which participants accessed conflicting claims in other documents via the hyperlinks was positively related to their detection of cross-document conflicts as well as their integration of source-content information. A mediational analysis indicated that conflict detection mediated the effect of accessing conflicting claims via the hyperlinks on source-content integration. No relationship was found between the prompting condition and participants’ selection of the hyperlinks. The theoretical significance as well as the practical value of our findings are discussed.

     

The Discrepancy-Induced Source Comprehension (D-ISC) Model: Basic Assumptions and Preliminary Evidence

Despite the importance of source attention and evaluation for learning from texts, little is known about the particular conditions that encourage sourcing during reading. In this article, basic assumptions of the discrepancy-induced source comprehension (D-ISC) model are presented, which describes the moment-by-moment cognitive processes that readers undergo when reading-to-understand controversial messages. We then review supporting evidence from single and multiple text comprehension research. In the discussion, we draw conclusions based on the theoretical and empirical research, highlight limitations of what is known to date, and suggest how further investigations of D-ISC might address these concerns.     

Effects of different ways of introducing a reading task on intrinsic motivation and comprehension

This study compared the effects of two brief prereading instructional practices – hands‐on activities and prior knowledge activation – on sixth‐graders' intrinsic motivation for reading a text and reading comprehension. Both hands‐on activities and prior knowledge activation substantially improved reading comprehension relative to a control condition where students just read to answer questions and take a test about the text content. These effects did not depend on preexisting individual differences in basic reading skill, reading motivation or topic knowledge. Hands‐on activities and prior knowledge activation did not differentially affect reading comprehension, however, nor did either of them have any effect on intrinsic motivation to read the text. If used regularly in classrooms, brief prereading practices in the form of hands‐on activities or prior knowledge activation may result in knowledge gains that accumulate to build a solid conceptual basis for further, self‐regulated learning from text.     

Organizing higher education in a knowledge society

The integration of higher education systems in the Western world has led both to development of overall strategies for the organization of higher education institutions by public authorities, as well as to strategies by higher education institutions aiming to position themselves within emerging higher education systems. This article first asks whether these developments represent converging or path dependent trends before it sketches a conceptual point of departure for the analysis of the relationship between institutions in higher education systems based on the effects of integration on academic hierarchies and functional specialization. Then I discuss how recent attempts at integrating higher education systems in Europe and the US may affect the relationship between institutions in the light of conceptions of education as a process by which students learn to learn or by which they learn specific occupational skills. Thirdly, the development is situated in a wider context where the relationship between different types of institutions are considered in relation to the spread of an extended and more utility oriented concept of knowledge. Finally, I consider briefly some possible future developments based on how modern capitalist and public managerialist knowledge regimes constitute conditions for higher education integration.     

Identifying a School Counseling Research Agenda: A Delphi Study

The authors conducted a Delphi study to identify important research questions regarding school counseling. During 3 consecutive rounds of e‐mail queries, an expert panel of 21 school counseling educators and practitioners were asked to identify the goals of school counseling research, develop specific research questions, and rate the importance of the questions. The highest rated research questions concerned school counseling interventions that have an impact on academic achievement and the effects of school counseling programs on student outcomes. The panel's final list of 42 research questions can help counselor educators, graduate students, and practitioners develop research projects that most effectively meet the needs of the field.     

Optimizing Conditions for Learning: Situating Refutations in Epistemic Cognition

A refutation text is designed to promote conceptual change by explicitly acknowledging commonly held misconceptions about a topic, directly refuting them, and providing an accurate explanation. In this study, we determined the impact of different types of refutation texts on adolescent readers’ conceptual change learning in science. Specifically, we manipulated the way the correct conception was justified and explained following work in epistemic cognition. Three different types of justification were compared to a control condition: justification by authority, justification by multiple sources, and justification by personal opinion. The findings showed that learning effects were optimized when the correct conceptions were presented in terms of a corroborated consensus among multiple sources.