Cross-age tutoring: how to promote tutees’ active knowledge-building

Cross-age tutoring is characterised by status and age differences between tutors and tutees. Tutees are often inactive in this setting, because responsibility for effective learning is transferred to the more experienced tutors. This study focused on improving the outcomes of cross-age tutoring for tutees by providing tutors with a tutor training session that emphasised knowledge-building instead of knowledge-telling. The tutors learned to encourage tutees’ autonomy, competence and active knowledge construction. In a quasi-experimental design, an experimental group of 74 tutors, who were 8th-grade secondary school students, received the tutor training in knowledge-building, and a control group of 82 tutors received no training. The students in both groups subsequently tutored 583 3rd-grade primary school students in small groups on elementary aspects of electric circuits. The tutoring process was videotaped and coded. Trained tutors showed more knowledge-building and less knowledge-telling behaviour. In the tutoring interaction with trained tutors, tutees showed more active behaviour and tutors showed more restrained behaviour. Tutees coached by trained tutors reported more experiences of autonomy, competence, and intrinsic motivation and learned more than tutees instructed by untrained tutors. The study showed that cross-age tutoring can be improved by providing tutors with training that focused on knowledge-building.     

The function of annotations in the comprehension of scientific texts: Cognitive load effects and the impact of verbal ability

Students participated in a study (n=98) investigating the effectiveness of three types of annotations on three learning outcome measures. The annotations were designed to support the cognitive processes in the comprehension of scientific texts, with a function to aid either the process of selecting relevant information, organizing the information in memory, or integrating information with prior knowledge. Learning outcomes were measured by assessing student recall of facts, comprehension of the text, and mental model construction. Results show that different types of annotations facilitate different learning outcomes. In addition, we found that, compared to having only one type of annotation available, multiple types of annotations resulted in a higher cognitive load that resulted in lower performance, especially in tests of higher-level processing. This effect was stronger for low-verbal-ability learners, who showed lower peformance in treatments with multiple types of annotations than high-verbal-ability learners.     

Reconsidering the Ambitions and Position of Gifted Education

This article is a theoretical commentary to Robert J. Sternberg’s Active Concerned Citizenship and Ethical Leadership (ACCEL) model as published in the Roeper Review. Though the proposed model is attractive and a formidable attempt to reform education in a politically and economically turbulent world that all too often ignores ethics and wisdom and increasingly shuns critical thinking, this article focuses on the two equally formidable obstacles to implementing the model, namely, systems inertia and evolutionary dynamics, neither of which is addressed by Sternberg (2017). In conclusion, a suggestion is made for the reevaluation of ambitions and position in the light of what the ACCEL model is proposed to potentially achieve.     

Taming Test Anxiety: The Activation of Failure-Related Concepts Enhances Cognitive Test Performance of Test-Anxious Students

We investigated processes underlying performance decrements of highly test-anxious persons. Three experiments contrasted conditions that differed in the degree of activation of concepts related to failure. Participants memorized a list of words either containing words related to failure or containing no words related to failure in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, all participants initially memorized words related to failure, but one experimental condition subsequently required the intentional forgetting of these words, thereby, decreasing the words’ activation in memory. The performance of highly test-anxious participants in unannounced cognitive ability tests following the memorizing phase profited from the activation of failure-related concepts. Experiment 3 replicated this finding by contrasting a condition priming failure–related concepts with a neutral control condition. The results point to a mechanism of suppressing worrying thoughts that is detrimental to test performances of highly test-anxious persons. Bringing the feared threat of failure to their awareness prevents that suppression.     

Controlling contractual exchange risks in R&D interfirm cooperation: an empirical study

Suppliers and buyers of R&D results perceive two exchange risks: first, the risk to achieve a lower profitability on the innovation return than the exchange partner, second, the risk of the partner becoming a competitor by unplanned, one-sided knowledge flows. Both risks motivate opportunistic behaviour. The paper deals with the reduction of the perceived supplier risks. We analyse how an option on later negotiation of an additional continuous innovation return sharing which is based on contractual hostages can lower the perceived exchange risks. An empirical study examines how effectively these hostages lower the perceived risks.     

Revisiting the Role of Worries in Explaining the Link Between Test Anxiety and Test Performance

Educational Psychology Review - The inverse relationship between test anxiety and test performance is commonly explained by test-anxious students’ tendency to worry about a test and the...     

TPSTM a circulating tumor marker in breast cancer

Tissue polypeptide specific antigen (TPS) measures an antigenic determinant associated with human cytokeratin 18. TPS is a marker of tumor cell activity in contrast to markers related to tumor burden. The value of detecting circulating TPS lies in the early detection of recurrence by serial determinations and in the rapid assessment of the efficacy of the treatment. Pretreatment levels of TPS in patients with metastatic breast cancer are related with prognosis. Decreasing TPS levels during therapy monitoring indicate response and a fast response is correlated to favourable prognosis. Increasing TPS levels, in the presence of clinically stable disease or partial remission, predict disease progression with a considerable lead-time. Improved effectiveness in breast cancer management can be seen when TPS is used in combination with CA 15-3. When tumor marker determinations are applied in a proper way in the appropriate situation, the results can assist the oncologist. Thus monitoring of therapy in patients with metastatic breast cancer should be based upon serial TPS and CA 15-3 determinations in serum. The use of tumor marker determinations in the early follow-up interval following surgery to detect early tumor recurrence may be simpler, more sensitive and less expensive than imaging methods.     

Beyond Exam Results? Differences in the social and psychological perceptions of young males and females at school

This paper reports the views and perceptions of around 1000 students in their final two years of compulsory schooling in respect of self-efficacy, goal orientation and motivation, stress and interpersonal skills. Gender differences are also reported. The study found that most students were generally positive about school and their future and felt in control of their lives. However, whilst male students felt better prepared in terms of problem solving, they were more likely to rely on luck and others to control their successes than were females. Whilst most pupils enjoyed going to school, over half often felt stressed, bored or fed up with school, and most of this group were female. The majority of students, of both sexes, felt comfortable approaching and communicating with teachers and adults in general, although up to a quarter had difficulties in this respect.