A Phenomenological Study of Malaysian Counsellors’ Experiences in Managing Countertransference

International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling - Processing and managing countertransference are part of the responsibilities of counsellors to fulfil their ethical obligation. The...     

Computer science concept inventories: past and future

Concept Inventories (CIs) are assessments designed to measure student learning of core concepts. CIs have become well known for their major impact on pedagogical techniques in other sciences, especially physics. Presently, there are no widely used, validated CIs for computer science. However, considerable groundwork has been performed in the form of identifying core concepts, analyzing student misconceptions, and developing CI assessment questions. Although much of the work has been focused on CS1 and a CI has been developed for digital logic, some preliminary work on CIs is underway for other courses. This literature review examines CI work in other STEM disciplines, discusses the preliminary development of CIs in computer science, and outlines related research in computer science education that contributes to CI development.     

The Self‐Reference Effect on Memory in Early Childhood

The self‐reference effect in memory is the advantage for information encoded about self, relative to other people. The early development of this effect was explored here using a concrete encoding paradigm. Trials comprised presentation of a self‐ or other‐image paired with a concrete object. In Study 1, 4‐ to 6‐year‐old children (N = 53) were asked in each trial whether the child pictured would like the object. Recognition memory showed an advantage for self‐paired objects. Study 2 (N = 55) replicated this finding in source memory. In Study 3 (N = 56), participants simply indicated object location. Again, recognition and source memory showed an advantage for self‐paired items. These findings are discussed with reference to mechanisms that ensure information of potential self‐relevance is reliably encoded.     

Age‐Related Changes in Spreading Activation During Infancy

The concept of spreading activation describes how retrieval of one memory cues retrieval of other memories that are associated with it. This study explored spreading activation in 6‐, 12‐, and 18‐month‐old infants. Infants (n = 144) learned two tasks within the same experimental session; one task, deferred imitation (DI), is typically remembered longer than the other task, visual recognition memory (VRM). At all ages, retrieval of the DI memory facilitated retrieval of the VRM memory, but the conditions under which this spreading activation occurred changed as a function of age. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the development of mnemonic networks during infancy and the value of studying infants for our understanding of memory more generally.     

Ethnic and Racial Identity During Adolescence and Into Young Adulthood: An Integrated Conceptualization

Although ethnic and racial identity (ERI) are central to the normative development of youth of color, there have been few efforts to bring scholars together to discuss the theoretical complexities of these constructs and provide a synthesis of existing work. The Ethnic and Racial Identity in the 21st Century Study Group was assembled for this purpose. This article provides an overview of the interface of ERI with developmental and contextual issues across development, with an emphasis on adolescence and young adulthood. It proposes a metaconstruct to capture experiences that reflect both individuals’ ethnic background and their racialized experiences in a specific sociohistorical context. Finally, it presents milestones in the development of ERI across developmental periods.     

Relative effects of three questioning strategies in ill-structured,small group problem solving

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relative effectiveness of using three different question-prompt strategies on promoting metacognitive skills and performance in ill-structured problem solving by examining the interplay between peer interaction and cognitive scaffolding. An ill-structured problem-solving task was given to three groups. One group (Type QP) received instructor-generated question prompts that guided the problem-solving process; the second group (Type PQ) developed their own peer-generated questions; another group (Type PQ-R) developed their own question prompts first and revised them later with an instructor-generated question list. In this study, students in the QP group outperformed those in any other groups. The results revealed that providing instructor-generated question prompts was more effective than letting students develop their own questions, with or without revision, in ill-structured problem solving. Analysis of each of the four problem-solving stages revealed that the provided question prompts were more helpful in the stages of justification, and monitoring and evaluating than student-generated prompts. The difference between PQ and PQ-R groups is not statistically significant either overall or in any of the problem-solving stages.     

Re-viewing student teamwork: preparation for the ‘real world’ or bundles of situated social practices?

Research in Australian business education continues to emphasise the importance of students learning teamwork as an integral part of the undergraduate curriculum. However, entrenched conceptual and practical confusion as to what the term ‘teamwork’ means and how it ought to be enacted remains a vexed issue capable of distorting and diminishing teamwork, learning and related pedagogy. In this paper, we critically re-examine the view that developing teamwork in an undergraduate business degree equips students for work in the real world. By focusing on the ‘real world’ metaphor-in-use in a cross-disciplinary business capstone subject, we interrogate the spatio-temporal dimensions of teamwork and its realist conceptions and performance. The research draws upon the perceptions of interviewed academics conducting teamwork activities in undergraduate business courses and the lived experiences of the authors. The findings highlight how the use of multiple models of teamwork, constructed by competing discourses and linked to the dualities and invocations constructed by ‘the real world’ metaphor, further exacerbate confusion. We suggest re-viewing and re-valuing student teamwork as the performance of situated, social practices opening new spaces for student teamwork, learning and pedagogical practice.     

An Attempt to Reinterpret Student Learning Outcomes: A Cross-National Comparative Study

Attracting significant attention from the media and policymakers, international student assessments are serving as pressures on and challenges for individual countries. Even so, paying attention only to publicly released rankings in international student assessments may lead to superficial interpretations of the assessment results. Simply equating the rankings with educational outcomes can be a questionable perspective because the assessment results can be interpreted differently. In this context, this article has explored student achievement in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests in comparison with civic knowledge achievement in the IEA Civic Education Study across 17 countries. This article has also evaluated efficiency in educational processes by assessing outputs (student performance in PISA) against inputs (educational spending and learning time) directly used in the education system. These two approaches clarify that publicly released rankings in PISA change to some extent when the rankings are reevaluated by taking other factors into consideration. This implication should be allowed for in interpreting the results of international assessment and the relative rankings of participating countries.     

Developing skills for youth in the 21st century: The role of elite International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme schools in China

There is a growing body of research suggesting that schools need to respond to changing social and economic dynamics by prioritising “21st-century skills”. Proponents of this view, who have been termed “the 21st century skills movement”, have called for greater emphasis on cognitive and non-cognitive skills development, alongside the learning of subject content and technical skills. This paper explores the potential of International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) schools to respond to this mandate in China, one of the fastest-growing markets for International Baccalaureate^® (IB) schools globally. The authors’ research team undertook a multi-site case study of five elite IBDP schools in China. Their findings revealed confidence among interviewees that the IB educational philosophy was conducive to 21st-century skills development, especially through the provision of the three IBDP “Core Requirements”, which are Creativity, Action, Service (CAS), Extended Essay (EE) and Theory of Knowledge (TOK). Despite this confidence, concerns remain about the implementation of the IB educational philosophy in the context of IBDP schools in China.     

Parental spanking of 1-year-old children and subsequent child protective services involvement

The majority of U.S. parents spank their children, often beginning when their children are very young. We examined families (N = 2,788) who participated in a longitudinal community-based study of new births in urban areas. Prospective analyses examined whether spanking by the child's mother, father, or mother's current partner when the child was 1-year-old was associated with household CPS involvement between age 1 and age 5. Results indicated that 30% of 1-year-olds were spanked at least once in the past month. Spanking at age 1 was associated with increased odds of subsequent CPS involvement (adjusted odds ratio = 1.36, 95% CI [1.08, 1.71], p < .01). When compared to non-spanked children, there was a 33% greater probability of subsequent CPS involvement for children who were spanked at age 1. Given the undesirable consequences of spanking children and a lack of empirical evidence to suggest positive effects of physical punishment, professionals who work with families should counsel parents not to spank infants and toddlers. For optimal benefits, efforts to educate parents regarding alternative forms of discipline should begin during the child's first year of life.