Using Math Journals to Enhance Second Graders’ Communication of Mathematical Thinking

As an action research project, using mixed methodology, this study investigated how the use of math journals affected second grade students’ communication of mathematical thinking. For this study, math journal instruction was provided. The data gathering included pre- and post- math assessment, students’ math journals, interviews with the students, and teacher’s reflective journal. Findings of the study indicated that the use of math journals positively influenced the students’ communication of mathematical thinking and the use of math vocabulary. Additionally, math journals served as a communication tool between the students and teacher and an assessment tool for the teacher. The implications of this study regarding students’ writing ability and time constraints issues were also discussed.     

Attention-based long short-term memory network using sentiment lexicon embedding for aspect-level sentiment analysis in Korean

Although deep learning breakthroughs in NLP are based on learning distributed word representations by neural language models, these methods suffer from a classic drawback of unsupervised learning techniques. Furthermore, the performance of general-word embedding has been shown to be heavily task-dependent. To tackle this issue, recent researches have been proposed to learn the sentiment-enhanced word vectors for sentiment analysis. However, the common limitation of these approaches is that they require external sentiment lexicon sources and the construction and maintenance of these resources involve a set of complexing, time-consuming, and error-prone tasks. In this regard, this paper proposes a method of sentiment lexicon embedding that better represents sentiment word's semantic relationships than existing word embedding techniques without manually-annotated sentiment corpus. The major distinguishing factor of the proposed framework was that joint encoding morphemes and their POS tags, and training only important lexical morphemes in the embedding space. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, we conducted experiments comparing with two baseline models. As a result, the revised embedding approach mitigated the problem of conventional context-based word embedding method and, in turn, improved the performance of sentiment classification.     

Empowering Students in Leading their Education and Practice: The Design Workbook

How does education prepare future designers for current and future requirements of the field? An attempt to respond to this question is presented through the Design Workbook: a curricular project that has been proposed and developed over the course of three phases. In Phase One, the objectives, structure and format were defined: an online interface containing activities organised under five chapters that aim at building students’ creative confidence and sensitivity to surrounding contexts, and prepare them to lead their career path. In Phase Two, the website was developed to its first usable version, and content applied into live classes. Phase Three was marked with content refinement for the activities, navigation and feature redesign in the interface, and new ways of conducting the course. The article summarises learning points from the first two phases, and provides new findings and analyses from the final phase. It also includes a sample of the activities content, student works and feedback as well as the interface development stages. The methodology utilised throughout consisted of active research, as well as learning outcomes assessment using direct and indirect measures. Assessment results and classroom observations confirmed that students benefit greatly from visualising ideas, hands on activities, design thinking workshops, as well as from collaborative experiences, to avoid facing designer's block and to practise empowerment of self and others. Finally, challenges, opportunities and future implications are discussed, alongside implementation possibilities: The Design Workbook can run as a sole course, spread across the curriculum, and expand into the community.     

Improved Student Reasoning About Carbon-Transforming Processes Through Inquiry-Based Learning Activities Derived from an Empirically Validated Learning Progression

This paper reports on our use of a fine-grained learning progression to assess secondary students’ reasoning through carbon-transforming processes (photosynthesis, respiration, biosynthesis). Based on previous studies, we developed a learning progression with four progress variables: explaining mass changes, explaining energy transformations, explaining subsystems, and explaining large-scale systems. For this study, we developed a 2-week teaching module integrating these progress variables. Students were assessed before and after instruction, with the learning progression framework driving data analysis. Our work revealed significant overall learning gains for all students, with the mean post-test person proficiency estimates higher by 0.6 logits than the pre-test proficiency estimates. Further, instructional effects were statistically similar across all grades included in the study (7th–12th) with students in the lowest third of initial proficiency evidencing the largest learning gains. Students showed significant gains in explaining the processes of photosynthesis and respiration and in explaining transformations of mass and energy, areas where prior research has shown that student misconceptions are prevalent. Student gains on items about large-scale systems were higher than with other variables (although absolute proficiency was still lower). Gains across each of the biological processes tested were similar, despite the different levels of emphasis each had in the teaching unit. Together, these results indicate that students can benefit from instruction addressing these processes more explicitly. This requires pedagogical design quite different from that usually practiced with students at this level.     

How the second screens change the way people interact and learn: the effects of second screen use on information processing

The use of a second screen can enhance information processing and the execution of search tasks within a given period. In this study, we examined the learner's attentional shift (AS) between two screens and controlled secondary tasks (STs) in the media multitasking setting and its effect on the learning process. In particular, we analyzed how cognitive and emotional learning effects can be explored depending on the role of this setting. A between-subject experiment was conducted with 69 participants (simultaneous vs. sequential use of a second screen in terms of open versus closed STs). The findings showed that there was a greater difference in emotional learning effects than in cognitive learning effects for participants who used a second screen. In terms of estimated emotional learning effects of media multitasking, participants engaged in sequential use demonstrated lower anxiety levels and higher competence beliefs during learning compared to participants who were engaged in simultaneous use. Moreover, an interaction effect occurred in the AS between the two screens and in controlled STs of recognition memory. These results indicate that attentional change and controlled STs are key predictors of learning effects in the media multitasking environment.     

解决良构问题与非良构问题的研究综述

学校情境下的问题大部分是良构问题,而现实生活中面临的问题大多是非良构问题。解决良构问题的程序是激活图式表征问题,搜寻解决方案和执行解决方案。结构性知识与具体领域的知识是解决良构问题的主要成分。解决非良构问题的过程包括了解问题的陈述,确定问题是否存在,确定问题的本质,澄清问题产生的原因,识别与澄清不同的看法,生成与选择可能的解决方案,评估与实施解决方案。认知的调节、认知观和情感态度等非认知因素均是解决非良构问题的关键因素。总之,在问题本质、问题解决过程和问题解决成分三个方面,良构问题与非良构问题存在看较大的差异。     

Changes in science classrooms after experiencing an international professional staff development program

This professional development program was designed to prepare science teachers to be more student-centered and to implement newer goals for science instruction. These goals are to improve science teaching in ways that promote broader and longer-lasting learning. Secondary school science teachers in Korea are expected to follow a rigid national curriculum with large classes - often with more than 50 students. This study focuses on feedback and follow-up interaction with teacher participants who were enrolled in a month-long workshop in the U.S. before returning to Korea to implement the new ideas. Assistance was offered to help teachers develop teaching modules which were more constructivist while also assisting with assessment efforts that provided further evidence of use of the new teaching practices and their effect on student learning. Student mastery of concepts and improvement in student creativity were two aspects of the summer workshop experiences and these were evaluated to illustrate workshop effects on teacher participants in their actual classrooms. An erratum to this article is available at .     

Rethinking the hermit kingdom: US social studies teachers’ cross-cultural professional development in South Korea

This study explores the experiences of 34 US social studies teachers who participated in a cross-cultural professional development in South Korea, and the impact of the programme on the participant teachers’ perceptions and practices of global education. Drawing upon a postcolonial lens, this mixed-method study takes a critical look at (a) how social studies teachers who mostly had limited previous knowledge of and experiences with the host country experienced cross-cultural learning and (b) how the teachers’ experiences were applied to their perceptions on global education and actual curricular and pedagogical changes in the classroom. The findings of this study provide solid empirical evidence on the possibilities and limitations of such international professional development, particularly in non-Western contexts, and discuss the implications on global teacher education.     

Patterns of peer scaffolding in technology-enhanced inquiry classrooms: application of social network analysis

The purpose of this study was to identify types and patterns of peer scaffolding that occur during inquiry-based learning (IBL) group activities. It employed a single instrumental case approach that integrated quantitative and qualitative analyses of data gathered from 21 students in a ninth grade biology course. A verbal analysis, a content analysis, and a social network analysis (SNA) were performed to identify patterns in group interactions and refine emergent themes. First, nine types of peer scaffolding were identified and found to serve the goals of direction maintenance, cognitive structuring, and simplification. Second, three different patterns related to the high, mixed, and low prior knowledge levels of each group were identified. The high prior knowledge group provided peer scaffolding that focused attention on considerations key to developing their arguments, and this scaffolding may have improved the group’s work. In the mixed prior knowledge group, the students with greater prior knowledge were likely to support those with less prior knowledge. Together, these findings indicate the way students are grouped may impact observable patterns in peer scaffolding. Identifying the difficulties that learners face and the assistance they seek could help instructional designers and teachers identify areas in which students need support during IBL group activities. This study informs educators and practitioners of effective strategies for designing and implementing peer scaffolding to assist inquiry activities in technology-enhanced classroom settings.

     

Direct and indirect effects of online learning on distance education

This paper presents an exploratory study that investigates the effects of online learning on distance education students in an open university context. Two hypotheses are posited: (1) a direct relationship exists between students’ involvement in online learning and distance learning outcomes, and (2) an indirect relationship exists between these two domains via the mediating variable of an institutional Transactional Presence (TP), that is, a student's sense of the availability of and connectedness with an educational institution. Student learning achievement, satisfaction and intent‐to‐persist are used as indicators of outcomes of distance learning. The analysis of data garnered from 285 distance students reveals multifaceted relationships between students’ engagement in online learning, their perceptions of institutional TP and the three learning outcome variables. Besides the findings, the paper will discuss factors affecting students’ engagement in online learning in relation to different requirements, that is, optional or compulsory online use as well as the level of the course (undergraduate or postgraduate).