Projecting images of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad school’: top scorers in educational large-scale assessments as reference societies

Researchers interested in the global flow of educational ideas and programmes have long been interested in the role of so-called ‘reference societies’. The article investigates how top scorers in large-scale assessments are framed as positive or negative reference societies in the education policy-making debate in German mass media and which functions they fulfil. Top scores in large-scale assessments do not automatically promote a country to the status of a positive reference society. Whether top scorers are perceived as positive or as negative reference societies depends largely on stereotyped prior perceptions that determine how success in these assessments is framed. Among the functions positive and negative reference societies fulfil are making educational reform agendas more plausible and serving as projection screens for conceptions of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ school.     

Developing Personalized Education: A Dynamic Framework

Personalized education—the systematic adaptation of instruction to individual learners—has been a long-striven goal. We review research on personalized education that has been conducted in the laboratory, in the classroom, and in digital learning environments. Across all learning environments, we find that personalization is most successful when relevant learner characteristics are measured repeatedly during the learning process and when these data are used to adapt instruction in a systematic way. Building on these observations, we propose a novel, dynamic framework of personalization that conceptualizes learners as dynamic entities that change during and in interaction with the instructional process. As these dynamics manifest on different timescales, so do the opportunities for instructional adaptations—ranging from setting appropriate learning goals at the macroscale to reacting to affective-motivational fluctuations at the microscale. We argue that instructional design needs to take these dynamics into account in order to adapt to a specific learner at a specific point in time. Finally, we provide some examples of successful, dynamic adaptations and discuss future directions that arise from a dynamic conceptualization of personalization.

     

Correction to: Fostering integrated mental models of different professional knowledge domains: instructional approaches and model-based analyses

Educational technology research and development - A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-021-09971-w     

Effects of Direct and Indirect Instruction on Fostering Decision-Making Competence in Socioscientific Issues

In this study the effects of different learning environments on the promotion of decision-making competence for the socioscientific issue of genetically modified crops is investigated. The comparison focuses on direct vs. indirect instructions. Therefore on the one hand a sophisticated decision-making strategy was presented to the directly instructed experimental group (1) and had to be applied correctly. On the other hand indirectly instructed students had to invent an appropriate strategy by themselves (2) based on the given information and the structure of the problem context. Group discussions are analysed qualitatively in order (1) to outline how the given strategy was understood and its results were reflected on by the students and (2) to explore the characteristics of invented strategies and their degree of complexity. Results indicate that the direct instruction of complex decision-making strategies may lead to a lack of understanding of the decision process when the given strategy is applied and therefore may cause rejection of the final decision. Indirectly instructed students were able to invent sophisticated decision-making strategies containing compensatory trade-offs. It is concluded that when directly instructing complex decision-making strategies, essential parts of reflection have to be integrated in order to gain greater transparency. Accordingly, empirical evidence has been found to consider indirect instruction as a possible way to foster decision-making strategies for complex socioscientific issues even if compensatory procedures are considered to be necessary.     

Research subsidies,industry–university cooperation and innovation

We evaluate the impact of the EC's Seventh Framework Programme, a large-scale research subsidy programme, on the innovation activities of subsidized firms, with a particular regard to industry–university partnerships. Using matching and difference-in-difference estimation, we find a positive effect on a range of innovation indicators. The number of project participants in general and university participants in particular positively affect performance, suggesting knowledge spillovers between project members. Research centres, on the other hand, do not exert positive externalities. We also find that the benefits of collaborating with universities are amplified by their academic quality.     

Evaluating the efficacy of using sentence frames for learning new vocabulary in science

Science students are increasingly challenged to use technical language related to the topics that they are studying, and therefore, science teachers benefit from knowing which tools are effective to support students in learning to use new terms. This study examined the impact of using one such tool—sentences frames—to teach science vocabulary, as measured through a science-writing task. Using an experimental approach with extant middle school science classes that offered a sample of 75 mainly Latino school students from grades six through eight, the researcher together with participating teachers identified 10 essential terms per science unit. The teachers used vocabulary-focused sentence frames for teaching the terms in one science unit, and a more traditional science text-based approach for teaching vocabulary in another unit. The writing task required at the end of the units consisted of essays in response to science-based prompts that directed students to use as many target science words as possible; matching/cloze format quizzes were also used to measure pretest and posttest receptive vocabulary knowledge. Findings indicated that there were advantages for teaching new science vocabulary via sentence frames as measured by use of the words in writing, but there were no advantages for sentence frames on quizzes measuring receptive vocabulary. Advantages of sentence frames for writing approached but did not reach statistical significance. There was some evidence that current and previous English language learners benefited more than initial English speakers from sentence frames, implying that utilizing sentence frames to teach science vocabulary might offer needed support especially for these subgroups. Limitations of the study included the sample size and the possibility that the strategy utilized in the comparison group might have offered some of the same advantages in producing language with technical vocabulary that the sentence frames unit offered.     

A contingency view on knowledge transfer: empirical evidence from the software industry

Reports on failures of knowledge transfer (KT) seriously accumulate. A reason for failure, claimed by contingency theory and strongly supported in other disciplines, is the lack of fit between context and configuration. Assessing the reported failures, we found substantial evidence for this view. Unfortunately, literature on KT explored context and configuration isolated, but largely ignored the fits between both and their relationships to success. Thus, we developed a contingency framework on KT including the above contingency concepts and underlying factors evident in the KT literature. Based on that, we addressed the unexplored relationships between fits and success by case study research in the software industry. In-depth interviews yielded audio-recorded statements for theory building leading to nine propositions. We encourage case study research to reach conceptual closure as well as hypotheses-testing research to achieve empirical validation.     

Hochintensives Intervalltraining im Sportunterricht

Background and aim

This study examined the effects of a 6-week high-intensity interval training (HIIT) vs. low-intensity endurance training (LOW), applied during physical education on motor performance, mood and perceived exertion.

Methods

Over a period of 6 weeks, 85 pupils (34 male; 51 female; age: 11.9?±?0.9 years) performed 11 sessions of either HIIT (20?min, intervals from 10?s to 4?min at about 90–100% of average running speed of 6?min run [v_mean]) or LOW (30?min, intervals from 6–25?min at about 65–85% v_mean). Before and after the 6?week intervention each pupils’ anthropometry and motor performance (20?m sprint, standing long-jump, lateral jumping from side to side, push-ups, sit-ups, 6?min run) were assessed. Session rating of perceived exertion (RPE) was recorded after each session and mood was assessed by questionnaire following the 3rd, 6th, 9th and 11th session.

Results

RPE (p?<?0.05) was higher and mood more positive (p?<?0.05) with HIIT compared to LOW. Performances in the 6?min run (p?<?0.001; part. η²?=?0.473), 20?m sprint (p?<?0.001; part. η²?=?0.226), standing long-jump (p?<?0.05; part. η²?=?0.056), push-ups (p?<?0.001; part. η²?=?0.523) and sit-ups (p?<?0.001; part. η²?=?0.146) improved following HIIT and LOW with no significant time?×?group interaction (except for the sit-ups [p?<?0.05; part. η²?=?0.048]).

Conclusions

HIIT and LOW improved the performances in 6?min run, 20?m sprint, standing long-jump and push-ups similarly. However, the improvements in HIIT compared to LOW were achieved in 30% less time. As time is limited in physical education classes, HIIT offers a new perspective for improving endurance and motor performance in children. The positive mood associated with HIIT demonstrates the applicability in physical education.