An eye tracking comparison of external pointing cues and internal continuous cues in learning with complex animations

Two experiments used eye tracking to investigate a novel cueing approach for directing learner attention to low salience, high relevance aspects of a complex animation. In the first experiment, comprehension of a piano mechanism animation containing spreading-colour cues was compared with comprehension obtained with arrow cues or no cues. Eye tracking data revealed differences in learner attention patterns between the different experimental conditions. The second experiment used eye tracking with synchronized and non-synchronized cues to investigate the role of dynamic direction of attention in cueing effectiveness. Results of Experiment 1 showed that spreading-colour cues resulted in better targeting of attention to thematically relevant aspects and in higher comprehension scores than arrow cues or no cues. For Experiment 2, superior comprehension after the synchronized version together with eye tracking data indicated that cue effectiveness depended on attention direction being spatially and temporally coordinated with onsets of animation events having high thematic relevance to the learning task. The findings suggest the importance of perceptual cues and bottom-up processing.     

Walanbaa warramildanha: The impact of authentic Aboriginal community and school engagement on teachers’ professional knowledge

The conundrum of Indigenous education in Australia is that there are multiple, highly contested and polarising narratives that vie to inform both public and policy debate about how to construct effective schooling of Aboriginal students. Two of these contested discourses, which are seen to drive much of this debate, highlight the complexity of concerns—one which is essentially aspirational in its intent but unperceptive to the realities of Aboriginal student achievement and a second data focused discourse that is managerial and evaluative in its focus to disclose policy and pedagogic failures on student outcomes. The first has posed the politically more palatable proposition that there has been a slow, sometimes faltering but inexorable improvement in Aboriginal education, while the second highlights a mounting body of qualitative data that document an overall failure by school systems to lift Aboriginal student education achievement. The author recognises the complex and historical nature of the multilayered ‘issues’ that sit at the heart of Aboriginal underachievement. He argues that one of those underpinning issues that has plagued Aboriginal education centres on the depth of the socio-cultural disconnect between Aboriginal students and their communities, and teachers. He also argues that, too often, teachers are appointed to schools with limited social, political and professional knowledge about the particular needs and aspirations of Aboriginal students such that it impacts on their capacity to establish authentic connections to students. The research on which this article is based sets out to provide an understanding of both the nature and dynamics of community and school engagement in sites with high proportions of Aboriginal students. The study aimed to investigate teachers’ capacity to develop authentic pedagogic practices that are responsive to the educational, cultural and aspirational needs of Aboriginal students. In particular, the research highlights how the relational dynamics between schools and Aboriginal people have been deeply affected by colonial histories of exclusion and systemic disadvantage, pervasive school discourses of marginalisation and in particular an ignorance about holistic needs of Aboriginal students at school and the resultant negative relational interactions between schools and Aboriginal families. This multisite ethnographic study was undertaken with Aboriginal community members, teachers and school principals in 2012 as doctoral research. It was conducted within a relational landscape characterised by an enduring socio-cultural dissonance between schools and their Aboriginal communities. The study focused on examples of authentic collaboration and purposeful interactions between Aboriginal communities and schools that were shown to support teachers in building deeper understanding that enhanced their cognisance of the wider needs of Aboriginal students. The findings in this article highlight that when authentic engagement between Aboriginal people and schools occurred, it appeared to positively impact the teachers’ professional knowledge and created a consequent interest within these communities to engage with their schools. The research further identified that in each site the Aboriginal participants articulated an interest in developing authentic school collaborations that would enhance student outcomes. These findings suggested that teachers need to honour, understand and actively reflect on community history, contexts and aspirations to develop the skills and knowledge to address the particular socio-cultural and educational needs of Aboriginal students.     

Connecting to nature at the zoo: implications for responding to climate change

Societal response to climate change has been inadequate. A perception that the issue is both physically and temporally remote may reduce concern; concern may also be affected by the political polarization surrounding the issue in the USA. A feeling of connection to nature or to animals may increase personal relevance, and a supportive social context may counteract political tensions. Zoos may provide opportunities for both sense of connection and social support. We surveyed over 7000 zoo and aquarium visitors to examine the ways in which a feeling of personal connection among zoo visitors may encourage concern about climate change. Results show that feeling connected to animals at the zoo is significantly associated with cognitive and emotional responses to climate change, as well as with other social groupings and social responses. Overall, the zoo seems to present a supportive social context for considering the topic.     

Recent Developments in the Funding of University Research

The UGC norm-based allocation of 1986, the current proposals for the rationalisation of departments, and the proposals of the Advisory Board for the Research Councils (ABRC) for R, X and T class universities are assessed against the actual operations of productive science departments and their patterns of expenditure on research as revealed born a recent sample survey. It is concluded that the UGC's norm-based allocation did not in any systematic way secure increases related to current research activity except for those cases where this came from the student number-based teaching element. Only the creation of larger departments seems likely to increase research output, and often that will best be achieved by increases in student numbers and their associated funding. Institutions similar to T class universities can be achieved by encouraging the recruitment of students at the expense of the public sector, but the distribution between R and X class universities is unsustainable.     

Positive emotions: passionate scholarship and student transformation

This paper challenges the practical and conceptual understanding of the role of emotions in higher education from the twin perspectives of transition and transformation. Focusing on the neglected area of positive emotions, exploratory data reveal a rich, low-level milieu of undergraduate emotional awareness in students chiefly attributed to pedagogic actions, primarily extrinsically orientated, and pervasive throughout the learning experience. The data conceive positive affect as oppositional, principally ephemeral and linked to performative pedagogic endeavours of getting, knowing and doing. A cyclical social dynamic of reciprocity, generating positive feedback loops, is highlighted. Finally we inductively construct a tentative ‘emotion-transition framework’ to assist our understanding of positive emotion as a force for transformational change; our contention is that higher education might proactively craft pedagogic spaces so as to unite the feeling discourse, the thinking discourse (epistemological self) and the wider life-self (ontological) discourse.     

Content and Context of the Administrative Internship: How Mentoring and Sustained Activities Impact Preparation

As universities prepare educational leaders for twenty-first century schools, the quality and authenticity of the internship experience require both the strengths of university faculty and the expertise of practitioners to create authentic experiences that seek to bridge the theory-to-practice divide. One mechanism to achieve this is through quality mentorship by school- and central-office-based personnel during the internship experience. A central aspect of this professional relationship is the ability for the mentor to provide access to quality activities that will prepare the aspiring leader for his/her first administrative position. This exploratory study examined language utilized by interns in their time logs as well as information gleaned from preliminary surveys of both interns and mentors upon completion of their experience. Findings revealed the complexity of language analysis and revealed a need for understanding activities of interns and interactions with mentors in a contextual fashion.     

Contraction: implications for school leaders

Ackoff's circular structure has been successfully utilised to combine hierarchy and democracy in various industries. This paper argues that this structure is the most appropriate democratic structure for the internal governance of public schools. It concludes that a circularity of power relations between administrators and teachers would create genuinely empowering teacher participation, improve co‐ordination, foster teacher self‐actualisation and expressiveness, alleviate teacher shortages, help attract high quality persons to teaching careers, ensure appropriate (service oriented) teacher supervision, and increase the number of successful school improvement projects.     

Transfer Student Success: Exploring Community College,University, and Individual Predictors

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates community college transfer success by exploring the relationship between individual and institutional-level characteristics at students’ two- and four-year institutions. Using statewide administrative data from North Carolina, this study employs a cross-classified multilevel model to investigate the impact that a student’s community college and four-year transfer institution have on post-transfer success. Our findings offer important and compelling insights into the relationship between transfer students, the community college they attended, the four-year transfer institution, and educational outcomes. While individual effects were small, we find several institutional factors associated with student success. Attendance at a large community college or having a public university in the same county as their community college is positively associated with student success, whereas size of the university is negatively related to grades during the first year and persistence to the second year. While the four-year institution’s selectivity is negatively related to many of our outcomes, transferring to a Historically Black College or University is positively associated with GPA, college persistence, and degree completion.