Immersive virtual reality in STEM: is IVR an effective learning medium and does adding self-explanation after a lesson improve learning outcomes?

Educational technology research and development - The goal of the current study was to investigate the effects of an immersive virtual reality (IVR) science simulation on learning in a higher...     

Building on student mathematical thinking in whole-class discourse: exploring teachers’ in-the-moment decision-making,interpretation, and underlying conceptions

Often, mathematics teachers do not incorporate whole-class discourse of students’ various ideas and solution methods into their teaching practice. Particularly complex is the in-the-moment decision-making that is necessary to build on students’ thinking and develop their collective construction of mathematics. This study explores the decision-making patterns of five experienced Dutch mathematics teachers during their novice attempts at orchestrating whole-class discourse concerning students’ various solution methods. Our goal has been to unpack the complexity of their in-the-moment decision-making during whole-class discourse through lesson observations and stimulated recall interviews. We investigated teacher decision-making adopting a model that combines two perspectives, namely (1) we explored student-teacher interaction with regard to building on student thinking and (2) we explored how the teachers based decisions during such interaction upon their own personal conceptions and interpretation of student thinking. During these novice attempts at orchestrating whole-class discourse, the teachers created many situations for students to articulate their thinking. We found that at certain instances, teachers’ in-the-moment decision-making resulted in opportunities to build on student thinking that were not completely seized. During such instances, the teachers’ decision-making was shaped by the teachers’ own conceptions of the relevant mathematics and by teacher conceptions that centered around student understanding and mathematical goals. Our findings suggest that teachers might be supported in their novice attempts at whole-class discourse by explicit discussion of the mathematics and of their conceptions with regard to student understanding and mathematical goals.

     

A systematic review and Bayesian meta-analysis of the development of turn taking in adult–child vocal interactions

Fluent conversation requires temporal organization between conversational exchanges. By performing a systematic review and Bayesian multi-level meta-analysis, we map the trajectory of infants’ turn-taking abilities over the course of early development (0 to 70 months). We synthesize the evidence from 26 studies (78 estimates from 429 unique infants, of which at least 152 are female) reporting response latencies in infant–adult dyadic interactions. The data were collected between 1975 and 2019, exclusively in North America and Europe. Infants took on average circa 1 s to respond, and the evidence of changes in response over time was inconclusive. Infants’ response latencies are related to those of their adult conversational partners: an increase of 1 s in adult response latency (e.g., 400 to 1400 ms) would be related to an increase of over 1 s in infant response latency (from 600 to 1857 ms). These results highlight the dynamic reciprocity involved in the temporal organization of turn-taking. Based on these results, we provide recommendations for future avenues of enquiry: studies should analyze how turn-by-turn exchanges develop on a longitudinal timescale, with rich assessment of infants’ linguistic and social development.     

Making sense of student mathematical thinking: the role of teacher mathematical thinking

Educational Studies in Mathematics - In mathematical whole-class discussions, teachers can build on various student ideas and develop these ideas toward mathematical goals. This requires teachers...     

Global Learning and Education for Sustainable Development

Globalization is a fundamental factor affecting higher education in this century. More than ever before, the processes of globalization are being integrated into a set of social, technological, economic, cultural and ecological factors, so that we are now beginning to accept that we are facing a completely irreversible world‐wide phenomenon. The concept of sustainable development integrates these factors and leads, beside environmental education, to a demand for global learning and education for sustainable development. To get a better understanding of the subject, the decision‐game ‘Prisoner's Dilemma’ focuses on the aspect of the public good.     

Training for reflective expertise: A four-component instructional design model for complex cognitive skills

This article presents a four-component instructional design model for the training of complex cognitive skills. In the analysis phase, the skill is decomposed into a set of recurrent skills that remain consistent over problem situations and a set of nonrecurrent skills that require variable performance over situations. In the design phase, two components relate to the design of practice; they pertain to the conditions under which practice leads either to rule automation during the performance of recurrent skills or to schema acquisition during the performance of nonrecurrent skills. The other two components relate to the design of information presentation; they pertain to the presentation of information that supports the performance of either recurrent or nonrecurrent skills. The basic prediction of the model is that its application leads to “reflective expertise” and increased performance on transfer tasks. Applications of the model that support this prediction are briefly discussed for the training of fault management in process industry, computer programming, and statistical analysis.     

Understanding Learning Culturally: Overcoming the Dualism Between Social and Individual Views of Learning

This paper identifies limitations within the current literature on understanding learning. Overcoming these limitations entails replacing dualist views of learning as either individual or social, by using a theory of learning cultures and a cultural theory of learning, which articulate with each other. To do this, we argue that it is possible and indeed necessary to combine major elements of participatory or situated views of learning with elements of Deweyan embodied construction. Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and field are used to achieve this purpose, together with the use of ‘becoming’ as a metaphor to help understand learning more holistically. This theorizing has a predominantly heuristic purpose, and we argue that it enables researchers to better explain data. We also suggest that a cultural approach of the sort proposed here leads toward the asking of better questions about learning and its improvement and has high practical significance.

Students' expectations about the processing demandsof teacher-made tests

History teachers (N=22) and their 11th-grade students (N=451) rated the importanceof four types of questions (verbatim, paraphrase, inference and skill items) by indicating the degree to which these questions were to be expected in an upcoming teacher-made test about a particular textbook chapter. In addition, teachers classified their actual tests according to these four question types. Importance ratings of individual students showed a low correspondence with those of their teacher and no correspondence with the actual test questions (as classified by their teacher). However, teachers' importance ratings also showed a considerable number of discrepancies with the actual test questions. These findings suggest that in study-test situations, more clarity is needed about processing demands.