Learning Styles and Strategies of Postgraduate Students

Research by Pask has suggested that matching and mismatching teaching strategies with learners'preferred learning strategies may have considerable effects of learning. The study reported here sought to explore the extent to which a group of experienced and successful learners, such as postgraduate students, might be expected to be versatile learners, in the sense of being able to learn equally well from holist and serialist learning materials. Eighty-three postgraduate students completed two questionnaires designed to assess learning styles. Twenty-six students also took two tests designed to assess their competence in learning from materials designed to suit holist and serialist learning strategies. Only two out of 26 students scored equally well on the tests of holist and serialist competence. The study also examines the extent to which holist and serialist competence may be predicted by relatively'quick and easy'questionnaire instruments. In 19 out of 23 cases such competence could be predicted from responses to a number of items from one of the questionnaires. Implications for further research are discussed.     

Alpha hemispheric asymmetry in children with learning disabilities and normally achieving children during story comprehension and rehearsal prior to narrative production

Twelve children with learning disabilities attending a remedial summer clinic were compared with 12 normally achieving controls balanced for age, sex, and handedness on alpha amplitude and production of narratives. Specifically, all subjects participated in three conditions. Condition 1 was a vigilance condition, Condition 2 involved listening to a story without an ending that had to be retold, and Condition 3 was an opportunity to rehearse the story mentally and construct an appropriate ending. Alpha amplitudes were monitored during the three conditions to determine any hemispheric asymmetry or differences between groups or conditions in alpha production. The subjects' narrative productions of retelling the story with a novel ending were also analyzed using a cohesion analysis procedure. The results showed no significant differences between the groups in alpha amplitude, but there was a significant task effect with the vigilance condition, story comprehension, and rehearsal showing decreasing alpha amplitudes in both groups of subjects. Analysis of the narratives showed the group with learning disabilities to produce significantly shorter and less cohesive stories. Results are discussed in relation to other studies of hemispheric processing differences in populations with learning disabilities.     

Group Time Experiences: Belonging,Being and Becoming Through Active Participation Within Early Childhood Communities

The National Quality Standards (NQS) as part of the Australian National Quality Framework were developed in 2011 and included several references to the organisation of small and large groups within early childhood settings (ACECQA 2013). The NQS act in tandem with the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) (DEEWR 2009) and are the basis by which early childhood centres are assessed for accreditation in Australia. This paper draws upon current research with early childhood educators as they struggle to understand the new concept of ‘intentional teachers’ within this new regime. There also appears to have been a dramatic shift in the understanding about how large and small groups operate within centres. As the accreditation process unfolds, some early childhood centres have been advised to abandon large or whole group work. At the core of the EYLF are the notions of ‘being, belonging, becoming’, locating young children as part of a community of learners within a democratic society. It therefore appears that tensions and contradictions are emerging between the fundamental principles of the EYLF as they are juxtaposed against the requirement of the NQS. Critical Pedagogy of Place provides a theoretical framework in which to interrogate the ways some early childhood educators interpret intentional teaching both in terms of the organisation of spaces in early childhood centres and the organisation of the children as they inhabit those spaces (Gruenewald 2008). This paper argues that the possible abandonment of large group experiences runs the risk of disconnecting children from their communities and the relationships they form as social participants. Furthermore, it is argued that whole group experiences are crucial elements that facilitate a child’s identity and active citizenry.     

Boyer in the Middle: Second Generation Challenges to Emerging Scholarship

This article reports on an examination of the distinctive second-generation challenges and opportunities faced by an early institutional adopter of the Boyer model of scholarship. Following the first cohort of faculty to be reviewed for tenure and promotion based on these criteria, we report the results of a survey designed to determine the perceptions of faculty and administrators of the degree to which emerging forms of scholarship had been integrated into the university culture including factors such as institutional identity, support structures, and faculty participation. This case study sheds light on the process of adaptation at this single institution and provides glimpses of how cultural change might occur across higher education.     

How Trainees Transfer What They Have Learned: Toward a Taxonomy of Use

Researchers have consistently advocated for clearer concepts and better operational definitions of measures of training transfer. To clarify what trainees actually do on the job, we defined transfer as use on the job of what was learned in training and developed a prototype taxonomy of use. To form the taxonomy we asked, “How do relatively autonomous workers, taught open skills, use in their work what they have learned from training?” To create categories of use, we analyzed, defined, and reorganized former trainees’ stories of application from studies by Yelon and others (Yelon, Reznich, & Sleight, 1997; Yelon, Sheppard, Sleight, & Ford, 2004; Yelon, Ford, & Golden, 2013). We identified, as part of the prototype taxonomy the actions, content, conditions, tasks, purposes, and beneficiaries of different types of use. We discuss how this multidimensional framework provides a way of conceiving of and measuring transfer as use and the implications for practice and research.