Understanding student pathways in context-rich problems

This paper describes the ways that students’ problem-solving behaviors evolve when solving multi-faceted, context-rich problems within a web-based learning environment. During the semester, groups of two or three students worked on five physics problems that required drawing on more than one concept and, hence, could not be readily solved with simple “plug-and-chug” strategies. The problems were presented to students in a data-rich, online problem-based learning environment that tracked which information items were selected by students as they attempted to solve the problem. The students also completed a variety of tasks, like entering an initial qualitative analysis of the problem into an online form. Students were not constrained to complete these tasks in any specific order. As they gained more experience in solving context-rich physics problems, student groups showed some progression towards expert-like behavior as they completed qualitative analysis earlier and were more selective in their perusal of informational resources. However, there was room for more improvement as approximately half of the groups still completed the qualitative analysis task towards the end of the problem-solving process rather than at the beginning of the task when it would have been most useful to their work.     

Students’ communicative behavior adaptability in CSCL environments

By the proliferation of online courses, the social dimension of computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is becoming more important than before. Research shows that communicative behavior adaptation to the computer medium is a critical issue in CSCL social relationship development. Two dominant theories in the CSCL field, social information processing theory and adaptive structuration theory, argue that individuals do not simply receive the technology passively but they adapt their behavior to increase benefits from the technology. This paper develops an instrument in order to operationalize the notion of individual’s communicative behavior adaptability in CSCL. Through an exploratory factor analysis performed on a small sample of post graduate students of an online degree in an Australian university, three factors have been unveiled: (1) individual perception of self-representation, (2) individual perception of compatibility, and (3) individual perception of the use of computer technology. Identification of these factors is expected to facilitate understanding of individuals’ social behaviors in CSCL environment, which in turn will guide the design of CSCL systems. In addition, the paper examines the relationships between the extracted factors and four environmental factors: learner’s characteristics, course characteristics, instructor characteristics, and technology characteristics. The results show that none of these characteristics strongly affect perception of self-representation or perception of the use of computer technology. On the other hand, a strong relationship was found between perception of compatibility and learner’s and course characteristics. The reliability as well as validity of the study is examined and findings are discussed. These findings will provide further insights into the design process of CSCL systems.     

Perceptions of the learning environment and associations with cognitive achievement among gifted biology students

This study assessed the perceptions of 146 gifted and 115 non-gifted high school biology students and investigated associations between student perceptions and cognitive achievement. The What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC) was used to assess perceptions of actual and preferred learning environments. Data indicated that all students preferred a more favourable environment than the one that they were currently experiencing, but gifted students perceived their actual environment more positively than non-gifted students. Statistically significant associations between the actual learning environment and achievement on a standardised biology test were found for the majority of scales. Teacher Support, Investigation and Equity were all statistically significant independent predictors of student achievement, while Student Cohesiveness had a negative association with achievement. Interviews revealed that students interpreted some WIHIC items differently from how the developers had intended.     

Examining the effect of positive behaviour support on academic achievement of students with disabilities

Students who engage in challenging behaviour compromise the fundamental ability of schools to educate children. Consequently, teachers face the daunting task of designing effective strategies to promote positive educational outcomes for their students. Since the 1997 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act amendments, the use of positive behaviour supports (PBS) to address the behavioural needs of children challenged by disabilities has expanded. There is evidence to support the utility of PBS in reducing challenging behaviour among students. However, successful schools are also gauged by the academic achievement of their students. Hence, it is important to examine the extent to which behavioural outcomes are related to academic outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which PBS interventions aimed at reducing challenging behaviour result in corresponding improvement in academic achievement. A meta‐analysis of extant research indicated a positive correlation of 0.40 between improvement in problem behaviour and academic achievement. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: http://youtu.be/c9OUU0GkGrw .     

The Relationship Between Undergraduate Attendance and Performance Revisited: Alignment of Student and Instructor Goals

We revisit the relationship between attendance and performance in the undergraduate university setting and apply agency theory in the instructor–student context. Building on agency theory propositions in the educational setting advanced by Smith, Zsidisin, and Adams (2005) , we propose that the student and instructor must align goals to promote the student's achievement of performance learning outcomes, and attendance functions as a behavior‐based alignment mechanism to encourage the convergence of faculty and student interests. Further, we propose that attendance does not equally affect lower‐ and higher‐performing students and that absences are also negatively related to students' cumulative grade point average. We test these hypotheses with data from undergraduates enrolled in management courses at a state university in the southeast. Our results show that attendance is positively related to exam performance, there are more pronounced negative effects of an absence for lower‐performing students than for higher performers, and absences are negatively related to a student's cumulative grade point average. We discuss the implications of our findings for students, instructors, and universities as well as practice in teaching and learning.     

Two components of responding in Pavlovian lick suppression

The present research examined the temporal distribution of responding in a lick suppression paradigm. In Experiment 1, rats were trained with either a 30- or a 120-s conditioned stimulus (CS), which was followed either by a footshock (unconditioned stimulus [US]) or nothing. Licking during the CS was suppressed only in the former condition. Suppression was more pronounced early in the CS. In Experiment 2, rats were exposed to two 30-s or two 120-s CSs, with delivery of the shock being contingent on CS1 for half of the animals and on CS2 for the other half. For both the paired and the unpaired conditions, suppression at the beginning of CS1 was observed for all the groups. By discounting the possibility of generalization between CS1 and CS2, it appears that this initial suppression was not a conditioned response to the CS, but an unconditioned one due to mere exposure to the shock US.     

Some determinants of second-order conditioning

In a Pavlovian conditioning situation, an initially neutral stimulus may be made excitatory by nonreinforced presentations in compound with an established conditioned excitor [i.e., second-order conditioning (SOC)]. The established excitor may be either a punctate cue or the training context. In four conditioned suppression experiments using rats, we investigated whether SOC phenomena parallel other cue interaction effects. In Experiment 1, we found that the response potential of a target stimulus was directly related to the intertrial interval when SOC was mediated by a punctate cue, and inversely related to the intertrial interval when SOC was mediated by the training context. Experiment 2 demonstrated that punctate- and context-mediated SOC are oppositely affected by posttraining context extinction, and Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that context- and punctate-mediated SOC are differentially affected by conditioned stimulus (Experiment 3) and unconditioned stimulus (Experiment 4) preexposure treatments. These findings parallel phenomena in conditioned inhibition and cue competition situations.     

Gender Adeptness Among Educational Administrators for Leading Innovative Initiatives in Public Education

It may be concluded that female administrators are perceived as being more adept than their male counterparts for leading innovation in schools and leveraging resources into productive outputs. It may be concluded that both genders of administrators perceive such efforts similarly. The only two skills where gender is significant are the two eornpetencies identified as being alert for new opportunities and synthesizing ideas into focused projects. For the other eight skills indicated in the survey, gender did not play a significant role in such perceptions.     

ENGAGING SCIENCE: PRE-SERVICE PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS�� NOTIONS OF ENGAGING SCIENCE LESSONS

If children are engaged in science lessons, their learning is likely to be better and, in the long term, careers in science and technology will remain open. Given that attitudes can develop early and be difficult to change, it is important for teachers of younger children to know how to foster engagement in science. This study identified what a cohort of 79 pre-service teachers in England considered to be engaging elementary science lessons and compared their notions with teacher behaviours known to be conducive to engagement. First, all brought beliefs about how to engage children in science lessons to their training. They tended to favour children’s hands-on activity as an effective means of fostering attentive participation in learning, although many had additional ideas. Nevertheless, the means and ends of their ‘pedagogies of engagement’ tended to be simple and narrow. Trainers need to ensure that notions of engagement are wide enough to cope with a variety of teaching situations, as when hands-on experience is not feasible, effective or appropriate. At the same time, teachers will need to recognise that one approach may not suit all learners. Without this, there is the risk that they will lack the skills to engage children in science. Nevertheless, these beliefs could offer a useful starting point for trainers who wish to widen pre-service teachers’ conceptions of engagement and increase their repertoire of teaching behaviours.