Allowing Learners to Choose

Abstract

For this study, we investigated the effects of self-controlled practice on learning multiple motor skills. Thirty participants were randomly assigned to self-control or yoked conditions. Participants learned a three-keystroke pattern with three different relative time structures. Those in the self-control group chose one of three relative time structures before each of 90 practice trials; yoked participants were not allowed to choose but were yoked to a self-control participant and followed that individual's sequence of practice trials. Results of the 24-hr serial transfer test revealed the self-control group exhibited significantly lower relative timing error, absolute error, and total error than the yoked group. Findings further support the efficacy of self-controlled learning.     

What happened to the Open University : Briefly

This paper provides an external, international assessment of The Open University, United Kingdom. It questions whether The Open University of the early 1970s is dead and perhaps — in the context of the current emphasis on open learning — invites staff of other open universities throughout the world to anticipate their future five or ten years hence.     

The validity and utility of the California Family Risk Assessment under practice conditions in the field: A prospective study

Objective

Analysis of the validity and implementation of a child maltreatment actuarial risk assessment model, the California Family Risk Assessment (CFRA).

Questions addressed

(1) Is there evidence of the validity of the CFRA under field operating conditions? (2) Do actuarial risk assessment results influence child welfare workers’ service delivery decisions? (3) How frequently are CFRA risk scores overridden by child welfare workers? (4) Is there any difference in the predictive validity of CFRA risk assessments and clinical risk assessments by child welfare workers?

Method

The study analyzes 7,685 child abuse/neglect reports originating in 5 California counties followed prospectively for 2 years to identify further substantiated child abuse/neglect. Measures of model calibration and discrimination were used to assess CFRA validity and compare its accuracy with the accuracy of clinical predictions made by child welfare workers. The extent of use of an override feature of the CFRA and child welfare worker reliance on CFRA risk scores for making service decisions were analyzed.

Results

Imperfect but better-than-chance predictive validity was found for the CFRA on a range of measures in a large temporal validation sample (n = 6,543). For 114 cases where both CFRA risk assessments and child welfare worker clinical risk assessments were available, the CFRA exhibited evidence of imperfect but better-than-chance predictive validity, while child welfare worker risk assessments were found to be invalid. Child welfare workers overrode CFRA risk assessments in only 114 (1.5%) of 7,685 cases and provided in-home services in statistically significantly larger proportions of higher- versus lower-risk cases, consistent with heavy reliance on the CFRA.

Conclusions/practice implications

Until research identifies actuarial models exhibiting superior predictive validity when applied in every-day practice, the CFRA is, and will be a valuable tool for assessing risk in order to make in-home service-provision decisions.     

The role of student academic beliefs in perceptions of instructor ideological bias

A common perception exists in the media that university instructors are a liberal elite who use their positions to instill a biased perspective in their students. Exploring student attitudes in the United States and Australia, the present study examined how students’ academic beliefs are related to their inferences of instructor ideological bias and the degree to which they identify as reacting to these inferences in the college classroom. Results of regression analysis using previously validated survey instruments revealed that students’ academic entitlement and grade orientation (GO) predicted perceptions of instructor bias. In addition, students’ GO predicted students’ reactions to such inferred bias. Institutional differences, pedagogical implications, and areas for future research are discussed.     

Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls: a ‘political’ sports club that is not political and ‘anarchist’ sports club that is not actually anarchist

In this paper I offer an activist's own account of a grass-roots club I helped found in 1992 and I remain an active member of today. The Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls are an amateur sports club based in inner-city Bristol. We have not got our own ground and most people would not have heard of us. We play at the very lowest rung of UK mass participation sport – in the Sundays and Saturday leagues, on the muddy pitches and municipal sports grounds where week after week men and women run around, for their own enjoyment without expectation of financial gain of any sort. My aim is to explain why the Cowboys and Cowgirls are an extraordinary club, outlining some of the extraordinary things it has done, some of which reside beyond the imagination of most professional clubs. It is only now, 20 years after we first formed, that we can stand back and admire what we have achieved and appreciate the role we have played in developing a small but growing network of teams that stand at odds with the way society is organized and (to a certain extent) the mediated, poisoned world of professional sport.     

Fictionalized History in the Philippines: Five Narratives of Collective Amnesia

The paper analyzes five historical fictions for children in the Batang Historyador (Young Historian) series which detail five periods in Philippine history. The books discuss the issues of child labor in precolonial Philippines, child labor and the right to education regardless of gender during the Spanish colonial period, child labor during the American Occupation, children as witnesses of history in the Japanese Occupation and Martial Law periods. The narratives reveal (consciously or unconsciously) how distortedly and inaccurately the past is told from the perspective of a colonized mind. The struggles of historians to review and revision history from a pro-Filipino consciousness were totally unheeded. The works attempt to throw light on issues of class, gender and children’s rights but Filipino issues regarding culture, identity, politics and history were obliterated because the framework was tied to a “universal” notion of history.

Modeling parameters that characterize pacing of elite female 800-m freestyle swimmers

Pacing offers a potential avenue for enhancement of endurance performance. We report here a novel method for characterizing pacing in 800-m freestyle swimming. Websites provided 50-m lap and race times for 192 swims of 20 elite female swimmers between 2000 and 2013. Pacing for each swim was characterized with five parameters derived from a linear model: linear and quadratic coefficients for effect of lap number, reductions from predicted time for first and last laps, and lap-time variability (standard error of the estimate). Race-to-race consistency of the parameters was expressed as intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). The average swim was a shallow negative quadratic with slowest time in the eleventh lap. First and last laps were faster by 6.4% and 3.6%, and lap-time variability was ±0.64%. Consistency between swimmers ranged from low-moderate for the linear and quadratic parameters (ICC = 0.29 and 0.36) to high for the last-lap parameter (ICC = 0.62), while consistency for race time was very high (ICC = 0.80). Only ~15% of swimmers had enough swims (~15 or more) to provide reasonable evidence of optimum parameter values in plots of race time vs. each parameter. The modest consistency of most of the pacing parameters and lack of relationships between parameters and performance suggest that swimmers usually compensated for changes in one parameter with changes in another. In conclusion, pacing in 800-m elite female swimmers can be characterized with five parameters, but identifying an optimal pacing profile is generally impractical.