The effects of summary production and encoding condition on children��s metacognitive monitoring

Two studies were conducted to investigate whether context variations were suitable to improve metacognitive judgments in children in a complex, everyday memory task. In the first phase of each experiment, participants were shown a short event (video) and gave judgments-of-learning (JOLs), that is, rated their certainty that they would later be able to recall specific details correctly. In the second phase of the experiments, participants took part in a memory interview about the memory event and gave confidence judgments (CJs), that is, rated their certainty that the provided answers to the memory questions were correct. Study 1 specifically investigated the potential positive influence of giving a verbal summary before the JOL-interview on metacognitive monitoring, whereas Study 2 had a closer look on the effect of intentional versus non-intentional encoding on JOL and CJ accuracy. Results revealed no significant influence of giving a summary and hardly any effect of encoding condition on metamemory monitoring although children from age 6 on showed adequate monitoring performance. JOL accuracy appears to be a complex process, which is even more difficult to influence in children than in adults.     

Twelve- and Fourteen-Year-Old School Children Differentially Benefit from Sensorimotor- and Multisensory-Enriched Vocabulary Training

Educational Psychology Review - Both children and adults have been shown to benefit from the integration of multisensory and sensorimotor enrichment into pedagogy. For example, integrating pictures...     

Multimodality,learning and decision-making: children's metacognitive reflections on their engagement with video games as interactive texts

This study examines how 31 middle-school children conducted multimodal analyses of video games. Over four consecutive days, students played video games for 30 minutes and then wrote written reflections about the multimodal symbols within the game and how these symbols influenced their interpretation and decision-making processes during gameplay. Students produced 124 reflections in total, which were analysed via template analysis to determine how children metacognitively reflected on different types of multimodal symbols and used those symbols to comprehend the games and make decisions. Results illustrate how students engaged in metacognitive semantic and syntactic processes with a variety of multimodal symbols, such as written language, dynamic visuals and abstract symbols, during gameplay that aided their understanding of the games and influenced their decisions. This study contributes to the limited empirical research on video game literacies and illustrates children's meaning-making processes while engaged with video games as multimodal interactive texts.     

Fostering Upper Secondary Students’ Ability to Engage in Practices of Scientific Investigation: a Comparative Analysis of an Explicit and an Implicit Instructional Approach

Research in Science Education - Inquiry-based teaching is considered as contributing to content-related, procedural, and epistemic learning goals of science education. In this study, a...     

Flowery math: a case for heterodiscoursia in mathematics problems solving in recognition of students’ authorial agency

In an innovative, progressive school, students were asked to solve a fairly routine mathematical problem using real money in a “real-world” scenario. Even though the school values students’ ideas, the reaction of the teacher to one student’s alternative modelling of the problem suggests that he was expecting a particular answer to be provided using routine mathematical models and thinking while not being interested in exploring the student’s unexpected alternative. We place his reasoning for doing so within broad pedagogical discourses that we think define the “allowable” responses of teachers and students in ways that inhibit meaning-making for both. These broad discourses are defined as the progressive constructivist approach, the scaffolding discursive approach, the situation modelling approach and the dialogic approach. We consider the advantages and the potential consequences each might bring to the case. We suggest that extensive consideration of pedagogical discourses in mathematics classes must be reconsidered both for how we understand students’ mathematical meaning-making and how we construct student agency in relationship to culture, whether as apprentices or authors.     

The identity crisis of educational planning

As long as educational expansion was considered to be decisive for achieving economic growth as well as social and political equality, the prospects and merits of educational planning were rarely questioned. However, the failure of educational expansion to produce the desired results, challenged the relevance of educational planning to such a degree that it is now suffering from an identity crisis. The author critically reviews traditional and contemporary technical approaches to educational planning, governmental planning activities, and the role of educational planning as a part of the political apparatus. Weighing up the possibilities and the limitations of educational planning, he stresses the need to build a new identity for it in order that it should be able to cope with the demographic, educational, economic and financial challenges of the 1980's.

---

Zusammenfassung Solange die Auffassung vorherrschte, die Expansion des Bildungswesens sei die entscheidende Voraussetzung für wirtschaftliches Wachstum, größere soziale Gerechtigkeit und mehr Demokratie, genoß die Bildungsplanung beträchtliches Ansehen und weckte große Erwartungen. Dies hat sich grundlegend geändert. Das Scheitern der anspruchsvollen Ziele expansionistischer Bildungspolitik verstrickte die Bildungsplanung in eine Identitätskrise. Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich kritisch mit der Entwicklung der wissenschaftlichen und politischen Bildungsplanung. Im Mittelpunkt steht der Wandel der Konzepte und Modelle der Planungsforschung. Die Überlegungen führen zu dem Fazit, daß eine Rekonstruktion der Bildungsplanung dringend geboten erscheint, um den Herausforderungen gewachsen zu sein, mit denen das Bildungswesen in der 80er Jahren konfrontiert wird.

---

Résumé Tant que l'on considéra l'expansion éducative comme le facteur décisif du développement économique, de l'égalité sociale et politique, les expectatives et les mérites de la planification éducative ne furent que rarement contestés. Cependant, l'échec de l'expansion éducative au niveau de la réalisation des résultats souhaités a tellement mis en cause l'importance de la planification éducative qu'elle souffre maintenant d'une crise d'identité. L'auteur procède à un examen critique des approches techniques nouvelles et traditionnelles de la planification éducative, des activités de planification du gouvernement et du rôle de la planification éducative en tant que partie de l'appareil politique. En évaluant les possibilités et les limitations de la planification éducative, il souligne le besoin pour la planification éducative de construire une nouvelle identité afin de pouvoir répondre aux exigences démographiques, économiques, éducatives et financières des années 80.

     

Education in the affluent society: Problems and conflicts

The author starts from the observation that in an affluent society, education loses its primary significance as an investment and increasingly assumes the nature of a commodity for private consumption. He discusses the problems resulting from this change and relates them to the development of an educational policy which, in the Federal Republic of Germany, is characterised by a conflict-laden contradiction between egalitarian and meritocratic goals.The social character of modern societies, with its preponderant orientation towards the market and towards conformity, transforms the school into an institution in which the pupils are guided by the principle of economic rationality, pluralistic educational contents are offered and consumed as goods, and good school marks and diplomas are seen as scarce commodities. School education takes on the nature of a methodically guided process of consumption tending to produce a lack of interest that has to be overcome by constant re-stimulation.To enable critically selective use to be made of the abundance of general and cultural opportunities offered by an affluent society with plenty of leisure time, it would be necessary to develop the individual's capacities in the artistic and spiritual sphere with no less care than has hitherto been lavished on productive capacities. At present, however, educational institutions are hardly able to do this. Being themselves dominated by the commodity character of education, they lack the necessary freedom. Furthermore, the excessive emphasis on achievement which influences all areas of education, including the artistic/cultural ones, inhibits the development of new skills in consuming, and in the use of leisure time. Current educational policy, on the one hand, aims at mass education oriented by the goal of equality with the optimal promotion of the individual, but on the other hand, allows for selection based on the supremacy of academic norms and standards, thus giving educational institutions a counterproductive dual orientation.

---

Zusammenfassung Der Autor geht von der Beobachtung aus, daß Bildung in der Wohlstandsgesellschaft ihre vorrangige Bewertung als Investitionsgut verliert und zunehmend Eigenschaften eines privaten Konsumgutes erlangt. Er diskutiert die daraus resultierenden Probleme und stellt sie in den Zusammenhang einer bildungspolitischen Entwicklung, die in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland durch einen konfliktreichen Widerspruch zwischen egalitären und meritokratischen Zielsetzungen gekennzeichnet ist.Der in starkem Maße durch Markt- und Konformitätsorientierung gekennzeichnete Sozialcharakter moderner Gesellschaften verwandelt Schule in eine Institution, in der sich Schüler am ökonomischen Rationalprinzip orientieren, in der pluralistische Bildungsinhalte als Ware angeboten und konsumiert werden und schulische Gratifikationen als knappe Güter fungieren. Unterricht erhält die Qualität eines methodisch geleiteten Konsumptionsprozesses, der tendenziell Interessenlosigkeit produziert, die mit ständig neuen Motivationsakten überwunden werden muß.Um die Vielfalt der Konsummöglichkeiten und kulturellen Angebote in der Wohlstands- und Freizeitgesellschaft kritisch-selektiv nutzen zu können, wäre es notwendig, die individuellen Konsumfähigkeiten als geistiges Gut nicht weniger sorgfältig zu entwickeln wie bislang die Produktionsfähigkeiten. Die Bildungseinrichtungen dürften dazu derzeit jedoch kaum in der Lage sein. Teils fehlt ihnen die erforderliche Souveränität, da sie selbst vom Warencharakter der Bildung beherrscht werden, teils blockiert ein überdehntes Leistungsprinzip, das alle Bildungsbereiche — einschließlich der musisch-kulturellen — beeinflußt, die Ausbildung neuartiger Konsum-und Mußefähigkeiten. Es ist Bestandteil einer Bildungspolitik, die zwar einerseits eine am Gleichheitsziel orientierte Massenbildung mit optimaler Förderung des einzelnen anstrebt, aber andererseits zugleich einer mit dem Vorherrschaftsanspruch akademischer Normen und Standards gekoppelten Auslese Raum gibt, wodurch den Bildungseinrichtungen eine kontraproduktive Doppelorientierung angesonnen wird.

---

Résumé L'auteur part de l'observation que, dans une société aisée, l'éducation perd sa signification première d'investissement pour devenir de plus en plus un produit de consommation individuelle. Il discute les problèmes qui découlent de cette modification et les rattache au développement d'une politique éducative qui est caractérisée en R.F.A. par une contradiction grosse de conflit entre les objectifs égalitaires et les buts méritocratiques.Le caractère social des collectivités modernes, essentiellement tournées vers le marché et la conformité, transforme l'école en une institution où les élèves sont guidés par le principe de la rationalité économique, où les contenus éducationnels pluralistes sont offerts et consommés comme des denrées, où les bonnes notes et les diplômes sont regardés comme des produits rares. L'éducation scolaire se transforme en un processus de consommation méthodiquement guidé et tendant à provoquer un désintérêt qu'il convient de surmonter par une constante stimulation.Pour permettre le choix judicieux et l'usage approprié des chances générales et culturelles offertes en abondance par une société aisée jouissant de nombreux loisirs, il faudrait développer les capacités de l'individu dans la sphère artistique et spirituelle avec autant de soins que l'on en a prodigués aux capacités productives. Actuellement, les institutions éducatives n'en sont guère capables. Etant elles-mêmes dominées par le caractère de denrée que présente l'éducation, elles manquent de la liberté nécessaire. De plus, l'accent excessif placé sur le résultat, qui influence tous les domaines de l'éducation, y compris ceux artistique et culturel, empêche le développement de nouvelles capacités à la consommation, et à l'utilisation des loisirs. La politique éducative générale tend, d'une part, à une éducation de masse orientée vers un objectif d'égalité avec promotion optimale de l'individu mais, d'autre part, elle tient compte de la sélection basée sur la suprématie des normes académiques et techniques, donnant ainsi aux institutions éducatives une orientation double et contre-productive.

     

Are older adults satisfied with their sexuality? Outcomes from a cross-cultural study

ABSTRACT

The present study intends to analyze older adult perspectives on what determines sexual satisfaction in old age. Four hundred and twenty-one non-institutionalized older parti- 10 cipants from three different nationalities aged 65 to 97 years were interviewed. All narratives were submitted to content analysis. This study’s outcome originated five themes: positive communication (k =.94, p <.01); supportive partner (k =.82, p <.01); feeling attractive (k = 81, p <.01); good sexual activity (k =.97, p <.01); and eroticism (k =.98, p <.01). 15 This study highlighted different determinants of sexual satisfaction in old age and emphasized the importance of positive communication and a supportive partner for older adults.     

Education as habitus transformations

Unlike a conventional reading of Bourdieu, this article focuses on his work with regard to the transformation of social structure. In the context of a rereading, from an educational theory perspective, the article proposes an approach that allows for the linking of empirically informed social theory, on the one hand, and biography research oriented to educational theory, on the other. Education, here, is generally conceived of as habitus transformation. For reconstructing the societal conditions of the possibility of education one needs to go beyond the habitus theory and its focus on actors and groups of actors. From the perspective of a theory of practice as proposed by Bourdieu, the concept that comes to mind is that of social field, largely neglected in the theory-of-education discourse. Based on a combination of biography analysis and discourse analysis is, then, presented as a perspective for a relational theory of education. The article aims to outline an empirical reconstruction of transformation processes between habitus and field.