Professor Barry Fraser��s contributions to science education research

In this article, I endeavour to convey the depth of Barry Fraser’s contributions to science education research, including his tireless endeavours to promote and advance research, especially the field of learning environments, the realisation of his vision to create one of the largest doctoral programs in science and mathematics education in the world, his leadership capacity in terms of guiding and leading an internationally renowned centre and large-scale cross-national and cross-cultural studies, his dedication towards human capacity building in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, his capacity as a mentor and editor that have seen the publication of numerous journal articles and books and the ongoing success of science education research journals.     

Gatekeeping and Competency-Based Education: Developing Behaviorally Specific Remediation Policies

Gatekeeping has long been an integral component of what is now referred to as the Implicit Curriculum, or the context in which professional social work education occurs. Despite its long-standing role within social work education, gatekeeping elicits conflict for both individual faculty members and entire programs of social work education. Much of this conflict stems from a failure to identify objective and measurable standards on which to base gatekeeping decisions. This article proposes using the Council on Social Work Education’s core competencies as behaviorally specific standards for remediation/termination and provides suggestions for developing gatekeeping policies inclusive of these competencies.     

Comparison of standardized assessment methods: logistics,costs, incentives and use of data

Critical thinking, problem solving and communication are fundamental elements of undergraduate education, but methods for assessing these skills across an institution are susceptible to logistical, motivational and financial issues. Queen’s University conducted two research studies investigating the use of standardised tests to assess cognitive skill development across the institution. Synthesis of results from implementing the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+), the Critical Thinking Assessment Test (CAT), and the HEIghten^TM test found that student test effort was a significant factor, and effort level correlated with performance at r?=?.33. Test incentives were also a significant factor; effort levels for the $25 financial incentive group were one standard deviation higher than effort for the in-class test group. A dedicated computer lab was the preferred option for computer-based testing. A paper-based test was found to be much simpler to administer, but test results were not available for a long time, therefore limiting the usefulness of data. The true cost of tests was greater than the price of the instrument; recruitment, training, proctoring and marking costs need to be included in the calculation. Generally speaking, alignment of test objectives with student or course objectives, and timeliness of data, were key for participation and motivation.     

Children’s learning of all the news that’s fit to picture

It has been shown that pictures greatly facilitate children’s recall of story information, But will they have the same positive effect when the passages to be recalled are more directly educational? In these experiments, both single pictures illustrating the passage’s main idea and a group of pictures, one illustrating each sentence, helped fourth graders recall the illustrated content of newspaper articles.     

Working memory capacity and disfluency effect: an aptitude-treatment-interaction study

According to Cognitive Load Theory, learning material should be designed in a way to decrease unnecessary demands on working memory (WM). However, recent research has shown that additional demands on WM caused by less legible texts lead to better learning outcomes. This so-called disfluency effect can be assumed as a metacognitive regulation process during which learners assign their cognitive resources depending on the perceived difficulty of a cognitive task. Increasing the perceived difficulty associated with a cognitive task stimulates deeper processing and a more analytic and elaborative reasoning. Yet there are studies which could not replicate the disfluency effect indicating that disfluency might be beneficial only for learners with particular learner characteristics. Additional demands on working memory caused by disfluent texts are possibly just usable by learners with a high working memory capacity. Therefore the present study investigated the aptitude-treatment-interaction between working memory capacity and disfluency. Learning outcomes were measured by means of a retention, a comprehension, and a transfer test. Moreover, the three types of cognitive load (intrinsic, extraneous, and germane) were assessed. The results revealed significant aptitude-treatment-interaction effects with respect to retention and comprehension. Working memory capacity had a significant influence only in the disfluency condition: The higher the working memory capacity, the better the retention and comprehension performance in the disfluency condition. No effects were found with respect to transfer or cognitive load. Thus, the role of metacognitive regulation and its possible effects on cognitive load need further investigation.     

The use of visual schedules and work systems to increase the on‐task behaviour of students on the autism spectrum in mainstream classrooms

Apparent differences in executive function can lead to challenges for students on the autism spectrum in mainstream settings. Difficulties with staying on‐task and transitioning between tasks and task elements can interfere with students’ participation in educational activities and lead to stress and anxiety. While the use of visual supports, such as visual schedules and work systems, has been shown to be effective in supporting students to stay on‐task in special education and autism‐specific settings, there is little research to support the use of these strategies by teachers in mainstream classrooms. This study evaluated the use of visual schedules and work systems in supporting four students on the autism spectrum to stay on‐task and work independently in a mainstream setting. These strategies were implemented by teachers as inclusive practices, and evaluated using observations within the natural classroom environment to examine their feasibility in mainstream settings. All participants demonstrated improvements in on‐task behaviours. Results for other, secondary, dependent variables were mixed, with some students showing reduced off‐task behaviours and increased productivity. The implications for clinical practice and future research directions are discussed.     

The impact of an online tool for monitoring and regulating learning at university: overconfidence,learning strategy,and personality

Being overconfident when estimating scores for an upcoming exam is a widespread phenomenon in higher education and presents threats to self-regulated learning and academic performance. The present study sought to investigate how overconfidence and poor monitoring accuracy vary over the length of a college course, and how an intervention consisting of (1) a monitoring exercise and (2) a monitoring and regulation strategy, improves students’ monitoring accuracy and academic performance. Moreover, we investigated how personality factors (i.e., grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, optimism) influence monitoring accuracy. We found that the Monitoring and Regulation Strategy positively influenced monitoring accuracy and exam scores, whereas the Monitoring Exercise that confronted students with their overconfidence protected students against overconfidence in the second exam score prediction but did not affect exam score. The results further revealed that exam score predictions lowered from the start to the end of the course for both poor and high performing students, but still leaving poor performers overconfident and high performers underconfident. Topic knowledge gained in the course did not wash out the Dunning Kruger effect, and results indicate that poor and high performers use different cues when predicting exam scores. Both grandiose and vulnerable narcissism contributed to overconfidence on exam score predictions but not on the Monitoring Exercise. These findings underline the potential of the Monitoring and Regulation Strategy intervention and ask for upscaling it to include measurements of self-regulated learning activities.