The impact of instruction and student characteristics on the development of students’ ability to read texts with instructional pictures

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Reading texts with instructional pictures (text-picture integration) is a key component of students’ learning processes in most school subjects,...     

Informationen des Bundesinstituts für Sportwissenschaft (BISp)

BISp-Informationen

Informationen des Bundesinstituts für Sportwissenschaft (BISp)     

Semantic-aware components and services of ActiveMath

ActiveMath is a complex web‐based adaptive learning environment with a number of components and interactive learning tools. The basis for handling semantics of learning content is provided by its semantic (mathematics) content markup, which is additionally annotated with educational metadata. Several components, tools and external services can make use of that content markup, eg, a course generator, a semantic search engine and user input evaluation services. The components and services have to communicate, pass content and state changes, actions, etc including mathematical semantics and educational markup. The novel event infrastructure supports this communication. This paper focuses on the usage of the content's semantics by selected novel components and sketches the communication.     

Generalizability of Multidimensional Student Ratings of University Instruction Across Courses and Teachers

Course quality is multifaceted, being determined by instructor, students, and external conditions. Consequently, any attempt at measurement should reflect this diversity, so that stable evaluations can be made that reflect both personal (instructor) and situational (student and external conditions) variables. This study extends previous research by examining the stability of both dimensions across different courses, student populations, and universities. In addition, the sample (N = 692 courses) was drawn from 6 traditional and technical German universities that have a different ethos of student interaction with academic staff than those in many other Western countries. Using the Heidelberg Inventory, it was found that instructor variables were reliable across courses given by the same instructor, but student scales or background variables were less consistent across courses in which the content was identical. It was concluded that the instrument was both reliable and valid for student evaluations of both teaching performance and course quality within a European context.     

Einstellungen,Motivation und Selbstwirksamkeit von Lehrkräften

Teachers’ attitudes, motivation and self-efficacy are aspects of their professional competence affecting students’ motivation and learning via instructional behavior. In the present study, school type-specific differences in these teacher competencies and their relation to instruction when teaching with texts and integrated pictures are analyzed, further focusing on effects of school subject and teaching experience. Teachers (N?=?265) of primary school, lower and upper track secondary school filled in questionnaires. Primary school teachers were less intrinsically motivated to teach text-picture integration than secondary school teachers. They showed more negative attitudes towards texts with pictures than upper track teachers and avoided discussing the picture to a higher degree. All teacher characteristics predicted instructional behavior, further school type-specific effects of the subject occurred. The results provide starting points for teacher training and the potential for further research concerning the support of students in class.     

Teachers’ beliefs, instructional behaviors, and students’ engagement in learning from texts with instructional pictures

This study investigated the relations between teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and students’ self-reported engagement in learning from texts with instructional pictures. Participants were the biology, geography, and German teachers of 46 classes (Grades 5-8) and their students. Teachers’ instructional behaviors and students’ engagement in learning from texts with instructional pictures were assessed by means of student ratings. Teachers’ beliefs about using texts with instructional pictures in their teaching were assessed by a self-report questionnaire. Results showed that the more teachers believed that students should be taught clear strategies on how to learn from texts with instructional pictures the more engagement was reported by their students. A multilevel mediation model showed that the association between teachers’ beliefs and students’ self-reported engagement was mediated by teachers’ perceived instructional behavior.     

A biomechanical comparison of countermovement performance after short-term traditional and daily-undulated loaded vertical jump training

In order to assess lower extremity muscle mechanical properties in athletes, power-load characteristics during multi-joint tasks are frequently examined. This work compared 6 weeks of traditional (TP) and daily-undulated (DUP) periodized loaded countermovement jumping (CMJ). 20 amateur athletes (age: 24.2 ± 2.6 years, height: 175.6 ± 7.1 cm, body mass: 71.5 ± 7.7 kg, 10 males/10 females) exercised three times weekly using maximal CMJs with loads corresponding to 0%, 15% and 30% of body mass. Prior to the training period, subjects were once-only assigned by random to either the TP or DUP training scheme. Pre-to-post training, maximal center of mass (COM) -height, -take-off velocity, -power output and -impulse were compared during CMJ with additional loads corresponding to 0–30% of body mass. ANOVA (time * group) with repeated measures revealed significant (P < 0.05) temporal gains of maximal COM-height (2–11%), -take-off velocity (1–7%), -power (2–8%) and -impulse (3–9%) over most loading conditions for TP and DUP. However, ANOVA indicated no group effects for any outcome. Independent from the periodization model, maximal power output remained statistically unchanged with increased testing loads. For short-term conditioning periods, TP and DUP were equally effective in enhancing biomechanical jumping variables under varying loading conditions.