The extended Theory of Planned Behaviour and college grades: the role of cognition and past behaviour in the prediction of students’ academic intentions and achievements

Understanding the underlying processes influencing college students’ academic achievement represents an important goal of educational research. The aim of the present study was to examine the utility of the extended Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and the relative influence of cognitive processes and measures of past behaviour in the prediction of grade intentions and actual grades in the context of higher education. Our results show that perceived behavioural control (PBC), subjective norms (SN) and past grades emerged as significant predictors and were able to explain 41% of the variance in grade intentions, while the influence of cognitive processes (planning and future orientation) was not significant. With respect to the prediction of actual grades, we found that habitual school attendance and past grades explained 26% of the variance in actual grades. Again, the influence of cognitive processes (planning and future orientation) was not significant. The main discussion is centred on the utility of the extended TPB in the prediction of academic achievement and the complex relationship between cognitive processes and past behaviour in predicting human actions in general. Limitations and implications of the study are also discussed.     

Introducing teachers to new semiotic tools for writing instruction and writing assessment: consequences for students’ writing proficiency

This article reports consequences for student writing quality based on a long-term professional learning project. Project teachers, representing all school subjects in grades 3–7, were presented with a writing construct, ‘Wheel of Writing’, and norms of expectation for writing proficiency. Participating teachers used the writing construct and norms as a basis for writing instruction and writing assessment. The project was conducted in 24 schools across Norway. 3088 students from 20 project schools participated. Two hundred and thirty three students from 4 schools were used as a comparison group. The investigation showed that students in primary school improved their writing quality significantly. Students in lower secondary school did not. However, there was substantial variation in writing quality effects between schools, classes, and individual students. For instance at a number of schools, project students from lower secondary school improved their writing quality significantly. The article discusses potential explanations of the effects.     

Digitalisation in higher education: mapping institutional approaches for teaching and learning

This paper explores the digitalisation of teaching and learning understood as external processes, influenced by government and international trends and as internal processes within the institutions, in Denmark and Norway. These are countries with similarities regarding digitalisation and educational systems. In the internal processes, there was some use of digital technology in teaching and learning when initiated from administration including IT-staff, in collaboration with academic leaders. There was little or only limited reported use of technology for teaching and learning, when the processes were initiated by administration together with enthusiasts among faculty staff, who did not have leadership roles or influence on change. There was more reported use of technology in teaching and learning in Denmark than Norway. The paper discusses possible explanations for these findings and thus illuminates how processes of digitalisation are influenced by broader governance arrangements, institutional maturity and academic and administration staffs.     

Semiotic and discursive variables in cas-based didactical engineering

This paper presents a semiotic analysis of the (often claimed) potential of computer algebra systems (CAS) for enabling mathematical activity on a conceptual level higher than usual. Theoretical points are illustrated by examples from a development project in the context of a first year university course on calculus. We also discuss how they may be used in `a posteriori' didactical analysis and in didactical engineering. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Teacher–student interaction in contemporary science classrooms: is participation still a question of gender?†

We show that boys still have a greater access to the space for interaction in science classrooms, which is unexpected since in Sweden today girls perform better in these subjects than boys. Results from video-recorded verbal communication, referred to here as interaction, show that the distribution of teacher–student interaction in the final year of lower secondary school follows the same patterns as in the 1980s. The interaction space for all kinds of talk continues to be distributed according to the two-thirds rule for communication in science classrooms as described by previous research. We also show that the overall interaction space in science classrooms has increased for both boys and girls when talk about science alone is considered. Another finding which follows old patterns is that male teachers still address boys more often than girls. This holds true both for general talk and for talk about science. If a more even distribution of teacher–student interaction is desirable, these results once again need to be considered. More research needs to be undertaken before the association between girls’ attitudes and interest in science in terms of future career choice and the opportunity to participate in teacher–student interaction is more clearly understood.     

To Read or Not to Read: A Qualitative Study of Students’ Justifications for Document Selection in Task-Oriented Reading

When navigating through the vast amount of information that we encounter in our everyday lives, we constantly make decisions concerning what information to read more closely and what information to disregard. Consideration of the relevance and trustworthiness of information sources facilitates those decisions. In the present study, we interviewed 25 upper-secondary students after they had selected documents to use in completing a task, and we asked them to justify their selections. A qualitative analysis of the interview data showed that students’ justifications could be related to (1) content relevance, (2) source features, and (3) prior topic knowledge. The results demonstrate that students are able to evaluate content relevance and source features as part of their document selection strategies but that perceived prior knowledge seems to influence both selections and justifications.     

The contribution of orthographic and phonological processes to word reading in young Norwegian readers

The dissociation between phonological and orthographic processes in word reading was investigated in a study involving 147 children in grade 3. The criterion measure was a timed word reading test. Two tasks assessed phonological skills and two tasks assessed orthographical skills. Orthographic ability accounted for variance in word reading even after phonological ability had been controlled. Poor readers differed from skilled readers in the way phonological and orthographic factors were balanced. The relationship between the two factors was fairly strong among poor readers, whereas the correlation was low for more skilled readers. Furthermore, phonological factors played a much stronger role in explaining the variance in word reading among poor readers, while on the other hand, orthographic factors were more powerful among skilled readers.     

Early language development and kindergarten phonological awareness as predictors of reading problems: from 3 to 11 years of age

At the end of Grade 4, 481 children on the Danish island of Bornholm were screened using group tests for sentence reading. For 205 of these children, language and speech data from the speech therapist's screening at age 3 were available, as well as language comprehension and linguistic awareness data from the kindergarten year (age 6) and word decoding measures in Grades 2 and 3. A path analysis revealed significant paths from early language abilities at age 3 through expressive and receptive language in kindergarten via language awareness in kindergarten and word decoding in Grade 2 to sentence reading in Grades 3 and 4. The subgroup of children with parents who had reported a history of reading problems at school entry scored significantly below average on sentence reading in Grade 4. The subgroup of children that were reported to show a very low interest in books and story reading before age 5 also scored low on sentence reading in Grade 4. Statistically significant but weak relationships were also found between parents' educational background, parents' library visits, and number of books at home and the child's reading ability in Grade 4.     

Teaching Critical Thinking and Problem Defining Skills

Critical thinking and skills in defining problems have been among the goals of a computers and society course that had its credits reduced and student number increased. In an attempt to prevent worsening the students' learning, four measures were taken. The results actually improved from a failure rate of 21.5% to 0.7%. This was mainly due to tighter project structure and additional student work. Reduced course material and improved teacher preparation did not seem to have any effect, while more focused project teaching may have contributed to the decreased failure rate. Further improvements may be gained through time estimation in the problem definition process.