Is having more prerequisite knowledge better for learning from productive failure?

A critical assumption made in Kapur’s (Instr Sci 40:651–672, 2012) productive failure design is that students have the necessary prerequisite knowledge resources to generate and explore solutions to problems before learning the targeted concept. Through two quasi-experimental studies, we interrogated this assumption in the context of learning a multilevel biological concept of monohybrid inheritance. In the first study, students were either provided or not provided with prerequisite micro-level knowledge prior to the generation phase. Findings suggested that students do not necessarily have adequate prior knowledge resources, especially those at the micro-level, to generate representations and solution methods for a multilevel concept such as monohybrid inheritance. The second study examined how this prerequisite knowledge provision influenced how much students learned from the subsequent instruction. Although the prerequisite knowledge provision helped students generate and explore the biological phenomenon at the micro- and macro-levels, the provision seemingly did not confer further learning advantage to these students. Instead, they had learning gains similar to those without the provision, and further reported lower lesson engagement and greater mental effort during the subsequent instruction.     

Socioeconomic Status– and Gender‐Based Differences in Students’ Perceptions of E‐Learning Systems

Many universities are pursuing increases in on‐line course offerings as a means of offsetting the rising costs of providing high‐quality educational opportunities and of better serving their student populations. However, enrollments in online courses are not always sufficient to cover their costs. One possible way of improving enrollments is through marketing campaigns targeted to specific demographic groups. In this study, we take a first look into how students’ perceptions of e‐learning systems, prior to their enrollment in an online course, vary across socioeconomic status and gender. Findings suggest that prior to taking an online course, working‐class students perceive e‐learning systems more positively than their middle‐class peers but that little difference exists between genders. Armed with this knowledge, universities may improve online course enrollments by marketing online courses specifically to working‐class students or through campaigns aimed at improving middle‐class students’ perceptions of e‐learning systems.     

Education and the Contested Meanings of ‘Global Citizenship’

This article examines the oftentaken-for-granted educational policy and curricular discourses of globalization and global citizenship within their larger cultural, political, and economically uneven histories and unequal consequences. Drawing upon evidence from recent scholarship on the implications for classroom pedagogy embodied inefforts to internationalize curricula in the North American university contexts, as well as specific related efforts in one Canadian context, the University of British Columbia,this article unpacks the contested meanings of global citizenship from above and below.The author analyzes three dominant curricular discourses of global citizenship. Far from weakening the Canadian state and building instances of transnational democratic educational communities, these dominant discourses may actually reinforce notions of Canadian gendered and racialized nation-building and nationalism. The article raises questions about what an alternative curricular and educational policy discourse from below premised upon efforts to decolonize curricula might look like. By way of provisional conclusion, the author discusses some promising examples of such an alternative,showing how they depend on seeing the relations between the local and global neither as fixed abstractions nor as a slogan system to be applied in absolutist racial, geographical,national, or culturally essentialist terms.     

Developmental Differences in Memory During Early Childhood: Insights From Event‐Related Potentials

Age‐related differences in behavioral and electrophysiological indices of memory were examined in 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children (N = 76). Behaviorally, no differences were observed in children's ability to identify old items; however, 3‐year‐old children were less accurate in correctly rejecting new items, and 3‐ and 4‐year‐old children recalled fewer contextual details compared to 5‐ and 6‐year‐old children. Age‐related differences in electrophysiological measures (800–1,000 ms after stimulus onset) were observed both to items recalled with contextual details, which increased between 3 and 4 years, and items recalled without contextual details, which were greatest in 5‐year‐old children, even after adjusting for global age‐related differences. These findings, interpreted within a dual‐process framework, may suggest changes in both recollection and familiarity processes during early childhood.