Fostering Peer Dialogic Engagement in Science Classrooms with an Educational Videogame

This study examines the design and enactment of a secondary physics unit on electromagnetism. The unit used an educational videogame to support peer dialogic engagement in a Singapore secondary school by engaging learners with qualitative physics phenomena. As an example of game-based learning, the unit includes activities and resources that organize a recurring progression of playing and interacting around science that we term play-centered cycles. We incorporate two complementary, qualitative analyses to consider how a recurring progression of playing with and talking about science-mediated peer dialogic engagement across two separate classes. Findings demonstrate that peer dialogic engagement occurred within each play-centered cycle for both classes but that the nature of such engagement varied across cycles and student teams. Additionally, comparative case analyses of focal teams’ peer dialogic engagement illuminate how the design of play-centered cycles productively supported play and learning while also highlighting emerging tensions for sustaining dialogic engagement. Findings underscore the plausibility of this approach to fostering science learning by articulating two principles for designing science learning environments that can guide ongoing efforts to enlist videogames and play in the service of talking about and learning science.

     

The use of questions to scaffold narrative coherence and cohesion

We examined the quality of 4‐ to 6‐year‐olds' production of narratives from picture sequences. Children (N = 81) first viewed a narrative picture sequence and then completed the narrative production task in each of two orders: either before or after answering a set of questions about the core elements of the story. Narratives elicited after questions were more coherent than those produced before the questions. In contrast, task order did not influence the cohesion of narratives nor the accuracy of responses to questions. An independent measure of memory was related to the gains in narrative coherence after answering questions. The results are discussed in relation to the role of questions as a guide to the structural elements of a narrative and a scaffold for understanding.     

美国推出省电显示器

笔记本、手持设备的电池续航能力受到人们的普遍关注,一项新的显示技术可以使手机和电脑的电池使用时间延长50%。这项新技术是由加利福尼亚州Clairvoyante公司开发的。该公司上个月宣布他们正在推出一种新技术,可以帮助手机、数码相机和笔记本电脑的制造商制     

Children's sensitivity to rime unit frequency when spelling words and nonwords

This paper presents two experiments investigating 8–9 year old children's sensitivity to rime level sound-spelling correspondence units when spelling words and nonwords. In Experiment 1, children spelled more words correctly if they contained a common rime unit rather than a unique or irregular unit. In Experiment 2, children spelled more words and nonwords correctly if they had many rime unit neighbours; words and nonwords with average or few rime unit neighbours were spelled less well. These findings show that children's spelling can not be described simply according to one-to-one phoneme-grapheme mapping. Instead, children are sensitive to lexical factors such as rime unit sound-spelling correspondence. The findings are interpreted within the framework of a connectionist model of spelling development.     

The Leaking Pipeline: Women Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers in Australia

This paper explores the leaking pipeline in women's participation rates from Bachelor to postgraduate research programmes. In examining projects at two Australian universities to identify and implement strategies to improve women's participation in research higher degrees, it focuses on three points of leakagebetween Bachelor and Bachelor with Honours degree programmes, Bachelor degree with Honours and postgraduate research programmes, and completion of postgraduate research and taking up a postdoctoral position, and the links between them. It examines three important consequences of women not undertaking or completing postgraduate research: entering academia at lower levels or in casual positions, often while doing postgraduate research part-time; tending to focus on teaching rather than research; and, due to under-representation at middle levels, not achieving a critical mass in senior academia. The paper suggests ways in which university policy may impact on women's participation in postgraduate research programmes through implementation of university-wide and departmental policies encompassing the strategies identified in these studies.     

Quality and Equity in Australian Universities: Contradictions and Challenges

There is no apparent relationshipd bettwen the outcome of 1993 CQAHE quality ratings and universities’ standing on several measures of equity performance. Further, there is no relationship between the overall quality ratings and the content of universities’ submissions referring to equity issues.     

Teachers as metacognitive role models

This paper draws on data collected during a longitudinal collaborative project with teachers in England from schools and further education colleges. The project investigated ‘Learning to Learn’ in partnership with teacher–researchers with a focus on how metacognitive awareness can be improved by enquiring into creative combinations of pedagogy, environment and learners’ dispositions. The paper is an attempt to make clear the theoretical underpinnings of our belief that the project teachers were enacting something different, something metacognitive. We present a pragmatic model of metacognition development based on ideas collaboratively produced across the project. The five cycles of development are exemplified from the pedagogic and the professional learning perspective with quotes, vignettes and case study excerpts. We show a catalytic relationship between the pedagogies used by the teachers to develop their students’ metacognition and the teachers’ own learning and metacognitive knowledge and skilfulness.     

Recruiting Honours Students in the Face of Market Demand for Pass Degrees: A Case Study

Third year undergraduate and fourth year honours students in a large university economics department were surveyed for this study with a view to some resolution of how honours participation rates might be improved (and hence the pool of potential postgraduates enlarged) when good employment opportunities are available to three‐year graduates. Reasons why students choose to do or not to do an honours year are examined in relation to their background characteristics, circumstantial factors, previous assessment, course structure and perceptions of market demand for honours graduates, opportunity costs and career paths. The results draw attention to ways in which more students might be attracted to the honours stream, the honours year and beyond. It is concluded that higher education institutions and federal bodies must share this responsibility.     

Exploring reading in social semiotics: theory and methods

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to critically review how social semiotics has contributed to the study of reading and to develop an agenda for further research. We consider the theoretical and methodological resources that social semiotics has developed to account for multimodal text in the contemporary semiotic landscape, and explore how they can be used to teach critical reading skills to young people to support their participation in different social domains. We reflect on the possibilities and limitations of different analytical frameworks, highlighting barriers and possibilities for advancing social semiotic scholarship on reading and beyond. We end with a sketch of a new research agenda for social semiotics, in the light of technological change and its implications for reading.     

The Development and Validation of the Perceived Academic Underachievement Scale

Academic competence beliefs have been widely studied. However, conceptual and measurement efforts have not yet been directed toward understanding perceived underachievement (feeling that one's accomplishments fall below perceived capability). We conducted two studies in order to develop and examine validity evidence for the Perceived Academic Underachievement Scale (PAUS). Participants were individuals enrolled for credit in at least one post-secondary course. In Study 1, we evaluated content validity and conducted an exploratory factor analysis. In Study 2, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis and investigated external validity. For both samples, PAUS demonstrated good internal consistency reliability, and items loaded strongly onto a single factor. PAUS was empirically distinct from a range of related constructs. Findings represent preliminary validation evidence.