Teaching the writing of psychological reports through formative assessment: peer and teacher review

This paper describes the teaching of psychological report writing at Karolinska Institutet and the efforts to improve it through the introduction of formative assessment applied as peer and teacher review. 48 fourth-year psychology students were required to write a psychological report. Half of the students also participated in a non-mandatory peer review of a first draft. All students handed in a preliminary version of the report, had it reviewed by the teachers and made alterations before handing in a final version. The results showed that both peer review and teacher review were valuable methods in the teaching of psychological report writing.     

Sex differences in achievement goals: do school subjects matter?

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Many studies have already found differences between male and female students in various motivational variables. With regard to the stereotypes...     

Film als Medium religiöser Bildung

Zusammenfassung Die Praktische Theologie protestantischer Pr?gung beginnt, den Film als Medium religi?ser Bildung zu entdecken. Diese Entwicklung steht im Kontext einer generellen kulturhermeneutischen Orientierung der Praktischen Theologie, die die Auseinandersetzung mit religi?sen Ph?nomenen auch au?erhalb des traditionellen Christentums vorantreibt. In diesem Zusammenhang ist deutlich geworden, dass die Erz?hlungen der audiovisuellen Medienkultur und insbesondere der Kinofilm wichtige Sinndeutungsfunktionen von der traditionellen Religionskultur des Christentums übernommen haben und damit auch für die Prozesse religi?ser Bildung relevant geworden sind. Der Film ist dabei besonders im Jugendalter von Bedeutung, insbesondere der Spielfilm fungiert als wichtige Ressource für die Sinn- und Wertorientierung Jugendlicher. Dass und wie religi?se Sinnmuster in Filmen von den Rezipienten auch aufgegriffen werden, zeigen erste Ergebnisse eines Forschungsprojektes am Berliner Seminar für Praktische Theologie am Beispiel des Films „Cast Away — Verschollen“ (USA 2001). Vor diesem Hintergrund und auf der Basis eines an überlegungen von Volker Ladenthin anknüpfenden Verst?ndnisses von Bildung als Selbstbildung wird die Auseinandersetzung mit Kinofilmen als wichtige Aufgabe eines Religionsunterrichtes eingefordert, der auf der H?he seiner Zeit sein will.

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Summary Film as a Medium of Religious Education Protestant Practical Theology has begun to discover films as a medium of religious education. This development emerges within the context of a general cultural hermeneutic orientation of Practical Theology which encourages the treatment of religious phenomena outside of Christianity’s traditional fora. It is now recognized that stories in the audio-visual media culture and particularly cinematic films have acquired a significant function for making-sense of the world — traditionally the role of religious culture — and have, therefore, become relevant for processes of religious education. Films are particularly important for youth culture and especially movies act as significant resources for young people’s understanding and value-orientation. First results of a research project at the Berlin Institute for Practical Theology demonstrate, using the example of “Cast Away” (USA 2001), that religious patterns of meaning in films are adopted by recipients and how this occurs. Based on this research and a concept of education as self-education pace Volker Ladenthin, a critical treatment of movies is argued to be an important task for religious courses, which strive to be contemporary.

     

AIDS und Sozialpädagogisch Verantworteter Umgang mit Betroffenen Kindern und Jugendlichen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Four faces of educational organizations

This article attempts to explore the presumed distinctive character of educational organizations. This is done by explicating and proposing an integration of four organizational models. The models are called: the rational-, the political-, the social system-, and the anarchistic model, respectively. A basic assumption is that the models represent four complementary dimensions of organizations, rather than four mutually exclusive alternatives. A typology is outlined, indicating a set of conditions under which the four dimensions are assumed to be differently salient. In conclusion, it is argued that educational organizations may be conceived of as involving an interplay of four dimensions characterized by the keywords: truth (the rational dimension), trust (the social dimension), power (the political dimension), and foolishness (the anarchistic dimension).     

Maintaining Competence in the Initial Occupation: Activities among Vocational Teachers

Contemporary work-life changes rapidly, and vocational education and training (VET) teachers need to keep up-to-date with changing knowledge demands and technological developments. This article concerns VET teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD) related to the specific vocations for which they teach. The aim is to analyse VET teachers’ participation in various types of activities designed to make them become more knowledgeable in relation to industry currency. The study draws on a socio-cultural perspective on practice and learning. Theory concerning adults’ participation in education is also used in analysing drivers of and barriers to participation in learning activities. The analyses are based on survey data from 886 Swedish VET teachers relating to their participation in different activities, barriers/drivers concerning participation in these activities, perceived effects (outcomes) of participation in terms of professional development, and teachers’ background. Reading professional texts was the most common CPD activity among those VET teachers participating in the study. Reading, and work in the VET teacher’s former/initial occupation were the two activities where variation in performing them could be explained to the highest degree. The study particularly highlights the importance of boundary crossing between school and work-life for maintaining and developing the industrial currency of VET teachers’ competence. Active membership and engagement in the community of practice of the initial occupation is important for participation in CPD activities closely related to this community.     

Explicit processing demands reveal language modality-specific organization of working memory

The working memory model for Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) predicts that processing differences between language modalities emerge when cognitive demands are explicit. This prediction was tested in three working memory experiments with participants who were Deaf Signers (DS), Hearing Signers (HS), or Hearing Nonsigners (HN). Easily nameable pictures were used as stimuli to avoid confounds relating to sensory modality. Performance was largely similar for DS, HS, and HN, suggesting that previously identified intermodal differences may be due to differences in retention of sensory information. When explicit processing demands were high, differences emerged between DS and HN, suggesting that although working memory storage in both groups is sensitive to temporal organization, retrieval is not sensitive to temporal organization in DS. A general effect of semantic similarity was also found. These findings are discussed in relation to the ELU model.     

Promoting University and Industry Links at the Regional Level: Comparing China’s Reform and International Experience

Abstract

This paper intends to learn from international experiences in order to facilitating China’s ongoing regional university transformation with an ultimate goal to enhance the role of university in regional economic development and innovation. In so doing, this paper compares major models of universities of applied sciences (UAS) around the world from the perspective of the Triple Helix Model with an emphasis on the nature of university-industry relation implied by each model, and then exploring their relevance for China’s UASs transformation. It is concluded that the Finnish model is the most relevant to China. By comparing the Finnish and Chinese practices, a number of recommendations are solicited to Chinese policy-makers.