Automation and education

Summary An attempt has been made in this paper to describe automation, both as an industrial process involving flow and control and as an intellectual system involving planning and decision-making. General effects on education in the areas of curriculum and program of studies, administration, general education, organization for instruction, the necessity for teaching new patterns of thinking, vocational and technical education were discussed. The concept of the possibility of automatizing the instructional process itself was introduced, and the outlines of a new content for education as a discipline were suggested. The following paper will deal with the problem of automatizing instruction through audio-visual means, and the third and last paper in the series will consider the dangers and difficulties involved in such a process. This is the first in a series of three articles that will discuss one of the most important and timely problems that educators face today-the effects of automation upon education.     

Automation and education: II. Automatizing the classroom-background of the effort

This paper has attempted to deal with two aspects of the problem of automatizing the classroom through audio-visual means. These aspects were: (a) the institutional background in which the earlier foundation support of the audio-visual movement by the Payne Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation was compared to the present, much more extensive support of the mass audio-visual approach to teaching supported by the Ford Foundation, its several Funds and the organizations which it underwrites; and (b) the theoretical position requiring audio-visual automation which was shown to be based on the teacher and plant shortage facing this country in the next two decades of swelling school and college enrollments and, therefore, necessitating technological solutions to problems of class size and building space. For a complete picture, some case histories and research results, as well as a technical analysis of the entire position, would prove useful. It is hoped to supply these three aspects of the study in the next paper, to be followed, if thought desirable, by a fourth discussion which would subject the whole idea to critical scrutiny. This is the second in a series of articles dealing with various aspects of the relationship between automation and education. The first, which appeared in the Winter, 1957, issue of the Review, dealt with the general relationships between the two. This article reviews the specific proposals for automatizing the classroom through audio-visual devices in terms of the organizations leading the movement and the theoretical justification for these proposed changes in educational procedure.     

Marijuana Use in Suburban Schools Among Students With Learning Disabilities

Although much research exists on adolescent marijuana use, few studies have examined marijuana use in school settings. Students experiencing academic and social difficulties at school, such as those receiving special education services, may be more at risk for school-related substance use. Nevertheless, virtually no research has examined this problem. This study assessed the prevalence of marijuana use at school and the perceived availability and consequences of using marijuana in school among students with learning disabilities. The results showed that 15 percent of students reported using marijuana at school, and that marijuana was easily obtained. Most students perceived marijuana to be harmful to their schoolwork, and many non-users felt unsafe and angry when drugs were present at school.     

Web design and learning in agri-environmental education: A UK case-study

Abstract

The development of websites was traditionally an occupation for those that possessed an in-depth knowledge of computer systems and programming languages. The advent of ‘user-friendly’ web development software in recent years has made this process less select. The Environmental Challenges in Farm Management project is an educational website developed by a team of non-web specialists both for third-level education and the agricultural community. This paper outlines the design, development and use of the site, and makes recommendations to those new to the task of putting web-based learning on-line, based on the experience gained during the project.     

Metacognition and control of study choice in children

Middle childhood may be crucial for the development of metacognitive monitoring and study control processes. The first three experiments, using different materials, showed that Grade 3 and Grade 5 children exhibited excellent metacognitive resolution when asked to make delayed judgments of learning (JOLs, using an analogue scale) or binary judgments of knowing (JOKs, ‘know’ or ‘don’t know’) without the target being present. (The delayed method used here also results in excellent metacognitive resolution in adults). In three subsequent experiments after making JOLs the children were asked to choose which items they would like to restudy to optimize learning. We then either honored or dishonored the children’s restudy choices, and tested their memory performance. In Experiment 4, honoring the children’s choices made no difference to final recall performance. Experiments 5 and 6 showed that when the computer, rather than the children, chose the items for restudy based on theoretical constraints proposed by the Region of Proximal Learning model of study time allocation, the children’s recall performance improved. In all three experiments, Grade 3 children’s choices were random. Whereas the Grade 5 children showed some indication of a metacognitively guided strategy of choosing the lowest JOL items for study, it did not, consistently, improve performance. Apparently, accurate metacognitive monitoring is largely in place in middle childhood, but is not yet converted into effective implementation strategies. This dissociation between metaknowledge and its implementation in choice behavior needs to be taken into account by educators aiming to design interventions to enhance learning in children at this age.     

Collaborative knowledge construction in digital environments: Politics, policy, and communities

How individuals share information with respect to politics and policy in networked research environments is an area ripe for interdisciplinary study. In this analysis, I explore some of the more current and salient research findings from several disciplinary literatures (communications, computer science, organizational behavior, information science, and public policy) to examine how current research perceives the influence of technology-aided communications on policy-making conversations. I suggest that a community-centric view, which takes into account online and offline group affiliations and their related power dynamics, is just as important as an individual-based unit of analysis. This understanding points to directions for the thoughtful creation of digital resources that appropriately reflect and support inter- and intra-group knowledge-sharing behavior.     

To refer or not to refer: Evaluation for special education

The authors are with the School of Education, University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL.