Using learning environments to create meaningful work for co-op students

For students in cooperative education (co-op) programs, meaningful work is a critical aspect of participation and a key component of program success. However, studies have not explored how meaningful work can be created for co-op students. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between co-op students’ perceptions of a learning environment, perceived relatedness of the work experience (to their potential careers and to their academic studies), and self-reported meaningfulness of work. Data were collected from undergraduate co-op students in a Canadian university immediately following a co-op work term. Results from testing a parallel mediation model showed that both forms of relatedness partially mediated the influence of learning environments on self-reported meaningfulness. These findings offer insight into the ways in which work terms can be designed to enhance co-op students’ work experiences.     

Components of Understanding in Proportional Reasoning: A Fuzzy Set Representation of Developmental Progressions

The development of proportional reasoning was examined using a temperature mixture task. Each individual's task understanding was assessed by components measuring understanding of various principles of the task. Age differences were found in the mean component scores. More important, different patterns of components were found depending on whether the task was presented numerically or nonumerically. Component patterns also depended on whether the task was presented such that subjects predicted the outcome of combining 2 containers of water at different temperatures (prediction task) or such that subjects inferred 1 of the 2 initial temperatures given the final temperature (reverse task). The results show the importance of distinguishing between intuitive knowledge and formal computational knowledge of proportional concepts and provide a new perspective on how intuitive and computational knowledge are related during development. Finally, the results also led to a new conceptualization of developmental levels as categories with fuzzy boundaries. Under this conceptualization, individuals can have different degrees of membership in "fuzzy developmental levels." This new concept preserves individual differences but also describes the sequence of development.     

Older learning engagement in the modern city

Abstract

This research employs novel techniques to examine older learners’ journeys, educationally and physically, in order to gain a ‘three-dimensional’ picture of lifelong learning in the modern urban context of Glasgow. The data offers preliminary analyses of an ongoing 1500 household survey by the Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC). A sample of 1037, with 377 older adults aged 60+, was examined to understand older learner engagement in formal, in-formal, non-formal and family-learning contexts. Preliminary findings indicate that all forms of older learning participation are lower than younger and middle-age counterparts. However, there is a subset of ‘actively ageing’, socially and technologically engaged older adult ‘learner-citizens’, participating in educational, physical, cultural, civic and online activities (including online political discussions and boycotts). These older learners were more likely to be working, caretakers and report better health overall. Long-term disabilities were associated with less engagement in non-formal learning activities. Additionally, engaged older learners’ GPS trails show more city activity than their matched non-learning-engaged counterparts. Place-based variables, such as feeling safe and belonging to the local area, moderated adult participation in learning activities. The full data-set will be accessible to researchers and the general public via UBDC, providing a complex data source to explore demographically diverse learners’ within an urban context.     

Educational administration and supervision in Brazil

The Brazilian formal educational system operates at federal, state and county levels. The federal Ministry of Education and Culture provides financial and technical assistance to the states, which have primary responsibility for administering the schools with the exception of federal and private institutions. Of particular interest are thesupletivo schools designed to provide for those who have dropped out of school. The State Secretariats are in various stages of decentralizing their administrative structures and are passing responsibilities down to the county level where possible. Brazil possesses an extensive system of informal education. A number of organizations e.g. SENAC and SENAI, supported by private rather than government funds, are actively providing educational opportunities for adults. In addition, specialized private schools have been established in metropolitan areas. While many opportunities for attaining an education exist at private specialized schools and privatesupletivo schools, the expense of the programs is carried by the students, not by the government. Major problems faced by Brazilian administrators include poorly qualified teachers, inadequate physical facilities and a high student dropout rate. There is a need for a clear statement of national goals in education.

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Zusammenfassung Das formelle brasilianische Bildungssystem arbeitet auf der förderativen, Staats-und Bezirksebene. Das Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur stellt finanzielle und technische Hilfe für die Staaten bereit, die dann die Verantwortung für die Verwaltung der Schulen haben, mit Ausnahme von privaten und Bundeseinrichtungen. Diesupletivo-Schulen für Schulabgml;nger ohne Abschluss sind von besonderem Interesse. Die Staatssekretariate befinden sich in verschiedenen Stadien der Dezentralisierung ihrer Verwaltungsstrukturen und geben soweit wie möglich Verantwortung an die Bezirke weiter. Brasilien hat ein weites Netz von informellen Bildungsangeboten. Eine Reihe von Organisationen, so z. B. SENAC und SENAI, die eher von privaten als Staatsgeldern unterstützt werden, stellen in sehr aktiver Weise Bildungsmöglichkeiten für Erwachsene bereit. Zusätzlich wurden private Schulen in städtischen Gebieten gegründet. In privaten Spezialschulen und privatensupletivo-Schulen sind viele Bildungschancen gegeben, aber die finanziellen Lasten werden von den Studenten und nicht der Regierung getragen. Die Hauptprobleme, denen die brasilianischen Verwaltungsfachleute gegenüberstehen, beinhalten schlecht qualifizierte Lehrer, unzureichende Versorgung mit Gebäuden usw., und eine hohe Zahl von Abgängern ohne Abschluss. Es besteht die Notwendigkeit, die nationalen Bildungsziele klar zu definieren.

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Résumé Le régime officiel de l'enseignement brésilien fonctionne aux niveaux fédéral, provincial et départemental. Le Ministère Fédéral de l'Education et de la Culture fournit des aides financières techniques aux gouvernements provinciaux auxquels incombe la responsabilité principale de l'administration des écoles, à l'exception des institutions fédérales et privées. Les écoles dites supletivo à l'intention des élèves arriérés présentent un intérêt tout particulier. Les secrétariats provinciaux s'avancent par étapes pour décentraliser leurs différentes structures administratives et délèguent leurs responsabilités, dans la mesure du possible, jusqu'au niveau départemental. Le Brésil témoigne d'un vaste régime d'enseignement officieux. Un nombre d'organismes, tels que SENAC et SENAI, soutenus par des fonds privés plutôt que gouvernementaux, pourvoient activement à la mise en oeuvre de ressources pour l'enseignement des adultes. Par ailleurs, on a établi des écoles spécialisées privées dans les régions des grandes métropoles. Bien qu'il y ait de nombreuses possibilités d'obtenir un enseignement aux écoles spécialisées privées et aux écoles dites supletivo, les frais des programmes sont à la charge des étudiants et non du gouvernement. Les importants problèmes, auxquels les administrateurs brésiliens ont à faire face, comprennent ceux d'instituteurs peu qualifiés, d'aménagements matériels imparfaits ainsi que d'un taux élevé d'étudiants arriérés. Le besoin se fait sentir d'énoncer une déclaration exacte sur les objectifs poursuivis dans l'enseignement au niveau national.

     

Classroom Management and Socioemotional Functioning of Burmese Refugee Students in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Access to Malaysian government schools is prohibited for refugee children, and hidden refugee schools only reach a minority of Burmese students in Malaysia. This study used a participatory culture-specific consultation (PCSC) approach to examine the perspectives of Burmese refugee teachers on Burmese refugee student socioemotional issues and classroom management using interviews, observations, a preliminary refugee teacher focus group (N = 10: 4 men, 6 women; M age = 26 years), and a primary focus group with refugee teachers who were Burmese refugees (N = 9: 6 men, 3 women; M age = 30 years). First, themes suggested that societal pressures have an effect on the classroom environment. Second, refugee student behavior and emotions ranged from externalizing to internalizing. Third, refugee teachers relied on traditional Burmese methods for managing serious misbehavior. Fourth, with mild misbehaviors, teachers employed more “modern,” student-centered methods. Results inform culture-specific consultation designed to meet refugee education needs.     

The nature of maternal postnatal pain

This study identifies the location and intensity of pain in a sample of 75 women during the first 4 days postpartum. The emphasis on normal processes and shortened hospital stays may decrease attention to maternal postnatal pain. Individual women's variations of pain in both location and intensity from day to day suggest that the reality of postnatal pain needs to become a more important aspect of perinatal education and postnatal care.     

Small-Sample Equating With Log-Linear Smoothing

This study investigated the extent to which log-linear smoothing could improve the accuracy of common-item equating by the chained equipercentile method in small samples of examinees. Examinee response data from a 100-item test were used to create two overlapping forms of 58 items each, with 24 items in common. The criterion equating was a direct equipercentile equating of the two forms in the full population of 93,283 examinees. Anchor equatings were performed in samples of 25, 50, 100, and 200 examinees, with 50 pairs of samples at each size level. Four equatings were performed with each pair of samples: one based on unsmoothed distributions and three based on varying degrees of smoothing. Smoothing reduced, by at least half, the sample size required for a given degree of accuracy. Smoothing that preserved only two moments of the marginal distributions resulted in equatings that failed to capture the curvilinearity in the population equating.     

Examining the influence of teacher behavior and curriculum-based movement breaks

Little research has explored the impact of teacher behavior in the relationship between classroom movement breaks and student outcomes. The authors' primary purpose was to explore teacher behavior during classroom movement breaks to determine if teacher behavior served as a moderating variable in the relationship between physical activity and student achievement. The second major aim was to examine these relationships across two different types of movement breaks: (a) academic-content movement breaks and (b) aerobic-based movement breaks. Children (n = 466) in Grades 3–5 from four elementary schools served as participants in the study. Results found that teachers who encouraged students to move and teachers who moved themselves did not necessary have students with higher activity levels during the movement breaks. However, significant differences across the type of movement break provided were found. Implications and limitations are discussed.     

Mapping Variation in Children’s Mathematical Reasoning: The Case of ‘What Else Belongs?’

Explaining appears to dominate primary teachers’ understanding of mathematical reasoning when it is not confused with problem solving. Drawing on previous literature of mathematical reasoning, we generate a view of the critical aspects of reasoning that may assist primary teachers when designing and enacting tasks to elicit and develop mathematical reasoning. The task used in this study of children’s reasoning is a number commonality problem. We analysed written and verbal samples of reasoning gathered from children in grades 3 and 4 from three primary schools in Australia and one elementary school in Canada to map the variation in their reasoning. We found that comparing and contrasting was a critical aspect of forming conjectures when generalising in this context, an action not specified in frameworks for generalising in early algebra. The variance in children’s reasoning elicited through this task also illuminated the difference between explaining and justifying.