Good practices for student learning: Mixed‐method evidence from the Wabash National Study

Kathleen M. Goodman, Marcia Baxter Magolda, Tricia A. Seifert, and Patricia M. King review both quantitative and qualitative data to understand students' college experiences and provide powerful information to guide educators.     

Online collaborative documents for research and coursework

Conclusion Garrison’s (2000) review of distance education theories describes the current need for ”sustained real two-way communication ... that refiect(s) a collaborative approach to distance education” (p. 13). One way to apply such theories to research and coursework is to use collaborative documents to promote transactions culminating in deliberation among the key players. Such deliberation can create ”a particular kind of democratic public culture among the deliberators: listening as well as talking, sharing resources, forging decisions together rather than only advocating positions taken earlier, and coming to disagreement” (Parker, Ninomiya, & Cogan, 1999, p. 129). Her research interests are collaborative learning in distance education, impact of culture on online learners, and design of online instruction for constructivist learning environments. Her primary research interests are in design considerations for collaborative online environments and in the powers of shared multimedia for enhancing personal growth, multicultural understanding, and global awareness. She investigates visual messages: how they can be shared and interpreted by learners, their impact, and how their impact can be researched. Her research interests are in computer and network-based foreign language and cultural learning.     

Creating safe spaces for children’s voices to be heard: supporting the psychosocial needs of children in times of trauma

ABSTRACT

This reflection on practice provides a foundation for understanding the impact of Hurricane Harvey on teachers and children across the Texas Gulf Coast. It also documents the emergence of a professional development initiative born when early childhood teacher educators in the community outreach arm of a major university sought to provide immediate support for colleagues returning to their classrooms in the wake of the disaster. The initiative was designed to promote teachers’ understanding of the theoretical rationale behind supporting the psychosocial development of children in times of trauma and offer specific strategies and activities to help children work through this particular natural disaster, that is, storms, flooding, property destruction, and some physical harm. Implications for early childhood teacher preparation along with recommendations for future action are included.     

Enhancing the practice of social work

This account of practice focuses on my learning and development as a new Action Learning Facilitator. It reflects on my thoughts and feelings as I began to facilitate my own sets a year or so ago. It will discuss and reflect on topics such as communication, feedback, expectations (both mine, the set members and the organisations), values, ethics, power and confidentiality. It opens with a personal reflection on my experience of becoming a set facilitator and then explores other aspects of my learning. It draws out, in particular, the links between Action Learning and social work and the ways in which the principles that underpin each of these are complementary and mutually enhancing.     

More about increasing the quality of educational intervention research: A synthesis

A synthesis of the commentaries to our leadoff paper is presented, along with our replies to some of the specific comments offered. When the original analysis and the commentaries are combined, an exceptionally thorough summary of issues that should be considered by intervention researchers emerges. We hope this set of issues will be useful to the educational research community.A draft of this synthesis was circulated among the commentators in this special issue, with a request to determine whether their views were represented fairly. There were few reservations expressed, and in every case when a concern was expressed, we concluded on review that slight adjustment was required to present the commentator's perspective more clearly and/or fairly, and we attempted to do so.     

Integration of reinforcement effects over time

Two accounts of how density of reinforcement affects steady-state performance on probabilistic schedules were compared: the real-time linear operator (RTLO) model and a temporal control model (in which response strength is determined by reinforcement probability as a function of postreinforcement time). In Experiment 1, the probability of reinforcement repeatedly cycled between extinction and a random-ratio 10 schedule. Response-rate gain and phase did not change with period of the cycle as predicted by the RTLO model, nor did either model predict the differences in response rate following reinforcement at different points in the cycle. In Experiment 2, the probability of reinforcement was elevated immediately following a reinforcement but fell after a few seconds. Previous reinforcements had no effect upon responding. An extension of the temporal control model, the cumulative impulse model, allowed for the summing of response strength over successive reinforcements and was consistent with the data of both experiments.     

Language development: A complex,systematic, and natural process

Conclusions Although we do not understand very well what the processes are that contribute to language development, it is clear that communication plays a central role. As children strive to become increasingly skilled at communicating their ideas (White, 1959), as they have increasingly complex ideas to communicate (Piaget, 1955), and as they encounter an increasingly diverse set of people with whom to communicate (Brown, 1973), they must learn to use language which is richer and more flexible.When children come to school or to a day care center they already know a great deal about language. They have readily and actively mastered words, sentences and forms of communication which they need in their own family and community. In their new environment—the school or center—children's language development can further be fostered by adults who are receptive to children's efforts at communication. Adults who encourage children to use language in new ways, who attend to what children mean to say and who recognize that children's errors are often not mistakes, are likely to play a positive role in children's language development.Janet H. Kane and Karen Sheingold are on the Staff at Bank Street College of Education.     

Acknowledging the affective in higher education

This article argues that we need richer conceptions of students as affective and embodied selves and a clearer theorisation of the role of emotion in educational encounters. These areas are currently under‐researched and under‐theorised in higher education. The first part of the article explores the literature on emotion. The second reports on a case study which aimed to map students' emotional journeys over their first year at university. These data highlight the importance of relationships, students' changing emotions over the year, their perceptions of their academic studies and understandings of life at university. The article concludes that it is important to understand the affective dimension in pedagogic encounters and the lifeworld of students, and that it is possible to do so without a collapse into therapeutic discourses.