A Classroom Study on the Relationship Between Student Achievement and Retrieval-Enhanced Learning

Retrieval practice has been shown to produce powerful learning gains in laboratory experiments but has seldom been explored in classrooms as a means of enhancing students’ learning of their course-relevant material. Furthermore, research is lacking concerning the role of individual differences in learning from retrieval. The current study explored the effects of retrieval in a large undergraduate introductory biology course as a function of individual differences in student achievement. Students completed in-class exercises that required them to retrieve course information (e.g., recalling definitions for terms and labeling diagrams) followed by feedback or to simply copy the information without retrieving it. A later quiz over the information showed that high-performing students benefited more from retrieving than copying, whereas middle- and low-performing students benefited more from copying than retrieving. When asked to predict their quiz scores following the in-class exercises, high-performers demonstrated better overall metacognitive calibration compared to middle- or low-performers. These results highlight the importance of individual differences in learning from retrieval and encourage future research using course-relevant material to consider the role of student achievement in classroom-based interventions.     

The citation impact of information behavior theories in scholarly literature

Theories of information behavior have been developed and used in a variety of disciplines to describe the needs, seeking/search/sharing behaviors, and uses of information among individuals and groups in a variety of contexts. While the development of a theory is a complex, evolutionary process, often involving many thinkers over a long period of time, there is generally a single or small group of publications that can be pointed to as the genesis of a theory. The genesis publications for information behavior theories were examined to determine the information behavior theories receiving the most direct citations in scholarly literature. The findings of this study may be beneficial to library and information science researchers in identifying influential and growing theories of information behavior for incorporation as the foundation of their own research.     

The effects of background television on the toy play behavior of very young children

This experiment tests the hypothesis that background, adult television is a disruptive influence on very young children's behavior. Fifty 12-, 24-, and 36-month-olds played with a variety of toys for 1 hr. For half of the hour, a game show played in the background on a monaural TV set. During the other half hour, the TV was off. The children looked at the TV for only a few seconds at a time and less than once per minute. Nevertheless, background TV significantly reduced toy play episode length as well as focused attention during play. Thus, background television disrupts very young children's play behavior even when they pay little overt attention to it. These findings have implications for subsequent cognitive development.     

Video-Based Analyses of Motivation and Interaction in Science Classrooms

An analytical framework for examining students’ motivation was developed and used for analyses of video excerpts from science classrooms. The framework was developed in an iterative process involving theories on motivation and video excerpts from a ‘motivational event’ where students worked in groups. Subsequently, the framework was used for an analysis of students’ motivation in the whole class situation. A cross-case analysis was carried out illustrating characteristics of students’ motivation dependent on the context. This research showed that students’ motivation to learn science is stimulated by a range of different factors, with autonomy, relatedness and belonging apparently being the main sources of motivation. The teacher’s combined use of questions, uptake and high level evaluation was very important for students’ learning processes and motivation, especially students’ self-efficacy. By coding and analysing video excerpts from science classrooms, we were able to demonstrate that the analytical framework helped us gain new insights into the effect of teachers’ communication and other elements on students’ motivation.     

Personality Dispositions,Expectancy and Context in Attributional Thinking

The purpose of the study was to explore the relationship between attribution and selected personality dispositions, as well as self‐serving attribution. Four hypotheses were formulated: (1) Attributions for positive events correlate differently with the five personality dispositions than attributions for negative events, (2) factor analysis and cluster analysis of attributions for positive and negative events and the five personality dispositions will generate a general bipolar expectancy factor, (3) self‐serving attributions will dominate irrespective of subcultural context, and (4) the dominance of self‐serving attributions will be stronger in an individualistic‐oriented context than in a collectivistic‐oriented context. One‐hundred‐and‐fifty students, selected from two educational contexts (one individualistic‐oriented and one collectivistic‐oriented), were scored on attributions for positive and negative events as well as on the five personality dispositions on the basis of an inventory. All four hypotheses were supported. Educational implications are discussed.