Exploring fourth graders’ sourcing skills / Un análisis de la capacidad de escrutinio sobre las fuentes de información de los estudiantes de cuarto grado

Acquiring information from the Web creates new educational demands even in elementary school. Children need to scrutinize source information (‘sourcing’) to choose trustworthy information. So far, few studies have documented young readers’ abilities to identify and evaluate source information. With two studies, we seek to gather more evidence on elementary students’ sourcing skills and use. In study 1, we investigate to what extent fourth graders can identify source information and evaluate informants’ expertise and intentions in simplistic, age-appropriate reading tasks. In study 2, we explore whether fourth graders spontaneously apply their sourcing skills when reading simplified multiple documents. Results suggest that fourth graders can successfully identify source information and evaluate informants’ expertise and intentions in simple and direct tasks but fail to apply this ability to more complex and implicit tasks. Implications for information literacy education are discussed.     

The Effect of Na?ve Ideas on Students’ Reasoning About Electricity and Magnetism

Traditional multiple-choice concept inventories measure students?? critical conceptual understanding and are designed to reveal students?? na?ve or alternate ideas. The overall scores, however, give little information about the state of students?? knowledge and the consistency of reasoning. This study investigates whether students have consistent alternate models when reasoning about Newton??s third law principle in the context of electromagnetics (EM), and whether these possible models are related to conceptual change and overall performance. Students?? conceptual understanding is evaluated with The Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) multiple-choice test. The data (N?=?118) are collected from an undergraduate static field theory course at the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. The data are analysed using frequency distributions, Fisher??s exact test, and One-Way ANOVA analysis. The study shows that every fifth student has a consistent or partially consistent alternate model of Newton??s third law principle in the context of EM prior to instruction. Students with this alternate model perform significantly (p?=?0.01) better on the overall concept test and are more likely to change conceptual understanding towards a correct model compared to students in an inconsistent mixed model state.     

Learning to ‘become somebody well’: Challenges for educational policy

This article argues that education has a role in promoting young people’s wellbeing. It draws on research on young people’s lives to highlight the changing world for which educators prepare young people. While older educational agendas such as literacies and numeracy remain significant, it is argued that education is increasingly important for its role in assisting young people to develop the capacities and skills that will enable them to live well and that will enhance social cohesion. Although these more recent social agendas are often acknowledged in significant policy documents, their enactment in schools is compromised by economistic policy imperatives that see young people primarily in terms of their capacities to attain labour market skills that will ensure Australia’s international competitiveness. I make a link between the work that young people do to make themselves, and wellbeing, highlighting the role that education plays in shaping identities — and in enabling them to ‘become somebody well’. The article concludes that health and wellbeing are marginalised in school curricula not because of a ‘crowded curriculum’ but because not all elements are given equal value within our current policy frameworks.     

Observing justice in the primary school classroom

Justice-related situations are a part of students? everyday life. In order to test the antecedents, correlates, and consequences of (in)justice in school, valid measures of justice are needed. To our knowledge, this is the first study to develop an observer low inference rating instrument that can be applied to measure justice in the primary classroom. In two pre-studies, justice-relevant situations in the classroom were extracted and observable indicators for these situations were developed. In the main study, this instrument was used to observe 208 primary school students with regard to their experiences of justice or injustice. In addition to this, other measures of justice were developed to examine the convergence between observer low inference ratings of classroom justice and high inference rating instruments for teachers, students, and external observers.Factor analyses and correlations between the different indices of the observer low inference rating and the high inference rating items suggested that incidents of justice and injustice in the classroom do not tend to co-occur frequently. Teachers do not appear to have a general tendency to treat a child more or less justly across a large number of situations.The findings suggest that a comprehensive assessment of classroom justice requires a multi-method approach where the justice ratings of students, teachers and external observers are all taken into consideration.     

Text-belief consistency effect in adolescents´ comprehension of multiple documents from the Web (El efecto de consistencia en la comprensión lectora de los adolescentes de documentos múltiples provenientes de Internet)

ABSTRACT

Readers often comprehend belief-consistent information from multiple texts better compared with belief-inconsistent information (text-belief consistency effect). The aim of the present study was to investigate whether adolescents’ comprehension of multiple texts is similarly impacted by their beliefs. Moreover, readers’ prior knowledge and an alternating (compared with a blocked) mode of presenting multiple texts were expected to attenuate the text-belief consistency effect. High school students read two belief-consistent and two belief-inconsistent texts on one of two scientific issues in different modes of presentation (blocked vs. alternating). A recognition task was used to assess situation model strength for each text, and prior beliefs and prior knowledge were measured before the main experiment. As expected, in the blocked mode of presentation high school students had a stronger situation model for belief-consistent texts. In the alternating mode of presentation, participants had similar situation model strengths for the different texts. Moreover, high-knowledge participants experienced a text-belief consistency effect, whereas low-knowledge participants had weaker and similar situation models for the texts.     

Prevention of Targeted School Violence by Responding to Students' Psychosocial Crises: The NETWASS Program

The standardized, indicated school‐based prevention program “Networks Against School Shootings” combines a threat assessment approach with a general model of prevention of emergency situations in schools through early intervention in student psychosocial crises and training teachers to recognize warning signs of targeted school violence. An evaluation study in 98 German schools with 3,473 school staff participants (M_age = 46.2 years) used a quasi‐experimental comparison group design with three measurement points (pre, post, and 7 months followup) with schools randomly allocated to implementation conditions. The study found increases in teachers' expertise and evaluation skills, enhanced abilities to identify students experiencing a psychosocial crisis, and positive secondary effects (e.g., teacher–student interaction, feelings of safety).     

Motivation and ability: which students use online learning and what influence does it have on their achievement?

There has been much recent research examining online learning in universities, but two questions seem to have been largely overlooked in this context: (1) Which students voluntarily utilise web‐based learning; and (2) Does this use influence their academic achievement? The current study aimed to determine whether the approaches to studying, ability, age, and gender of 110 undergraduates in the second year of a psychology degree predicted the extent to which they utilised online learning using Web Course Tools (WebCT) in support of a core Biological Psychology unit. Data were obtained from WebCT's student tracking system, Entwistle and Ramsden's 18‐item Approaches to Studying Inventory (1983) and academic records. Multiple linear regressions and discriminant function analysis were used to examine whether individual differences predicted WebCT use, while analysis of covariance determined whether web use influenced academic achievement. The number of hits, length of access, and use of the bulletin board was predicted by age, with older students using WebCT more. These factors were also influenced by ability and achievement orientation. The degree of participation in self‐assessment was not predicted by student variables, but, of those that repeated an online quiz, improvement was more likely in those with lower achievement orientation. Only bulletin board use influenced achievement, with those posting messages outperforming those not using, or passively using bulletin boards. However, because individual differences will determine the extent to which students utilise this facility, it is suggested that future research should focus on developing online learning environments that incorporate activities with both a beneficial influence on learning and appeal to a wide student population.     

Assessing journal author guidelines for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: findings from an institutional sample

Objectives:Systematic reviews and meta-analyses (SRs/MAs) are designed to be rigorous research methodologies that synthesize information and inform practice. An increase in their publication runs parallel to quality concerns and a movement toward standards to improve reporting and methodology. With the goal of informing the guidance librarians provide to SR/MA teams, this study assesses online journal author guidelines from an institutional sample to determine whether these author guidelines address SR/MA methodological quality.Methods:A Web of Science Core Collection (Clarivate) search identified SRs/MAs published in 2014–2019 by authors affiliated with a single institution. The AMSTAR 2 checklist was used to develop an assessment tool of closed questions specific to measures for SR/MA methodological quality in author guidelines, with questions added about author guidelines in general. Multiple reviewers completed the assessment.Results:The author guidelines of 141 journals were evaluated. Less than 20% addressed at least one of the assessed measures specific to SR/MA methodological quality. There was wide variation in author guidelines between journals from the same publisher apart from the American Medical Association, which consistently offered in-depth author guidelines. Normalized Eigenfactor and Article Influence Scores did not indicate author guideline breadth.Conclusions:Most author guidelines in the institutional sample did not address SR/MA methodological quality. When consulting with teams embarking on SRs/MAs, librarians should not expect author guidelines to provide details about the requirements of the target journals. Librarians should advise teams to follow established SR/MA standards, contact journal staff, and review SRs/MAs previously published in the journal.     

Developing and Supporting Faculty Training for Online Social Work Education: The Columbia University School of Social Work Online Pedagogy Institute

ABSTRACT

With the growth of online and distance education in social work, faculty training and support need to be provided to ensure high-quality online social work education. A model for training social work educators in online teaching is outlined that focuses on pedagogy, technology, and social work values. Columbia University School of Social Work’s Online Campus provides a five-week Institute on Pedagogy and Technology for Online Courses for prospective social work instructors. The Institute provides a faculty training model that can be adopted in other social work programs, and seeks to model best practices in online education.