Use of Exam Wrappers to Enhance Students’ Metacognitive Skills in a Large Introductory Food Science and Human Nutrition Course

Research shows that students struggle to develop higher order thinking skills and effective study strategies during the transition from high school to college. Therefore, in addition to teaching course content, effective instructors should assist students in developing metacognitive skills, that is, the practice of thinking about their thinking. An effective assignment that assists students in thinking about their exam performance is the exam wrapper. The objectives of this study were to examine students’ metacognitive skills, evaluate the correlation between study behaviors and student performance, and assess student perception of exam wrappers. Exam wrapper assignments were offered as extra credit after the first 3 exams in a large introductory Food Science and Human Nutrition course, and student responses and exam performance were analyzed. Many students with poor exam performance overestimated their exam scores, indicating students’ self‐assessment skills could be sharpened. However, students demonstrated the ability to make and implement goals to improve study strategies throughout the semester. A modest relationship between use of study strategies and improved exam performance was observed, particularly for students with a B exam average, suggesting that students in the middle of the grade distribution may benefit most from this type of intervention. Finally, most students expressed a belief that exam wrappers helped them improve their study habits and exam scores, and that they planned to use the exam wrapper process in future classes. In summary, this study shows that the exam wrapper is a valued and effective postexam reflection tool for improving students’ self‐reported study habits.     

Why Do Some Young Adults not Graduate From Upper-Secondary School? On the Importance of Signals of Labour Market Failure

In high-income countries, not completing secondary school often entails a high risk of social exclusion. Using data on young adults born in 1985 who grew up in metropolitan Sweden, we study factors associated with not graduating from upper-secondary school at age 21. Our hypothesis is that if a young person sees examples of people who are not able to earn a living despite having a long education, such negative examples are influential. Results from estimated logistic models are consistent with the hypothesis.     

Slippage and/or symbolism: gender,policy and educational governance in Scotland and Sweden

This article provides an overview and analysis of the relationship between gender, educational policy, and governance in Scotland and Sweden and the two countries’ response to European Union and global legislative and policy change. In Scotland, gender is mainly invisible in recent policies on inclusion, achievement beyond academic attainment, and the idealisation of the child. Gender is thus marginalised within a range of factors contributing to social in/equality. In Sweden, in contrast, gender has higher visibility in policy and governance as both an indicator of democracy and a means of preserving social democratic consensus and prosperity. However, recently its privileged position has come under attack. We draw on social capital, gender, and policy theory to analyse the range of influences on gender and educational governance in the two countries including that of the social capital of organised feminism.     

Globalisation and education for sustainable development: emancipation from context and meaning

This article tries to contribute to the critical debate on the ideological and globalising potential of education for sustainable development (ESD), which exists in the research field of environmental education, by highlighting potential contradictions in the argumentation for ESD’s ideological and globalising tendency. Further, the authors of this article argue for an alternative perspective on how education policy on ESD can be seen to contribute to globalisation and homogenisation by merging two conceptualisations of ‘globalisation as connection' and the role of ‘empty signifiers' in political discourse. The ambition with the merger is not to provide a universal explanation of globalisation and ideology, instead, the intention is to outline an alternative theoretical outlook that allows for an empirical study of the processes that can be seen to feed into or interrupt the preservation of hegemony in a global setting.     

Seeing self as others see you: variability in self‐efficacy ratings in student teaching

The main objective of this study was to compare pre‐service English teachers' self‐efficacy beliefs with the instructors' views of the teaching competence of these pre‐service teachers. Thirty‐nine student teachers (13 males and 26 females) and five female instructors participated in the study. For data collection, student teacher and instructor versions of the same scale were used. The results of the research indicated that the student teachers' self‐efficacy judgments were higher than the instructors' judgments for the student teachers' teaching competence. Interviews with the instructors indicated that enactive experiences and verbal persuasion seem to be important factors which affect the personal efficacy beliefs of the prospective teachers in the current study.     

Learning disabilities and the auditory and visual matching computer program

This study examined whether audiovisual computer training without linguistic material had a remedial effect on different learning disabilities, like dyslexia and ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). This study applied a pre‐test–intervention–post‐test design with students (N = 62) between the ages of 7 and 19. The computer training lasted eight weeks occurring twice a week for 15 minutes per session. After the training period, an improvement in the auditory‐visual matching test was found. According to the hypothesis of this study, the youngest children with dyslexia would benefit most from the intervention. However, the training had also a positive effect on auditory‐visual matching with older students with dyslexia. Surprisingly, the students with ADD benefited from this intervention. According to the teachers, this intervention had also a positive effect on the students' school behaviour.     

Privileging and Artifacts: On the Use of Information Technology in Science Education

The aim of this paper is to develop an approach that can be used in addressing the issue of the use of information technology and its importance in human meaning making. By using a combination of Wittgenstein’s work method, a sociocultural perspective on learning, and a sociotechnical perspective on artifacts a specific focus for analyses was discerned: the relation between the use-of-technology in meaning-making on one hand and the circumstances for this meaning-making on the other hand. The conversations of six groups of children, who worked with an assignment, that required that they doubted information they encountered, were video recorded and analyzed. The analyses were done in three interrelated steps. (a) The students use-of-technology in meaning making, (b) the meaning patterns that the students encounter on the web, and (c) students’ intentions and habits. Our findings show that, while the mode of reinforcement of the texts used by the students may have provided little opportunity for doubt or learning how to doubt, the students’ habits and intentions with their work determined the result of the interaction, namely copying information from the web. Taking our point of departure in this empirical illustration we discuss theoretical and methodological questions concerning the understanding of the use of information technology in educational settings.     

An Academic Performance Measurement System and its Impact on Quality of Engineering Faculty Work at Middle East Technical University

A system has been developed for measuring the performance of faculty members at Middle East Technical University (METU) in 1998. This system has been designed to provide feedback for improving the quality of academic work. It involves a separate set of criteria and measures for each college within the university. The criteria used for the College of Engineering include publications, editorial work and translation, professional and other research activities, educational activities, memberships and awards, and other activities. Faculty members are recruited based on these criteria. They report their activities and works annually as required by this system, and they can access their measurement results through the university Intranet. These results play a significant role in promotion of the faculty members. Awards are given to faculty members who demonstrate superior performance. This system has also been utilised to measure the efficiency of engineering departments, and guide and support departments in improving their efficiency. Since the beginning of implementation of this system, significant changes have been observed in preferences and activities of faculty members, and their performance. The paper discusses impact of this system on performance of the Engineering College.     

Questioning to learn and learning to question: Structure and function of problem-based learning scenarios in environmental science education

In problem-based learning, scenarios relating to real life areused as a point of departure for the learning process. Eventhough the importance of suitable cases or scenarios in bringingabout a fruitful learning process is emphasised in theliterature, few studies focus on how they actually function inthe learning process. This study focuses on how the scenariosused in a ten-week introductory course of a new four-yearundergraduate programme in environmental science functioned interms of the structure and content of the questions they evoked.Data were gathered through diary notes from nine groups ofstudents, comprising 5–8 students per group. The data weresubjected to a qualitative analysis aimed at describing thestructure and content of the questions generated by the groups.Five different kinds of questions were identified and labelled;encyclopaedic, meaning-oriented, relational,value-oriented and solution-oriented. All scenarios generated questions pertaining to all five categories in all groups, butthe emphasis varied. The results are discussed in relation to thedesign of scenarios, and in relation to students' approaches tolearning.     

Globalisation and education for sustainable development: exploring the global in motion

The article explores education for sustainable development (ESD) as a policy concept in different spaces and how it is re-articulated as part of a process of globalisation. The objective is to explore empirically an alternative set of logics in order to conceive of this process of globalisation. With this objective in mind, the article investigates articulations of ESD and sustainable development in Vietnamese and Thai policy-making, and reflects upon how these articulations can be seen to relate to globalisation. In so doing, it addresses concerns about the globalising potential of ESD within the field of environmental education research, and aims to open up for an alternative understanding of the processes associated with the rearticulation of ESD in different national education policy settings. The alternative conception that is put forward promotes an understanding of these re-articulations of ESD as contingent, opening up a space for contestation and counter-hegemonic articulations.