Constructing a Pragmatic Science of Learning and Instruction with Functional Contextualism

Constructivism has been embraced by many in the field of instructional design and technology (IDT), but its advocates have struggled to move beyond theory to practice or to empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of their approach. As an alternative to constructivism, a new perspective emerging in psychology, known as functional contextualism, is presented. Like constructivism, functional contextualism also rejects objectivist epistemology, but provides a much more coherent philosophical basis on which to build an empirical science of learning and instruction. The philosophical worldview known as contextualism is reviewed to outline the similarities and differences between constructivism and functional contextualism, and the key characteristics of functional contextualism and the science it supports, behavior analysis, are described. Implications of functional contextualism for research and practice in IDT are then explored. Eric Fox [eric.fox@wmich.edu] is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Western Michigan University. This article was written while he was a doctoral student in the Learning & Instructional Technology program at Arizona State University.     

Overlapping symptoms of substance abuse and learning handicaps: implications for educators

The effects of substance abuse have produced a population of students who exhibit behaviors similar to the behaviors of many youth with learning problems. Often such students are mislabeled as learning handicapped (including learning disability, behavioral disorder, and attention deficit/hyperactive disorder), when their primary problem is actually one of chemical abuse. The following issues are examined: (a) overlapping symptoms of chemical impairment and learning handicap that may result in misdiagnosis, (b) student populations at high risk for chemical abuse, (c) preventive measures, and (d) intervention and treatment for chemically impaired students.     

African American Fathers in Low Income, Urban Families: Development, Behavior, and Home Environment of Their Three-Year-Old Children

This study examined the relationship between paternal roles, regardless of residence, and the well-being of 175 3-year-old children from low income, African American families. There were no differences in children's cognition, receptive language, behavior, or home environment related to father presence. Fathers (or father figures) were identified in 73% of the families, and 64% participated in an interview and videotaped observation. The relationships between paternal roles (parenting satisfaction, economic support, nurturance during play, child care, and household responsibilities) and children's cognitive skills, receptive language, behavior, and home environment were examined. After controlling for maternal age, education, and parenting satisfaction, there were significant relationships between paternal roles and each index of children's well-being, suggesting that fathers' contributions were unique. Fathers who were satisfied with parenting, contributed financially to the family, and were nurturant during play had children with better cognitive and language competence; fathers who were satisfied with parenting and employed, had children with fewer behavior problems; and when fathers were living with the child, the home was more child-centered. Neither the biological relationship of the father nor the parents' marital status entered into the models. These findings support ecological theories linking paternal involvement with children's well-being and argue for the institution of family-oriented policies that promote positive father involvement.     

What the children’s literature of war is telling the children

This article discusses several issues arising from some wide reading of children’s literature of war and peace as part of a Comenius (EU) collaboration with partners in Belgium and Portugal. The focus here is on the content of the books rather than ways of telling. The issues raised concern national identities, gaps in the collective texts which perhaps reflect national identities, the emphasis on the home front rather than battles, the usefulness of children in wartime compared to most modern child readers, the ethical issues common to the literature in all three countries, the allegorical war literature available for young children, and, increasingly, the more realistic literature for the same group including stories of the holocaust.     

The Young Child's Pictorial Representation of the Human Figure

This study investigated reasons for the omission of the torso typical in most young children's drawings of the human figure. Do they have an incomplete mental image of the human figure; if so will the torso be omitted from a manikin task too? As the head is normally drawn first, is the torso simply forgotten; if so will children include it if they are asked to draw the torso first? Eighty tadpole‐drawers (aged between 2 years 7 months and 5 years) were randomly allocated to a drawing or a manikin condition; they were further subdivided into a head‐first or torso‐first condition. Significantly more children produced a conventional figure when they constructed a manikin compared with those who were asked to draw; the order of body parts (head‐first vs torso‐first) had no significant effect. These results suggest that young children omit the torso from their human figures because they have yet to devise a way of drawing it, perhaps because it is a relatively unimportant item; there is little evidence that they have simply forgotten it or that their mental model for the human figure is incomplete.     

The Effect of Information Framing on Academic Task Completion

Information framing was investigated as a classroom management technique for academic task completion. Framing effect refers to the finding that people's choices are affected by how pre‐decisional information is framed (Tversky & Kahneman, 1984). In five 3rd and 4th Grade classrooms, teachers observed task completion rates of their students under five different framing conditions: unframed instruction; positively framed instruction with (a) group and (b) individual consequence; negatively framed instruction with (a) group and (b) individual consequence. Task completion rates were significantly greater under all framed instruction conditions than unframed, with effect sizes ranging from 0.21 to 0.32 and much greater at the class level. Improvement rates corresponding to effect sizes ranged from 20% to 70% at the class level, showing the usefulness of framing instructional directives.     

The Deep-Time Digital Earth program: data-driven discovery in geosciences

Current barriers hindering data-driven discoveries in deep-time Earth (DE) include: substantial volumes of DE data are not digitized; many DE databases do not adhere to FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) principles; we lack a systematic knowledge graph for DE; existing DE databases are geographically heterogeneous; a significant fraction of DE data is not in open-access formats; tailored tools are needed. These challenges motivate the Deep-Time Digital Earth (DDE) program initiated by the International Union of Geological Sciences and developed in cooperation with national geological surveys, professional associations, academic institutions and scientists around the world. DDE’s mission is to build on previous research to develop a systematic DE knowledge graph, a FAIR data infrastructure that links existing databases and makes dark data visible, and tailored tools for DE data, which are universally accessible. DDE aims to harmonize DE data, share global geoscience knowledge and facilitate data-driven discovery in the understanding of Earth''s evolution.     

Following the action in action learning: towards ethnomethodological studies of (critical) action learning

Action learning is a pedagogical practice that helps participants learn by talking about their workplace action with fellow participants (‘comrades in adversity’) in their action learning set. This paper raises questions about the action in action learning, such as: how do members of an action learning set learn from and through each other? How do they learn through their developing conversation and interaction?

To answer such questions, I argue that, ‘ethnomethodology’ (the study of ‘member's methods’ or ‘folk methods’ for doing any kind of practical action) is useful for showing the intricacy of the practical learning process in action learning, as in learning in action, more generally. The paper illustrates the conversational and interactional work of members doing things and learning together in action (for example discovering things in science and in board meetings); and argues that this approach may also be used to study action learning in practice.     

The relative effects of university success courses and individualized interventions for students with learning disabilities

Little is known about the relative effects of post‐secondary learning services for students with learning disabilities. We compared outcomes for students with learning disabilities who selected to: (1) take an academic learning success course (course‐intervention), (2) have regular individual interventions (high‐intervention) or (3) use services only as needed (low‐intervention). Pre‐ and post‐test comparisons revealed improvements in academic self‐efficacy and academic resourcefulness for students in the course‐ and high‐intervention groups. The course‐intervention group also showed decreases in their failure attributions to bad luck and increases in their general repertoire of learned resourcefulness skills in comparison to the high‐intervention group and had significantly higher year‐end GPAs in comparison to the low‐intervention group. Here we find positive outcomes for students with learning disabilities taking a course that teaches post‐secondary learning and academic skills.     

The Effects of Early Experience on Face Recognition: An Event-Related Potential Study of Institutionalized Children in Romania

Data are reported from 3 groups of children residing in Bucharest, Romania. Face recognition in currently institutionalized, previously institutionalized, and never-institutionalized children was assessed at 3 time points: preintervention ( n  = 121), 30 months of age ( n  = 99), and 42 months of age ( n  = 77). Children watched photographs of caregiver and stranger faces while event-related potentials were recorded. Results demonstrate that institutionalized children show pervasive cortical hypoarousal in response to faces and that foster care is somewhat effective in remediating this deficit by 42 months of age. All 3 groups of children distinguished between the familiar and unfamiliar faces. These results have the potential to inform an understanding of the role of early experience in the development of the neural systems that subserve face recognition.