Instructional and motivational classroom discourse and their relationship with teacher autonomy and competence support—findings from teacher professional development

European Journal of Psychology of Education - The present study investigates whether productive classroom discourse in the form of instructional and motivational classroom discourse (Turner et al.,...     

Preservice early childhood educators’ pedagogical beliefs

Preservice early childhood educators begin postsecondary programs with established beliefs about children, children’s learning, and their roles as future educators. The present study examined 26 first-year students’ beliefs about children, classroom practice, and guiding children’s behavior. Participants completed the Teacher Beliefs Q-Sort (Rimm-Kaufman, Storm, Sawyer, Pianta, & La Paro, 2006) at three time points over the course of their first year of studies. We compared responses across the three time points to explore whether the students’ beliefs changed over time. Findings are presented under three main themes: 1) beliefs about children; 2) beliefs about classroom practice; and 3) beliefs about behavior management. Overall, findings reveal that for all three themes, at each time point, practices that are most characteristic of the participants’ beliefs are child-centered, whereas beliefs that are least characteristic of their beliefs are teacher-directed. To support students’ application of theory to practice, they should be given opportunities during their studies to voice, explore, and critically examine their beliefs in relation to philosophies and teaching approaches.     

Situating Motivation

This article describes a situative approach to studying motivation to learn in social contexts. We begin by contrasting this perspective to more prevalent psychological approaches to the study of motivation, describing epistemological and methodological differences that have constrained conversation between theoretical groups. We elaborate on issues of the unit of analysis, the conceptualization of contexts, and the role of identity as a central construct. Finally, we argue that the design of learning environments and interventions to change learning environments are informed by attention to the relationships among meanings, identities, and motives in context. We illustrate our argument with examples of design-based research and design-based implementation research focused on motivation to learn in children and adults.     

Getting Students Outside: Using Technology as a Way to Stimulate Engagement

Informal environments provide students with unique experiences that allow them to actively participate in activities while promoting a positive attitude toward and an increased interest in science. One way to enhance informal science experiences is through the integration of mobile technologies. This integration is particularly useful in engaging underrepresented students in learning science. Our informal environmental science program engages underrepresented, fifth-grade students in an informal learning environment supplemented with mobile tablet technology (iPads). The purpose of this study was to explore how fifth-grade students interacted with nature using mobile technology during a nature hike series. Participants included 55 fifth-grade students from two low-income schools. We found that students used the mobile technology to explore nature and stay engaged throughout the hike. The iPads were used as references, data collectors, and engagement tools. Students had an intense desire in returning to the site and responded positively toward interacting with nature. Prior research has indicated that students in this age group are likely to lose interest in science and the incorporation of field-friendly technology that engages students with nature, not technology alone, is a useful tool for keeping students interested in science.     

Karaoke Night at the Tower of Babel: The Cacophonous Discourse of School Reform

Written for the general public, this article unpacks the “dialogue gap” in education and raises concerns about what can happen when groups dependent on one another are not talking. Part of the problem involves a matter of scale; policymakers rarely talk about children as individuals as opposed to as aggregates. The larger policy context loses the child in the push to have standardized assessments drive instruction. We are challenged to include students in conversations about assessment and achievement so that they might embrace our ambitions and achieve the standards they hold for themselves.     

"It's cheesy when they smile:" what girl athletes prefer in images of female college athletes

Building on previous research in which we provided an opportunity for female college athletes to construct their own photographic portrayals, this study explored young female athletes' perceptions of the college athlete photographs. Fifty-two girls participated in focus group interviews where they viewed and discussed the images. The young athletes particularly liked images they perceived to show authentic athletes (e.g, in athletic settings, with appropriate sport attire), images they could relate to due to personal experiences, and images that reflected competent and passionate sportswomen. Images perceived as revealing a lack of motivation, poor sporting attitudes, and nonathletic poses generally were disliked. Images depicting multiple social identities (e.g., an athlete in a dress) were controversial and generated much discussion.     

Classification of trampoline jumps using inertial sensors

The automatic segmentation and classification of an unknown motion data stream according to given motion categories constitute an important research problem with applications in computer animation, medicine and sports sciences. In this paper, the scenario of trampoline motions is considered, where an athlete performs a routine consisting of sequence of jumps that belong to predefined motion categories such as pike jumps or somersaults. As main contribution, a fully automated approach for capturing, segmenting, and classifying trampoline routines according to these categories is introduced. Since trampoline motions are highly dynamic and spacious, optical motion capturing is problematic. Instead, it is reverted to a small number of inertial sensors attached to the athlete’s body. To cope with measurement noise and performance differences, suitable feature and class representations are introduced that are robust to spatial and temporal variations while capturing the characteristics of each motion category. The experiments show that the approach reliably classifies trampoline jumps across different athletes even in the presence of significant style variations.     

‘What really matters to freshers?’: evaluation of first year student experience of transition into university

Measuring student experience in terms of satisfaction is a national measure used by prospective students when considering their higher education choices. Increasingly league tables are used as a means to rank universities with a limited interrogation of the reality of students’ experiences. This study explored the question ‘What really matters to freshers?’ during their transition into higher education through to completion. Students on an academic undergraduate Early Childhood Studies degree (n = 530) over a five-year period completed a Student Experience Evaluation in their first term and this data was correlated with the National Student Survey data collected about their cohorts in the final term of their degree. During the five year period, a number of interventions were undertaken by the academic staff to develop a learning community, based on the values linked to ‘being, belonging, and becoming’. The results of this study suggest that three things matter to students about their experience, that is, the academic staff they work with, the nature of their academic study and feeling like they belong. A model is proposed which aims to demonstrate the impact of academic staff, studies and the learning community that develops through social and academic experiences at University.