Developing and Implementing a Moodle-Ares Integration for Physical and Electronic Reserves at a Small Liberal Arts College

Reacting to the popularity of reserves and as part of an ongoing merger of circulation, interlibrary loan, and reserves into a fully integrated access services department, DePauw University purchased and implemented Atlas Systems’ Ares reserves software. As part of that implementation, a campus programmer designed interface integration between Moodle, the campus course management software, and Ares. Despite setbacks and complications along the way, the implementation was successful; both faculty and students have provided positive feedback, and staff members are able to process material faster and more accurately. We hope to deepen Ares's integration with both Moodle and with our integrated library system and public catalog as time goes on.     

Learning to use information: Informed learning in the undergraduate classroom

Informed learning is a pedagogy that focuses on learning subject content through engaging with academic or professional information practices. Adopting the position that more powerful learning is achieved where students are taught how to use information and subject content simultaneously, the research reported here investigated an informed learning lesson. Using phenomenographic methods, students' experiences of the lesson were compared with observations of how the lesson was enacted in the classroom. Based on an analysis of student interviews using variation theory, different ways of experiencing the informed learning lesson emerged. Some students understood the lesson to be about learning to use information, i.e., researching and writing an academic paper, while others understood it as focusing on understanding both subject content and information use simultaneously. Although the results of this study are highly contextualized, the findings suggest criteria to consider when designing informed learning lessons.     

爱情趣味调查

No.1情人节结束=情人结束? 你知道一年之中人们最容易在十二月的第一个周一分手吗?一项非正式的脸谱网调查显示,各种节日、假日过后,通常伴随的就是分手的开始,假期紊乱加上每周一的假后倦怠,造成了居高不下的分手时期.但是,如果你认为圣诞节或者愚人节是高峰期,那你就想错了.调查表明,情人节之后的一段时间才是绝对的分手高峰!情人节结束=情人结束?结果是不是有些讽刺?     

Personalised learning for young people with social,emotional and behavioural difficulties

Limited research evidence pertains to the inter-related themes of personalised learning and curricular reform with young people who are disaffected with school or experience social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD). The Extended New Directions (END) project aimed to provide flexible and individualised education to help re-engage secondary school-aged young people. A mixed method research design evaluated the project. Quantitative data were gathered in respect of attendance, exclusion and achievement for the entire cohort of 30 young people. Self-report measures (focus group, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires) were used with randomly selected young people, parents and all stakeholders (n = 52). Analysis suggested that END was generally achieving its aims, and implications for future research, policy and practice are discussed.     

US and Turkish preschoolers’ observational knowledge of astronomy

The purpose of this cross-cultural study was to describe and compare US and Turkish children's observational knowledge of the day and night cycle and to identify similarities predicted by framework theory. Fifty-six (27 US and 29 Turkish) young children (ages 48–60 months) participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews were individually conducted, digitally recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using the constant comparative method. The results demonstrate that preschoolers from the two cultures are able to make comparable informal observations of the sky, and their observational knowledge includes many similarities, with one exception, as predicted by framework theory. US children were more likely to perform better than the Turkish children on the question about the time of observation for the moon. Although science concepts and skills are better represented in US early childhood education programs than the Turkish program, the results suggest that this advantage did not translate into performance differences between US and Turkish children.     

Monitoring of education for sustainable development in Germany – insights from early childhood education,school and higher education

In Germany, the implementation of the UNESCO Global Action Programme (GAP) on Education for sustainable development (ESD) 2015–2019 aims to implement ESD more profoundly within the structures of Germany’s educational system. In this context, a national monitoring has been set up in order to analyze the extent and quality of ESD implementation in all educational areas. The paper contains the results of an indicator-based desk research comprising a content analysis of key documents in three areas of education: early childhood education, school education and higher education over a period of 5 years (2011–2016). Overall, the main results indicate that, at the level of key documents, the goal of a broad implementation of ESD is not yet achieved, while there are considerable differences among the federal states. ESD and related concepts can be found more frequently particularly in documents that are more recent. At the same time, ESD is increasingly predominating other educational concepts such as environmental education. The results are one component of a comprehensive monitoring process of ESD-implementation on the level of documents and offer important insights relevant for further (political) activities aiming at a mainstreaming of ESD.     

Re-Examining the Similarities Between Teacher and Student Conceptions About Physical Science

There is a large body of research that has explored students’ misconceptions about science phenomena. Less research, however, has been devoted to identifying teachers’ misconceptions, but the results of the few existing studies demonstrate that teachers and students possess similar misconceptions. This study explored the physical science conceptions of 103 elementary science teachers to determine whether, after three decades of misconception research, teachers still possess conceptions similar to those held by students. We found that our teachers expressed misconceptions regarding gravity, magnetism, gases, and temperature that were similar to common student misconceptions. Suggestions for improving science professional development programs are discussed.     

Improving prevention programs: first results on the relation between subjectively perceived levels of usefulness and social competencies

School-based aggression prevention programs have been implemented in many educational institutions, and fostering the development of social competencies is one of the central aspects of many approaches. The aim of the present study was to assess the level of subjectively perceived usefulness of the prevention program “Faustlos” in connection with the self-reported levels of aggressiveness and social competencies in a sample of German fourth graders. The children had completed the prevention program. Results suggest differences in the level of aggressiveness and social competencies between children with different levels of perceived usefulness of the prevention program.     

Approaches to Inquiry Teaching: Elementary teacher's perspectives

Learning science through the process of inquiry is advocated in curriculum documents across many jurisdictions. However, a number of studies suggest that teachers struggle to help students engage in inquiry practices. This is not surprising as many teachers of science have not engaged in scientific inquiry and possibly hold naïve ideas about what constitutes scientific inquiry. This study investigates teachers' self-reported approaches to teaching science through inquiry. Phenomenographic interviews undertaken with 20 elementary teachers revealed teachers identified six approaches to teaching for inquiry, clustered within three categories. These approaches were categorized as Free and Illustrated Inquiries as part of an Experience-centered category, Solution and Method Inquiries as part of a Problem-centered category, and Topic and Chaperoned Inquiries as part of a Question-centered category. This study contributes to our theoretical understanding of how teachers approach Inquiry Teaching and suggests fertile areas of future research into this valued and influential phenomenon broadly known as ‘Inquiry Teaching'.     

Explanation-Construction in Fourth-Grade Classrooms in Germany and the USA: A cross-national comparative video study

To help explain the differences in students' performance on internationally administered science assessments, cross-national, video-based observational studies have been advocated, but none have yet been conducted at the elementary level for science. The USA and Germany are two countries with large formal education systems whose students underperform those from peers on internationally administered standardized science assessments. However, evidence from the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Exam assessment suggests fourth-grade students (9–10 year-olds) in the USA perform higher than those in Germany, despite more instructional time devoted to elementary science in Germany. The purpose of this study is to comparatively analyze fourth-grade classroom science in both countries to learn more about how teachers and students engage in scientific inquiry, particularly explanation-construction. Videorecordings of US and German science instruction (n _1?=?42, n _2?=?42) were sampled from existing datasets and analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Despite German science lessons being, on average, twice as long as those in the USA, study findings highlight many similarities between elementary science in terms of scientific practices and features of scientific inquiry. However, they also illustrate crucial differences around the scientific practice of explanation-construction. While students in German classrooms were afforded more substantial opportunities to formulate evidence-based explanations, US classrooms were more strongly characterized by opportunities for students to actively compare and evaluate evidence-based explanations. These factors may begin to help account for observed differences in student achievement and merit further study grounded in international collaboration.