Language and theory of mind: meta-analysis of the relation between language ability and false-belief understanding

Numerous studies show that children's language ability is related to false-belief understanding. However, there is considerable variation in the size of the correlation reported. Using data from 104 studies (N=8,891), this meta-analysis determines the strength of the relation in children under age 7 and examines moderators that may account for the variability across studies--including aspect of language ability assessed, type of false-belief task used, and direction of effect. The results indicate a moderate to large effect size overall that remains significant when age is controlled. Receptive vocabulary measures had weaker relations than measures of general language. Stronger effects were found from earlier language to later false belief than the reverse. Significant differences were not found among types of false-belief task.     

How to Drink From a Fire Hose Without Drowning: Collection Assessment in a Numbers-Driven Environment

As collection budgets have dwindled, library acquisitions has become a data-driven field that relies on hard numbers. Libraries are struggling with the demands of adapting to a numbers-driven environment, both from a personnel and a data management perspective. This article includes a literature review, survey results, and practical advice that can be applied to most library environments. A model of transferable outcomes is introduced that encourages libraries to create a data pool of statistical information that can be applied to collections decisions in a variety of ways to quantify the impact of library resources to the broader community.     

A discursive question: Supporting student-authored multiple choice questions through peer-learning software in non-STEMM disciplines

Peer-learning that engages students in multiple choice question (MCQ) formulation promotes higher task engagement and deeper learning than simply answering MCQ’s in summative assessment. Yet presently, the literature detailing deployments of student-authored MCQ software is biased towards accounts from Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths and Medicine (STEMM) subjects, rather than discursive subjects or disciplines where content may contain fewer absolute facts and objective metrics and more nuance. We report on qualitative and quantitative findings from a semester-long deployment of a peer-learning software package (PeerWise) in a 140-student course on Interaction Design. PeerWise enables students to author, rate and comment upon their peers’ MCQ questions. The platform was enthusiastically adopted as a revision aid, yet overall question quality was poor and students expressed difficulty in translating the discursive nature of the course content into MCQs with only one correct answer. In addressing these shortcomings, this paper offers specific recommendations to instructors of more discursive subjects using student-led MCQ authoring platforms, and further, how platforms such as PeerWise may be adapted to better suit disciplines characterised by discursive content. We propose alternative approaches to moderation and two suggestions for potential amendments to the software itself.     

Do Science Teachers Distinguish Between Their own Learning and the Learning of Their Students?

Learning beliefs influence learning and teaching. For this reason, teachers and teacher educators need to be aware of them. To support students’ knowledge construction, teachers must develop appropriate learning and teaching beliefs. Teachers appear to have difficulties when analysing students’ learning. This seems to be due to the inability to differentiate the beliefs about their students’ learning from those about their own learning. Both types of beliefs seem to be intertwined. This study focuses on whether pre-service teachers’ beliefs about their own learning are identical to those about their students’ learning. Using a sample of pre-service teachers, we measured general beliefs about “constructivist” and “transmissive” learning and science-specific beliefs about “connectivity” and “taking pre-concepts into account”. We also analysed the development of these four beliefs during teacher professionalisation by comparing beginning and advanced pre-service teachers. Our results show that although pre-service teachers make the distinction between their own learning and the learning of their students for the general tenets of constructivist and transmissive learning, there is no significant difference for science-specific beliefs. The beliefs pre-service teachers hold about their students’ science learning remain closely tied to their own.     

A care-infused market tale: on (not) maintaining relationships of trust in energy retrofit products

ABSTRACT

Issues of maintenance offer exceptional opportunities for advancing our understanding of how market-driven innovation can meet societal objectives for energy transitions. In this article, I present a case study of ongoing attempts by two spin-outs and one start-up to stabilise innovative socio-technical agencements – ‘customer journeys’ – designed to catalyse economic exchange of certain singular goods – energy retrofit products – in the Netherlands. This market-driven innovation relies on sustaining carefully crafted relationships of trust among supply-chain actants and homeowners. I mobilise the analytical lens of ‘care’ to show how the multiplicity of connections that form through socio-technical agencements – and function as a market – are tentative, contested, and unpredictable. Trust relationships are in a constant process of becoming through contestation and convergence among supply-chain actants. In doing so, I expose the precarious and arduous work involved in maintaining a market for singular public goods. This implies a knowledge politics as well: in a call to sensitise us, market scholars, to processes of maintenance integral to market-driven innovation for energy transitions I propose to advance Callon’s call to civilise markets by sharing troubled, though encouraging, care-infused market tales in an effort to counteract the storification of energy transitions as innovation fairy tales.     

Random and blocked practice of movement sequences: differential effects on response structure and movement speed

Three similar six-element key press sequences were practiced under blocked or random practice schedules with acquisition conducted on one day and retention and transfer on the next day. The task required participants to type, as quickly as possible, one of three 6-element sequences as observed on a computer monitor. In blocked practice, participants completed all practice in one repeated sequence before the next repeated sequence was introduced. In random acquisition practice, the three repeated sequences were randomly presented to the participants. The data suggest that random practice results in participants adopting a uniform response structure, while blocked practice allows participants to exploit unique sequential aspects of the individual tasks. This finding suggests that random practice may not be as effective as blocked practice when one of the tasks being practiced together can be optimized through the development of a unique response structure.