Progressive treatment and self-assessment: effects on students’ automatisation of grammatical spelling and self-efficacy beliefs

The production of grammatical markers takes a long time to master. Even when students know the rules, they do not systematically apply them. However, few studies have demonstrated the efficacy of interventions to improve this competence, and no study has addressed the issue at the cognitive and motivational levels jointly. Our study demonstrates the effect of combining progressive treatment, based on cognitive cost and self-assessment, on grammatical spelling and on self-efficacy beliefs. Over 8 weekly 50-minute lessons, four groups of 18, 20, 18 and 21 ninth graders received, respectively, progressive treatment alone, coupled with self-assessment, coupled with feedback, or coupled with self-assessment and feedback. These intervention groups were compared with a control group of 36 students receiving standard spelling instruction. The interventions focussed on past participle inflections, which are particularly difficult to learn for French-speaking students. The results indicated that (a) students who received progressive treatment made more progress than the control group students in spelling past participle inflections, presenting a transfer and a first degree of automatisation of the rules. The results also indicated that (b) students who participated in progressive treatment with self-assessment improved even more on the spelling tests, including free text production, and in their self-efficacy beliefs, demonstrating a deeper automatisation of the grammatical rules combined with an increase in perceived efficacy. This research shows that learning benefits from instructional practices that provide both cognitive cost and motivational support.     

Using the United States Census Data to Introduce Differential Equations

Abstract

This article describes a method for using the United States Census data to open a differential equations course. The question of finding a model for the United States population data gives students a first experience with creating a model using differential equations, and also understanding derivatives, what they mean, and how to calculate them in the context of real data. This model-building start motivates further exploration in many of the standard differential equations topics: the method of separation of variables, slope fields, autonomous equations, equilibria, and stability.     

New Challenges and Opportunities for Institutional Researchers in Assessment and Accreditation

Increased focus on assessment of student learning in the accreditation of higher education institutions offers new, challenging opportunities for institutional researchers. This article explores how institutional researchers can maximize these opportunities by offering methodological guidance in the assessment process and by designing new studies to produce assessment results. The article discusses the importance of methodological expertise, highlights the relevance of lessons learned from assessment literature, and provides a model for designing studies relevant for assessment.

     

Qualified Pedagogical Reflection as a Way to Improve Mathematics Education

All changes of the character of education and improvement of its quality depend, in our view, particularly on the teacher. To be able to do their work efficiently, teachers have to be equipped with professional skills and dispositions, with “teachers’ competence”. For their professional growth, we consider indispensable competence in reflection, which is aimed at the teacher’s activities with regard to aspects of pedagogy and/or subject-didactics. From the point of view of the goals and content of their teaching and the methods of work (and their realisation), the development of teachers’ conscious self-reflection on their own teaching and systematic pursuance of joint reflection with other teachers and/or researchers can promote the teacher’s professional growth. In this paper, we show how a selected group of elementary school teachers reflected on their competence in the course of preparing, carrying out and analysing several instruction experiments. The paper is based on samples of teachers’ reflections and their gradual development from mere simple conversations based on intuitive perceptions, through searching for effective teaching approaches, to the deep assessment of mathematics teaching from the point of view of topics and their didactic elaboration and to suggestions for the teachers’ own experiments. May the teacher know what he teaches. May the teacher know how to teach. May the teacher be sincerely interested in teaching. Comenius