Technology and moral change: the transformation of truth and trust

Ethics and Information Technology - Today humanity is in the midst of the massive expansion of new and fundamental technology, represented by advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The...     

Direct and indirect effects of textual and individual factors on source-content integration when reading about a socio-scientific issue

Reading and Writing - The purpose of this study was to test a hypothesized model that specified direct and indirect effects of textual and individual factors on readers’ ability to integrate...     

The Norwegian perspective on issues of quality in day care

Since 1953, Norwegian national standards regulate ratios of children to staff, training requirements, group sizes, leadership and subsidies. Both national and local subsidies support the management and quality level of day care centers. In Norway a current viewpoint on quality in day care is to stimulate innovation in day care activities by rewarding local initiative and creativity. Outdoor activities and giving the children freedom to learn are highly valued. Preschool teacher education, which is three years at college, shares a common frame of a governmental curricular guideline as well as a nationwide curriculum for day care. A responsive and warm interaction between staff, children and parents is a definite moral value of the preschool teacher profession. Current issues of quality are related to the shortage of highly qualified directors and leaders in public day care as well as the expansion of private centers with questionable quality. Quality control of day care centers is now discussed as a necessary surveillance system of the quality of contexts and interactions in children’s daily life.     

A longitudinal think-aloud study of spontaneous strategic processing during the reading of multiple expository texts

This study examined the strategiesspontaneously used by university students asthey tried to understand multiple expositorytexts as part of their normal reading andstudying. Law students read self-selected textsat different points in time during onesemester. Think-aloud protocols generatedduring reading were analyzed to identify typesof strategic text processing. It was foundthat students' strategic processing changedover time, with some of the changes associatedwith changes in students' perception of thenature of the reading task. Different changesin strategic processing were observed forstudents at different levels of performance.     

Integrating assessment for learning in the teacher education programme at the University of Oslo

Abstract

This article provides an analysis of the integration of assessment for learning principles in the newly revised five-year Master of Education programme at the University of Oslo, Norway, across didactic subjects, pedagogy and school practice. The analysis draws on lecture notes, student videos and student exam papers among 143 student teachers, aiming to identify (a) the operationalisation of the assessment curriculum at the university campus, and in school practice, (b) how the student teachers use assessment principles as tools in their instructional designs and (c) how they self-assess their teaching practice. Our main finding is that student teachers seem to be more concerned with assessing their students than using self-assessment to improve their instruction. Based on the findings, we argue the importance of relating the teaching and learning activities with the assessment situations used in the teacher education programme.     

Developing an equalities literacy for practitioners working with children,young people and families through action research

ABSTRACT

The Marginalisation and Co-created Education (MaCE) project was developed between the University of Southern Norway, VIA University in Denmark and the University of Cumbria in the UK and funded by Erasmus+. The project aims to co-create proposals to achieve an equitable and socially just education system through participative action research with ‘Early School Leavers’. This paper establishes a conceptual framework called ‘Equalities Literacy’ that evolved from the first action research cycle of the project. The framework is informed by the practice experience and theoretical knowledge of the international and interdisciplinary research team. It is applied to one youth narrative in this paper to illustrate its efficacy in revealing socio-cultural in/equalities. The Equalities Literacy framework is proposed to challenge and inform practice and further research. Further, the ‘Indirect Approach’ is introduced and located within action research as a participatory methodology that other researchers may wish to adopt.     

The relation between intellectual and metacognitive skills in early adolescence.

The first objective of this study was establishing to what extent metacognitive skill is associated with intelligence. As a second objective, the impact of hints on the execution of metacognitive skills was investigated. Both issues have major implications for the training and transferability of metacognitive skills during performance on a representative school task. First, a standardized intelligence-test was administered to a group of first-year secondary-school students. Next, these students solved six math word problems, three without metacognitive hints and three including these hints. Metacognitive skilfullness was assessed through systematical observation, while learning performance consisted of performance on a math task and grade point average (GPA). Results show that without hints metacognitive skilfulness is the main predictor of initial learning, while intelligence additionally enters the regression equation after the presentation of metacognitive hints. GPA also appears to be predicted by a combination of intellectual and metacognitive skills. Consequences for the early acquisition of metacognitive skills are discussed.     

Teachers' Opinions about Inclusion: A pilot study in a Palestinian context

The present study explored teachers' opinions about the inclusion of students with disabilities and special needs in regular primary schools in a Palestinian context, and factors that influenced such opinions. The sample consisted of 90 teachers at six schools. Eighty-seven (97%) of them had students with disabilities or special needs in their classes. Fifty-four (60%) of the teachers were of the opinion that students with disabilities and special needs should have an opportunity to attend public schools. Opinion-related factors were identified and compared to results of previous studies. Eighty-one (90%) of the teachers expressed a need for changes in the public schools in order to meet the needs of students with disabilities and special needs. Their focus of interest for building their own competence was on knowledge and skills that could empower them as teachers, not on knowledge about the students' disabling impairments.     

Exploring the Use of Conceptual Metaphors in Solving Problems on Entropy

A growing body of research has examined the experiential grounding of scientific thought and the role of experiential intuitive knowledge in science learning. Meanwhile, research in cognitive linguistics has identified many conceptual metaphors (CMs), metaphorical mappings between abstract concepts and experiential source domains, implicit in everyday and scientific language. However, the contributions of CMs to scientific understanding and reasoning are still not clear. This study explores the roles that CMs play in scientific problem-solving through a detailed analysis of two physical chemistry PhD students solving problems on entropy. We report evidence in support of three claims: a range of CMs are used in problem-solving enabling flexible, experiential construals of abstract scientific concepts; CMs are coordinated with one another and other resources supporting the alignment of qualitative and quantitative reasoning; use of CMs grounds abstract reasoning in a “narrative” discourse incorporating conceptions of paths, agents, and movement. We conclude that CMs should be added to the set of intuitive resources others have suggested contribute to expertise in science. This proposal is consistent with two assumptions: that cognition is embodied and that internal cognitive structures and processes interact with semiotic systems. The implications of the findings for learning and instruction are discussed.     

Environmental education policy research – challenges and ways research might cope with them

This essay examines the relationship between research and policy and, more specifically, how researchers might relate to policy work. Given the current international policy focus on climate change, green growth and sustainability in general, it argues for strengthening and widening policy research in the areas of Environmental Education (EE), Education for Sustainable Development and Climate Change Education. It especially makes a case for two kinds of research on EE policy: (1) a multi-sited approach to empirical documentation and theory development which explores the relationships between international policy agreements and local practice, and (2) an interactive policy-engaged approach to research.