Charting the routes to revision: An interplay of writing goals,peer comments,and self-reflections from peer reviews

Building upon self-regulated learning theories, we examined the nature of student writing goals and the relationship of these writing goals to revision alone and in combination with two other important sources of students’ self-regulated revision—peer comments on their writing, and reflections for their own writing obtained from reviewing others’ writing. Data were obtained from a large introductory undergraduate class in the context of two 1000-word writing assignments involving online peer review and a required revision. We began with an investigation of students’ free response learning goals and a follow-up quantitative survey about the nature and structure of these writing goals. We found that: (a) students tended to create high-level substantive goals more often, (b) students change their writing goals across papers even for a very similar assignment, and (c) their writing goals divide into three dimensions: general writing goals, genre writing goals, and assignment goals. We then closely coded and analyzed the relative levels of association of revision changes with writing goals, peer comments, reflections from peer review, and combinations of these sources. Findings suggest that high-level revisions are commonly associated with writing goals, are especially likely to occur for combinations of the three sources, and peer comments alone appeared to make the largest contributions to revision.     

Ethnic Identity Development and Acculturation Preferences Among Minority and Majority Youth: Norms and Contact

This article tests a longitudinal model of the antecedents and consequences of changes in identification with indigenous (Mapuche) among indigenous and nonindigenous youth in Chilean school contexts over a 6‐month period (633 nonindigenous and 270 Mapuche students, M_ages = 12.47 and 12.80 years, respectively). Results revealed that in‐group norms supporting contact and quality of intergroup contact at Time 1 predicted student's changes in Mapuche identification at Time 2, which in turn predicted changes in support for adoption of Chilean culture and maintenance of Mapuche culture at Time 2; some of the relationships between these variables were found to be moderated by age and ethnicity. Conceptual and policy implications are addressed in the Discussion .     

How to stay becoming – living up to the code of conduct in a sports class

In this article we show how a hybridisation of elite sport and school in lower-secondary education in Denmark produces a particular kind of learning subject with dual tracks for development, and we ask what kind of actions the students apply in order to stay becoming along both tracks. We apply theoretical conceptions of ‘becoming’ inspired by Brembeck and Johansson that allow us to understand how the sports students live up to the code of conduct of the sports classes. The article is based on an ethnographic study carried out in four schools located in four regions of Denmark. We argue that the hybrid obliges students to follow a narrow developmental track with an ambitious goal of performing in both sport and school, and that the hybrid is threatened when a sports student prioritises either sport or school while he/she is still enrolled in the class.     

Knowledge flows through informal contacts in industrial clusters: myth or reality?

The role of informal networks in the development of regional clusters has recently received a lot of attention in the literature. Informal contact between employees in different firms is claimed to be one of the main carriers of knowledge between firms in a cluster. This paper examines empirically the role of informal contacts in a specific cluster. In a questionnaire survey, we asked a sample of engineers in a regional cluster of wireless communication firms in Northern Denmark a series of questions on informal networks. We analyze whether the engineers actually acquire valuable knowledge through these networks. We find that the engineers do share even quite valuable knowledge with informal contacts. This shows that informal contacts represent an important channel of knowledge diffusion.     

External and internal representations in the acquisition and use of knowledge: visualization effects on mental model construction

This article investigates whether different formats of visualizing information result in different mental models constructed in learning from pictures, whether the different mental models lead to different patterns of performance in subsequently presented tasks, and how these visualization effects can be modified by further external representations during task performance. A total of 80 university students learned from an illustrated text different day times and different dates exist simultaneously on the earth. One half of the participants received the text combined with pictures visualizing the earth as a kind of carpet (carpet pictures), whereas the other half received the text combined with pictures visualizing the earth surface as a circle (circle pictures). After learning, the participants received a test including different kinds of tasks. In both visualization groups, one half of the participants solved the tasks with an additional external representation, whereas the other half solved the tasks without an external representation. The findings indicate that the form of visualization affects the structure of mental models. Different structures of mental models result in different patterns of performance, when individuals solve tasks based only on their mental representations acquired during their previous learning. However, these effects decrease, when further external representations are made available to the learners. The findings are discussed within a broader framework of learning with multiple external representations.     

Investigation of Clinically Significant Change by Severity Level in College Counseling Center Clients

The authors investigated the number of sessions necessary for college counseling center clients of different levels of severity of distress at intake to achieve clinically significant change (CS) in therapy. The Outcome Questionnaire‐45 (M. J. Lambert, N. B. Hansen, et al., 1996) was used to categorize 914 clients by severity of distress. Analyses of outcome indicated that clients with less and more severe distress needed 14 and 20 sessions, respectively, for 50% in each group to achieve CS. Implications are discussed.     

Scientists' Role in Educational Content Development

As part of NASA's overall plan to create increased learning opportunities related to its scientific and technical enterprises, we developed a successful model for research scientists to participate in educational content creation. We used this model to create multimedia resources designed to improve science and mathematics skills in students and improve public awareness of science through the results of the Hubble Space Telescope. The model places scientists in partnership with teachers, graphic artists, writers, and multimedia Web developers. Teams were led by professional content developers and multimedia production chiefs. We used a systematic production cycle including specification, project definition, frequent reviews, and several testing periods that has proven to generate robust but flexible resources. Local outreach scientists and other scientists drawn from the community participated in the content creation at various stages, with well specified roles. The model was used successfully to create curriculum support materials, a traveling museum exhibit, press releases, and a website for the public.     

Technological internationalisation in the electro-technical industry: a cross-company comparison of patenting patterns 1986-2000

This paper addresses the issue of R&D internationalisation of two multinationals in the electro-technical industry (GE and ABB), by means of a patent data analysis. The overwhelming majority of both companies’ R&D activities are concentrated in Western Europe and North America. The locational overlap between the two firms’ activities is small. These results are consistent with findings from earlier studies that (1) there is little evidence to suggest that the ‘production’ of technology is globalised in a general sense and (2) that tapping knowledge from an industry's global lead location plays a very limited role in foreign R&D investments.