The Future of Educational Neuroscience

The primary goal of the emerging field of educational neuroscience and the broader movement called Mind, Brain, and Education is to join biology with cognitive science, development, and education so that education can be grounded more solidly in research on learning and teaching. To avoid misdirection, the growing worldwide movement needs to avoid the many myths and distortions in popular conceptions of brain and genetics. It should instead focus on integrating research with practice to create useful evidence that illuminates the brain and genetic bases as well as social and cultural influences on learning and teaching. Scientists and educators need to collaborate to build a strong research foundation for analyzing the “black box” of biological and cognitive processes that underpin learning.     

Kompensatorische Wirkungen von Ganztagsschulen – Ist die Ganztagsschule ein Instrument zur Entkopplung des Zusammenhangs von sozialer Herkunft und Bildungserfolg?

The introduction of “all-day schools” (i.e. schools that provide extended education times and extracurricular activities) has been a major topic in educational debates in Germany in the last decade. One of the main goals for expanding the provision of all-day schooling in Germany was to support the development of academic skills and abilities of all students independent of their socio-economic-background. Based on empirical results of current studies and the data of the “study of the development of all day schools” educational effects of extracurricular activities are analyzed. Typically studies show that extracurricular participation supports social learning rather than academic achievement. Nonetheless, data provide first hints of compensatory effects. Thus all-day schools can weaken the link between socio-economic background and academic achievement.     

Getting immersed in teacher and student perspectives? Facilitating analytical competence using video cases in teacher education

The ability to analyze and understand classroom situations through the eyes of not only teachers but also students can be seen as a crucial aspect of teachers’ professional competence. Even though video case-based learning is considered to have great potential for the promotion of analytical competence of teachers (i.e., becoming immersed in student and teacher perspectives as well as applying conceptual knowledge to better understand classroom situations), only a few studies have investigated the effects of corresponding instructional support. This empirical field study examines the effects on analytical competence of two types of instructional support—hyperlinks to multiple perspectives and hyperlinks to conceptual knowledge—by using a 2 × 2 factorial design in a computer-supported video case-based learning environment inspired by cognitive flexibility theory and participatory design. The study examines collaborative learning processes to discover what specific kind of instruction may help to counteract some of the known deficits of case-based learning and teacher thinking, such as limited perspective-taking. From a participatory design point of view, training novices to become immersed in teacher and student perspectives can be considered as an alternative for direct involvement of teachers and students in the design process. The study was realized as a four-day university course for pre-service teachers (N = 100). ANCOVAs of learning processes (small-group discussions) and outcomes (written case analyses) provide evidence that both types of instructional support (i.e., hyperlinks to multiple perspectives and conceptual knowledge) are beneficial. In particular, hyperlinks to multiple perspectives affected small-group case discussions and written post-tests as they led to increased immersion (i.e., perspective-taking). Hyperlinks to conceptual knowledge furthered the application of this knowledge, especially in the written post-tests. Implications for teacher education, participatory design, and further research are discussed.     

Cultural conceptions of morality: Examining laypeople’s associations of moral character

Whether moral conceptions are universal or culture-specific is controversial in moral psychology. One option is to refrain from imposing theoretical constraints and to ask laypeople from different cultures how they conceptualize morality. Our article adopts this approach by examining laypeople’s associations of moral character in individualistic- and collectivistic-oriented cultures. Using correspondence analysis we found that the concept of moral character yielded widely shared associations with justice and welfare concerns. Yet, there were also clear cultural differences with individualistic-oriented samples associating more frequently rights-based features and collectivistic-oriented samples more frequently associating duty-based attributes. When matching freelisted trait categories with Schwartz’s value types, moral value hierarchies were similar across cultures and correlated significantly with explicit moral value ratings. We conclude that imposing constraints through an expert-designed category system can narrow the scope of inquiry to common moral aspects related to problem-solving, promotion of prosocial actions and control of antisocial behaviour.     

Fostering the analytical competency of pre-service teachers in a computer-supported case-based learning environment: A matter of perspective?

Analytical competency in classroom situations can be seen as a crucial aspect of teachers' professional competency. While case-based learning is considered to have great potential for teacher education, particularly with respect to the promotion of teachers' analytical skills, there have been very few attempts to investigate the effects of corresponding instructional support. The present empirical study investigated the effects of instructional support in the form of multiple perspectives (i.e. authentic comments made by teachers and learners) and the presentation format of these perspectives in a computer-supported case-based learning environment which was based on the principles of cognitive flexibility theory. Twenty-nine foreign-language student teachers participated in the study. Experimental groups were presented with multiple perspectives in a video (plus audio track) or audio-track format. A control group did not have access to these multiple perspectives. The instructional support with multiple perspectives positively influenced learning processes and outcomes with respect to a central dimension of analytical competency – learners' ability to apply conceptual knowledge to case information. Learners with access to multiple perspectives as “audio only” outperformed learners in the “audio + video” condition, who did not substantially differ from the control group.