Two instructional aids to optimise processing and learning from instructional explanations

Although instructional explanations are commonly used to introduce learners to new learning content, previous studies have often shown that their effects on learning outcomes are minimal. This failure might partly be due to mental passivity of the learners while processing introductory explanations and to a lack of opportunity to revise potential misunderstandings after working on introductory explanations. Against this background, we provided learners with two instructional support measures to optimise the introduction of new principles and concepts by providing instructional explanations in the domain of management theory: (a) prompts designed to induce inferences that are focused on the central content of the explanations, and (b) remedial explanations that are adapted to the learners’ knowledge gaps. We tested their effects in a 2 × 2 factorial experimental design with the following factors: (a) prompts designed to induce focused processing (with vs. without), and (b) remedial explanations (adapted vs. random). The participants consisted of 80 psychology students. We found that the prompts fostered both the share of deep-oriented processing and the acquisition of conceptual knowledge. The beneficial effect of prompts on conceptual knowledge was mediated by the number of inferences that learners generated in response to the prompts. In addition, we found that prompts also fostered the instructional efficiency of providing instructional explanations. The provision of adapted remedial explanations, however, fostered neither deep-oriented processing nor the acquisition of conceptual knowledge. We conclude that prompts designed to induce focused processing can foster deep-oriented processing as well as both the effectiveness and efficiency of learning from instructional explanations.     

International teachers negotiating 21st century science classrooms: a question of hybridized identities and pedagogical imaginaries

International high school science teachers are crossing international and cultural borders to teach, raising important issues in education. In this article, we describe the cross-cultural assessment challenges that four international science teachers encountered when they migrated to teach in the United States. These included differences in grade expectations for a given quality of work, the weight given to final examinations, the assessment process, and cutoff scores for letter grades. To become proficient in their new teaching contexts, the participating teachers had to modify (or hybridize) their assessment philosophies and practices in order to conform to the expectations of their new schools. This hybridization process ushered them into what is proposed as the Pedagogical imaginary; a transitional space between the ``purity' of their native educational conventions and that of their American schools. The implications of these findings are discussed in hopes of improving high school science teaching experiences for international science teachers. Deborah J. Tippins is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Science Education at the University of Georgia. She served as a Fulbright Scholar in the Philippines where she continues to explore notions of community-based science education. Her research interests include culturally relevant pedagogy, case-based science teaching and learning and post-structuralist feminist pedagogy and research. She is intensively involved in professional development of PreK-8 science teachers. In her spare time she likes to play tennis, travel and take her dog for long walks. Lorie Hammond is an Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at California State University at Sacramento. Her work centers on community-based multicultural science education. For the past 10 years she has been leading action research projects centered in school-community gardens in diverse urban schools which serve as food security, oral history, science education, and service learning sites involving children, parents, teachers, and pre-service teachers. Lorie just co-edited a book, Innovations in educational ethnography: Theory, methods and results (2006), with George Spindler, and is finishing a book on how teachers can teach and learn with immigrant communities. She has recently been engaged in ethnographic and international research with immigrant women, developing relational and equalizing models of teaching and learning in immigrant communities. Charles B. Hutchison is an Assistant Professor at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the author of the book, Teaching in America: A cross-cultural guide for international teachers and their employers, and the upcoming book, Teaching diverse and urban learners: Research, best practices, and lesson planning. He is the recipient of Recognition and Key to the City of Boston, and has appeared on, or been featured by local and international news media. He was recently invited to participate in the Oxford Round Table at Oxford University, England. He teaches and provides professional development in science education, cross-cultural and urban education, and instructional strategies for diverse learners.     

Detrimental effects of immediate explanation feedback

Adjunct questions are a common means to foster learning from instructional explanations. As the benefit of adjunct questions is mitigated if learner performance on them is low, it is also common to provide feedback as an add-on if learners fail to correctly respond to them. However, if adjunct questions are highly demanding, feedback might not only beneficially affect learning because it helps learners revise their comprehension difficulties; at the same time, it could also detrimentally affect learning by causing learners to invest less time in responding to subsequent adjunct questions, which lowers learner performance on these questions. This, in turn, could reduce learning outcomes. To address these potential detrimental effects of feedback, we experimentally varied whether N?=?59 students received immediate feedback after they responded to highly demanding adjunct questions. We found that the feedback did indeed have detrimental effects: At least for the learners who perceived the task of responding to the adjunct questions as highly demanding, the feedback decreased both the time the learners invested in responding to the adjunct questions and their performance on them. This detrimental effect on the performance on the adjunct questions, in turn, entailed a detrimental effect on learning outcomes. We conclude that immediate feedback is not necessarily a beneficial add-on to adjunct questions in all situations.     

Referencing the Imaginary: An Analysis of Library Collection of Role-Playing Game Materials

The most famous role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons, recently celebrated the fortieth anniversary of its release. The books that define the games in the role-playing genre function like sports rulebooks, contain entries like encyclopedias, or are based on collections of maps similar to those in atlases. In the library context, this places the books that define role-playing games in the domain of reference books. While currently divisions of the American Library Association encourage librarians to consider using the game in community-building and youth services, there was a time period where organized groups actively tried to discourage librarians from collecting materials associated with the genre. This study is an assessment of library holdings of role-playing game materials worldwide, detailing collection and cataloging issues associated with the genre.     

Art as Activism,Activism as Art

How can information and critique be introduced into an art project? What can art do? How can it position itself in society today?     

Plasma ß‐endorphin immunoreactivity: Response to resistance exercise

Previous research investigating the response of plasma ß‐endorphins (ß‐EP) to resistance exercise has resulted in equivocal findings. To further examine the effects of resistance exercise on ß‐endorphin immunoreactivity, six resistance‐trained athletes participated in a three‐set series of eight repetitions of isotonic exercise. All exercises were performed at 80% maximal effort. Blood was sampled from the group by venepuncture, both prior to and following the exercise bout, and ß‐endorphin concentration was determined by radioimmunoassay. The results indicated that mean ( ± S.E.) plasma levels of ß‐endorphins following exercise (18.04 ± 3.4 pg ß‐EP ml^‐1) were not significantly changed from pre‐exercise (control) levels (19.59 ± 2.4 pg ß‐EP ml^‐1), although there was considerable inter‐individual variability. Our results support previous research which has reported no significant changes in ß‐endorphin immunoreactivity following resistance exercise, as well as reported findings of considerable variability in the ß‐endorphin response to exercise.     

Students' Knowledge About Environmental Matters and Their Belief in Their Own Action Possibilities–A Danish Study

Abstract

Drawing chiefly from Paul Shepard's (1982) Nature and Madness and David Abram's (1996) The Spell of the Sensuous, this essay draws attention to two underlying foundations of educational thought: the process of human social development and the emergence of language and literacy. A reading of Shepard and Abram implies that the meaning of human social development and the meaning of literacy must be recovered from our shared human heritage in which human beings developed a sense of interconnection with nonhuman others. This perspective suggests many challenges to environmental educators including (a) the need to take a more philosophical (and less instrumental) approach to our work, (b) the need for a working theory of development and literacy in education that takes nonhuman otherness seriously, (c) the need to advocate for more regular and extended experiences in the natural world in order to nurture relationship with otherness, (d) the need to reinvent “accountability” in education, (e) and the need to develop in all learners, including ourselves, a sense of at-homeness.     

Assisting self-explanation prompts are more effective than open prompts when learning with multiple representations

Learning with multiple representations is usually employed in order to foster understanding. However, it also imposes high demands on the learners and often does not lead to the expected results, especially because the learners do not integrate the different representations. Thus, it is necessary to support the learners’ self-explanation activity, which concerns the integration and understanding of multiple representations. In the present experiment, we employed multi-representational worked-out examples and tested the effects of two types of self-explanation prompts as help procedures for integrating and understanding multiple representations. The participants (N = 62) learned about probability theory under three conditions: (a) open self-explanation prompts, (b) self-explanation prompts in an assistance-giving-assistance-withholding procedure (assisting self-explanation prompts), or (c) no prompts (control group). Both types of self-explanation prompts fostered procedural knowledge. This effect was mediated by self-explanations directed to domain principles. Conceptual knowledge was particularly fostered by assisting self-explanation prompts which was mediated by self-explanations on the rationale of a principle. Thus, for enhancing high-quality self-explanations and both procedural knowledge and conceptual understanding, we conclude that assisting self-explanation prompts should be provided. We call this the assisting self-explanation prompt effect which refers to the elicitation of high-quality self-explanations and the acquisition of deep understanding.     

When in Doubt,Go to the Library: The Effect of a Library-Intensive Freshman Research and Writing Seminar on Academic Success

The paper is an extension of a previous study, which examined student perceptions of a unique freshman seminar offered to Criminology and Criminal Justice students at Florida State University. The seminar is characterized by a heavy focus on interactive library sessions in which students learn how to conduct research and write a scholarly paper. The previous article reported on student perceptions of research and writing skills developed in the seminar. This report, using Multivariate Regression and Propensity Score Matching reveals that compared to a carefully constructed comparison group, first time in college students enrolled in the seminar have statistically significantly higher cumulative grade point averages and percentages of graduation within four years. The seminar’s emphasis on the library as a research tool is thought to have contributed to the differences seen on academic outcomes between students who took the seminar and a matched comparison group.