An activity‐based learning third‐level course on survey sampling

This paper describes a novel method for the delivery of an introductory module on survey sampling at a third‐level institution. As part of the module, students undertake a practical survey that is of interest not only to themselves but also to university administrators and other module coordinators. Unlike many data collection activities used in class, these data have intrinsic value. This module is shown to produce students with a high level of expertise in survey sampling. It also fosters in students wider generic capacities, such as information, communication and problem‐solving skills and teamwork and leadership skills that prepare them for further study and employment. The emphasis on activity‐based learning has led to increased student participation, improved examination results as well as enhanced student satisfaction with the module.     

The roles of reification and reflective abstraction in the development of abstract thought: Transitions from arithmetic to algebra

This study utilized a psychological constructivist perspective to examine the transitions that students make from arithmetic to algebra in the context of problems, that from the expert's perspective, involve the concept of linear inequality. Unstructured interviews were used to gather data that were used to develop an explanation concerning student understanding. Thirteen college students were interviewed individually and asked to solve nine related tasks. The interviews were videotaped and the protocols were analyzed to document student conceptions. Five case studies were used to develop and substantiate an explanation regarding students' transitions from arithmetic to algebra. Cifarelli's (1988) levels of reflective abstraction and Sfard and Linchevski's (1994) theory of reification provided a framework for this explanation. This paper discusses an integration of Cifarelli and Sfard's constructs. Students who completed a transition to algebra operated at higher levels of reflective abstraction than students who were unable to complete such a transition. Operating at higher levels of reflective abstraction enabled these students to consider concepts as both processes and abstract objects. Developing this ability was found to be critical in achieving a transition to using algebraic methods.     

Terra Populus: Workflows for Integrating and Harmonizing Geospatial Population and Environmental Data

The Terra Populus project (TerraPop) addresses a variety of data management, curation, and preservation challenges with respect to spatiotemporal population and environmental data. In this article, we describe our approaches to these challenges, with a particular focus on geospatial data workflows and associated provenance metadata. The goal of TerraPop is to enable research, learning, and policy analysis by providing integrated spatiotemporal data describing people and their environment. To do so, TerraPop is assembling a globe-spanning and temporally extensive collection of high-quality population and environmental data, ensuring good documentation, and developing a Web-based data access system that enables users to assemble customized integrated data sets drawing on a variety of data sources and formats. We describe TerraPop's collection strategies, detail the geospatial workflows involved in preparing data for ingest into the project database and those used to transform data across formats for dissemination, and discuss the system used to capture and manage provenance metadata throughout the project. A key aspect of the project is the development of global current and historical administrative unit boundaries that can be linked to census data. These boundaries serve as the linchpin of TerraPop's data integration strategy, and constitute an important data set in their own right.     

Stimulus specificity of concurrent recovery in the rabbit nictitating membrane response

Three experiments demonstrated that, following the extinction of an established conditioned stimulus (CS; e.g., tone), the pairing of an orthogonal stimulus from another modality (e.g., light) with the unconditioned stimulus (US) results in strong recovery of responding to the extinguished CS. This recovery occurred to about an equal degree regardless of whether or not initial training contained unambiguous stimulus—reinforcer relationships—that is, consistent CS—US pairings—or some degree of ambiguity, including intramodal discrimination training, partial reinforcement, or even cross-modal discrimination training (tone vs. light). Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that this recovery of responding was largely specific to the extinguished CS, but moderate generalization to other stimuli from the same modality did appear. The results are discussed with reference to alternative mechanisms applicable to learning-dependent generalization between otherwise distinct CSs. These models assume that such generalization is mediated by either a shared response, shared reinforcer, shared context, or shared hidden units within a layered neural network. A specific layered network is proposed to explain the present results as well as other types of savings seen previously in conditioning of the rabbit nictitating membrane response.     

The body and pedagogy: beyond absent,moving bodies in pedagogic practice

Following the corporeal turn in social theory, this paper explores how the body is implicated in pedagogic practice and leaning. Focusing on the body has usually been recognised as part of the regulative rather than instructional discourse in schools. Work has begun to redress the mind–body imbalance through the ‘corporeal device’ developed from Bernstein’s ‘pedagogic device’, the fundamental relay through which social inequalities are reproduced in schools. To properly recognise the way bodies act as pedagogic relays requires a robust understanding of persons as multi-sensorial acting beings. Examples for choreographic pedagogy are used to illuminate the complex and multimodal features of instructional discourse and to suggest how the moving body could be enlisted to enhance students’ access to formal academic discourses and better understand why some young people fail to achieve in schools.     

Experiences of Motherhood in Counselor Education

This phenomenological study examined 20 tenured and nontenured counselor educators regarding their experiences of motherhood and academia. Two central themes from the interviews emerged: environmental influences (including position flexibility, experienced discrimination, and felt support) and choices and circumstances (including defining and establishing boundaries and accepting decisions). Findings are important for understanding academic mothers’ experiences and underscore the need for additional research in the field that specifically addresses these issues.     

The fourth R: Reasoning

This study examined the self‐concept of a small group of academically gifted adolescents in New Zealand, with the aim of exploring gender differences. Using the Tennessee Self‐Concept Scale: 2, a sample of 40 male and female 15–18 year old students participated. Results indicated gender differences: males scored higher than females on most dimensions with the exception of Self‐Criticism, Moral Self‐Concept, and Inconsistent Responding. Additionally, the mean score was higher for males than females. Results indicate gender differences do occur in some New Zealand gifted adolescents and warrant the need for further research in this area.     

The impact of strategy instruction and timing of estimates on low and high working-memory capacity readers' absolute monitoring accuracy

Working-memory capacity, strategy instruction, and timing of estimates were investigated for their effects on absolute monitoring accuracy, which is the difference between estimated and actual reading comprehension test performance. Participants read two expository texts under one of two randomly assigned reading strategy instruction conditions (an explanation strategy versus no strategy). Next, readers estimated comprehension test performance both immediately and after a delay. Readers' estimations were followed by the completion of a comprehension test, a postdiction of test performance, and a working-memory capacity task. The results showed that low working-memory capacity readers were generally more accurate than high working-memory capacity readers but were not affected by strategy instruction or timing of estimates. In contrast, high working-memory capacity readers were most accurate when instructed to use an explanation strategy and when estimates were made immediately. These results are described in the context of the increased processing hypothesis, which contends that more effortful processing during reading augments the availability of text concepts and, in turn, enhances absolute monitoring accuracy.     

Museums as avenues of learning for children: a decade of research

In this review, we focus on the museum activities and strategies that encourage and support children’s learning. In order to provide insight into what is known about children’s learning in museums, we examined study content, methodology and the resultant knowledge from the last decade of research. Because interactivity is increasingly seen as essential in children’s learning experiences in a museum context, we developed a framework that distinguishes between three main interactivity types for facilitating strategies and activities in children’s learning: child–adults/peers; child–technology and child–environment. We identify the most promising strategies and activities for boosting children’s learning as situated in overlapping areas of these interactivity types. Specifically, we identify scaffolding as a key to enhanced museum learning. Our review concludes by highlighting research challenges from the last decade and recommendations for practice and future research on how to design, evaluate and guide theoretically-grounded educational programs for children in museums.