How adolescents navigate Wikipedia to answer questions / ¿Cómo navegan los adolescentes en Wikipedia para contestar preguntas?

Abstract

In one experiment, we explored how high school students use hyperlink relevance cues while they navigate to answer questions from hypertexts. Current evidence has shown that students may navigate by either performing a deep semantic analysis of the relationship between the question and the existing hyperlinks, or by matching words in the question to words in the hyperlink labels. We focused on how students combine both cues during navigation, and how comprehension skills relate to the use of such cues. Our study revealed that 14 year old students (N = 53) selected hyperlinks by relying to a similar degree on both word matching and semantic overlap. Furthermore, when there was a conflict between an irrelevant link cued via word matching and a relevant link only cued through semantic overlap, students’ comprehension skills facilitated their initial selection of an informative relevant link. To conclude, we discuss the implications of these results for current models of hypertext navigation.     

Children’s and adolescents’ thoughts on pollution: cognitive abilities required to understand environmental systems

Pollution phenomena are complex systems in which different parts are integrated by means of causal and temporal relationships. To understand pollution, children must develop some cognitive abilities related to system thinking and temporal and causal inferential reasoning. These cognitive abilities constrain and guide how children understand pollution processes. Hence, ascertaining whether changes among children’s ideas of pollution are related to system thinking and inferential reasoning abilities could be useful in improving environmental education. Eighty participants between 9 and 16 years old were interviewed to evaluate how children explain different aspects of pollution-related systems. From the explanations found in these interviews, three progressive epistemic structures were reconstructed. The three epistemic structures differ in the type of causal and temporal relationship established by the participants and in the mechanisms that the participants used to relate the pollutant to its effects.     

Introduction to the special issue ‘How adolescents read and learn on the Web: internal and external factors (Introducción al número especial ‘Cómo leen y aprenden los adolescentes en la red: factores internos y externos’)

ABSTRACT

The World Wide Web has become a major information resource for adolescents (i.e., 10–19 years of age), offering an unprecedented amount of information on virtually any topic. While the Web can potentially offer new learning opportunities, it also presents several challenges. Reading and learning on the Web requires a set of advanced literacy skills that adolescents do not necessarily possess and need to develop in order to effectively deal with the complexity of information encountered online. This special issue brings together five empirical articles and a discussion paper that examine internal and external factors that are beneficial (or detrimental) to adolescents’ reading and learning on the Web, and contribute to explaining how young learners develop complex literacy skills. Theoretically, the special issue contributes to the conceptualization of what researchers refer to as ‘multiple documents literacy’. In practice, it informs researchers and educators of emerging empirical results regarding adolescents’ information behaviour, as well as on instructional strategies that can be effective for developing adolescents’ literacy skills.     

The long‐day childcare context: implications for toddlers' pretend play

Forty‐eight toddlers aged 17 to 31 months attending long‐day childcare participated in this project, which examined some of the influences of the day‐care context on their emerging pretend play. Ninety minutes of video‐taped observations were collected for each participant as they engaged in free play with their same‐age peers and their pre‐school‐aged peers. The play environment was assessed on a number of dimensions, including the provision of play materials, the quality of care and staff attitudes toward play. Additionally, the participants' weekly attendance pattern was taken into consideration. The complexity of pretend play was coded in accordance with Westby's Symbolic Play Scale (1991 Westby C A scale for assessing children's pretend play 1991 in: C. E. Shaefer, K. Gitlin & A. Sandgrund (Eds) Play diagnosis and assessment New York Wiley 131 161  [Google Scholar]). Two components of the long‐day childcare context—play with pre‐school‐aged peers and the unsatisfactory provision of play materials—were found to be significantly influential on the participants' complexity of pretend play. An attendance of four or more days in childcare was also found to be favourable. A number of implications for educational programming in the day‐care context arise from these results.     

Changing Kinesiology and Physical Education by Infusing Information About Individuals With Disabilities

Just as faculty are expected to refer to performance and behavior changes that occur by age, gender, and other factors, an infusion of information about individuals with disabilities requires us to focus on the range of human variability and its relation to physical activity across the life span. This call to infuse information about individuals with disabilities should affect most kinesiology/ physical education undergraduate and graduate curricula in institutions of higher education. Advocacy for this idea has been developing for many years (Hall & Stiehl, 1978; Sherrill, 1988; Stein, 1969). Such infusion could add to and enhance our ability to contribute to the broad goals of society. But for us to assume this role, we must change our curricula to meet our published mission of serving society. This change will help disciplinary and professional preparation programs produce a broader range of scholarly activity and provide leadership that other disciplines may envy     

现代火葬的出现与亡者的作业

欧洲在19世纪末才开始实行火葬,在技术先进的焚化炉中,通过燃烧使尸体迅速地化为灰烬。但当时火葬的出现很难被解释为科学发展的结果或经济上的必要,也无法归因于对死亡的新观念。只有将现代火葬置于和其他文化实践或政治主张的各种同构关系中,才能将其中的多重意义在一组组关系中展现开来。     

Exploring fourth graders’ sourcing skills / Un análisis de la capacidad de escrutinio sobre las fuentes de información de los estudiantes de cuarto grado

Acquiring information from the Web creates new educational demands even in elementary school. Children need to scrutinize source information (‘sourcing’) to choose trustworthy information. So far, few studies have documented young readers’ abilities to identify and evaluate source information. With two studies, we seek to gather more evidence on elementary students’ sourcing skills and use. In study 1, we investigate to what extent fourth graders can identify source information and evaluate informants’ expertise and intentions in simplistic, age-appropriate reading tasks. In study 2, we explore whether fourth graders spontaneously apply their sourcing skills when reading simplified multiple documents. Results suggest that fourth graders can successfully identify source information and evaluate informants’ expertise and intentions in simple and direct tasks but fail to apply this ability to more complex and implicit tasks. Implications for information literacy education are discussed.