Effects of different ways of introducing a reading task on intrinsic motivation and comprehension

This study compared the effects of two brief prereading instructional practices – hands‐on activities and prior knowledge activation – on sixth‐graders' intrinsic motivation for reading a text and reading comprehension. Both hands‐on activities and prior knowledge activation substantially improved reading comprehension relative to a control condition where students just read to answer questions and take a test about the text content. These effects did not depend on preexisting individual differences in basic reading skill, reading motivation or topic knowledge. Hands‐on activities and prior knowledge activation did not differentially affect reading comprehension, however, nor did either of them have any effect on intrinsic motivation to read the text. If used regularly in classrooms, brief prereading practices in the form of hands‐on activities or prior knowledge activation may result in knowledge gains that accumulate to build a solid conceptual basis for further, self‐regulated learning from text.     

Towards a Theory of Pedagogic Text Analysis

The present study examines why businesses and government ministries use and need occupational second foreign language (L3) skills, but fail to mention these in job advertisements. It contrasts data from two quantitative surveys of language use in business and government domains with two studies of the mention of L3 skills in job advertisements. While the former show that L3 languages are still used and still considered important and relevant, the latter show that such skills are hardly mentioned in job advertisements, not even as cautious requests in positions where these would be highly relevant. The authors discuss whether this may be due to the lack of L3 skills among new employees or due to the belief that English is sufficient, also known as “Anglophone complacency.”     

Teacher Education for Research‐based Practice in Expanded Roles: Finland's experience

Preparing teachers for a research‐based professionalism has been the central mission of teacher education in Finland since the mid‐1970s. More recently, as a result of such national policy developments as school‐based curriculum development and local decision‐making, the conception of teachers' work and professionalism has expanded. Drawing on experience within the teacher education programmes at the University of Helsinki and Åbo Akademi University, this paper discusses some of the programmatic issues that these developments have raised in class‐teacher, i.e. “elementary”, teacher education programmes. We focus in particular firstly on the research thesis that is a part of every teacher education programme in Finland, and the hallmark of the research‐based professional ideal; and, secondly on the emerging issues that derive from the need to incorporate the expanded understanding of the teacher's role within the curriculum of teacher education.     

Communications Technology

M.D. Fagan, A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: National Service in War and Peace, 1925-1975 (Bell Laboratories, - Whippany Rd., Whippany, N.J. 07981—$15.00).

Daniel M. Costigan Electronic Delivery of Documents and Graphics (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1978—$21.95)

Konrad K. Kalba, Electronic Message Systems: The Technological, Market and Regulatory Prospects (Cambridge, Mass.: Kalba Bowen Associates, 1978—$30.00, paper),

Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff, The Network Nation: Human Communication via Computer (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978—$29.50/17.50)

Robert Johansen, Jacques Vallee and Kathleen Spangler, Electronic Meetings: Technical Alternatives and Social Choices (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979—$15.95)     

Project work in university mathematics education

This article discusses project work in university mathematics education. The practice perspective is obtained as students and teachers from Aalborg University share their experiences. A theoretical framework is introduced. It includes the following key-terms: Problem-centered studies, interdisciplinarity, participant-directed studies, and the exemplarity principle. The contrasting of this theoretical conception of project work with the practice shows that the original notion of project work has been modified as a consequence of its encounter with practice. The modification can be perceived as both a success and a failure. To discuss this, different perspectives on project work in mathematics are suggested.     

Dealing with complex and ill-structured problems: results of a Plan-Do-Check-Act experiment in a business engineering semester

Challenged by increased globalisation and fast technological development, we carried out an experiment in the third semester of a global business engineering programme aimed at identifying conditions for training student in dealing with complex and ill-structured problems of forming a new business. As this includes a fuzzy front end, learning cannot be measured in traditional, quantitative terms; therefore, we have explored the use of reflection to convert tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge. The experiment adopted a Plan-Do-Check-Act approach and concluded with developing a plan for new learning initiatives in the subsequent year’s semester. The findings conclude that (1) problem-based learning develops more competencies than ordinarily measured at the examination, especially, the social/communication and personal competencies are developed; (2) students are capable of dealing with a complex and ambiguous problem, if properly guided. Four conditions were identified; (3) most students are not conscious of their learning, but are able to reflect if properly encouraged; and (4) improving engineering education should be considered as an organisational learning process.     

The changing nature of expertise: insights from the case of TAVI

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we interrogate the current views on medical expertise, and expertise more in general, by building upon the study of an innovative medical procedure called transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI). We find that phenomena like TAVI require that we modify our traditional views of expertise to acknowledge its social, material and distributed nature. We also find that in the case of TAVI expertise feeds upon the broad circuits of knowledge created by the combination of professional relationships, social ties and, increasingly, economic interests. Becoming and remaining an expert implies not only being socialised in a local regime of activity but increasingly also participating in, learning to navigate, and exploiting alternative and potentially competing circuits of knowledge, which may be controlled by private companies. The case of TAVI helps us to appreciate expertise as a translocal and connected phenomenon and foreground some of the implications of the emergence of proprietary circuits of knowledge.     

Concerns of new university teachers

Eighty-one newly appointed university teachers at the University of Copenhagen were interviewed about their concerns in connection with their forthcoming class-room début. It appeared that most of them had some previous teaching experience. Only one out of four had never taught before. Primary among their concerns ranked problems with their personal subject matter adequacy and with organizing and verbally presenting subject matter in an adequate form. A comparison of their chief concerns with the content components that are most frequently included in education courses for University staff, suggests that some of the latter have little relevance for specifically beginner teachers. A particular analysis of inexperienced new teachers relative to those with ample previous experience unequivocally supports the assumption that inexperienced new teachers are primarily ego-centered in their concerns whilst their more experienced colleagues are primarily teaching- or student-centered in their concerns about teaching. The implications for the design of training programmes for university staff are discussed.