Do individual differences in children’s curiosity relate to their inquiry-based learning?

This study investigates how individual differences in 7- to 9-year-olds' curiosity relate to the inquiry-learning process and outcomes in environments differing in structure. The focus on curiosity as individual differences variable was motivated by the importance of curiosity in science education, and uncertainty being central to both the definition of curiosity and the inquiry-learning environment. Curiosity was assessed with the Underwater Exploration game (Jirout, J., & Klahr, D. (2012). Children's scientific curiosity: In search of an operational definition of an elusive concept. Developmental Review, 32, 125–160. doi:10.1016/j.dr.2012.04.002), and inquiry-based learning with the newly developed Scientific Discovery task, which focuses on the principle of designing informative experiments. Structure of the inquiry-learning environment was manipulated by explaining this principle or not. As intelligence relates to learning and possibly curiosity, it was taken into account. Results showed that children's curiosity was positively related to their knowledge acquisition, but not to their quality of exploration. For low intelligent children, environment structure positively affected their quality of exploration, but not their knowledge acquisition. There was no interaction between curiosity and environment structure. These results support the existence of two distinct inquiry-based learning processes – the designing of experiments, on the one hand, and the reflection on performed experiments, on the other – and link children's curiosity to the latter process.     

Multilevel correlates of behavioral resilience among children in child welfare

Resilience, defined as positive adaptation and functioning following exposure to significant adversity, is an important topic of investigation in child welfare. The current study used data from the Ontario Looking After Children (OnLAC) project to estimate the prevalence of behavioral resilience (i.e., lower frequency of conduct and emotional problems, higher frequency of prosocial behavior) in 531 5–9 year olds living in out-of-home care, and to determine how behaviorally-resilient children are functioning in other domains (i.e., peer relationships and academic performance). Furthermore, hierarchical linear modeling was used to examine the contribution of four levels of analysis (i.e., child, family, child welfare worker, and child welfare agency) on behaviors and to identify the contribution of predictor variables within each of these levels. Findings indicated that 50–70% of children exhibited resilience on one behavioral outcome while approximately 30% showed resilience on at least two of the outcomes. Also, 8.4–9.6% exhibited resilience on one of the behavioral outcomes in addition to peer relationships and academic performance. The child level accounted for the highest proportion of total explained variance in behavioral outcomes, followed by the family-, child welfare worker-, and child welfare agency-levels. A number of child and foster family variables predicted behavioral functioning. Findings indicate that it is important to inquire about children's functioning across multiple domains to obtain a comprehensive developmental assessment. Also, child and foster family characteristics appear to play considerable roles in the promotion of behavioral resilience.     

“When I’m drawing,I see pictures in my head.”: secondary school students constructing an image of the past by means of a drawing task and a writing task

The past is not in the classroom to observe and study. Thus, creating a lively and understandable image of a past period or situation is an achievement to be learned. A variety of tasks can be used to stimulate students to create an image of the past. In this experimental study, 151 grade 9 students (14–16 years old) participated by completing a drawing task or a writing task on the Roman Forum in Ancient Rome. Their products were compared. Additionally, the students’ perceptions of the tasks were explored by means of a questionnaire and an interview. The findings show that the written products contained more information elements than the drawings. However, in terms of the historical plausibility of the product, the drawn products and written products were comparable. Students who made a drawing reported higher situational interest than students who wrote a text.

     

Feeding forward from summative assessment: the Essay Feedback Checklist as a learning tool

Owing to the increasing diversity of assessments in higher education, feedback should be provided to students in a format that can assist future and alternative work. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of the Essay Feedback Checklist on future alternative assessments. Participants were assigned to one of two groups, one of which completed the checklist prior to assessment 1 (essay) and received feedback using this method. Attainment on assessment 1 and assessment 2 (examination) were taken as pre- and post-test scores. Results revealed increased assessment scores for the checklist group, compared to those who received conventional feedback. Focus group data indicated that students particularly liked elements of the checklist as a feedback method, but potential drawbacks were also highlighted. Implications and future use of the checklist is then discussed.     

‘I Saw Angry People and Broken Statues’: Historical Empathy in Secondary History Education

Tasks which invite students to identify with historical actors and describe their perspectives are a common phenomenon in history education. The aim of this study is to explore the differences in students’ answers when completing a writing task in first person (‘imagine you are in the past’) or in third person (‘imagine someone in the past’), or a task in which such imagination is not explicitly asked. Furthermore we investigated the effects of the type of task on topic knowledge and situational interest. Students in Dutch secondary education (N = 254) participated by completing a task on the Dutch Iconoclasm. Our analysis of student answers focused on aspects of historical empathy: historical contextualization, affective elements and perspective taking.

Results were that all students gained some knowledge from the task, regardless of the type of task they completed. Students’ situational interest also did not differ between the three tasks. However, students’ written work showed that the first- and third-person writing tasks stimulated students to imagine concrete details of the past and emotions of historical actors. Students who were not explicitly asked to imagine themselves or someone in the past included more perspectives into their writings. Students who completed the task in first person tended to show more presentism and moral judgements of the past than students who completed a task in third person.     

List of Guest Reviewers—Volume 15

This study compared the affordances of 4 multimedia learning environments for specific learning processes. The environments covered the same domain but used different instructional approaches: (a) hypermedia learning, (b) observational learning, (c) self-explanation-based learning, and (d) inquiry learning. Although they all promote an active attitude, they differ in the specific learning processes they intend to foster. In earlier research (Eysink et al., 2009 Eysink, T. H. S., de Jong, T., Berthold, K., Kolloffel, B., Opfermann, M. and Wouters, P. 2009. Learner performance in multimedia learning arrangements: An analysis across instructional approaches. American Educational Research Journal, 46: 1107–1149. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), we found that learners involved in self-explanation-based or inquiry learning had the highest learning outcomes. In these approaches learners were required to generate (parts of) the subject matter, from which we concluded that they presumably stimulated learners to elaborate. Therefore, in the present study we expected that learners involved in self-explanation-based or inquiry learning would engage in more learning processes connected to elaboration than would learners involved in hypermedia or observational learning. Forty participants worked through the learning environments while thinking aloud; their protocols were coded using a generic learning processes scheme. Results showed that self-explanation-based learning and inquiry learning led to greater engagement in learning processes in general and more elaborative processes in particular. The results suggest that elaboration is indeed the key process explaining differences in learning across different instructional approaches within multimedia learning environments.