Researching learning outcomes: building confidence in our conclusions

The ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme is expected to produce knowledge of high social scientific quality and practical pedagogic value. It faces, in a particularly acute form, the issue of how confidence in its conclusions can be built. This article begins with some conceptual clarification of the notion of a ‘warrant’ for research findings and distinguishes between warrants in social research and warrants for educational policy and practice. It then, in the specific context of research on learning outcomes, proposes an integrated model that recognizes the importance of, and relationships among, criteria associated with research design and empirical work, theoretical coherence, relationship with other research, and user affirmation. It concludes by emphasizing the need for continuing debate about, and development of, the roles and relationships of ‘researchers’ and ‘users’.     

Academic users’ interactions with ScienceDirect in search tasks: Affective and cognitive behaviors

This article presents part of phase 2 of a research project funded by the NSF-National Science Digital Library Project, which observed how academic users interact with the ScienceDirect information retrieval system for simulated class-related assignments. The ultimate goal of the project is twofold: (1) to find ways to improve science and engineering students’ use of science e-journal systems; (2) to develop methods to measure user interaction behaviors. Process-tracing technique recorded participants’ processes and interaction behaviors that are measurable; think-aloud protocol captured participants’ affective and cognitive verbalizations; pre- and post-search questionnaires solicited demographic information, prior experience with the system, and comments. We explored possible relationships between affective feelings and cognitive behaviors. During search interactions both feelings and thoughts occurred frequently. Positive feelings were more common and were associated more often with thoughts about results. Negative feelings were associated more often with thoughts related to the system, search strategy, and task. Learning styles are also examined as a factor influencing behavior. Engineering graduate students with an assimilating learning style searched longer and paused less than those with a converging learning style. Further exploration of learning styles is suggested.     

Pupils’ Learning,Identity and Social Context: the case of Mary∗

ABSTRACT

This paper provides an analysis of social factors which influence the sense of identity and approach to learning of young children. The analysis is set in the context of a critique of national education policies which fail to appreciate the importance of the engagement of learners in learning processes. However, it focuses at a more detailed level on the social dynamics between children and parents, siblings, peers and teachers and the ways in which these evolve over time and influence identity. A model of key factors and processes is presented which draws on both symbolic interactionism and social constructivism and its use is illustrated through a detailed case study of the learning of one child over a three‐year period.

     

Towards a Sociology of Learning in Primary Schools

In this paper the aim is to highlight the absence of a sociology of learning in relation to primary education. Further, it is argued that there is considerable scope for cooperation between psychologists and sociologists in tackling this issue and one way will be explored in which this could be achieved by drawing on social constructivist psychology and symbolic interactionist sociology. In support of this suggestion, some brief illustrative material is presented, drawn from a longitudinal ethnography of a pupil cohort progressing through a primary school in the UK.     

‘An attempt to tip the scales’: music and embodied capital in an English secondary school

This article explores class, capital, and aspiration to social mobility in an ethnographic study of an English secondary school. In particular, the article considers the school’s musical instrument programme as a site for inculcating forms of capital, under the auspices of developing skills for upward social mobility. Bringing together Bourdieu’s conceptions of schooling with theories of materiality and situated learning, we contend that this school succeeds in cultivating new forms of embodied capital among students through the development of communities of musical practice. However, a tension remains between emancipatory aims of the programme and the sanctioning and championing of certain forms of dominant cultural practice. The learning environment of the instrument programme highlights the complex and conflicted impact that schooling can have on the development of cultural capital and on reproducing disadvantage and difference.     

Conceptualizing and conducting preoperative psychological assessments of cochlear implant candidates

A review of literature pertaining to psychosocial research on cochlear implantation is embedded in this formulation of how preoperative psychological assessments should be comceptualized and conducted. This article considers various purposes of such assessments, including those relevant to candidate selection, exclusion, and readiness. Particular attention is directed to the conceptualization and operational investigation of candidate readiness, which includes aspects of motivation and informed consent. Assessment in this context is framed as both a data collection and an intervention procedure. The article describes specific methodologies useful in preoperative psychological assessment, including questionnaires, interviews, and psychological tests.