Exploring the links between students' engagement in cooperative learning, their goal preferences and appraisals of instructional conditions in the classroom

Previous research suggested that social support, belongingness and mastery goals were related to the quality of cooperative learning (CL). In this in-depth study we explored how to differentiate between four effective CL teams and four ineffective CL teams, in terms of students' goals and perceptions of instructional conditions. Apart from the earlier mentioned goals we found students' preference for social responsibility, learning for a certificate and entertainment goals to be salient in the CL setting. Mastery and social responsibility goals were prevalent in effective teams, while learning for a certificate and entertainment goals were prevalent in ineffective teams. Moreover, the type of task, group composition and teacher support were mentioned as reasons for effective or ineffective CL.     

Gender differences in Brazilian street youth's family circumstances and experiences on the street

OBJECTIVES: It has been proposed that homeless street girls are more likely to be from dysfunctional families and exhibit psychological distress than homeless street boys, reflecting cultural factors that result in differential norms for male and female behavior. The current analysis examined whether male and female street youth in a mid-sized Brazilian city differed in their family circumstances and day-to-day functioning on the street. METHODS: The opportunity sample consisted of 33 male (mean age 14.3, range 10-17 years) and 33 female (mean age 14.6, range 11-18 years) street youth who participated in a sentence completion task and structured interview examining family experiences and ability to meet daily needs on the street. RESULTS: Consistent with the cultural hypothesis, girls described more negative family backgrounds than boys (e.g., they were more likely to have left home because of conflict or abuse, and reported more negative relationships with their parents). However, girls' functioning on the street was similar to, and in some cases more positive than, that of boys (e.g., fewer girls reported police violence and begging to earn money). CONCLUSIONS: The few gender differences that emerged in this study offer little support for the cultural hypothesis. The findings make sense if local factors, such as services available for male and female youth and public response to street youth, are considered. It appears that street youth differ in their experiences depending on local circumstances, highlighting the need for caution in generalizing about the situation of street youth in different countries.     

Keeping Up Appearances: Uniform Policy for School Diversity?

This paper analyses policies pertaining to school dress codes which have been formulated recently by all state education bureaucracies in Australia. It examines these policies and their implementation in the context of devolution, the marketisation of schools, and cognate social legislation. In doing so it seeks to understand the textual hiatus between government policy and schooling practices.     

Africa's educational dilemma: Roadblocks to universal literacy for social integration and change

Literacy is constantly evolving to meet the needs of African people, but the obstacles (or roadblocks) to universal literacy in Africa are numerous. This paper sets out to analyze them. Some date from colonial regimes, which created elites. Since then, rapid population growth has outstripped gains in literacy, while the differences between male and female literacy, and between urban and rural areas, remain marked. The multiplicity of languages presents a challenge, increasingly met by the use of community languages, although most African states continue to rely on English, French and Portuguese for official and educational purposes. Literacy is ultimately a social construction that determines and is determined by a given social order. Those in power have a vested interest in restricting access to literacy, and there are ambiguities in the policies of national and international agencies. In particular, literacy has been linked to economic and technical development while its promoters have sought to preserve the interests of government, so that consciousness-raising has not been truly adopted. A model of roadblocks is presented, and the article concludes with nine propositions for an analysis of their relationships.

---

Zusammenfassung Die Alphabetisierung wird ständig weiterentwickelt, um den Bedürfnissen afrikanischer Völker gerecht zu werden, aber es gibt zahlreiche Hindernisse (oderSperren) für eine universelle Alphabetisierung in Afrika. In diesem Artikel sollen sie analysiert werden. Einige stammen noch von den Kolonialregierungen, die Elitegruppen bildeten. Seitdem hat der rapide Bevölkerungsanstieg die Erfolge der Alphabetisierung überholt, and die Alphabetisierung von Männern und Frauen sowie von der städtischen und ländlichen Bevölkerung unterscheiden sich weiterhin deutlich. Die Sprachenvielfalt ist eine Herausforderung, der man mehr und mehr durch Anwendung von Gemeinschaftssprachen begegnet, obwohl sich die Mehrzahl der afrikanischen Staaten für offizielle und erzieherische Zwecke immer noch der englischen, französischen und portugiesischen Sprache bedient. Die Alphabetisierung ist letztendlich ein soziales Gefüge, das eine gegebene soziale Ordnung beeinflußt und auch von ihr bestimmt wird. Die Machthaber haben ein persönliches Interesse an einem begrenzten Zugang zur Alphabetisierung, und es gibt Unstimmigkeiten in den Maßnahmen nationaler und internationaler Institutionen. Im besonderen wurde die Alphabetisierung mit wirtschaftlichen und technischen Entwicklungen in Verbindung gebracht, wobei ihre Förderer bestrebt waren, die Interessen der Regierung zu wahren, so daß eine Bewußtseinsöffnung in Wahrheit nicht eingetreten ist. Es wird eine Übersicht Über die Hindernisse gegeben, und der Artikel schließt mit neun Vorschlägen zu einer Analyse darüber, welche Beziehungen zwischen diesen Hindernissen bestehen.

---

Résumé L'alphabétisation se développe d'une manière constante pour répondre aux besoins du peuple africain, mais les obstacles (les barrages de route) à la généralisation de l'alphabétisme en Afrique sont nombreux. Le présent article se propose de les analyser. Certains sont issus des régimes coloniaux, qui ont créé des élites. Depuis lors, la rapide croissance économique a devancé le développement de l'alphabétisation, tandis que les différences entre l'alphabétisme féminin et masculin, et entre les zones urbaines et rurales, restent marquées. La multiplicité des langues pose un problème, résolu de plus en plus par l'utilisation des langues locales, bien que la plupart des Etats africains continuent de faire appel à l'anglais, au français et au portugais dans le domaine officiel et dans l'éducation. L'alphabétisation est en fin de compte une construction sociale qui détermine et est déterminée par un ordre social donné. Ceux qui détiennent le pouvoir ont intérêt à réduire l'accès à l'alphabétisation, et les politiques des organisations nationales et internationales sont ambiguës. En particulier, l'alphabétisation a été liée au développement économique et technique, tandis que ses promoteurs ont cherché à préserver les intérêts des gouvernements, si bien que la prise de conscience n'a pas été véritablement adoptée. On présente un modèle debarrage de route, et l'article conclut par neuf propositions pour l'analyse de leurs relations.

     

What can academic development learn from the health humanities?

The health humanities is a movement seeking to promote engagement with arts and humanities disciplines as a way of helping professionals, patients, informal carers, and members of the public to understand healthcare. Here, I draw parallels between health and learning and suggest a similar approach for academic developers. I indicate the potential scope for the learning arts and humanities, providing examples of existing practice in which the methods and sensibilities of literary studies are shedding light on learning and teaching in higher education.     

Cross-Modal Transfer of Shape is Difficult to Demonstrate in One-Month-Olds

We tested 1-month-olds for cross-modal transfer of shape between touch and vision using a procedure described by Meltzoff and Borton, but including controls for side bias and stimulus preference. In Experiment 1 (N = 48), infants' looking times to smooth and nubby visual stimuli were not influenced by previous oral exposure to one of the shapes during the preceding 90 s, except for an effect on the first test trial in one group; this effect could have been due to limited cross-modal transfer, to Type 1 error, or to side bias, possibly interacting with a small stimulus preference. The failure of that effect to replicate in a group (N = 16) with less side bias (Experiment 2) suggests that it was not due to cross-modal transfer. Experiment 3 (N = 32), an exact replication of Meltzoff and Borton's experiment, also failed to yield evidence of cross-modal transfer. Overall, there is not good evidence that 1-month-olds can transfer information about these shapes from touch to vision. Future studies exploring the ability to transfer information about other shapes will be easier to interpret if they include controls for side bias and stimulus preference.     

How do preservice teachers perceive ‘environment’ and its relevance to their area of teaching?

The environment is not only an ecological entity distinct from people but a cultural, social, and political construct. Understanding how learners conceptualize ‘environment’ may contribute to more effective environmental education (EE). This study investigated, in a paired pre–post design, 215 students’ understandings of ‘environment’ and perceptions of its relevance to their teaching area, at the onset and toward the end of their studies in teacher-education colleges in Israel. While student teachers, regardless of their major, acknowledged the importance of EE to their future function as teachers, they do not demonstrate an adequate understanding of the concept environment: humans are not viewed as part of the environment nor is the environment understood as a complex web of interactions among people, man-made systems and natural ecosystems. The fact that toward the end of studies, student teachers’ understandings of environment remained essentially basic indicates the necessity to reorient teacher-education programs toward EE. The various ways in which students perceived the relevance of environment to their teaching area are the starting points for this change.     

Mentors’ personal growth and development in a college access mentorship program

As the prevalence of mentoring programs in higher education institutions continues to grow, there remains little research on the growth and development that comes from serving as a mentor. In this phenomenological study, the researchers examined college students’ personal and educational gains through serving as mentors to high school students in a work-study mentoring program for increasing college access. Drawing on interviews with 14 mentors and other program staff, the researchers examined the following research question: In what ways did student mentors in the G-Force Mentoring Program grow and develop as a result of their mentor experience? Findings included mentor growth in three key categories: (a) self-development and awareness, (b) skill development, and (c) career development. Implications for practice and future research are offered.     

Learning to rank for<Emphasis Type="Italic"> why</Emphasis>-question answering

In this paper, we evaluate a number of machine learning techniques for the task of ranking answers to why-questions. We use TF-IDF together with a set of 36 linguistically motivated features that characterize questions and answers. We experiment with a number of machine learning techniques (among which several classifiers and regression techniques, Ranking SVM and SVM ^map ) in various settings. The purpose of the experiments is to assess how the different machine learning approaches can cope with our highly imbalanced binary relevance data, with and without hyperparameter tuning. We find that with all machine learning techniques, we can obtain an MRR score that is significantly above the TF-IDF baseline of 0.25 and not significantly lower than the best score of 0.35. We provide an in-depth analysis of the effect of data imbalance and hyperparameter tuning, and we relate our findings to previous research on learning to rank for Information Retrieval.