An invasion in the classroom: influence of an ill-structured innovation on instructional and epistemological beliefs

In this article, the actual impact on students' instructional and epistemological beliefs of systematic attempts to implement a problembased, collaborative and technologicallyrich learning environment in regular, internationallyspread, secondary school classrooms is described. Although the literature suggests that learning environments do affect both categories of beliefs, empirical evidence is currently limited. To study the effects of learning environments, classroombased learning environments were redesigned in various respects. The change entailed the implementation of a problembased, collaborative and technologicallyrich environment to replace the more regular contentdriven, teachercentred and textbookbased environment. The implementation of the innovation was hypothesised to result in a change of both the instructional and epistemological beliefs of students. Moreover, these beliefs were expected to evolve in the direction of the assumptions underlying the innovative environment. A classical pretest and posttest study resulted in the confirmation of the first hypothesis. However, for the second hypothesis, the opposite was found: students' beliefs strengthened in a direction that contradicts the basic principles underlying the designed environment. The study highlights that a poor implementation of potentially powerful learning environments can result in unexpected and even undesirable side effects.     

Neuropsychological intervention in kindergarten children with subtyped risks of reading retardation

Kindergarten children at risk of developing language problems were administered the Florida Kindergarten Screening Battery. A principal components analysis revealed a verbal and a visual-spatial component and subsequent discriminant function analyses a high verbal/low visual-spatial group (LAL: Latent L) and a high visual-spatial/low verbal group (LAP: Latent P). LAL- and LAP-children were considered at risk for developing an L- or P-type of dyslexia, respectively. As is common practice with children suffering from manifest L- or P- dyslexia, the LAL- and LAP-kindergartners received right and left hemisphere stimulation, respectively. The outcomes were compared with those of bilateral hemispheric stimulation and no intervention. Reading tests were administered in primary school Grades 1 and 5/6; teachers’ evaluation of reading took place in Grade 5/6. Overall, the LAL- and LAP- groups showed significant backwardness in word and text reading, both at early and late primary school. Types of intervention made a difference though: not significantly backward in early word, late word, and late text reading were the LAL-children who had received right hemisphere stimulation. Nonintervened LAP-children did not show significant backwardness in early word reading and late text reading, nor did LAP-children who had received left hemisphere or bilateral stimulation. Early text reading was not affected by any treatment. Teacher’s evaluations were in support of these findings.     

The agencement of taskification: On new forms of reading and writing in BYOD schools

Abstract

The proliferation of digital devices in educational settings has contributed to the decentralization of knowledge from teachers and established textbooks to fluid online personalized resources, and from blackboards as spaces of materialization of this knowledge to personal screens. In this new constellation, school practices such as reading, writing and note-taking take new forms. How are these practices reconfigured when centered around mobile digital devices? In this paper, we investigate routine lesson practices of a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) school by means of an ethnographic observation. Adopting the term agencement as a heuristic device, we explore what practices are being constituted and how they are always in connection with one another. Moreover, we show that by practicing they produce different forms of action. We argue that in such a hybrid constellation, tasks find a different status beyond isolated and self-contained units for enhancing learning in different lessons. We introduce task-agencement, through which the task always entails a process of taskification that formats BYOD schools. With taskification, we mean that the task-agencement expands the domain in which tasks not only influence the organization and structure of lessons, but equally the very organization of the BYOD school by enacting a particular form of schooling. Finally, we propose a taskified form as a form of BYOD schooling that templates and formats how practices such as reading and writing, contextualization and introduction of the lesson are conducted.     

Emotional engagement,social interactions,and the development of an afterschool game design curriculum

This formative design study examines how a program curriculum and implementation was emergently (re)designed in dynamic relation to the expressed emotions of teachers and students. The context was a yearlong afterschool game design program for STEM learning at an urban and public all-girls middle school. Using Randall Collins’ (Interaction ritual chains, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2004) sociology of emotions framework, our analysis of field notes and video data reveal how the original intended curriculum hindered the generation of positive emotions, mutual foci of attention, and feelings of group solidarity—factors important in the generation of successful group interactions. In response to teacher and student expressed emotions, we took these factors as a guide for redesigning the program curriculum and implementation in order to foster a more positive emotional climate and redirect students’ positive emotions toward engagement in learning goals. This study’s implications point to the possibilities for designing curricula and program implementations to engender more emotionally responsive environments for STEM learning.     

The function of annotations in the comprehension of scientific texts: Cognitive load effects and the impact of verbal ability

Students participated in a study (n=98) investigating the effectiveness of three types of annotations on three learning outcome measures. The annotations were designed to support the cognitive processes in the comprehension of scientific texts, with a function to aid either the process of selecting relevant information, organizing the information in memory, or integrating information with prior knowledge. Learning outcomes were measured by assessing student recall of facts, comprehension of the text, and mental model construction. Results show that different types of annotations facilitate different learning outcomes. In addition, we found that, compared to having only one type of annotation available, multiple types of annotations resulted in a higher cognitive load that resulted in lower performance, especially in tests of higher-level processing. This effect was stronger for low-verbal-ability learners, who showed lower peformance in treatments with multiple types of annotations than high-verbal-ability learners.     

In search of the reliability of a Flemish version of the Knowledge Monitoring Assessment Test

Metacognitive skills are widely recognized as an important moderating variable for learning. Many studies have shown that these skills affect students’ learning results. Tobias and Everson (2000) argue that metacognitive skills cannot be effectively applied in absence of accurate knowledge monitoring. Consequently, they constructed a knowledge monitoring assessment test, which is claimed to be a valid test to measure students' knowledge monitoring capacity. In this contribution the reliability of a Flemish version of the KMA test is studied. Two studies are reported on, one with secondary education students and one with freshmen university students. In both studies split half method and Kuder Richardson 20 were used to calculate the internal consistency as a measurement of reliability. Because none of the results showed a good reliability it is suggested that additional efforts are needed to elaborate a reliable instrument.     

Research into the construction of mathematical texts

Investigations of the actual reading process and of the structure of a mathematical text are important for elaborating didactical methods for teaching reading a mathematical text. The article reports on a broader project concerning the structure of a mathematical text. The structure of several hundred texts has been analyzed. Academic textbooks and mathematical monographs (especially in Polish) written by mathematicians have been used as a source. Characteristic features of proof construction, that may influence the course of the reading process, have been isolated. For instance, transmission means have been investigated such as text segmentation which uses delimiters and so called procedure schemes.