Portuguese spelling in primary grades: complexity,length and lexicality effects

Reading and Writing - This study investigates spelling abilities of 189 second, third, and fourth graders using a word and pseudoword dictation task in European Portuguese. We analyzed the effect...     

Development of educational software for the teaching of telecommunication engineering by using MATLAB

The characteristics of a set of software tools developed for teaching are exposed in this work. This package is designed for telecommunication engineering students in order to facilitate the study of applied electromagnetism and communication theory concepts: theoretical guided propagation, practical training in radiation and radiocommunication laboratory. The programs are made under a MATLAB environment which provides great capabilities for graphical purposes. The programs are designed as user-friendly and interactive tutorials and they can be used as a powerful tool for improving the teaching process.     

The interactive effect of pro-environmental disciplinary concentration under cooperation versus competition contexts

This research explores the relevance of cooperation and students’ environmental disciplinary concentration on decision-making with respect to environmental issues – specifically the use of water, a limited common-pool resource. For this purpose, 61 environmental sciences students and 46 educational sciences students played the role of farmers and made decisions about irrigating their fields in the simulation ‘Irrigania.’ Prior to the simulation exercise, participants were randomly assigned to an experimental condition (competition or cooperation). Results demonstrated that both a cooperation situation and students’ environmental disciplinary concentration are related to the use of more pro-environmental and less selfish irrigation strategies in the simulation. Moreover, high levels of cooperation were able to counteract the lack of students’ disciplinary concentration on environmental problems; inversely, high levels of disciplinary concentration on environmental problems were able to counteract the competitive situations. This study highlights the relevance of programs that provide learning of (1) cooperative contexts that may reinforce cooperative frameworks on which students could base their behaviors, and (2) broader disciplinary concentration related to environmental problems that could lead to students feeling powerful in respect of knowing how to act against those problems and, thus, behaving in less selfish ways, with positive implications for the planet.     

Supporting Blended-Learning: tool requirements and solutions with OWLish

Currently, most of the educational approaches applied to higher education combine face-to-face (F2F) and computer-mediated instruction in a Blended-Learning (B-Learning) approach. One of the main challenges of these approaches is fully integrating the traditional brick-and-mortar classes with online learning environments in an efficient and flexible way. In this paper, we present a set of requirements to be met by a computer system in order to adequately support both students and teachers in a B-Learning context. Then, it defines a suitable conceptual architecture to meet the requirements, and the multi-agent implementation of the architecture. Next, it presents the evaluation of the functionality implemented. Finally some conclusions are drawn.     

“I wanted to go here”: Adolescents’ perspectives on school choice

New Zealand legislation removing school zones radically reshaped school choice, resulting in increased school stratification from parental choice frequently driven by social factors such as ethnic makeup of the school community. This article considers school choice through the eyes of 1,465 adolescents from 12 secondary schools in Dunedin (New Zealand). The most common reasons for school choice included: preference for a coeducational school, school’s facilities, positive comments from parents/students, and friends’ enrollment. Reasons for school choice differed by who was making the decision. Social factors and school programs/facilities, rather than proximity to home, influenced school choice decisions in Dunedin.     

Key challenges and future directions for educational research on scientific argumentation

At the 2015 NARST: A Worldwide Organization for Improving Science Teaching and Learning Through Research Annual International Conference, a group of scholars held an extended pre‐conference workshop to discuss key challenges and future directions faced by argumentation researchers around the world. This wide‐ranging group of facilitators and participants represented varying perspectives and experiences with argumentation research. Learning artifacts from the workshop were collected and analyzed utilizing multiple qualitative coding techniques. Analysis of these artifacts revealed five major themes that emerged from the NARST workshop describing this group of scholars’ views on current issues and potential directions for the field of argumentation research. These themes center on: (i) establishing a classroom culture that values argumentation; (ii) how differing theoretical frameworks challenge how researchers communicate findings; (iii) the challenge of assessing various aspects of scientific argumentation in a valid and reliable fashion; (iv) pedagogical challenges in supporting student discourse and social collaboration; and (v) challenges concerning the professional development of teachers. Each of these themes is described using direct quotes from the workshop artifacts, and implications for future research in argumentation are discussed. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 55: 5–18, 2018     

The link between executive functions and literacy: introduction

This special issue was born within the M2S Project (Mindfulness to students’ success: Relating executive functions and writing through a mindfulness app to promote children’s cognitive, social, and health-related outcomes) to call researchers and practitioners’ attention to the role that executive functions play on the acquisition and development of literacy skills, a neglected topic in the field. The selected papers include various methods and techniques to examine the relationships between literacy and executive functions across languages/cultures and different age groups, with and without disabilities.