Validating and Optimizing the Effects of Model Progression in Simulation-Based Inquiry Learning

Model progression denotes the organization of the inquiry learning process in successive phases of increasing complexity. This study investigated the effectiveness of model progression in general, and explored the added value of either broadening or narrowing students?? possibilities to change model progression phases. Results showed that high-school students in the ??standard?? model progression condition (n?=?19), who could enter subsequent phases at will, outperformed students from a control condition (n?=?30) without model progression. The unrestricted condition (n?=?22) had the additional option of returning to previous phases, whereas the restricted condition (n?=?20) disallowed such downward progressions as well as upward progressions in case insufficient knowledge was acquired. Both variants were found to be more effective in terms of performance than the ??standard?? form of model progression. However, as performance in all three model progression conditions was still rather weak, additional support is needed for students to reach full understanding of the learning content.     

Notes on contributors

Social cohesion in school is reflected in social discrimination processes and the complementary social roles of teachers, pupils, other staff and pupils' relatives. School social cohesion varies in level from high, characterised by prosocial interactions, to low, characterised by antisocial or violent interactions. Antisocial behaviour is usually embedded in specific interaction patterns between different social actors and is based on specific motives or stereotypes that elicit or justify this behaviour. Comprehensive study of these patterns is enabled by information and communication technology (ICT). The aim of this study is to use ICT to investigate social interaction patterns between personal and school characteristics of secondary school teachers and their curricular and disciplinary characteristics and experience of violence, including the motives they perceive when they are the victim, perpetrator or witness of six types of violence, differentiated according to the complementary roles of pupils, other teachers, other school staff and pupils' relatives. Three questionnaires were developed and used in a nationwide Internet‐based survey in Dutch secondary schools. This school safety monitor was completed in 2006 by 5148 teachers, 80,770 pupils, 1749 educational support staff and 629 school managers. Data were checked for reliability, scale homogeneity and representativeness. Pearson correlation analysis was used to examine the social interaction patterns in teachers' data. The results reveal violence‐specific social behaviour and social‐mirroring processes between teachers and pupils in particular. Furthermore, teachers who are younger, female or working in low‐attainment educational settings apply more curricular differentiation and collaborate more with pupils on disciplinary matters than their respective counterparts. Teachers who work in low‐attainment schools, who work in cities, who are homosexual/lesbian or who do not feel most at home in The Netherlands experience more violent behaviour as a victim or witness than their respective counterparts. In particular, teachers attribute the following motives to violence: physical appearance, behaviour, level of school achievement, a handicap, being religious, gender, sexual preference and ways of dealing with non‐conforming behaviour or punishments. Compared to teachers, pupils gave a broad array of motives for every type of violence. The conclusion is that Internet‐based data‐collection procedures provide a more comprehensive and systematic picture of social discrimination and violence motive patterns in schools than has hitherto been customary.     

Strategic Innovation in HE: The Roles of Academic Middle Managers

This article explains the development of, and presents a theoretical framework for, harnessing the roles of the academic middle manager in strategic innovation in Dutch higher education, thereby increasing higher education’s ability to learn, innovate and develop a competitive advantage. The framework is developed from theoretical models of role interactions in an educational context and in business organizations. It is also based on an empirical pilot study of the role of the academic middle manager and reviews of other relevant literature. The aim of this article will be to explore and discuss ways of analyzing the way in which academic middle managers influence strategic innovations in universities.     

Finding Out How They Find It Out: An empirical analysis of inquiry learners’ need for support

Inquiry learning environments increasingly incorporate modelling facilities for students to articulate their research hypotheses and (acquired) domain knowledge. This study compared performance success and scientific reasoning of university students with high prior knowledge (n = 11), students from senior high‐school (n = 10), and junior high‐school (n = 10) with intermediate and low prior knowledge, respectively, in order to reveal domain novices’ need for support in such environments. Results indicated that the scientific reasoning of both groups of high‐school students was comparable to that of the experts. As high‐school students achieved significantly lower performance success scores, their expert‐like behaviour was rather ineffective; qualitative analyses substantiated this conclusion. Based on these findings, implications for supporting domain novices in inquiry learning environments are advanced.     

Making the invisible visible: enhancing students’ conceptual understanding by introducing representations of abstract objects in a simulation

This study aimed to identify if complementing representations of concrete objects with representations of abstract objects improves students’ conceptual understanding as they use a simulation to experiment in the domain of Light and Color. Moreover, we investigated whether students’ prior knowledge is a factor that must be considered in deciding when to use representations of abstract objects. A pre-post comparison study design was used, involving 69 participants assigned to two conditions. The first condition consisted of 36 students who had access to a simulation with representations of concrete objects, whereas the second condition consisted of 33 students who had access to a simulation with representations of both concrete and abstract objects. Both conditions used the same inquiry-oriented curriculum materials, consisting of three sections that included physical phenomena with increasingly complex underlying mechanisms, so that the third section’s mechanisms were more complex in nature than those in the first two sections. Tests were administered to assess students’ conceptual understanding before and after the presentation of the curricular material as a whole, as well as before and after each of its three sections. Results revealed that the presence of representations of abstract objects was helpful for the first two sections, but only for students with low prior knowledge. On the third, most complex section, also the students with higher prior knowledge profited from the presence of abstract objects. From these findings, we conjecture that for physical phenomena with a lower level of complexity, students with high prior knowledge are able to mentally construct the necessary abstract concepts on their own, whereas for higher levels of complexity they need an explicit representation of the abstract objects in the learning environment.     

Multimodal Versus Unimodal Instruction in a Complex Learning Context

Multimodal instruction with text and pictures was compared with uni-modal, text-only instruction. More specifically, 44 students used a visual or a textual manual to learn a complex software application. During 2 103-116-min training sessions, cognitive load, and time and ability to recover from errors were measured. After training, the authors tested students' learning on trained and untrained tasks. The results for cognitive load, training time, and learning effects initially supported dual coding theory. The results show that even in this complex situation, multimodal instruction led to a better performance than unimodal instruction. That is, the multimodal manual led to a stronger mental model of the computer program, improved identification of window elements and objects, and speeded up the location of window elements and objects.     

Pupil-centred learning, ICT, and teacher behaviour: observations in educational practice

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is believed to contribute to innovative, pupil-centred learning environments. In these environments, curriculum characteristics fit pupil characteristics better and teachers act as coaches instead of lecturers. This article presents results from a study of teaching–learning characteristics and the role of the teacher in ICT learning environments. Observations were carried out in classrooms of 25 technology-rich primary and secondary schools in five European countries.
Qualitative and quantitative results show that in many cases ICT is used to facilitate traditional ways of teaching. Some examples of promising ICT teaching–learning situations are presented. In addition, quantitative results indicate that learning environments are more pupil-centred when there is a higher degree of curriculum differentiation and when teachers act as coaches. However, even if teachers act as coaches, they tend to stay firmly in control of the learning environment.     

Modeling and supporting the authoring process of multimedia simulation based educational software: A knowledge engineering approach

Traditionally, support for authoringeducational software focuses on the authoringprocess: the nature and sequence of theactivities that must be performed to deliverthe required product. As a consequence, themethods that are used tend to have a stronglinear flavor, which resembles the classicalwaterfall approach. Development strategies ascurrently used in software engineering shiftthe attention from activities to products(see De Hoog et al., 1994). A generalimplementation of this approach can be found inthe CommonKADS methodology (see Schreiber etal., 2000). The present article describes howthis new development approach has influencedthe design of an authoring system formulti-media simulation based educationalsoftware, the Simquest authoring system.     

格中的序收敛及间断

定义了半序集中网的序收敛，证明了在一个格中，对每一个ｏ－离散的网Ｘ（Ｐｘ，Ｑｘ）是一个闭间断，且每一个间断（Ａ，Ｂ）对应一个ｏ－离散的网Ｘ使得ＰｘＡ’＿及ＱｘＢ＊＇．另外还证明了：（１）有限个半序集的乘积中网是按坐标ｏ－收敛的，（２）半序集Ｐ中ｏ－收敛的网在Ｐ的任一个收缩Ｑ中也是ｏ－收敛的．     

Autonomy and Assurance of Quality: Two Sides of One Coin

This article gives an account of the innovative ways in which the Dutch university system has responded to a changing philosophy of the Government with regard to Higher Education: on the one hand more autonomy, on the other pressures to provide greater public accountability and internal renewal. The Dutch universities have answered the challenge by working out a system for external quality assessment This is done under the umbrella of the Association of Dutch Universities. Since similar pressures are also being applied to higher education systems in other countries, readers can draw parallels with their own system.