The stepping stones of learning and evaluation

Based on the teachers’ lectures and evaluations we elaborate on a model of the aspects of learning. Inside the framework of this model three ways for solving a given problem relating to the previous teaching are presented.

We describe and analyse a method which is useful in selecting an evaluation task adapted to intended objectives, helps in the interpretation of the students’ performances and acts as a guide to the possible inferences about what the students acquire.     

教育中的新制度主义

制度理论一直将教育领域作为一个重要的研究对象。近十几年来,在教育领域出现了三个显著的变化,它们分别是教育服务提供从单一走向多元、教育系统结构从松散变为紧密以及教育制度重要性的增加。这些教育制度变化的新对于以往制度理论的基本命题提出了挑战,要求重新审视一些制度关系,如同形性与多样性、合法性与效率、松散性与紧密性、制度约束与制度创新、政府与市场等。这预示着对于教育领域进行制度研究的广阔前景。     

Performance Technologist Preparation: The Role of Leadership Theory Originally published in 1995, PIQ 8.4

This article explores the unique positioning of leadership theory and literature as a unifying and informing discipline for the preparation of performance technologists. Although the role of leadership could be emphasized in any of the settings in which performance technologists become skilled, university departments of educational leadership seem especially suited for programs with this emphasis. A sample course activity is shared and linked to the building of leadership skills. The purpose of this article is to describe the importance of leadership as an informing and unifying discipline for the preparation of performance technologists and to explore the impact of this orientation on performance technologist preparation.     

Predicting a Threshold of Perceived Facebook Post Success via Likes and Reactions: A Test of Explanatory Mechanisms

Individuals frequently engage in self-presentation via social media and can subsequently receive various simple communicative cues (paralinguistic digital affordances; PDAs) from which they may determine the success of their self-presentation, including Likes and Upvotes. Previous research has found these communicatively abstract one-click cues are interpreted idiosyncratically when received, but the quantity received matters to users in determining whether a post is “successful.” The present work probes explanatory mechanisms behind the use of PDA responses as a metric of self-presentational success, deriving hypotheses from social comparison theory, social penetration theory, and expectancy violations theory. Results from a survey (N = 255) reveal that social comparison and communicative reciprocity provide explanatory power regarding the threshold of Likes and Reactions to a Facebook post needed to consider a post successful.     

Infant and Toddler Child-Care Quality and Stability in Relation to Proximal and Distal Academic and Social Outcomes

This study considered the quality and stability of infant and toddler nonparental child care from 6 to 36 months in relation to language, social, and academic skills measured proximally at 36 months and distally at kindergarten. Quality was measured separately as caregiver–child verbal interactions and caregiver sensitivity, and stability was measured as having fewer sequential child-care caregivers. This longitudinal examination involved a subsample (N = 1,055) from the Family Life Project, a representative sample of families living in rural counties in the United States. Structural equation modeling revealed that children who experienced more positive caregiver–child verbal interactions had higher 36-month language skills, which indirectly led to higher kindergarten academic and social skills. Children who experienced more caregiver stability had higher kindergarten social skills.     

Self-Direction, Values and Truth: Towards an Unpostmodern Re-examination

Despite its exalted status in post-war analytical educational philosophy as probably the main aim of liberal education, the basic philosophical psychology of autonomy or self-determination is prey to certain not widely acknowledged conceptual difficulties. In relation to this problem, the present paper explores different conceptions of evaluation and competing liberal and communitarian conceptions of rational choice and decision, to the ultimate end of defending a crucial connection—discerned by many ancient and modern philosophers—between rational self-direction and the possibility of objective knowledge and truth.