Walking the tightrope with an e-portfolio: imbalance between support and autonomy hampers self-directed learning

Teacher coaching is essential to support self-directed learning, but requires a lot of time and energy. This mixed-methods study investigated the effects of using an e-portfolio with a self-coaching protocol and limited teacher coaching on the development of self-directed learning skills and motivation. With regard to self-directed learning, students’ overestimation of performance on learning tasks grew over time, while their ability to formulate points for improvement did not change significantly. With regard to motivation, students’ controlled (i.e. largely extrinsic) motivation increased while their autonomous (i.e. largely intrinsic) motivation decreased. Thematic analysis of interviews demonstrated students needed more support and feedback from their teacher. The use of suboptimal cues for performance assessment and an imperfect balance between autonomy and support hampered self-directed learning and motivation. We recommend providing just-in-time feedback about performance on learning tasks and giving students some autonomy over the choice of learning tasks, to enhance reflection and motivation.     

Socio‐economic background,parental involvement and teacher perceptions of these in relation to pupil achievement

Parental involvement and teacher perceptions of parental involvement in the education of children were studied in relation to level of parental education and pupil achievement. A questionnaire was administered to 218 parents and 60 teachers. Correlational analyses and paired‐sample analyses showed teacher perceptions to be weakly related to parental reports of their own involvement and to operate at a different level. Regression analyses and analyses of variance showed teacher perceptions of parental involvement to affect pupil achievement more strongly than parental reports. The results suggest that teacher perceptions of parents may be stereotyped and that such stereotypes can clearly affect academic results.     

Tower of Hanoi disk-transfer task: Influences of strategy knowledge and learning on performance

Tower of Hanoi has become a popular tool in cognitive and neuropsychology to assess a set of behaviors collectively referred to as executive functions. Substantial variability in performance on the Tower of Hanoi (TOH) disk-transfer task among normally functioning young adults, and potential contributions to these individual differences, were examined. In this expanded 60-problem version of the four-disk TOH, the degree to which problem administration (blocked vs. random) and strategy knowledge influenced overall performance and changes in accuracy across problems was examined. Eighty-seven college students were randomly assigned to a Blocked Group (problems given in ascending order of move-length) and a Random Group (problems given in a random order). After administration of the TOH task, participants described their problem solving and these verbal protocols were analyzed with regard to four elements of a strategic approach to problem solving. Problem administration order demonstrated no effect on task performance or on expressed strategy knowledge; however, strategy knowledge did predict performance on the TOH. An expected decrease in performance across trials was observed in the Blocked Group, and an increase in accuracy in the Random group indicated a learning effect. Strategy knowledge did not interact with these changes in performance across the items. These results suggest that external cues do not influence performance on the TOH to the same extent as individual differences in strategy induction relatively early in the problem solving process.     

Globalisation and national identity: a reflection on the Japanese music curriculum

This article investigates the relationship between globalisation and national cultural identity through Japanese educational policies for music. Japan is often referred to as a society that provides a model of cultural hybridisation that is a phenomenon in globalisation. However, what actually happened in Japan was not hybridisation, but the replacement of traditional music with western music in the process of the re‐construction of national musical culture. Even the recent state emphasis on Japanese elements in music teaching can be interpreted as no more than an attempt to further transform Japanese music culture so that it will resemble that of Europe.     

Interobserver Agreement in the Assessment of Parental Behavior and Parent-Adolescent Conflict: African American Mothers, Daughters, and Independent Observers

Agreement between 57 African American mothers and their early adolescent daughters on measures of maternal support, maternal restrictive control, and parent-adolescent conflict were examined. To assess the relative validity of these reports, the study then evaluated them against the ratings of independent observers. Additionally, mother and daughter reports were combined to examine validity coefficients based on aggregate scores of each construct. All analyses were based on 2 sets of objective criterion ratings, ratings provided by coders of similar ethnic background (African American) and coders who were ethnically dissimilar (non-African American) to the families they rated. Overall, adolescents provided ratings that were more valid than those of their mothers when evaluated against both sets of independent ratings. Adolescent ratings of maternal control and parent-adolescent conflict converged at significantly higher levels than the ratings provided by their mothers. Maternal and adolescent reports of maternal support converged with objective criteria at statistically comparable levels. Validity coefficients for adolescent reports were also higher than those based on aggregate mother-daughter scores. Secondary analyses further revealed that African American coders rated mothers as less controlling and rated the dyadic interactions as less conflictual, and that their ratings were more consistent with the perceptions of the African American mothers and adolescents than were those provided by non-African American coders.     

A Feminist View of Foundations of Education

The student... has to see on his own behalf and in his own way, the relations between means and methods employed and results achieved. Nobody else can see for him, and he can't see just by being “told,” although the right kind of telling may guide his seeing and thus help him see what he needs to see. ‐John Dewey     

Universities’ Autonomy in Times of Changing Higher Education Governance: A study of the Swiss academic labour market

Although eternally debated, the issue of autonomy in higher education is rarely analysed in its complexity. To address this issue, this article uses an analytical matrix which combines the distinction between substantive and procedural autonomy and the distinction between HEI governing bodies, academic professions and individual academics. This framework allows for analysing—by the example of the Swiss academic labour market—how changes in national steering can lead to the redistribution of autonomy between the mentioned actors. Further insights relate to the observed higher education system’s decentralised character. Empirical findings—based on the examination of three special programmes initiated by the federal government—indicate that HEI actors lose some substantive autonomy in favour of the Confederation, and—against the general tendency induced by New Public Management to reinforce HEI governing bodies—procedural autonomy is rather redistributed to individual academics and academic professions.     

The effect of delayed-JOLs and sentence generation on children’s monitoring accuracy and regulation of idiom study

When studying verbal materials, both adults and children are often poor at accurately monitoring their level of learning and regulating their subsequent restudy of materials, which leads to suboptimal test performance. The present experiment investigated how monitoring accuracy and regulation of study could be improved when learning idiomatic phrases. Elementary school children (fourth and sixth-graders) were instructed to predict their test performance by providing judgments of learning (JOLs). They provided JOLs immediately after studying each idiom, after studying all idioms, or after studying all idioms followed by generating sentences in which the idioms were used. Correlations between JOLs and test performance showed that delayed-JOLs and delayed-JOLs with sentence generation were more accurate than immediate JOLs. JOLs after sentence generation also improved regulation of study compared to delayed-JOLs only. Analyses of JOL reaction times suggest that delayed-JOLs led children to retrieve the literal meaning of the idiom, whereas JOLs after sentence generation led children to focus on connections between studied information, contextual information, and prior knowledge. Sentence generation presents a promising method to improve regulation of study, and thus idiom learning.     

Video as Digital Object: Production and Distribution of Video Content in the Internet Media Ecosystem

The media industry is undergoing comprehensive change due to the shifting audience and consumption patterns fostered by the diffusion of the Internet. This article describes how these changes shape established practices of video production and redefine the cultural categories of video and broadcasting. Drawing on an empirical case study of the practices within the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the we show the production of video content to be increasingly unbundled and broken down into several smaller processes, which make it possible to manage and recompose in a variety of ways that transcend established institutional divisions and cultural perceptions. At the same time and as a means of accommodating multiplatform content delivery, video distribution is acquiring flexible and mutating formats that further destabilize the perception of video as a self-sufficient cultural form. In this context, video metadata rises to be an important coordinative medium that provides the cognitive resources for identifying and managing video content within and across particular settings and the link through which the operations of media organizations become entangled with the technical landscape of the Internet.