Effects of Item Wording on Sex Bias

This study examined the effects of gender-related item-wording changes on the performance of male and female examinees. Mathematics word problems and English language items were created in neuter, male, and female versions. Items were administered to randomly equivalent samples of about 300 high school juniors and seniors. Loglinear analysis was used to assess the impact of item gender and its interaction with examinee sex on the difficulty and discrimination of each item in each context. No items were found to have sex bias in either context. Mathematics items did not have different difficulty or discrimination in the three gender versions. Neither mathematics nor English items had different discrimination levels in the three gender-related versions. Some English items, however, were found to have different difficulty levels in the three gender-related versions. These difficulty differences were not systematic." none of the three gender versions appeared consistently more or less difficult than the others.     

“Social Work Is a Profession,Not an Ideology”: A Qualitative Analysis of Student Perceptions of Social Justice Discussions in the Classroom

The purpose of this article is to describe student perceptions of their experiences around social justice discussions in the social work classroom through a qualitative, grounded theory framework. Student responses from a qualitative section of a survey were analyzed and sorted into three categories: perceived discrimination, heightened self-awareness/self-assessment, and future social work practice. Each of these categories was derived from comparable multiple themes stemming from the student responses. A conceptual model resulting from the analysis suggests that students who shared experiences of perceived discrimination during classroom discussions could develop an enhanced self-awareness, which would result in an added empathy for clients in their future social work practice. Suggestions for teaching strategies and directions for future research are also discussed.     

Intrinsic integration in learning games and virtual instruction

This paper responds to a 2016 systematic literature review of the research on learning games by Ke (Educ Technol Res Dev 64(2):219–244, 2016). The review paper unpacked the idea of intrinsic integration in learning games, analyzing important emergent themes. The key ideas and the value of this review are discussed in the context of the recent shift to virtual instruction. The limitations, impact, and future implications are also described, with the perspective of this response focused on education theory. Intrinsic integration is an important consideration when designers create the next generation of digital games, and as researchers try to untangle the affordances of different educational games for student learning.

     

Pedagogic affect and its politics: learning to affect and be affected in education

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the critical contribution that affects as bodily capacities to act, engage and connect can make to children’s learning in museums and schools. Drawing chiefly on empirical material collected over the course of visits by school children to Museums Victoria, Australia, and bringing a sociomaterial sensibility to bear, I trace the movements of these children through exhibition spaces and show pedagogic affect at work. I argue that children’s learning can usefully be understood in ways that go beyond social constructivism which underwrites museum learning and school education yet tends to neglect the role of affectivity and material agency in learning, as well as relations of power. As the empirical material shows, the politics of affective practice involve the co-constitution of bodies, spaces and objects in ways that actively intervene in established relations of power. I conclude by calling for a renewed engagement with the affective in education.     

The effect of language modification of mathematics story problems on problem-solving in online homework

Instructional Science - Students’ grasp of the non-mathematical language in a mathematics story problem—such as vocabulary and syntax—may have an important effect on their...