Personalized learning for the post‐mechanical age

This study describes an approach to learning and teaching that is structured as a project‐based context‐driven inquiry. The approach is positioned at the interface between knowledge‐generation and use, and grounded in a generic notion of responsibility for the future of bodily life. The intention is to move the debate beyond the exhausted language of rigid oppositions between the academic and vocational, the universal and contextual. The purpose is to identify and nurture a personal portfolio of competencies responding to the contemporary material condition of humanity. It is expressed in terms of the student's learning power, a manifold of new assessment criteria and methodological steps constitutive of what a student could achieve having progressed through a given course. This is an approach in which competencies are outcomes supported rather than led by subject knowledge. The course structure combines traditional instruction with innovative project and assessment components and also provides an opportunity for the student to get acquainted with an employment niche. The practical applications of this approach at university and secondary‐school levels have led to encouraging results for both staff and learners.     

Eye Contact Modulates Cognitive Processing Differently in Children With Autism

In humans, effortful cognitive processing frequently takes place during social interaction, with eye contact being an important component. This study shows that the effect of eye contact on memory for nonsocial information is different in children with typical development than in children with autism, a disorder of social communication. Direct gaze facilitated memory performance in children with typical development (n = 25, 6 years old), but no such facilitation was seen in the clinical group (n = 10, 6 years old). Eye tracking conducted during the cognitive test revealed strikingly similar patterns of eye movements, indicating that the results cannot be explained by differences in overt attention. Collectively, these findings have theoretical significance and practical implications for testing practices in children.     

High School Students’ Informal Reasoning Regarding a Socio‐scientific Issue,with Relation to Scientific Epistemological Beliefs and Cognitive Structures

This study investigated the relationship among 68 high school students’ scientific epistemological beliefs (SEBs), cognitive structures regarding nuclear power usage, and their informal reasoning regarding this issue. Moreover, the ability of students’ SEBs as well as their cognitive structures for predicting their informal reasoning regarding this issue was also examined. The participants’ SEBs were assessed with a quantitative instrument; their cognitive structures were assessed through tape‐recorded interviews and were further analyzed with the ‘flow map method’; their reasoning regarding nuclear power usage was assessed with an open‐ended questionnaire; and, then, their responses were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. It was revealed that students’ beliefs about the justification of scientific knowledge (an aspect of the beliefs on the nature of knowing science) were significantly correlated with their reasoning quality; the extent and the richness of students’ cognitive structures as well as their usage of the information processing mode, ‘comparing,’ were positively correlated with their reasoning quality. A series of regression analyses further confirmed that students’ use of the information processing mode, ‘comparing,’ was the most significant factor for predicting reasoning quality, while their beliefs regarding the justification of scientific knowledge was the other important predictor.     

Attachment,Acculturation, and Psychosomatic Complaints Among Hispanic American University Students

This study investigated adult attachment and acculturation frameworks of reported psychosomatic complaints related to perceived discrimination among a sample of Latino/Hispanic university students (N = 160). The model supported by the data suggests that attachment anxiety, acculturation toward the dominant cultural norms, and adherence to Latino/Hispanic cultural beliefs are important factors for perceived discrimination and psychosomatic complaints experienced by Latino/Hispanic students. Counseling implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Rethinking Nature and Nurture in Education

This paper evaluates how our understanding of natural talent affects questions of educational justice. We argue that education debates currently suffer from a naïve understanding of ‘nature versus nurture’ and present a more rigorous approach that allows us to see what is required for fair treatment of students. As it stands, there is controversy over the extent to which a student's achievements are a result of their natural talent, as opposed to the quality of their education. For those on the nature side of the debate, students who are performing poorly just are not cut out for academic life, and redoubling efforts at furthering their education is both a waste of resources for society and pointless torture for the student. For those on the nurture side, failing students are a sign of a failing education system. To make progress on educational justice, we must move away from attempts to simply assign proportional influence to natural talent and education, respectively, and instead look at the broader landscape of individual reactions to a range of educational environments.     

Violence and Vigilance: The Acute Effects of Community Violent Crime on Sleep and Cortisol

The data combine objectively measured sleep and thrice‐daily salivary cortisol collected from a 4‐day diary study in a large Midwestern city with location data on all violent crimes recorded during the same time period for N = 82 children (M_age = 14.90, range = 11.27–18.11). The primary empirical strategy uses a within‐person design to measure the change in sleep and cortisol from the person's typical pattern on the night/day immediately following a local violent crime. On the night following a violent crime, children have later bedtimes. Children also have disrupted cortisol patterns the following morning. Supplementary analyses using varying distances of the crime to the child's home address confirm more proximate crimes correspond to later bedtimes.     

Coexisting problem behaviour in severe dyslexia

A small group of children and young adolescent with dyslexia has severely impaired reading skills despite prolonged special education. These are the students in focus. In dyslexia, problem behaviour, internalised as well as externalised, has previously been reported, so also for the participants with dyslexia in this study. The aim of the present study was to obtain more in‐depth knowledge of the behaviour problems from various informants, representing different settings. This kind of information is imperative for identifying problem behaviour, and for planning and implementing remedial programmes. A clinical group of 70 students with severe dyslexia, due to phonological problems, and a control group of 70 without reading problems participated. The two groups were pair‐wise matched on age, gender, cognitive level and whether they lived in rural or urban areas. Mean age was 150 months, and mean IQ was approximately 100 in both groups. Parents, teachers and participants provided information on behaviour through the Achenbach questionnaires Child Behavior Checklist, Teacher's Report Form and Youth Self Report. Behaviour is, in these questionnaires, divided into eight syndrome areas called Withdrawn, Somatic Complaints, Anxious/Depressed, Social Problems, Thought Problems, Attention Problems, Delinquent Behavior and Aggressive Behavior. The three informant groups reported significantly more problems in the dyslexia group than in the controls in all the syndrome areas. Parents reported more children with dyslexia to be anxious and depressed, and have social problems and attention problems than teachers. They also reported suicidal ideations in nine participants with dyslexia. In addition, parents rated more internalising and total problems in the dyslexia group than teachers.     

The erosion of a method: examples from grounded theory

Since its original inception in the 1960s grounded theory has been widely used by many qualitative researchers. However, recently epistemologically different versions of grounded theory have been presented and this epistemological diversity among grounded theorists and the erosion of the method will be the major focus of this paper. The first section explores the question of what ‘erosion’ of grounded theory means for the practice of qualitative research and the epistemological assumptions embedded in different uses of grounded theory are discussed. Furthermore, three ways to use qualitative methods are conceptualized: epistemological, strategic and intuitive. Additionally, the first section describes the erosion that occurs when research methods are transferred from one epistemology to another. The second part of the paper raises the questions as to whether it is possible to transfer methods from one epistemological realm and theoretical stance to another one to do qualitative research situated therein and how the erosion of a method influences qualitative research. To elucidate these questions, examples will be drawn from grounded theory to illuminate the different uses of methods. Last, the authors ask why such a transfer would be attempted altogether. In this final part of the paper they discuss how grounded theory is used as a label, believing that much of the current popularization of grounded theory is based on power, privilege and authority.     

Using item response theory to describe the Nonverbal Literacy Assessment (NVLA)

The Nonverbal Literacy Assessment (NVLA) is a literacy assessment designed for students with significant intellectual disabilities. The 218‐item test was initially examined using confirmatory factor analysis. This method showed that the test worked as expected, but the items loaded onto a single factor. This article uses item response theory to investigate the NVLA using Rasch models. First, we reduced the number of items using a unidimensional model, which resulted in high levels of test reliability despite decreasing the number of questions, providing the same information about student abilities in less time. Second, the multidimensional analysis indicated that it is possible to view the NVLA as a test with four dimensions, resulting in more detailed information about student abilities. Finally, we combined these approaches to obtain both specificity and brevity, with a four‐dimensional model using 133 items from the original NVLA.     

Structured Constructs Models Based on Change‐Point Analysis

This study proposes a structured constructs model (SCM) to examine measurement in the context of a multidimensional learning progression (LP). The LP is assumed to have features that go beyond a typical multidimentional IRT model, in that there are hypothesized to be certain cross‐dimensional linkages that correspond to requirements between the levels of the different dimensions. The new model builds on multidimensional item response theory models and change‐point analysis to add cut‐score and discontinuity parameters that embody these substantive requirements. This modeling strategy allows us to place the examinees in the appropriate LP level and simultaneously to model the hypothesized requirement relations. Results from a simulation study indicate that the proposed change‐point SCM recovers the generating parameters well. When the hypothesized requirement relations are ignored, the model fit tends to become worse, and the model parameters appear to be more biased. Moreover, the proposed model can be used to find validity evidence to support or disprove initial theoretical hypothesized links in the LP through empirical data. We illustrate the technique with data from an assessment system designed to measure student progress in a middle‐school statistics and modeling curriculum.