A Methodological Case Study with Mobile Eye-Tracking of Child Interaction in a Science Museum

The field of instructional design and technology (IDT) aims to understand the interactions occurring among people and learning resources during educational experiences to inform design. This article illustrates the utility of mobile eye-tracking for research with children as a tool for IDT researchers and practitioners. Mobile eye-tracking can collect precise information concerning the learners’ visual attention and interactions in authentic environments, unlike traditional eye-tracking using a laboratory or stationary computer. Mobile eye-tracking also can be used effectively in out-of-school settings where learners walk around and interact with diverse resources. By presenting a qualitative interaction analysis, we illuminate how mobile eye-tracking supports investigating explorations in a hands-on museum. The analysis shows patterns of visual and bodily interactions with exhibits and with family members. Implications include how mobile eye-tracking can contribute to a researcher’s understanding of the child’s idiosyncratic viewpoint to examine in detail learners’ interactions and educational resources’ affordances at various educational settings.     

Teaching the Social Curriculum: Classroom Management as Behavioral Instruction

Psychological science has identified positive classroom management and climate building strategies as a key element in developing and maintaining effective learning environments. In this article, we review the literature that has identified effective strategies that build classroom climates to maximize student learning and minimize disruption. In general, these strategies indicate a shift away from reactive and punitive approaches towards an emphasis on instructional and preventive approaches, including setting clear expectations, appropriate curriculum to increase student engagement, positive acknowledgment, and building relationships between students and teachers. Emerging research has also begun to identify features of culturally responsive classroom management that can engage and build relationships for a diverse student population.     

Teacher disapproval,delinquent peers,and self-reported delinquency: A longitudinal test of labeling theory

Data from the National Youth Survey (waves one and two) were used to assess the effects of individual students' perceptions of teacher disapproval on self-reported delinquency. The panel study included youths between the ages of 11 and 17. Consistent with the labeling perspective, the results indicated that perceptions of teacher disapproval are associated with subsequent delinquency. This relationship was significant even when controlling for prior delinquency, thus weakening the argument that labeling is merely a result, and not a cause, of delinquency. The effects did, however, appear to be indirect when measures of delinquent peer associations were included in the model.     

A beautiful myth? The gendering of being/doing ‘good at maths’

This paper draws on a research study into why more boys than girls choose to study mathematics. My starting point is that only four of the 43 young participants, and all of them male, self‐identified as ‘good at maths’. By reading these interviews as narratives of self, I explore the ‘identity work’ accomplished within their talk and within the talk of those who produced themselves/are produced as ‘not good at maths’. I argue that central to this are the ways that young people locate themselves in a series of inter‐related gendered binary oppositions including: fast/slow, competitive/collaborative, independent/dependent, active/passive, naturally able/hardworking, real understanding/rote learning and reason/calculation. I then explore the socio‐cultural context that makes such imaginings a central feature of young people’s relationships with mathematics, discussing the role of the gendered discourses of rationality evident in western enlightenment thinking and in popular culture’s stereotypes of mathematical ‘nerds’ and ‘geniuses’.     

Examining Student Engagement with Science Through a Bourdieusian Notion of Field

Student engagement with science is a long-standing, central interest within science education research. In this article, we examine student engagement with science using a Bourdiusian lens, placing a particular emphasis on the notion of field. Over the course of one academic year, we collected data in an inner London secondary science classroom through lesson observations, interviews and discussion groups with students, and interviews with the teacher. We argue that applying Bourdieusian theory can help better understand differential patterns of student engagement by directing attention to the alignment between students’ habitus and capital, and the field. Student behaviours that did not meet the requirements of the wider field were not recognised and valued as constituting engagement. Even when the ‘rules of the game’ of the science classroom were understood by the students, the tensions they experienced within the field made engaging with science impossible and undesirable. We discuss how a greater focus on the field can be useful for planning future interventions aimed at making science education more equitable.     

Evaluation of an adaptive tutorial supporting the teaching of mathematics

ABSTRACT

Adaptive tutorials enable engaged, personalised and interactive online learning that includes instant adaptive feedback. By integrating an adaptive tutorial into a large and diverse engineering mathematics course, we explored its potential to support and guide students’ learning from afar. The aim of this study was to assess whether students provided with an adaptive tutorial, could benefit from its use and whether they would engage in and take responsibility for their learning. Comparisons were made between students who did and did not use the tutorial. Quantitative and qualitative data analyses determined the impact of including an adaptive tutorial in a blended learning environment, where 58% of students engaged with the tutorial and 74% of them completed it. Improved confidence and understanding was reported by 98% of the participants. A comparison of examination results indicated that median scores for students who utilised the tutorial were significantly higher than those who did not.