Learning from television and books: A dutch replication study based on salomon's model

According to Salomon's (1981) model, children usually invest less effort in television viewing than in book reading, with the result that information from television is less deeply processed than information from books. The amount of invested mental effort, in its turn, is assumed to depend on the way a medium is perceived. Most children perceive television as an easy medium and books as a difficult one. In this article, Salomon's model and the research in which the model was tested are discussed, and a replication study is presented. The study determines the internal structure of the Dutch versions of Salomon's instruments and tests some predictions following from the model. Unlike their American peers, Dutch children do not unconditionally perceive television as an easy medium.     

FIRST COMES THE THEORY, THEN THE PRACTICE? ON THE ACQUISITION OF GENERAL PEDAGOGICAL KNOWLEDGE DURING INITIAL TEACHER EDUCATION

Teacher education systems worldwide are confronted with the essential question of how to foster both future teachers’ theoretical and practical knowledge and to adequately enable future teachers to connect their theoretical and practical knowledge for teaching. This article investigates how future teachers acquire general pedagogical knowledge (GPK) as a central component of teacher knowledge during initial teacher education, exemplified by pre-service teachers in Germany, where initial teacher education is divided into a first phase with a heavy focus on theoretical, academic study, and a second phase where future teachers learn how to apply their theoretical knowledge in the classroom. Data from teacher knowledge studies Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics and Längsschnittliche Erhebung pädagogischer Kompetenzen von Lehramtsstudierenden/Longitudinal Survey of Student Teachers’ Pedagogical Competencies are used to compare future teachers’ GPK at different teacher education stages (the beginning, after 2 years, and end of training). Findings show the more advanced future teachers are in the course of their initial teacher education, the better they perform in the test measuring GPK. When analyzing subscales of the test measuring cognitive dimensions of GPK, as would be expected declarative-conceptual knowledge (measured by cognitive dimensions “recall” and “understand/analyze”) was gained predominantly during the theoretical study (first phase), whereas future teachers who had additionally passed through the practical second phase performed much better on the practical knowledge test subscale (measured by the cognitive dimension “generate”). Research findings are discussed with regard to the development of teacher expertise during initial teacher education, and recommendations for future policy directions with respect to teacher education are given.     

Learning from Errors at Work: A Replication Study in Elder Care Nursing

Learning from errors is an important way of learning at work. In this article, we analyse conditions under which elder care nurses use errors as a starting point for the engagement in social learning activities (ESLA) in the form of joint reflection with colleagues on potential causes of errors and ways to prevent them in future. The goal of our study was to investigate whether exploratory findings from an earlier study on hospital nurses’ ESLA (Bauer and Mulder Learning in Health and Social Care 6:121–133, 2011) replicate and generalise to the domain of elder care nursing. For this purpose, we surveyed a sample of N?=?180 elder care nurses using vignette-based questionnaires. With these data, we tested a mediation model of nurses’ ESLA suggested by the earlier study. We firstly found a statistically significant indirect effect of error strain on ESLA that is completely mediated by the estimation of an error as relevant for learning (β?=?.16). Secondly, the perception of a safe social team climate at work has a statistically significant indirect effect on ESLA that is completely mediated by nurses’ tendency to cover up errors (β?=?.31). These results entirely cross-validate the exploratory findings of Bauer and Mulder (Learning in Health and Social Care 6:121–133, 2011) on hospital nurses’ ESLA and show that they generalise to the domain of elder care nursing.     

Making a good career choice: A decision-analytical intervention to enhance proactive decision-making and career choice self-efficacy in high school students

At the end of high school, teenagers must deal with the first life-changing decision of determining what to do after graduation. For these decisions, adolescents need to be able to make good choices. However, most schools have not yet implemented decision trainings into their curricula. A new intervention called “KLUGentscheiden!” was developed to train complex decision-making in high school students to close this gap. The intervention targets three key components of good decision-making: envisioning one's objectives, identifying relevant alternatives, and comparing the identified alternatives by a weighted evaluation. We assumed that successfully training those decision-analytical steps should enhance self-perceived proactive decision-making skills. In addition, the training should also enhance self-assessed career choice self-efficacy. The intervention was evaluated in a pseudorandomized control study including 193 high school students. Compared to a control group, the intervention group significantly increased proactive decision-making skills and career choice self-efficacy. Although different long-term evaluations are still pending, the KLUGentscheiden! intervention provides an important tool to train complex decision-making in high-school students. It also has the potential to apply to other career choices of young individuals, such as choosing majors, a final thesis, a job, or a field of work.     

Transitioning Experiences of First Year Gender Non-conforming Students from School to University in South Africa

Interchange - Change is an inevitable part of life, more so for gender non-conforming students who have to confront prejudice and hostile environments as they transition from school to university....     

Paraproteinämien / Multiples Myelom

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Utility of the PASS theory and cognitive assessment system for Dutch children with and without ADHD

This study examined the utility of the Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, Successive (PASS) theory of intelligence as measured by the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS) for evaluation of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The CAS scores of 51 Dutch children without ADHD were compared to the scores of a group of 20 Dutch children with ADHD. The scores of the Dutch children were also compared to American standardization samples of children with and without ADHD. The findings showed that children with ADHD in both countries demonstrated relatively low scores on the Planning and Attention scales of the CAS, but average scores on the Simultaneous and Successive scales. These findings are similar to previously published research suggesting that the PASS theory, as operationalized by the CAS, has sensitivity to the cognitive processing difficulties found in some children with ADHD.     

Public broadband investment priorities in the United States: an analysis of the broadband technology opportunities program

In 2009, U.S. Congress approved $7.2 billion to accelerate the deployment of advanced broadband networks and services to unserved and underserved regions of the country. Although primarily a short-term response to the economic crisis, the appropriation also indicates a willingness to seek a new balance between private sector and public sector initiatives in the development of the nation's broadband infrastructure. This paper is a first step in assessing the potential impact of the new government initiatives. It discusses in detail one component of the overall program, the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). The rationales and objectives of BTOP and its initial implementation are explored. Based on information in the BTOP database, 265 awards were examined to document award types, target communities, applications, technology, and access speeds. Whereas it is too early to assess the initiatives' effects on employment and other important social and economic objectives, it is appropriate to consider whether the awards made under the BTOP program advance a national broadband development agenda. Overall, they appear to. However, the present analysis found that projects focusing on minority populations may have received less emphasis in the BTOP awards than that announced in the stated goals of the program.     

Effects of social networks on the quality of life in an elder and middle-aged deaf community sample

This article endeavors to investigate the role of social networks in contributing to the quality of life of an elder and middle-aged Deaf population. In particular, it poses the question of whether a certain network composition (deaf and hearing network persons) provides positive resources to improve quality of life and attempts to identify moderating and mediating connections between social networks and quality of life. Based on the data collected in a survey of 107 members of the Deaf community aged 45-81 years, it was possible to ascertain the fact that a larger social network is significantly associated with a higher quality of life, but the size of the deaf network is principally decisive. The hypothesis that a bicultural network composition would have a particular positive effect on the quality of life could not be confirmed. Findings revealed that the effect of deaf network size on the quality of life is mediated by personal resources concerning self-efficacy and communication skills. Moreover, evidence was sound for the functional equivalence of social and personal resources, which suggests that potential negative effects of reduced personal resources on the quality of life could possibly be compensated by a larger deaf network and vice versa.     

Professionalisierung von Hochschullehrenden

Despite a growing interest in professionalization, research on didactic training of novice university teachers is lacking. This contribution, therefore, analyzes the development of teaching intentions and strategies (teaching approaches) in relation to teaching action, professional vision and teacher identity during a video-based training. We questioned fourteen novice teachers in a pre-post-design and with reference to video-taped teaching sessions. We also conducted a systematic video analysis. The results show that the teachers?? approaches start out rather teacher-focused. However, these approaches become more coherent to teaching action over time, which, in combination with emerging self-efficacy in teaching, indicates a developing teaching profile. Teachers?? professional vision of their own teaching is strongly focused on themselves. Teachers reflect on discrepancies between intentions and action and, by this, they can deduce concrete actions to make their teaching coherent to their intentions. We, therefore, conclude that our training equips teachers with the necessary tools for changes in action. Even so, putting this knowledge into practice also depends on contextual factors.