Evolution of methods to measure student information use

Over the past decade, there has been an increase in the application of the case study method to investigate the process used by students in secondary school and undergraduate academic settings to locate and use information through the library. The case study method has, in most recent years compared to investigations of 20 to 30 years ago, become established as the primary research technique used to document student thought processes in topic focus and in source selection. Direct observation and interviewing successful library users, two tools common to the case study method, may also lead to examination of student selection and critical use of evidence for research projects as students move beyond the traditional library collection. These tools have also proven to be useful as researchers in recent studies are more interested in an analysis of student use of information as evidence rather than conducting studies which only document student location and citation of resources. Selected studies which illustrate this evolution are drawn from the dissertations and field studies related to secondary school and undergraduate bibliographic instruction.     

Response to a multi-media system

Several physics classes followed an integrated multi-media, multi-modal teaching-learning system or schedule, and completed a number of evaluation instruments designed to collect data on both affective and cognitive variables, as well as on the resulting behaviors of teachers and students. The data lead to some tentative conclusions about reactions of students to different media in such a system, effects of media on learning, and the impact of the system on teacher self-concept. Conclusions relate to the future of such integrated systems and their effects on motivation and learning.     

Individual differences in cognitive synthesis: An M-capacity analysis

Individual differences in children's propensity to demonstrate cognitive synthesis were evaluated using an artificial reading task. Six-year-olds were asked to demonstrate the meaning of various sentences constructed of logographs, or whole-word symbols, which were arranged in either a meaningful (i.e., grammatical) or scrambled (i.e., ungrammatical) order. Some children demonstrated the sentences in a synthesized mode (expressing a single idea unit), while others used a nonsynthesized mode (expressing the meanings of individual logographs). Overall, synthesizers had a larger attentional reserve, or M-capacity, than nonsynthesizers. The two groups did not differ significantly in age, intellectual level, or reading achievement. As predicted by their larger M-capacity, synthesizers demonstrated from memory significantly more items from meaningful sentences than nonsynthesizers. However, when synthesizers attempted to integrate the scrambled sentences, the excessive operative schemes needed to reorganize the items reduced their recall performance to the level of nonsynthesizers.     

Dealing with “induced migration” in university impact studies

The migration-inducing effect of an institution of higher education is often overlooked in university impact studies. This paper deals with estimating the local economic impacts of a university accounting for the fact that students and staff induced to the area by the presence of the university are unlikely to remain in its absence. It is argued that this is an important aspect of the correct identification of the counterfactual position and a vital component in accurate impact analysis. A case study is presented relating to the short-term impacts of the Northwestern University campus in the city of Evanston, Illinois. The tendency to overstate this impact through the incorrect treatment of induced migration is illustrated. It is also shown that the estimated income and output impacts attributed to the university are very sensitive to changes in the local consumption patterns of migrants.     

Evolving strategies for using interactive video resources in mathematics classrooms

In order to understand the role of interactive video (IV) in mathematics classrooms, teachers were given a set of IV resources which were very mixed in character and style, and from which they could freely select. These were used in lessons over an extended period, in some cases two years or longer. By interviewing and by observing lessons, it has been possible to draw some tentative conclusions about the relative merits of different styles of IV in mathematics classrooms. IV resources are often managed in a similar way to computers and this similarity seems to have influenced teachers' opinions and choices. However, the affective impact of video was also evident in teachers' choices. A complex picture emerges with no one style dominating.     

Rhetoric and the origins of the human sciences: A Foucauldian tale untold

Michel Foucault’s famous history of the human sciences focused on “the order of things” and in doing so it overwhelmed a rhetorical perspective that can track the arts of moving souls: pedagogy, politics, and psychology. If we revisit Foucault from a rhetorical perspective there are consequences: (1) at the level of architectonic, we rediscover rhetoric’s role at the inception of the human sciences, and (2) at the level of thematic, we can make better sense of rhetorical phenomena such as the sixteenth-/seventeenth-century sacred arts of listening, which feature a “public ear.” Foucault’s late interest in the pastoral picks up this rhetorical thread, although he never was able to revise the disciplinary and biopolitical history implicated therein. This article initiates just such a revision, paying particular attention to historiographic questions, and to recent discussions of biopower that wind up looking very different from this rhetorical perspective.