Closing the feedback loop? Iterative feedback between tutor and student in coursework assessments

We evaluate the case for using feedback iteratively, to improve student engagement and learning. In this model, students were invited to respond to tutor feedback with students’ own responses. Among the three courses/modules (three tutors) studied, differences in feedback styles were evident from: (a) thematic analysis of tutor comments and, for one course, and (b) comments in a student focus group. Students were inconsistent in their evaluation of tutor feedback but, in a more detailed study of one of the courses, there was clear evidence for the benefits of iterative feedback. Lessons from the main study were then applied to a course that had not previously incorporated iterative feedback. Using this experience, we provide suggestions for applying iterative feedback in assessments.     

Finding Audiences for Our Research: Rethinking the Issue of Ethical Challenges

This essay is a fleshed-out version of a presentation to the 2011 COST Action workshop on the challenges of audience research. In it, I explore what I see as some overlooked problems in research ethics protocols, relating to the assumptions and models about our relations with research participants which resonate with wider “figures of the audience,” which occur widely. In place of these, I outline a notion of “trust” as the proper goal of researcher-participants relations.     

The Immigrant Experience: Differences in Acculturation,Intercultural Sensitivity,and Cognitive Flexibility Between the First and Second Generation of Latino Immigrants

This study tested the assertion that intercultural communication competence develops as a result of intercultural adaptation. Surveys were collected from a sample of 216 first- and second-generation Latino immigrants in the US. It was predicted that first-generation immigrants would score higher on cognitive flexibility, intercultural sensitivity, and biculturalism than second-generation immigrants because of their direct exposure to two cultures. These hypotheses were not supported, as second-generation immigrants scored higher on all three measures. As predicted, bicultural orientation was correlated with both cognitive flexibility and intercultural sensitivity. The findings are discussed with attention to immigrants' acculturation strategies.     

Exploring the educational landscape of juggling – challenging notions of ability in physical education

ABSTRACT

Background: Research on physical education (PE) shows a prevalence of narrow and reductionist views on what counts as ability. These views tend to privilege certain students and marginalize others, and often equate ability with technique-based sport performance. A lot of research is still directed towards the above problem. However, very few have devoted time and energy to actually resolving this problem. If no alternatives to narrow and reductionist views of ability are presented, then research will struggle to make a difference to the practice of PE. Assuming that movement is a key element in PE, the question of what counts as ability in PE is, we argue, a question of what capabilities a learner needs to develop in order to move in different ways. Investigating what movement capability can mean will provide possibilities for discussing and negotiating the meaning of ability in PE when the learning goal is something other than technique-based sport performance.

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to further advance the knowledge base of what movement capability can mean within the context of PE. By achieving this aim, we intend to challenge narrow views on ability and thereby provide enhanced possibilities for PE to make a difference for students’ abilities through education.

Theory and method: The process of coming to know something can be seen as exploring, with all senses, a landscape. Exploration involves recognizing details and nuances of the landscape and their relationships to one another. In this investigation, we examine what there is to know in the landscape of juggling using Ryle’s and Polanyi’s notions of knowing and learning. In line with a focus on the learners’ perspectives, interviews and observations were conducted with students whilst they were coming to know juggling. Ethnographic-type conversations were used to help students describe what they seemed to know or were aiming to know. Students were invited to write diaries with a focus on their experiences during the learning process, which we hoped could extend our insights regarding the experiential aspects in learning.

Findings: Findings of the investigation suggest that in the group of students, four significant ways of knowing the landscape of juggling are important: grasping a pattern; grasping a rhythm; preparing for the next throw and catch and navigating one’s position and throwing. The research challenges the narrow view on ability as technique-based sport performance by providing examples of what movement capability can mean in terms of knowing a movement landscape alternatively to knowing a specific movement ‘in the right way.’     

New insights in paediatric exercise metabolism

Research in paediatric exercise metabolism has been constrained by being unable to interrogate muscle in vivo. Conventionally, research has been limited to the estimation of muscle metabolism from observations of blood and respiratory gases during maximal or steady state exercise and the analysis of a few muscle biopsies taken at rest or post-exercise. The purpose of this paper is to review how the introduction of ³¹P-magnetic resonance spectroscopy and breath-by-breath oxygen uptake kinetics studies has contributed to current understanding of exercise metabolism during growth and maturation. Methodologically robust studies using ³¹P-magnetic resonance spectroscopy and oxygen uptake kinetics with children are sparse and some data are in conflict. However, it can be concluded that children respond to exercise with enhanced oxygen utilization within the myocyte compared with adults and that their responses are consistent with a greater recruitment of type I muscle fibres. Changes in muscle metabolism are age, maturation- and sex-related and dependent on the intensity of the exercise challenge. The introduction of experimental models such as “priming exercise” and “work-to-work” transitions provide intriguing avenues of research into the mechanisms underpinning exercise metabolism during growth and maturation.     

On practising in physical education: outline for a pedagogical model

Background: Models-based approaches to physical education have in recent years developed as a way for teachers and students to concentrate on a manageable number of learning objectives, and align pedagogical approaches with learning subject matter and context. This paper draws on Hannah Arendt’s account of vita activa to map existing approaches to physical education as oriented towards: (a) health and exercise, (b) sport and games, and (c) experience and exploration.

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to outline a new pedagogical model for physical education: a practising model. We argue that the form of human activity related to practising is not well represented in existing orientations and models. To sustain this argument, we highlight the most central aspects of practising, and at the same time describe central features of the model.

Relevance and implications: The paper addresses pedagogical implications the practising model has for physical education teachers. Central learning outcomes and teaching strategies related to four essential and ‘non-negotiable’ features of the practising model are discussed. These strategies are: (1) acknowledging subjectivity and providing meaningful challenges, (2) focusing on content and the aims of practising, (3) specifying and negotiating standards of excellence and (4) providing adequate time to practising.

Conclusion: The practising model has the potential to inform new perspectives on pedagogical approaches, and renew and improve working methods and learning practices, in physical education.     

A comparison of difficulty and discrimination values of selected true-false item types

Thirty-eight undergraduate students were randomly assigned one of two alternate forms of a 144-item true-false midterm examination. Whenever a statement appeared on one form as true and positively stated, it appeared on the alternate form as false and negatively stated. Similarly, a false and positively stated item on one form was true and negatively stated on the other. The subject matter of the two forms was identical and the four kinds of true-false items were equally represented on each form. Difficulty and discrimination indices were computed for each of the four item types. The statistical results showed negatively stated items were more difficult, but no more discriminating, than positively stated items. Also, false items were not statistically more difficult than true items, but were significantly more discriminating. It was concluded that test constructors should include more false items than true items in their instruments and that all items should be stated positively.     

Gene-environment processes linking aggression, peer victimization, and the teacher-child relationship

Aggressive behavior in middle childhood is at least partly explained by genetic factors. Nevertheless, estimations of simple effects ignore possible gene-environment interactions (G × E) or gene-environment correlations (rGE) in the etiology of aggression. The present study aimed to simultaneously test for G × E and rGE processes between aggression, on the one hand, and peer victimization and the teacher-child relationship in school, on the other hand. The sample comprised 124 MZ pairs and 93 DZ pairs assessed in Grade 1 (mean age = 84.7 months). Consistent with rGE, children with a presumed genetic disposition for aggression were at an increased risk of peer victimization, whereas in line with G × E, a positive relationship with the teacher mitigated the genetically mediated expression of aggression.