How has recent curriculum reform in China influenced school-based teacher learning? An ethnographic study of two subject departments in Shanghai,China

Curriculum reforms with a focus on helping students ‘learn to learn’ are now an established global educational phenomenon. China has been implementing such curriculum reform and this poses challenges to teachers as they need to develop new pedagogical skills and knowledge to deal with new educational demands that arise. This ethnographic study investigates the impacts of current curriculum reform on teacher learning using two subject departments from two schools in Shanghai, China. It shows that teachers direct much attention towards searching for good practices and norms of practice to encounter new curriculum challenges. Findings show that outside experts who act as ‘boundary brokers’ are crucial in teacher learning. They also identify two modes of teacher learning activities: hierarchical, which relies on imported expert knowledge; and reciprocal, which depends on exploiting local knowledge. Striking a balance between these two approaches may be the way forward.     

Stellen Hochschultypen differenzielle Entwicklungsmilieus dar?

The German higher education system has three different types of universities. This study aims to investigate the effect of choosing one particular university type on central personality traits (vocational interests, vocational motives and the Big Five). Existing results clearly show that the individual types of universities recruit students with different backgrounds. Whether differential development during and after studies is determined by university type (i.e. socialization effects in a broader sense) or whether it denotes a consequence of pre-existing differences among students of the university types will, for the first time, be examined using propensity-score matching. To do this, data of a large longitudinal study in Baden-Wuerttemberg were used in order to compare 1568 students at traditional universities (Universit?ten), universities of applied sciences (Fachhochschulen), and universities of cooperative education (Berufsakademien) in their second, fourth and sixth year after university entrance examination. Socialisation effects were tested in propensity-score based parallelised sub-samples (N?=?622). Results show that differences between university types can mainly be explained with selection effects and that the effects of attendance at the university types itself were hardly differential.     

Investigating changes in pedagogical knowledge and skills from pre-service to the initial year of teaching

This study examined the levels of pedagogical knowledge and skills as perceived by student teachers who were enrolled in the Post Graduate Diploma in Education program at the National Institute of Education, Singapore, from the beginning of their initial teacher preparation program to the end of their first year of teaching. Their perceptions were assessed using the Pedagogical Knowledge and Skills in Teaching (PKST) survey which comprised six factors, namely, Student Learning, Lesson Planning, Instructional Support, Accomodating Diversity, Classroom Management, and Care and Concern. A sample of 812 student teachers participated in the study. The MANOVA conducted showed that there were significant increases in both their pedagogical knowledge and skills in teaching in all six factors from the start of their initial teacher preparation (ITP) program till the end of their first year of teaching. However, between the exit from the program to the end of the first year of teaching, they only perceived that their level of pedagogical knowledge in classroom management and care and concern continued to increase significantly. In the case of self-perceived skills, their level increased significantly between entry and exit of the program for all factors, except for care and concern, while the increase between the exit and first year of teaching was significant for all six factors. These results may have implications for preservice teacher education and this will be discussed in this article.     

Moving toward a grand theory of development: in memory of Esther Thelen

This paper is in memory of Esther Thelen, who passed away while President of the Society for Research in Child Development. A survey of Esther Thelen's career reveals a trajectory from early work on simple movements like stepping, to the study of goal-directed reaching, to work on the embodiment of cognition, and, ultimately, to a grand theory of development--dynamic systems theory. Four central concepts emerged during her career: (1) a new emphasis on time; (2) the proposal that behavior is softly assembled from the interaction of multiple subsystems; (3) the embodiment of perception, action, and cognition; and (4) a new respect for individuality. Esther Thelen communicated these ideas to scientists and practitioners alike, so the ultimate benefactors of her work were children.     

The role of negative priming in preschoolers' flexible rule use on the dimensional change card sort task

Four experiments examined the development of negative priming (NP) in 3-5-year-old children using as a measure of children's executive function (EF) the dimensional change card sort (DCCS) task. In the NP version of the DCCS, the values of the sorting dimension that is relevant during the preswitch phase are removed during the postswitch phase. The experiments showed that the NP effect observed in the DCCS decreased during the preschool years, and they clarified the circumstances in which NP occurs. Taken together, the findings suggest that the development of EF in early childhood consists in part in disinhibiting attention to information that has previously been suppressed.     

Prevalence of vulnerability and protective factors of sexual victimization

English language abstract not available at time of publication.     

The effects of expressions of fear induced by background music on reading comprehension

Background

Research has suggested that background music can have a positive or negative effect that can influence the affective state of individuals. Although research has demonstrated that fear negatively influences our cognitive performance, there is a research gap in understanding the combined effects of different background music tempo and fear in influencing reading comprehension performance.

Methods

Data were collected from 70 participants enrolled at a public university in Canada. Participants were required to listen to background music of varying speeds with three conditions (no music, slow music and fast music). We adopted a cross-sectional multi-level modelling approach for the main analyses, and further analyses using t-test and ANOVA.

Results

Results indicated that expression of fear was not a significant predictor of participants' reading comprehension performance (Model 1). However, when music condition was added (Model 2) in addition to expression of fear, a significant relationship between reading comprehension performance and music condition was found, showing better reading comprehension performance in the slow music condition than in the no music condition. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction effect between music condition and expression of fear on reading comprehension performance (Model 3). Importantly, not all individuals were affected by the music to the same extent, with the possibility that baseline level of fear being the key issue in influencing comprehension performance.

Conclusions

Considering both expression of fear and music condition is required to understand the combined effects on cognitive performance. Expression of fear during cognitive tasks such as reading could be an essential signal that interventions should be applied. Such strategies may be especially beneficial for task performers with higher baseline levels of fear and possibly provide us with insights for best practice and research implications in the field of reading comprehension among individuals with special needs.