Children's Prosocial and Antisocial Behaviour,as Perceived by Children,Parents and Teachers

Within the context of a widespread concern with children's antisocial behaviour, especially bullying, the development of ‘whole‐school’ policies on bullying, and also recent national guidelines which emphasise the importance of fostering children's prosocial behaviours, this research examines the extent to which children, parents and teachers exhibit within‐ and between‐group consensus, both in their perceptions and relative judgements of different forms of child prosocial and antisocial behaviours, and in their responses to such behaviours. Less consensus was found in judgements of prosodal than of antisocial behaviours, both within and between groups, and significant between‐group differences are discussed in the context of the teaching of social behaviour.     

Linking teaching and research in an undergraduate course and exploring student learning experiences

ABSTRACT

In this case study, we first describe how teaching and research are linked in a master’s course on tissue engineering. A central component of the course is an authentic research project that the students carry out in smaller groups and in collaboration with faculty. We then explore how the students experience learning in this kind of discovery-oriented environment. Data were collected through a survey, reflective writing, and interviews. Using a general inductive approach for qualitative analysis, we identified three themes related to the students’ learning experiences: learning to navigate the field, learning to do real research, and learning to work with others. Overall, the students strongly valued learning in a discovery-oriented environment and three aspects of the course contributed to much of its success: taking a holistic approach to linking teaching and research, engaging students in the whole inquiry process, and situating authentic problems in an authentic physical and social context.     

An instrument for assessing primary students’ knowledge of information graphics in mathematics

Information graphics have become increasingly important in representing, organising and analysing information in a technological age. In classroom contexts, information graphics are typically associated with graphs, maps and number lines. However, all students need to become competent with the broad range of graphics that they will encounter in mathematical situations. This paper provides a rationale for creating a test to measure students’ knowledge of graphics. This instrument can be used in mass testing and individual (in‐depth) situations. Our analysis of the utility of this instrument informs policy and practice. The results provide an appreciation of the relative difficulty of different information graphics, and provide the capacity to benchmark information about students’ knowledge of graphics. The implications for practice include the need to support the development of students’ knowledge of graphics, the existence of gender differences, the role of cross‐curriculum applications in learning about graphics, and the need to explicate the links among graphics.     

The Actor–Partner Interdependence Model for Longitudinal Dyadic Data: An Implementation in the SEM Framework

In dyadic research, the actor–partner interdependence model (APIM) is widely used to model the effect of a predictor measured across dyad members on one’s own and one’s partner outcome. When such dyadic data are measured repeatedly over time, both the non-independence within couples and the non-independence over time need to be accounted for. In this paper, we present a longitudinal extension of the APIM, the L-APIM, that allows for both stable and time-varying sources of non-independence. Its implementation is readily available in multilevel software, such as proc mixed in SAS, but is lacking in the structural equation modeling (SEM) framework. We tackle the computational challenges associated with its SEM-implementation and propose a user-friendly free application for the L-APIM, which can be found at http://fgisteli.shinyapps.io/Shiny_LDD. As an illustration, we explore the actor and partner effects of positive relationship feelings on next day’s intimacy using 3-week diary data of 66 heterosexual couples.     

Drawing Pedagogies in Higher Education: the Learning Impact of a Collaborative Cross‐disciplinary Drawing Course

Drawing is taught in higher education across art and design but also, increasingly, in medical education, with a variety of aims and approaches. It is argued that there is a need, in both these disciplinary domains, to make more explicit the underpinning pedagogical approach to drawing and the impact that different approaches have on learning. The research described in this article focuses on an optional drawing course for undergraduate craft students and medical students. The course is run by the College of Arts and Humanities at a UK university and has a thematic focus on the human body. This qualitative case study sets out, in the context of selected theory about the teaching and learning of drawing, to explore what the learning impact of a particular collaborative model of teaching drawing was on a cross‐disciplinary student group. Findings included, with reference to Riley's framework of drawing pedagogies, that a range of philosophical and pedagogical ideas about drawing were blended from the teaching perspective in a way that enabled students from distinct disciplinary backgrounds to engage and learn. A shift was observed in students’ perceptions of drawing, with both sets of students questioning previously held assumptions about the use and value of drawing within their learning. Life drawing and anatomy laboratory drawing, in particular, provoked deep and challenging reflections about different cultural conceptions of the human body and the practice of collaborative drawing, with dialogic reflection, enabling insights to be developed into different disciplinary epistemologies.     

Measuring pre-service teachers’ Asia literacy and their preparedness to teach Asia

Asia literacy is a growing concern of the Federal Government in relation to the development of an Asia literate workforce. Despite 30 years of funded initiatives, the thought of teaching about Asia is a daunting one for pre-service teachers. This is due to the lack of Asia foci in university pre-service courses and complicated by the definition of Asia literacy. This study sought to identify the Asia literacy needs of 54 undergraduate pre-service students in a teacher education programme of study at a regional university. Results of this study indicated that few respondents considered themselves to be Asia literate and most did not believe they were ready to teach about Asia. However, the majority of respondents wanted to know more about Asia prior to graduation. The results indicate that much needs to be done to support students and universities in preparing students to teach about Asia.     

Infants make quantity discriminations for substances

Infants can track small groups of solid objects, and infants can respond when these quantities change. But earlier work is equivocal about whether infants can track continuous substances, such as piles of sand. Experiment 1 (N = 88) used a habituation paradigm to show infants can register changes in the size of piles of sand that they see poured from a container when there is a 1-to-4 ratio. Experiment 2 (N = 82) tested whether infants could discriminate a 1-to-2 ratio. The results demonstrate that females could discriminate the difference but males could not. These findings constitute the youngest evidence of successful quantity discriminations for a noncohesive substance and begin to characterize the nature of the representation for noncohesive entities.     

Coordinating learning analytics policymaking and implementation at scale

Many Latin-American institutions recognise the potential of learning analytics (LA). However, the number of actual LA implementations at scale remains limited, notwithstanding considerable effort made to formulate guidelines and frameworks to support the LA policy development. Guidance on how to coordinate the interaction between the LA policymaking and implementation is mostly missing, leaving a difficult challenge up to practitioners. In this study we propose a coordination model to support future LA initiatives at scale. We explore the problem by comparing two cases in Belgium and Ecuador. Following up we use the LA implementation timeline as a driver for planning the interaction between the policymaking and implementation. We continue by testing an application of the model with LA experts predominantly from Latin-American institutions, asking them to map low-level items of the SHEILA policy framework to four implementation phases. The results of this mapping support that LA policy building can be spread over time, that it can coincide with LA implementation at scale, and that both efforts can be coordinated. It is hoped that this study will provide additional guidance for future Latin-American and other LA initiatives.     

The effects of stride technique and pitch location on slo-pitch batting

In slo-pitch softball, the ball is delivered in an arc trajectory with a moderate velocity; hence, batters have time to adjust their stride technique based on the pitched ball location. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of stride technique and pitched ball location on the mechanics of slo-pitch batting. A two-way ANOVA of two locations of pitch (inside and outside) x three strides (open, parallel, and closed) repeated measure study was conducted in this study. The results showed that the stride technique and pitched ball location did not have a consistent impact on the participants across different batting conditions, so the study recommends slo-pitch batters to explore different stride techniques when striking the ball. Further, to better understand the generalizability of the findings, the results indicated that participants were quite homogeneous as a group. Hence, coaches and educators may apply the findings from this study to other players with similar skill level.