The effect of the number of syllables on handwriting production

Four experiments examined whether motor programming in handwriting production can be modulated by the syllable structure of the word to be written. This study manipulated the number of syllables. The items, words and pseudo-words, had 2, 3 or 4 syllables. French adults copied them three times. We measured the latencies between the visual presentation and the first production (L1), the first and second production (L2), and the second and third production (L3). The results show an effect of the number of syllables in L1 for pseudo-words but not for words and on L2 and L3 for all the items (Experiments 1 and 2). Experiment 3 ruled out an interpretation of the latencies for pseudo-words in terms of reading time with a delayed copying task. Experiment 4 replicated the previous results and assessed the effect of varying the temporal interval between the second and third trials. The results of the four experiments confirm the role of the syllable in word writing. The number of syllables of a word modulates the time course of handwriting production.

A Fragmented Training Environment: Discourse Models in the Talk of Physics Teacher Educators

Research in Science Education - This article reports the results of an empirical study exploring the discourses of physics teacher educators. We ask how the expressed understandings of a physics...     

Comparative acceptability and effectiveness of teacher-revised and designer-revised instruction

This study examined whether instructional material revised by teachers will be more effective and adopted more readily than material revised by designers and material that is not revised. Teachers from a vocational school were randomly assigned to review one version of the material and complete an Instructional Materials Acceptance Questionnaire. Students were asked to read the chapter randomly assigned to them and complete a posttest.Contrary to expectations, the teacher-revised material was as effective as the designer-revised material and more effective than the original material, yet it was not more acceptable to teachers. As expected, the designer-revised material was more effective than the original material. However, teachers were no more favorably disposed to the designer-revised version than to the original version. Possible reasons for these findings are described and suggestions for future research are offered.     

Exploring Force and Motion Concepts in Middle Grades Using Computational Modeling: a Classroom Intervention Study

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Computational thinking (CT) and modeling are authentic practices that scientists and engineers use frequently in their daily work. Advances in...     

Teaching about complex systems is no simple matter: building effective professional development for computer-supported complex systems instruction

The recent next generation science standards in the United States have emphasized learning about complex systems as a core feature of science learning. Over the past 15 years, a number of educational tools and theories have been investigated to help students learn about complex systems; but surprisingly, little research has been devoted to identifying the supports that teachers need to teach about complex systems in the classroom. In this paper, we aim to address this gap in the literature. We describe a 2-year professional development study in which we gathered data on teachers’ abilities and perceptions regarding the delivery of computer-supported complex systems curricula. We present results across the 2 years of the project and demonstrate the need for particular instructional supports to improve implementation efforts, including providing differentiated opportunities to build expertise and addressing teacher beliefs about whether computational-model construction belongs in the science classroom. Results from students’ classroom experiences and learning over the 2 years are offered to further illustrate the impact of these instructional supports.     

Undergraduate political attitudes: An examination of peer,faculty, and social influences

A socialization perspective is used to examine the processes through which undergraduate student political attitudes are influenced by peers, faculty, and social trends. Using the model of undergraduate socialization provided by Weidman (1989) as a framework, I examine how the normative contexts of college campuses and students' interactions with peers and faculty serve to influence the political orientations of students, net of precollege and college characteristics. Based on longitudinal data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, the results indicate that student orientations change in ways quite similar to trends observed more generally, and that peer and faculty normative contexts tend to have a positive influence of equal magnitude on political orientations of students.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1995 meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.     

Condoning aggressive behaviour in sport: A cross-sectional research in a few consecutive age categories

The aim of this study was to compare the way in which 216 young handball players (Mage = 12.79, SD = 2.20) of different ages (nine- to 10-years-old, 11- to 12-years-old, 13- to 14-years-old, and 15- to 16-years-old) combined and integrated five different information cues (the consequences of the aggression, the current score, the time left to play, the context of the aggression, the relative importance of the game) for judging the extent to which an aggressive act performed by a player during a match of handball could be condoned. The participants indicated their judgement in 48 scenarios constructed from the combination of these information cues. A cluster analysis has been done. Two different positions on moral judgement were observed. The information cues were combined differently and moral judgement increased according the young players’ age. The approach of information integration completes the previous studies on developmental moral judgement in sport.     

A Descriptive Survey of Why Parents Choose Hybrid Homeschools

ABSTRACT

“Hybrid home schools” are schools in which students attend school with other students for 2 or 3 days per week in traditional classroom settings, and are homeschooled the balance of the week. This exploratory study presents self-reported reasons parents choose these schools, using an electronic survey of parents from four such schools (n = 136; 19% return rate). Findings indicate that families in these schools are relatively wealthier and more suburban than parents using tax credit programs, that they value school structures more than particular student achievement outcomes, and that they seek information on accreditation, curriculum, and the religious nature of schools in making their choices.