What do children think animals need? Developmental trends

Understanding how children think about the needs of animals may aid bridging from how they care about individual animals to caring about the environment more generally. This study explored changes with age in children's conceptions of animals' needs, including how such conceptions may extend beyond the individual animal to larger systems and conservation. During attendance at a North American zoo, 171 children between the ages of 4 and 14 years were interviewed and did drawings in response to questions about the needs of a favorite animal. The results reported here focus on developmental patterns. Animals' basic physiological needs were grasped at an early age. Understanding ecological and conservation needs showed the strongest developmental trends across the full age range, with some children showing early proficiency in ecological, but not conservation, concepts. Conservation and ecological thinking appeared to follow different trajectories, especially through middle childhood, when other dimensions than knowledge may cause increases in conservation conceptions. Educational implications include building on interest in individual animals; not underestimating even young children's ability to assemble ecological facts around an animal; emphasizing concrete ecological connections; and highlighting animals that children experience in their own lives. Considering the needs of animals offers a developmentally pre‐potent way to increase how children know and value multiple levels of biological organization.     

Assessing and changing career decision-making self-efficacy expectations

Conclusion Evidence that a significant percentage of career decision-makers may be helped only partially by traditional information-oriented approaches suggests that career counselors pay increased attention to the personal-emotional barriers which deter many individuals from making and enacting sound career plans. Self-efficacy theory seems to be especially promising as a guide for changing negative expectations, as it offers the counselor a set of specific strategies for assessing low expectations and for treating them. Social-cognitive theory provides a firm research-based framework from which the counselor can encourage clients to gather new efficacy information. Using the basic social-cognitive strategies, counseling can proceed to facilitate the changing of clients' cognitive schemata, by means of the counselor's encouraging clients to consider new evidence and to try further tests of old beliefs. Counselors are encouraged to continue to explore methods for assessing and treating low career decision-making self-efficacy expectations. A self-efficacy-based approach lends itself to the requirement for focused, short-term intervention which is typical of many settings in which career counseling is practiced, while it also ensures that important personal-emotional issues in career decision-making are addressed.     

Situations,interaction, process and affordances: An ecological psychology perspective

From an ecological psychology perspective, afull analysis of any learning context mustacknowledge the complex nonlinear dynamics thatunfold as an intentionally-driven learnerinteracts with a technology-based purposefullydesigned learning environment. Further, a fullanalysis must avoid focusing only on theindividual within the learning context and notaccounting for the intentionality andconstraining influence of the designer and thebroader community. Finally, such an analysismust either pin down how learning anddevelopment can be driven by perception of theenvironment alone (detection of affordances),or alternatively from an ecologicalperspective, by a cyclical interaction ofperception and action. This paperpresents these parameters for any model ofcontext or situation in relationship to theissues raised by Akhras and Self's (this issue)presentation on intelligent learningenvironments. We propose that a full situationmodel would need to incorporate constraints notonly from the environment, but also from theindividual and most precisely from the specificinteraction at the moment of an occasion.     

Sources of Job Satisfaction in Science Secondary School Teachers in Chile

The paper aims to augment the limited literature on teacher job satisfaction in developing countries, specifically in Chile. The nature of job satisfaction in Chilean secondary science teachers is investigated and causes of satisfaction and dissatisfaction identified. Teachers mentioned most often their satisfaction with interactions with students, relationships held within the school and opportunities to contribute to the development of society, future generations or the individual. Sources of dissatisfaction are poor salary, excessive workload, student characteristics, resources and infrastructure. Associations between teachers' characteristics (age, gender, experience), the type of school administration and job satisfaction are also made and suggestions on how to address the issues of teacher satisfaction and dissatisfaction are discussed.     

心灵深处的音乐

Life...What is it?See it in the colors of autumn,A gentle snowfall in winter,A sudden shower in spring,The radiance of a summer day.Behold it in the laughterOf the young and the old.Know of it in a surge of hope,The blessings that are bountiful.What is li…     

Negotiating a critical agenda in middle years physical education

In this research a number of strategies including physical experiences, physical stories and lab school with guided reflection were used with pre-service physical education teachers in an attempt to foster more critical and inclusive approaches to teaching physical education in the middle years. The strategies were used to illustrate the complex processes that inhibit or enhance an individual’s relationship to physical activity. They served to identify discursive, social and institutional practices, which supported the development of a physical identity for some young people while powerfully denying it to others. Pre-service physical education teachers were asked to respond to these strategies in multiple ways as well as constructing their own knowledge around teaching and learning in physical education. It was concluded that a more complete understanding of young people’s physicality could develop from recognition of the complex interrelationships that occur between school, culture and physical experiences. The strategies used allowed insights into these complexities and worked to develop a deeper appreciation of ‘lived’ experiences, around physical education. Opportunities to explore and critically reflect on teaching and student learning were also found to be significant in considering broadened understandings of pedagogies of physical education.     

Segmentation’s failure to improve software video tutorials

Segmentation reduces learners’ cognitive load by inserting system-controlled pauses into instructional animations and video. However, many previous studies focus on conceptual knowledge, and do not allow users control over the pacing of instruction. This two-part experiment attempted to validate segmentation in the context of procedural software instruction by applying it to an Excel conditional formatting tutorial. Learners assigned to segmented video failed to show either improved knowledge transfer or decreased cognitive load. Instead, learners using the videos were able to successfully use the pause and rewind features to manage their own cognitive load. This study shows the importance of providing users with control over the pacing of instruction, and with testing educational theories when applying them in a new context.