The Cognitive Consequences of Collaborative Problem Solving With and Without Feedback

The goal of this research was to assess the impact of feedback, partner, and shared understanding in the course of problem solving. A sample of 180 6- to 9-year-olds was pretested to discover the children's "rule" for predicting the movement of a mathematical balance beam. For the treatment they either worked alone or with a partner who was equally, less, or more competent, with two-thirds receiving feedback from the materials. They subsequently participated in 2 individual posttests. The results revealed that children receiving feedback improved significantly more than those who did not, but that the presence of a partner was only beneficial when children received no feedback. Irrespective of feedback, those children whose partner exhibited higher-level reasoning were far more likely to benefit from collaboration than those whose partner did not, provided that the pair achieved shared understanding.     

Teacher Change Following a Professional Development Experience in Integrating Computational Thinking into Elementary Science

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Computer science and computer science education are marked by gender and racial disparities. To increase the number and diversity of students engaging...     

An Exploration of Indigenous Knowledge Related to Physics Concepts Held by Senior Citizens in Chókwé, Mozambique

Indigenous knowledge is at risk of being lost in many parts of the world. It is important to find ways to preserve it for both cultural and practical reasons, since it is often well-suited to addressing local needs using available resources. If indigenous knowledge can be incorporated into school science curricula, it can also provide familiar contexts within which to learn scientific concepts, as well as helping the younger generation to recognise its value. The purpose of this study was to identify indigenous knowledge that could be related to physics concepts, with a view to integrating it into school curricula. Twenty-nine senior citizens from Chókwé, a rural village in Mozambique, volunteered to participate in two sets of in-depth interviews. The first set of interviews was individual and unstructured in order to explore which aspects of indigenous knowledge might be related to physics concepts. The second set was semi-structured and conducted in small groups in order to probe participants’ understanding and application of the identified physics concepts. The results showed that participants had indigenous knowledge that was useful to them in their daily lives and that were applications of thermal physics, static electricity and mechanics concepts. In some cases participants’ explanations were aligned to physics explanations, in some cases they were similar to students’ alternative conceptions identified in the literature, and in other cases they referred to supernatural phenomena.     

Attitudes of counseling students in the United States toward minority clients

One hundred and twenty counseling students representing 10 programs across the United States were administered the Purdue Master Attitude Scale, the Defining Issues Test, the Index of Homophobia and a demographic questionnaire in an effort to identify attitudes of students to ward minority groups. A demographic profile of these counselors in traning presents a picture of the typical American. They are fairly young, mostly caucasian, middle class and were raised in traditional two-parent families.The results of the instruments administered indicate that counseling students appear to reflect the dominant culture attitude with respect to homophobia by demonstrating average to high homophobia, while the Purdue Master Attitude Scale reflects a somewhat overall positive attitude toward ethnic minorities.In terms of statistical analyses, level of moral judgment, as measured by the Defining Issues Test, was significantly related to attitude to ward ethnic and sexual preference minorities. Individuals with more favorable attitudes demonstrated higher levels of moral reasoning and vice versa. Higher frequency of experience with minorities was significantly related to lower homophobia scores and demonstrated a trend in the direction of better attitude scores. Quality of experience, while not achieving significance, showed a trend with better quality ratings being related to better attitude toward ethnic minorities and lower homophobia scores.Paper presented to the International Round Table for the Advancement of Counselling, Utrecht, the Netherlands July 15, 1985.     

The role of social comparison in students’ perceptions of ability: An enriched view of academic motivation in middle school students

This study addressed notions derived from a model by [Tesser et al., 1984] of self-concept and how it is influenced by social relationships. We were interested in whether the self-evaluation maintenance model (SEM) would allow us to investigate more directly the value component in expectancy–value models of achievement motivation. Using distinctions often made about different motivational orientations, we discovered a three-way interaction between level of mastery orientation (high or low), relevance of math (high or low), and target of rating (self or 7th grade friend) on students’ perception of ability in math. Thus, the SEM model was supported but only for students reporting a low mastery orientation. For them, those who reported math as highly relevant estimated their own ability as significantly higher than their friend’s, whereas those reporting math as less relevant showed no difference in estimates of ability between self or friend. For high mastery oriented students, no differences were found.