Pedagogical constraints of physical literacy based on cognitive load theory

PROSPECTS - While numerous studies have highlighted the benefits of physical activity on cognitive health, learning, and executive function, maintaining physical activity throughout one’s...     

Progressive treatment and self-assessment: effects on students’ automatisation of grammatical spelling and self-efficacy beliefs

The production of grammatical markers takes a long time to master. Even when students know the rules, they do not systematically apply them. However, few studies have demonstrated the efficacy of interventions to improve this competence, and no study has addressed the issue at the cognitive and motivational levels jointly. Our study demonstrates the effect of combining progressive treatment, based on cognitive cost and self-assessment, on grammatical spelling and on self-efficacy beliefs. Over 8 weekly 50-minute lessons, four groups of 18, 20, 18 and 21 ninth graders received, respectively, progressive treatment alone, coupled with self-assessment, coupled with feedback, or coupled with self-assessment and feedback. These intervention groups were compared with a control group of 36 students receiving standard spelling instruction. The interventions focussed on past participle inflections, which are particularly difficult to learn for French-speaking students. The results indicated that (a) students who received progressive treatment made more progress than the control group students in spelling past participle inflections, presenting a transfer and a first degree of automatisation of the rules. The results also indicated that (b) students who participated in progressive treatment with self-assessment improved even more on the spelling tests, including free text production, and in their self-efficacy beliefs, demonstrating a deeper automatisation of the grammatical rules combined with an increase in perceived efficacy. This research shows that learning benefits from instructional practices that provide both cognitive cost and motivational support.     

Exploring the Use of Cases and Case Methods in Influencing Elementary Preservice Science Teachers' Self-Efficacy Beliefs

In this study, we hypothesize that cases demonstrating exemplary practice in the science classroom can be used as a source for learning content and pedagogical skills that will improve teachers' self-efficacy beliefs. Twelve preservice elementary science teachers are followed as they participate in a case and case method activity illustrating the Grade 7 topic of robotics and fluids. While there was little evidence to show improvements in content knowledge, results indicate that the case acted as a boundary object for brokering between individual experiences and those found in the science teaching community by scaffolding for multiple points of entry, bridging the theory practice gap and offering beginning teachers more immediate access to the community of already practicing teachers.

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Contents Vol. 1

Volume Contents

Contents Vol. 1     

Database Problem Behavior: A Literature Retrieval System for Professionals Dealing with Problem Behaviours of Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities

Knowledge of the literature among professionals in the area of problem behaviours and developmental disabilities is most likely soon out of date as several hundred useful studies appear each year. A literature database may be a useful tool for clinicians and researchers to conveniently retrieve needed information, preventing them from collecting, reading, processing, and storing all the available material. This report describes a database (i.e., Database Problem Behavior) encompassing information that goes far beyond presenting abstracts only. The third version of the database encompasses 885 empirical studies on the (functional) analysis, and behavioural and pharmacological treatment of problem behaviours (e.g., self‐injurious behaviour, aggressive behaviour, depression) for persons with developmental disabilities.     

“Springing from a sense of wonder”: classroom film and cultural learning in the 1930s

Abstract

This article makes an “exercise in the archaeology of education” and focuses on the City of Birmingham (UK) in the year 1935 where the Education Committee allowed an experiment on the use of classroom film in senior elementary schools. Arrangements were made to provide projectors, films, operators, and screens for a series of exhibits at 80 schools. The aim of the experiment was to test the value of cinema for class teaching purposes. This article argues that this experiment with sound film could equally be considered an experiment in cultural learning. The first section describes the experiment and the local context in which it took place. The second section broadens the perspective by providing context beyond the local level that puts the experiment in time and place. The third and final section picks up on some of the findings of the first two sections and considers contemporary sources, mainly articles published in the British Film Institute’s film magazine Sight and Sound, as well as recent scholarship on both educational and documentary film in order to discuss the notions of “background” and “excursive” film and to show that the experiment was a genuine adventure in cultural learning.     

Critical Viewing of Television News: the impact of a Dutch schools television project

Using a quasi‐experimental pretest‐posttest control group design, the study investigated the educational effects of a six‐programme schools television series designed to teach children aged 10‐12 that television news broadcasts give a selective and thus subjective and incomplete impression of the news. Results indicated that the schools television series led to an increase in children's knowledge of the selection processes involved in the production of news programmes, and an increase in children's proficiency in recognizing the moments of selection in news items. However, the television series did not result in a decrease in the level of credibility children attribute to television news broadcasts. The reason for the latter finding probably is that the series showed that the makers of news programmes are conscious of the selection processes involved in making news programmes and do their utmost to make the choices in the most responsible way possible. As a result, the series may have unintentionally created the impression that the problem of selectivity can be satisfactorily solved.     

Implementation Effects of a Pre‐service Training Course for Secondary Education Teachers

A quasi‐experimental, treatment‐control group investigation was designed to test the effects of a pre‐service training course for secondary education teachers. Previous findings from teacher effects research and cognitive strategy instruction were translated into two direct instructional models: a model of executive acting directed at well‐structured skills and a model of strategic acting directed at higher‐level thinking strategies. Pre‐ and post‐training comparison of classroom observations by trained observers revealed significantly more effective instruction by the student teachers after training. No treatment effect was found for pupil engagement rates. The ratings from the supervising teachers did not show significantly better use of the recommended instructional skills by the trained student teachers than by the untrained student teachers.     

Examining evolutions in the adoption of metacognitive regulation in reciprocal peer tutoring groups

We aimed to investigate how metacognitive regulation is characterised during collaborative learning in a higher education reciprocal peer tutoring (RPT) setting. Sixty-four Educational Sciences students participated in a semester-long RPT-intervention and tutored one another in small groups of six. All sessions of five randomly selected RPT-groups were videotaped (70 h of video recordings). Analyses were focussed on identifying time-bound evolutions with regard to (a) the frequency of occurrence of metacognitive regulation, (b) the low-/deep-level approach to regulation, and (c) the initiative (by tutors/tutees) for metacognitive regulation. Logistic regression models allowing change points were adopted to study evolutions over time. The results indicated that RPT-groups increasingly adopt metacognitive regulation (i.e. orientation and evaluation) as the RPT-intervention progressed. Regarding RPT-groups’ regulative approach, the results revealed a significant evolution towards deep-level metacognitive regulation (i.e. orientation and monitoring), despite a dominant adoption of low-level regulation strategies. With regard to the initiative, the results demonstrated that tutees started to initiate RPT-groups’ monitoring significantly more frequently as they became familiar with the RPT-setting. Orientation, planning, and evaluation remained tutor-centred responsibilities.