Development of an instrument for assessing senior high school students’ preferred and perceived laboratory classroom environment

This study aimed to develop an instrument, named the inquiry-based laboratory classroom environment instrument (ILEI), for assessing senior high-school science students’ preferred and perceived laboratory environment. A total of 262 second-year students, from a senior-high school in Taiwan, were recruited for this study. Four stages were included in the development of the ILEI: (1) item formulation, (2) content validation, (3) construct validation and (4) reliability calculation. The study revealed that the ILEI was valid and reliable. Most students showed a preference for a student-directed and teacher-guided hybrid learning environment. The development of the ILEI is likely to help researchers and teachers to more effectively understand student views of the laboratory classroom environment. Our profound hope is to utilise ILEI to improve teachers’ assessment and students’ learning in inquiry-based laboratory classroom environments.     

Beginning teachers’ conceptions of competency: implications to educational policy and teacher education in Malaysia

When any innovations or measurement procedures are introduced into the education system to improve or judge the quality of its teaching force, beginning teachers often have to adapt to these new concepts of what constitute a high quality teaching. This article contends that these new concepts neither necessarily match beginning teachers’ own conceptions about their own competency nor has it given beginning teachers a chance to be heard. This study provides an opportunity for beginning teachers’ ‘voices’ to be heard through phenomenography which is an interpretive research approach to discover what beginning teachers in Malaysia conceive and understand as competence in relation to what they do every day as teachers. The main finding of this study is the key role played by beginning teachers’ conceptions of competency which has provided strong implications for educational policies and teacher education. The findings suggest that teachers need to be represented in any quality improvement measures. Careful attention should also be paid to the school systems and to teacher training programmes to support and encourage teachers in their professional growth as competent teachers.     

Blocking between landmarks during 2-D (touchscreen) and 3-D (ARENA) search tasks with pigeons

Many studies investigating cue competition have focused on the blocking effect. We investigated the blocking effect with pigeons using a landmark-based spatial search task in both a touchscreen preparation (Exp. 1a) and an automated remote environmental navigation apparatus (Exp. 1b). In Phase 1, two landmarks (LMs: A and Z) appeared on separate trials as colored circles among a row of eight (touchscreen) or six (ARENA) identical response units. Subjects were rewarded for pecking at a target response unit to the right of LM A and to the left of an extraneous LM, Z. During the blocking trials in Phase 2, LM X was presented in compound with a second LM (A) that had been previously trained. On control trials, LM Y was presented in compound with LM B and a target in the same manner as in the trials of AX, except that neither landmark had previously been trained with the target. All subjects were then tested with separate trials of A, X, B, and Y. Testing revealed poor spatial control by X relative to A and Y. We report the first evidence for a spatial-blocking effect in pigeons and additional support for associative effects (e.g., blocking) occurring under similar conditions (e.g., training sessions, spatial relationships, etc.) in 3-D and 2-D search tasks.     

A student perspective on nontraditional graduate education

This discussion article seeks to uncover those aspects of nontraditional programs which carry the highest priority for students. Alternative graduate education is explored from the perspective of one student who has participated in two nontraditional programs. Highlighted issues include: changing roles and responsibilities for both faculty and students, problems with shared decision-making, the need for team building and problem solving, and the importance of maintaining open channels of communication.Dr. McDonnell recently completed the Doctor of Education Degree in Organization and Leadership at the University of San Francisco, San Francisco, California. Her Master of Arts Degree in Human Development was earned through St. Mary's College, Winona, Minnesota. She now lives in Bennettsbridge, Co Kilkenny, Ireland.     

Injury rates in professional soccer players during Ramadan

Many of the socio-cultural lifestyle and dietary changes that take place during Ramadan may affect the risk of injury in athletes, but little evidence is available. The aim of the present study was to examine the effects over two consecutive years of the holy month of Ramadan on injury rates in 42 professional players of a Tunisian top-level professional soccer team. Players were retrospectively organized into fasting and non-fasting groups and monitored for 3 months: 4 weeks before Ramadan, during the month of Ramadan (4 weeks), and 4 weeks after Ramadan each year. During Ramadan, training started at 22.00 h. The circumstances (training/match) and mechanism of injury (traumatic/overuse) were recorded. No significant differences between the three periods were observed for weekly mean training load, training strain, training duration, and Hooper's Index (quality of sleep, and quantities of stress, delayed-onset muscle soreness, and fatigue). Compared with non-fasting players, fasters had a lower (P < 0.05) Hooper's Index and stress during and after Ramadan. No significant difference in injury rates was observed between fasting and non-fasting players. Nevertheless, the rates of non-contact (6.8 vs. 0.6 and 1.1) and training overuse (5.6 vs. 0.6 and 0.5) injuries were significantly higher in fasting players during the month of Ramadan than before or after Ramadan. In conclusion, Ramadan, along with the corresponding changes in nutritional habits, sleeping schedule, and socio-cultural and religious events, significantly increased overuse and non-contact injuries in fasting players despite the fact that the training load, strain, and duration were maintained.     

Growth behavior of publications and patents: A comparative study on selected Asian economies

This study attempts to model the growth behavior of the number of publications and patents of South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Malaysia. Three competing growth functions, namely, simple logistic growth function, bi-logistic growth function and logistic function within a dynamic carrying capacity were considered. The findings provide insight to the diffusion process of science and technology, often measured by the number of publications and patents, respectively. The function that provides the best fit to the observed data was opted for explaining the diffusion process. The function with the best fit is the bi-logistic growth function for the number of publications as well as the number of patents of South Korea and Taiwan, the logistic growth function within a dynamic carrying capacity (LGDCC) for the number of publications and the bi-logistic growth function for the number of patents of Japan, and the LGDCC for the number of publications and simple growth function for the number of patents of Malaysia. The results suggest a dynamic self-propagating growth for the science and technology, and thereby a transition from science and technology-push to market-pull growth for South Korea and Taiwan. While a similar transition was observed for the technology of Japan, the growth in science had entered a maturity stage. On the other hand, the growth potential in science is dynamic for Malaysia, but its technological advancement is relatively lower and static compared to the other economies.     

Effectiveness of Multimedia Pedagogical Agents Predicted by Diverse Theories: a Meta-Analysis

Multimedia pedagogical agents are on-screen characters that allow users to navigate or learn in multimedia environments. Several agents’ characteristics may moderate their instructional effectiveness, including appearance, gender, nonverbal communication, motion, and voice. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis to test hypotheses from diverse theories predicting the effects of these agents’ characteristics. We tested predictions of cognitive load theory, cognitive theory of multimedia learning, computers are social actors, social agency theory, uncanny valley, and the action observation network. Our meta-analysis of 32 effect sizes (N?=?2104) revealed a small overall effect (g+?=?0.20), showing that learning with multimedia pedagogical agents was more effective than learning without these agents. As predicted by the redundancy effect of cognitive load theory and the coherence principle of cognitive theory of multimedia learning, 2D agents (g+?=?0.38) tended to be more effective than 3D agents (g+?=?0.11). As predicted by the computers are social actors hypothesis, most of the agents’ characteristics, including nonverbal communication, motion, and voice, appeared not to moderate their effectiveness. We conclude that multimedia pedagogical agents help learning through multimedia, and that students may be able to learn similarly from different types of agents.