Preschoolers Flexibly Shift Between Speakers' Perspectives During Real-Time Language Comprehension

In communicative situations, preschoolers use shared knowledge, or “common ground,” to guide their interpretation of a speaker's referential intent. Using eye-tracking measures, this study investigated the time course of 4-year-olds’ (n = 95) use of two different speakers’ perspectives and assessed how individual differences in this ability related to individual differences in executive function and representational skills. Gaze measures indicated partner-specific common ground guided children's interpretation from the earliest moments of language processing. Nonegocentric online processing was positively correlated with performance on a Level 2 visual perspective-taking task. These results demonstrate that preschoolers readily use the perspectives of multiple partners to guide language comprehension and that more advanced representational skills are associated with the rapid integration of common ground information.     

Patterns of compensation of public and private school teachers

General impressions suggest that public school teachers are paid higher salaries than private school teachers. Indeed, the evidence is consistent with this general impression. But why the difference? Do public school teachers have better qualifications? Are private schools better places in which to work, and are they able to pay lower wages for comparable teachers? Do public and private schools even operate in the same market for teaching personnel? Are those individuals who seek employment in the private school sector from the same population as those seeking public school employment? What part does the ownership structure of the school play in the determination of teacher compensation? It is the purpose of this paper to provide some insights into these and related questions about the patterns of variation in compensation of public and private school teachers. Our findings reveal that public school teachers earn more than teachers in non-public schools. Teachers in parochial schools are the lowest paid, while teachers in non-sectarian private schools are the highest paid among non-public school teachers. There appear to be structural differences in the patterns of wage variation between the different sectors. Public school teachers possess greater quantities of those characteristics that are valued in the market than non-public school teachers. Non-public school teachers sacrifice between 10 and 40% of the public school teacher salary to work in the non-public sector (depending on the type of school within the non-public sector) and they are aware of their sacrifice. Organizational and ownership structure of the school also appears to make a difference in salaries, with profit-making schools being among the lowest paying, second only to parochial schools.     

Using Group Viewing of Television to Teach Preschool Children Social Skills

This quasi‐experimental field study assessed whether group viewing of television in a day‐care setting can be used to encourage prosocial behavior in young children. Drawing from social learning theory and cognitive‐developmental stage theory, four short‐ term programs were designed and tested. Children (aged 3‐5 years) from eight day‐care centers in Montreal (n = 150) were part of the study. Intact groups (two settings randomly assigned to condition) participated in 8 days of intervention consisting of group viewing of video‐taped segments of Sesame Street, followed by participation in activities. The programs were evaluated using a 2 X 2 X 2 factorial pretest—post‐test design with video‐type (prosocial, cognitive), activity‐type (cooperative, individualistic), and gender as the three factors. Measures included free‐play observations, a perspective‐taking ability test, and two qualitative measures describing the context. Analysis of covariance (pretest and age combined as covariates) revealed a significant main effect for video‐type on prosocial behavior, and a significant interaction between video‐type and activity‐type on antisocial behavior. Results suggest that prosocial modelling using television can encourage prosocial behavior in the day‐care setting. A group‐viewing context, with or without post‐viewing enactive prosocial training, may enhance prosocial modeling effects.     

Learning to be human in a digital world: a model of values fluency education for physical education

ABSTRACT

It is argued that negotiation and performance of identity in contemporary society is linked with the value-laden spaces in which individuals spend time. Concepts of space, place and identity have become important when looking to understand elements of social practice, in light of the recognition that life is becoming progressively more mobile, varied and challenging. This has resulted in a shift in how subsequent generations experience space and place within digitally-mediated social landscapes. It is asserted that young people in contemporary society can be seen to occupy a hybrid virtual-real world (Jordan, B. (2009). Blurring boundaries: The ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ in hybrid spaces. Human Organisation, 68.) where they experience the multiplication of place or duplication of space (Papacharissi, Z. (2011). A Networked Self: Identity Community and Culture on Social Network Sites. New York: Routledge). Such complex social geographies, we contend, have important implications for young people’s negotiation and performance of identity, the acquisition of socio-technical capital (Resnick, (2002). Beyond b?owling t?ogether: SocioTechnical c?apital. In J. M. Carroll (Ed.), Human-c?omputer i?nteraction in the n?ew m?illennium (pp. 647–?672). Upper Saddle River, NJ: ACM Press.) and, ultimately, digital well-being. In a time when there is a focus on developing global and connected citizens (Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the Imagination: Essay on education, the arts and social change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.) we argue that pupils need to be both digitally fluent and values fluent as they negotiate spaces of reality and virtual reality. Both constructs require the learner to engage critically with information and misinformation as presented on ever-changing digital interfaces (Kahne, J., & Bowyer, B. (2017). Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age: Confronting the Challenges of Motivated Reasoning and Misinformation. American Educational Research Journal, 54, 3–34.) and to make value choices. Given that physical education (PE) has been identified as a significant place for meaning-making (Spracklen, K. (2015). Digital Leisure, the Internet and Popular Culture: Communities and Identities in a Digital Age. London: Palgrave Macmillan.) and a core site for values-based education (Mccuaig, L., Marino, M., Gobbi, E., & Macdonald, D. (2015). Taught not Caught: Values based Education through physical education and School Sport: Literature Review. AIESEP Partners for WADA, ICSSPE, IOC, Fairplay & UNESCO.) it is identified as a key context in which to examine some of the challenges posed for students and educators with regard to values-based practices in digitally-mediated spaces. Within this conceptual paper, we propose a praxis model of values fluency to help PE teachers to support young people to recognise and successfully navigate hybrid spaces, to critically engage with sociotechnical capital and become adept at transferring and translating values across and between social contexts.     

Establishing an online community of inquiry at the Distance Education Centre,Victoria

This pilot intervention focused on three courses that were redesigned to utilize the online environment to establish an online community of inquiry (CoI). The setting for this research study was the Distance Education Centre, Victoria (DECV), an Australian co-educational school with approximately 3000 students who, for a variety of reasons, are studying one or more subjects via distance education. Despite the availability of information and communications technology, many students at the DECV remain socially isolated from their peers. The DECV recognizes that online student collaboration has the potential to bridge this divide. Results of this study suggest that the adaptation of these courses had led to improvements in students’ perception of their educational experience. These findings may be of use to other P–12 education providers who are attempting to promote online collaboration and student connectedness.     

Seeing a World in a Grain of Sand: Science Teaching in Multicultural Context

This paper briefly describes two unusual curriculum plans: the Imagining Nature Project at Deakin University in Geelong, Victoria, Australia and the Native Eyes Project at the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico Among other things, both projects entail the teaching of science and technology studies to non-science majors of highly diverse cultural origin. Both projects also incorporate innovative strategies designed to make science and technology more credible and relevant to indigenous people.     

Increasing the Use of Student-Centered Pedagogies from Moderate to High Improves Student Learning and Attitudes about Biology

Student-centered strategies are being incorporated into undergraduate classrooms in response to a call for reform. We tested whether teaching in an extensively student-centered manner (many active-learning pedagogies, consistent formative assessment, cooperative groups; the Extensive section) was more effective than teaching in a moderately student-centered manner (fewer active-learning pedagogies, less formative assessment, without groups; the Moderate section) in a large-enrollment course. One instructor taught both sections of Biology 101 during the same quarter, covering the same material. Students in the Extensive section had significantly higher mean scores on course exams. They also scored significantly higher on a content postassessment when accounting for preassessment score and student demographics. Item response theory analysis supported these results. Students in the Extensive section had greater changes in postinstruction abilities compared with students in the Moderate section. Finally, students in the Extensive section exhibited a statistically greater expert shift in their views about biology and learning biology. We suggest our results are explained by the greater number of active-learning pedagogies experienced by students in cooperative groups, the consistent use of formative assessment, and the frequent use of explicit metacognition in the Extensive section.