Activity Achievement Emotions and Academic Performance: A Meta-analysis

Educational Psychology Review - Achievement emotions are emotions linked to academic, work, or sports achievement activities (activity emotions) and their success and failure outcomes (outcome...     

Post-qualitative line of flight and the confabulative conversation: a methodological ethnography

This paper is a methodological ethnography aiming to highlight the difficulties in using conventional methods in connection with an explorative philosophy; Deleuze and Guattari’s. Taking an empirical point of departure in conversations about the future with students in upper secondary school, the struggle to find a scientifically valid label through the focus group interview is outlined. However, combining the particular philosophy with a conventional qualitative method turned out to be an impossible aim since the ideals of the focus group interview departures in the image of stable subject simultaneously as the method is blemished by positivistic language and standards. By turning to post-qualitative research, which encourages new concepts and methods, the confabulative conversation was produced. Within these confabulative conversations, the aim has been to create a methodologically smooth space in order to enable movements beyond manifested knowledge in favor of the virtual and the not-yet-seen, and thus producing possibilities for something new.     

Why School Choice Reforms in Denmark Fail: the blocking power of the teacher union

This article investigates why school choice is exercised to a limited degree by parents despite major government initiatives to enhance diversity, competition and choice in the Danish education system. Denmark has had 20 years of centre‐right governments, promoting choice reforms perhaps even more vigorously than the other Nordic countries, yet school choice is seldom used – only 12% of parents choose a public school that differs from the one that is allocated to them. The literature on school choice in Denmark argues that this is primarily due to a general lack of parental interest because of the relatively high similarity across schools. In this article, we argue that the main reason is to be found in the politics of vested interests, namely municipalities’ persistent use of pupil assignment schemes supported by powerful teacher union branches at the local level.     

Associations between Profiles of Maternal Strengths and Positive Parenting Practices among Mothers Experiencing Adversity

SYNOPSIS

Objective . Few studies have explored associations between strength-based factors and positive parenting among mothers experiencing adversity. Adopting a person-centered statistical approach, we examined how patterns of maternal strengths relate to positive parenting practices. Design . Participants were 188 female primary caregivers (71% African American) who experienced intimate partner violence and/or were living with HIV. Women were recruited from community organizations in the Mid-Southern United States and completed measures of adaptability, spirituality, ethnic identity, social support, parent-child communication, community cohesion, and parenting practices. Latent profile analysis was used to generate classes of individual (adaptability, spirituality, education), relational (family support, friend support, parent-child communication about Substance Abuse, Violence, and AIDS/HIV), and contextual (ethnic identity, community cohesion) factors, in line with the social-ecological model of resilience. Associations between the classes and positive parenting practices were examined. Results . Three classes emerged: (1) Low Individual, Relational, & Contextual (LIRC; n = 18); (2) Low SAVA Communication (LSC; n = 30); and (3) High Individual, Relational, & Contextual (HIRC; n = 140). Mothers in the LIRC class reported lower parental involvement and less positive parenting practices than those in the HIRC class. Conclusions . Mothers who endorse increased individual, relational, and contextual factors utilize more positive parenting practices. Optimal clinical approaches to enhance parenting should target supports at multiple levels.     

The use of organising purposes in science instruction as a scaffolding mechanism to support progressions: a study of talk in two primary science classrooms

Purpose: This study examines how different purposes can support teachers in their work with progressions as a part of a teaching sequences in science in primary school.

Design/Method: The study was carried out in two classes working with inquiry and the events that took place in the classroom were filmed. In the study, we have chosen to use the technical term proximate purposes for the student-oriented purposes, and ultimate purposes for the scientific purposes. Together, these two types of purposes form the organisational purposes for the classes. Proximate purposes work in such a way that students can use their language and relate to their experiences as ends-in-view. To examine how organising purposes can be used to analyse progressions, we discuss examples from two different lessons.

Result: The study shows the importance of proximate purposes working as ends-in-view and also demonstrates how the teacher and students may create continuity in teaching to enable progression as a part of a teaching sequence.

Conclusions: To create continuity, it was essential that the teacher scaffolded the students in ways which allowed the students to explicitly differentiate between what was relevant or not, about the proximate purposes in relation to the ultimate purpose.     

Promoting social inclusion in the early years of elementary school: a focus on children’s epistemic beliefs for moral reasoning

As classrooms continue to diversify, there is an increasing need to understand children’s inclusive behaviours and moral reasoning. Research shows that epistemic beliefs (beliefs about knowing and knowledge) can influence reasoning for adults, but we know little about this relationship in younger children or how classroom contexts relate to epistemic beliefs for moral reasoning. Thirty-one elementary school children (mean age 6.5 years) participated in epistemic beliefs and moral reasoning tasks in the first year of a three-year longitudinal study. Findings showed that while children described objectivist epistemic beliefs (right/wrong answers) about social inclusion, their justifications revealed an unexpected, more complex set of epistemic beliefs. Implications for moral pedagogies are discussed.     

Child and adult witnesses: the effect of repetition and invitation-probes on free recall and metamemory realism

Witnesses?? event recall and the realism in their evaluation of the correctness of their recall are of great importance in forensic processes. These issues were investigated in the present study by use of calibration methodology. More specifically, we analyzed the effects of two recalls of the same event (repetition) and of probes (non-informative follow-up questions at recall) on 9?C11?year-old children??s and adults?? open free recall and the degree of realism in the participants?? confidence judgments of the correctness of the recall after they had seen a short video clip. The findings were that repetition resulted in more units recalled both for children and for adults, and in that the children showed higher overconfidence compared with one recall, but not the adults. Moreover, when only the statements in the repetition conditions that were recalled twice were included in the analysis, higher confidence was found for the children (independent of an increase in the proportion correct statements of all statements) but not for the adults. Probing increased the number of units recalled for both children and adults, decreased the children??s proportion correct statements but not the adults??, decreased both children??s and adults?? confidence and increased the children??s overconfidence, but not the adults??. Finally, the combination of two recalls and probing disrupted the children??s but not the adults?? metacognitive performance.     

The Influence of Interactive Learning Materials on Solving Tasks That Require Different Types of Mathematical Reasoning

International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education - The purpose of this study is to analyse the effects of the Interactive Learning Materials Triangle (iLMT) on the learning and knowledge...     

Authenticity work in higher education learning environments: a double-edged sword?

Higher Education - Educational authenticity occupies a strong position in higher education research and reform, building on the assumption that correspondence between higher education learning...