Attentional inertia reduces distractibility during young children's TV viewing

The longer a look at TV is maintained, the conditional probability that it will be further maintained rapidly increases for about 15 sec, after which it increases slowly. This increase in the conditional probability of maintaining a look is called "attentional inertia." An external audiovisual distractor stimulus was presented during 3- and 5-year-olds' TV viewing. The distractor was less effective in eliciting a head turn from the TV if it was presented after a look at the TV had been continuously maintained for at least 15 sec. If a head turn to the distractor following such a maintained look did occur, moreover, its reaction time was significantly increased. Parallel effects were found for the nonviewing pauses between looks. The results provide evidence of increasing attentional engagement as a look at TV is maintained.     

Psychological correlates of physical abuse in Hong Kong Chinese adolescents

OBJECTIVE: To understand the associations between adolescent family physical maltreatment and psychiatric morbidity or psychological problems. METHODS: questionnaire survey on 489 secondary school students in Form 2 from 10 schools in Hong Kong. Questions regarding three forms of family physical maltreatment were measured: corporal punishment within the past 6 months, beaten without any reason within the past 6 months, or ever been beaten to injury. MAIN RESULT: Corporal punishment was not associated with the psychological variables after Bonferroni adjustment was made. Those who experienced the two other forms of physical maltreatment had significant and strong associations with positive Achenbach CBCL outcome (OR from 3.26 to 3.27), drug abuse problems (OR from 2.60 to 20.38), self-injurious behaviors (OR from 3.34 to 8.47) and poor perceived parental support. In addition, those who had ever been beaten to injury scored significantly lower in the "physical appearance" and "behavioral conduct" subscales of the Harter's Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents. CONCLUSIONS: In Hong Kong, some forms of family physical maltreatment (beaten for no reason and beaten to injury) were associated with a number of psychiatric/psychological problems. Further studies should be carried out to clarify whether the relationships are causal in nature.     

Rethinking the flipped learning pre-class: Its influence on the success of flipped learning and related factors

Flipped learning (FL) has had a substantial impact on higher education worldwide, prompting active dialog among educational researchers and practitioners. It is widely accepted that the value of FL lies in enabling in-depth, learner-centered learning experiences by offloading content delivery onto pre-class online learning. The in-class component is thus generally considered more critical, even though both pre-class and in-class elements are indispensable components of FL and practitioners are faced with the issue of under-prepared learners. In this study, we examine the significance of pre-class learning as a gateway to the intended benefits of FL. We aim to investigate the extent to which FL pre-class learning influences overall FL success and what other factors affect FL pre-class learning to ascertain the implications of designing and implementing FL pre-class learning. A college life science course was designed and implemented with the FL model for a semester, from which data were collected and statistically analyzed. The results indicate that the influence of pre-class learning on final FL success is significant and strong. Regarding the modality of pre-class learning materials, learners demonstrated higher levels of performance in the weeks with video materials than during those with reading materials. Among several learner factors, self-direction was found to significantly influence pre-class learning performance and perceived learning readiness. The role of FL pre-class learning to attain the intended value of FL is discussed, and theoretical and practical design implications are suggested.     

Effects of self-affirmation on message persuasiveness: a cross-cultural study of the U.S. and South Korea

Much research on public communication campaigns has shown that the negative appeals (e.g. fear, guilt appeals) commonly used may not be effective for encouraging prosocial behaviors, as they can facilitate defensive processing. Self-affirmation theory suggests that self-affirmation may be a useful strategy for mitigating defensive responses to potentially self-threatening messages. This cross-national study explored the effect of self-affirmation on the persuasiveness of a threat appeal message in the context of climate change. An experiment with a 3 (no affirmation versus message-integrated affirmation versus message-separate affirmation)?×?2 (high self-threatening versus low self-threatening message)?×?2 (U.S. versus Korea) factorial design (N?=?225, U.S.; N?=?255, Korea) was employed to test this postulation. The results suggested that self-affirmation has a positive effect on perceived risk, attitude toward message, and intention to engage in environmentally-friendly behaviors, although this effect is limited to high self-threat conditions. Additionally, a statistically significant interaction between self-affirmation and culture was found for the effect on behavioral intention. Finally, message-integrated affirmation manipulation was found to be as effective as message-separate affirmation manipulation. The implications of these findings for public communication campaigns in terms of promoting prosocial behaviors are discussed.     

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SCIENCE WRITING HEURISTIC (SWH) APPROACH IN 8TH GRADE SCIENCE CLASSROOMS

Current initiatives in science education in Korea have emphasized science literacy as the most important purpose of science education; that is, science education needs to focus on helping each student to become a scientifically literate person who is able to make reasoned decisions. In attempting to address this focus concern about science literacy, the researchers of this study attempted to implement the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) approach and examined both the SWH and the control groups using the modified Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP). Students’ performance on a Summary Writing Test (SWT) was also examined. Participant students of this study were eighth grade students in three middle schools located in the second biggest city in Korea. Each of the three teachers from three schools taught both the SWH and the control classes. The results of this study showed significant differences between the SWH and the control groups on the SWT. There was a difference in the total RTOP scores between the SWH and the control groups. Differences among schools imply that higher level of teachers’ implementation of the SWH approach would appear to result in better student achievement.     

Three dimensions of reflective thinking in solving design problems: a conceptual model

Design tasks are omnipresent in our everyday lives. Previous research shows that reflective thinking is one of the critical factors in solving design problems. Related research has attempted to capture designers’ reflective thinking process. Yet a close inspection of designers’ reflective thinking taking place during their design process demands further effort. To understand designer’s reflective practice and to find better ways to promote novices’ reflective thinking in solving real-world design problems, a comprehensive model was developed. This model identified three dimensions to guide the understanding of designers’ reflective thinking during a design process: (1) the timing of reflection, indicating the points in the process where reflective thinking occurs, (2) the objects of reflection, showing the different types of objects that designers may reflect upon, and (3) the levels of reflection, referring to the different levels of designers’ reflection. This model provides for meaningful aspects of reflective thinking to be situated in a design process, which can guide educators and instructional designers in developing appropriate learning environments for facilitating novice and practicing designers’ reflective thinking. Moreover, the model can serve as a stepping stone for further research.     

A review of online course dropout research: implications for practice and future research

Although online learning is expanding in availability and popularity, the high dropout rates remain a challenging problem. In this paper, we reviewed the existing empirical studies on online course dropouts in post-secondary education that were published during the last 10 years. We identified 69 factors that influence students’ decisions to dropout and classified them into three main categories: (a) Student factors, (b) Course/Program factors, and (c) Environmental factors. We then examined the strategies proposed to overcome these dropout factors: (a) understanding each student’s challenges and potential, (b) providing quality course activities and well-structured supports, and (c) handling environmental issues and emotional challenges. Finally, we discussed issues regarding dropout factors and strategies for addressing these factors and offered recommendations for future research.     

Seventh grade students' mental models of the greenhouse effect

This constructivist study investigates 225 student drawings and explanations from three different schools in the midwest in the US, to identify seventh grade students' mental models of the greenhouse effect. Five distinct mental models were derived from an inductive analysis of the content of the students' drawings and explanations: Model 1, a ‘greenhouse’ for growing plants; Model 2, greenhouse gases cause ozone depletion or formation, causing the Earth to warm; Model 3, greenhouse gases, but no heating mechanism, simply gases in the atmosphere; Model 4, greenhouse gases ‘trap’ the sun's rays, heating the Earth; and Model 5, the sun's rays are ‘bounced’ or reflected back and forth between the Earth's surface and greenhouse gases, heating the Earth. Science textbooks are critiqued in light of the students' mental models and curricular and instructional implications are explored.     

Scaffolding Peer-questioning Strategies to Facilitate Metacognition During Online Small Group Discussion

Meaningful discussion that facilitates reflective thinking can be initiated when learners raise thoughtful questions or provide critical feedback; however, generating effective questions requires a certain level of domain knowledge and metacognitive skills of the question-askers. We propose a peer-questioning scaffolding framework intended to facilitate metacognition and learning through scaffolding effective peer-questioning in online discussion. This framework assumes that novice students who lack domain and metacognitive knowledge can be scaffolded to generate meaningful interactions at an early stage of learning and the resulting peer-generated adaptive questions can facilitate learners’ metacognition. Thus, this study investigated the effects of providing online scaffolding for generating adaptive questions to peers during online small group discussion. A field experimental time-series control-group design was employed as a mixed model for the research design. Thirty-nine college students from an online introductory class on turfgrass management participated in the study. The findings revealed that the scaffolds were useful to increase the frequency of student questioning behavior during online discussion. For some students, the online guidance reportedly served as “a starting point” to generate questions when they had difficulty asking questions. However, the guidance did not improve the quality of questions and thus learning outcomes. The interview data indicated that peer-generated adaptive questions served a critical role in facilitating learner’s reflection and knowledge reconstruction. Further study should focus on the quality improvement of peer-generated questions while considering adaptive and dynamic forms of scaffolding and intermediate factors such as prior knowledge, metacognition, task complexity, and scaffolding type.     

The effect of problem-based video instruction on student satisfaction, empathy, and learning achievement in the Korean teacher education context

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether or not the use of video can have a positive effect on satisfaction, empathy, and learning achievement in problem-based instruction among Korean college students majoring in education. To achieve this purpose, this study compared the findings from three dependent variables in problem-based video instruction with those in problem-based text instruction. The results indicate that there were statistically significant differences in learner satisfaction, empathy, and learning achievement between students who received problem-based video instruction and students who received problem-based text instruction. Consequently, the findings of this study imply that video can be an effective medium to present authentic situations in order to enhance student satisfaction, empathy, and learning achievement in problem-based instruction. This study might be significant in expanding the potential use of problem-based video instruction and in establishing an example of problem-based video instruction for Korean college students majoring in education.