Self Organising Wayfinding Support for Lifelong Learners

Lifelong learning puts learner self-direction centre-stage. However, increased responsibility should not come at the price of over-burdening or abandonment of learners as they progress along their learning journey. This paper introduces an approach to wayfinding support for lifelong learners based on self-organisation theory. It describes an architecture which supports the recording, processing and presentation of collective learner behaviour designed to create a feedback loop informing learners of successful paths towards the attainment of learning goals. The approach is presented as an alternative to methods of achieving adaptation in hypermedia-based learning environments which involve learner modelling. The article concludes with a discussion of the questions being addressed in our ongoing research.     

Implementing the flipped classroom: an exploration of study behaviour and student performance

The flipped classroom is becoming more popular as a means to support student learning in higher education by requiring students to prepare before lectures and actively engaging students during lectures. While some research has been conducted into student performance in the flipped classroom, students’ study behaviour throughout a flipped course has not been investigated. This study explored students’ study behaviour throughout a flipped and a regular course by means of bi-weekly diaries. Furthermore, student references to their learning regulation were explored in course evaluations. Results from the diaries showed that students’ study behaviour in the flipped course did not appear to be very different from that of students in a regular course. Furthermore, study behaviour did not appear strongly related to student performance in both the flipped and the regular course. Exploration of student references to their learning regulation in the course evaluations showed that some students experienced the flipped course design as intended to support their learning process. Other students, however, demonstrated resistance to changing their study behaviour even though changing study behaviour is expected in order to benefit from the flipped classroom. Further research on the relationship between students’ learning regulation and actual study behaviour and course results is necessary to understand when and why implementing the flipped classroom is successful. Recommendations that may help more effective flipped classroom implementation include considering the prior history between students and instructor(s), the broader curriculum context, and frequent expectation communication especially with large numbers of students and non-mandatory lecture attendance.     

Precariousness under the new psychological contract: the effect on trust and the willingness to converse and share knowledge

This paper argues that the traditional employment relationship based on long-term commitment and reciprocity has been replaced by one which incorporates a high level of precariousness and that individuals form perceptions of the trust they have in the organisation based on their view of the psychological contract. This paper develops a model of these perceptions and develops six propositions about an individual's level of trust in the organisation, management and fellow workers and their belief that their expectations will be progressively met and that they will be compensated in the long term for their contribution. These perceptions and the six propositions developed in the paper have profound ramifications for the willingness of individuals to converse and potentially to share their knowledge with others for the benefit of the organisation, because high levels of trust will be needed before individuals will be predisposed to start to converse and exhibit a willingness to share their knowledge.     

Co-designing a civics curriculum: young people,democratic deficit and political renewal in the EU

Contemporary discussion of the ‘crisis in democracy’ displays a tendency to see young people as the problem because they are ‘apolitical’, ‘apathetic’ and ‘disengaged’, or point to deficiencies in institutions deemed responsible for civic education. This discussion normally comes as a prelude to calls for more civics education. This article points to a renewal of politics at the hands of young people relying on new media, and draws on evidence like survey research, case studies and action research projects. This political renewal is occurring largely in response to the assumption of political elites that a ‘politics-as-usual’ will suffice to address the major political challenges of our time. Against the assumption that teachers, curriculum experts and policy-makers already know what kinds of knowledge and skills students need to become good citizens, we make a case for co-designing a contemporary citizenship curriculum with young people to be used for the professional development of policy-makers. We argue that such an intervention is likely to have a salutary educational effect on policy-makers, influence how they see young people’s political engagement and how they set policy agendas. The article also canvasses the protocols such a project might observe.     

Prefix identification in the reading of Dutch bisyllabic words

Two experiments were conducted in order to explore the role of prefix identification in the reading of Dutch bisyllabic words. Although Dutch orthography is highly regular, several deviations from a one-to-one correspondence exist. A case in point is the grapheme E which can represent the vowels ε, e and œ in polysyllabic words. In Experiment 1, 33 third-grade children and 46 sixth-grade children were presented a list of randomly ordered bisyllabic words starting with the letter string BE and the first syllable being (1) a real prefix, (2) a phonological prefix (same sound pattern as a prefix), or (3) a pseudoprefix (sound pattern deviant from a prefix). Pseudowords starting with the same letter string were also presented. The results showed that words starting with a real or a phonological prefix were identified more accurately than words starting with a pseudoprefix. For the pseudowords, a predominant interpretation of the first part as a prefix was also evidenced. In Experiment 2, a lexical decision task was administered to 35 third-grade children, 33 sixth-grade children, and 26 adults. Words with a phonological prefix and words with a pseudoprefix were randomly presented along with other word types. The data showed both children and adults to retrieve words with phonological prefixes more quickly and more accurately than words with a pseudoprefix. The results are discussed with reference to current models of word decoding.     

Training in phonemic segmentation: The effects of visual support

Two experimental studies examined the effects of different types of phonemic segmentation training on phonemic segmentation, reading and spelling. Children with learning disabilities, who were weak in phonemic segmentation, were trained with the use of diagrams and alphabet letters, with alphabet letters only, or with no visual support at all (the control condition). For this purpose three computer-assisted training programs were developed. In the first experiment, 48 children were assigned to one of the three programs. The training period lasted five weeks. Although in each training program the children improved their phonemic segmentation skill, there were no significant differences among the three training programs. This result may have been influenced by the different types of feedback that were provided in the three training programs. In a second experiment, therefore, these differences in feedback were eliminated and 49 different children were trained with the same three programs. The results of this experiment, however, were the same as those of the first experiment. The finding that visual support had no beneficial effects could therefore not be attributed to differences in explicit feedback. It was concluded that with these children, in contrast to preschoolers, phonemic segmentation training using visual support does not have any advantage over auditory training alone. The results of this study indicate that preschoolers and children with reading and spelling problems cannot be treated in the same way. It underlines the importance of further examination of the problems that poor readers and poor spellers encounter in grasping the structure of spoken language.     

Assessing highly‐creative ability1

This paper presents a psychological perspective of the educational dilemma of assessing highly (high‐level) creative ability (with some connections to contemporary philosophical debate). Assessment of highly‐creative ability is a topic of longstanding debate involving questions of what constitutes creativity; whether the creative mental process is essentially intuitive or essentially rational; whether creative ability could or should be reduced to quantifiable parameters; and whether the most important aspects of creative achievement reside in the initial thinking (invention of ideas) or in the subsequent process of development of the idea (making a work of art, design, etc) or in the end product (the work of art or design itself). The debate is fueled by various philosophical, psychological and educational perspectives, all of which are continuously evolving. As a consequence, learning objectives and assessment criteria are ambiguous and confound the enhancement of creative ability that is the primary purpose of higher education. This paper traces the research and development path that led to an innovative ‘authenticative assessment’ approach to assessing highly‐creative ability that offers a promising solution.