Updating Relationships Between Communication Traits and Communication Competence

This study examined the degree to which six self-perceived communication traits are related to self-perceived communication competence (SPCC), both individually and collectively. The results indicate communication apprehension and shyness were strongly and inversely related to SPCC, whereas willingness to communicate was strongly and positively associated with SPCC. When examined collectively, several communication traits were found to predict SPCC.     

The role of instructional variables in conceptual change in high school physics topics

This study was conducted to determine the effect of three variables on conceptual change in physics. Ninth and 10th-grade students who, despite instruction, still held nonscientific intuitive ideas about the motion of objects participated in viewing a demonstration, engaged in student-to-student discussion, and/or read a refutational text about Newton's laws of motion. Students (N = 310) were randomly assigned within classes to eight groups representing combinations of the three activities and participated in pretesting, instruction, and posttesting. Posttest results revealed that reading the refutational text helped students change their intuitive ideas to scientific ones, while seeing a demonstration affected how students interacted with group and text on some measures. Discussing ideas in a group did not lead to significant learning of scientific notions but, rather, caused students to be less influenced by either the demonstration or the text.     

Interest-enhancing approaches to mathematics curriculum design: Illustrations and personalization

Two common interest-enhancement approaches in mathematics curriculum design are illustrations and personalization of problems to students’ interests. The objective of these experiments is to test a variety of illustrations and personalization approaches. In the illustrations experiment, students (n?=?265) were randomly assigned to lessons with story problems containing decorative illustrations, contextual illustrations, diagrammatic illustrations, misleading illustrations, or no illustrations (only text [control condition]). Students’ problem-solving performance and attitudes were not affected by illustration condition, but learning was better in the control compared with contextual illustrations. In the personalization experiment, students (n?=?223) were randomly assigned to story problems that were either personalized based on: a survey of their interests, their choice of interest topics, a randomly assigned interest topic, or the original nonpersonalized story problem (control). The findings indicated there were benefits for choice personalization both for performance in the problem set as well as on a later learning assessment.     

“Stop! You didn't read who wrote It!”: The concept of author

Virginia Lowe has lectured in both children's and English literature at several Australian teachers' colleges and is currently a school librarian. She has published a monograph,Adult Book Child, and several articles on books and young children.     

Effect of the implicit combinatorial model on combinatorial reasoning in secondary school pupils

Elementary combinatorial problems may be classified into three different combinatorial models (selection, partition and distribution). The main goal of this research was to determine the effect of the implicit combinatorial model on pupils' combinatorial reasoning before and after instruction. When building the questionnaire, we also considered the combinatorial operation and the nature of elements as task variables. The analysis of variance of the answers from 720 14–15 year-old pupils showed the influence of the implicit combinatorial model on problem difficulty and the interaction of all the factors with instruction. Qualitative analysis also revealed the dependence of error types on task variables. Consequently, the implicit combinatorial model should be considered as a didactic variable in organising elementary combinatorics teaching.     

一位美国老教师的生活与工作美国老师给编辑部的一封来信(三)

Virginia Hurt Bailey(美国) 阅读课第二部分是专题阅读。在这段时间里,学生阅读学术文章,读后用自己的话进行复述。阅读课的第三部分是文学精粹选读。10点40分-10点50分是课间休息。星期二和星期三,在这段时间里,我要在操场上值班,以防学生在活动时出问题。     

Getting Everyone to the Fair: Supporting Teachers in Broadening Participation in Science and Engineering Fairs

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Science and Engineering (S&E) fairs are a valuable educational activity and are believed to increase students’ engagement and learning in...     

Grammar and the lexicon: developmental ordering in language acquisition

Recent accounts of language acquisition propose that the knowledge structures that comprise language develop within a single, unified system that shares computational resources and representations. One implication of this approach is that developmental relations within the system become central to theorizing about language acquisition. Previous work suggested that lexical development preceded grammatical development, a developmental ordering with strong theoretical implications. One purpose of the current article is to test this developmental ordering hypothesis. Results showed that children (aged 16-30 months) developed lexicon and grammar synchronously. The second purpose is to demonstrate a recently developed method for testing developmental ordering, the nonlinear-mapping approach, and show how the method can be extended to capitalize on multiply determined developmental systems, such as language.