Prospective Teachers' Conceptions of the Knowledge Base for Teaching Chemistry at the German Gymnasium

Journal of Science Teacher Education -     

Validity of block start performance without arm forces or by kinematics-only methods

The purpose of this study was to validate the calculation of reaction time (RT) and normalised power in block starts without considering arm ground reaction forces (GRFs) or using two kinematics-only methods. The RT and normalised power in the action phase were calculated using four different methods: using GRFs of arms and legs by force plates (whole F-based method), which can be regarded as the most valid method, using GRFs of legs captured by force plates (legs F-based method), using position of the centre of mass of the entire body captured by high-speed cameras (whole P-based method), and using only a partial subset of segment position (partial P-based method). Bland–Altman plots demonstrated that the RT of the legs F-based method was not similar to that of the whole F-based method: the mean difference was 7.4 ms and the 95% limits of agreement was?45.1 to 59.8 ms, and it was the least valid method for the calculation among the four methods. In contrast, the normalised power was more valid in the legs F-based method, followed by whole and partial P-based methods. This information will help researchers and practitioners to decide upon their analysis methods when analysing block start performance.     

Differential effects of home and preschool learning environments on early language development

The present study is based on longitudinal data from a German early childhood education and care (ECEC) governmental initiative assessing children's grammatical and vocabulary development between 2;6 and 4;0 years (N = 1,331), quality of the home learning environment and quality of the preschool setting. Results showed that the quality of the home learning environment predicted development in grammatical skills, but not in receptive vocabulary at age 4, while the effects of preschool process quality showed similar relative impacts on both language outcomes. Further analyses revealed effects of accumulated advantages of preschool quality for children from medium‐ and high‐quality home learning environments in their vocabulary development. The results are compared with previous findings from the German ECEC context and discussed with respect to implications for policy efforts to improve ECEC quality and ways in which both learning environments act together on children's development.     

Challenges to Comparative Education: Between Retrospect and Expectation

This article takes an autobiographical approach, which is applied in order to devise a panorama of Comparative Education, as it has developed during the past four decades. It identifies five "paradigms" which have been dominant in debates, inquiries and projects carried out by comparative educationists in various regions: East-West conflict (fifties and sixties); large-scale educational reforms (seventies); intercultural education in multicultural societies and gender issues (late seventies and eighties); transformation processes and post-modern "revolt" against the predominant theories of modernity (late eighties and nineties); and universalism versus cultural pluralism (nineties). The "changes' of these paradigms have been stimulated by developments and trends in the socioeconomic, political and cultural framework as well as by the continuous debates within the science. The current period seems to be primarily determined by the challenges to Comparative Education to define its response to the antagonism between universalism and cultural pluralism. Comparative studies may provide evidence for "reconciliatory" endeavour. They can, on the one hand, warn universalists of hasty "harmonisations", while, on the other hand, they can tell radical advocates of cultural pluralism that the commitment to one's ethnic, religious or national identity need and should not close the doors to the search for universal trends and generally acceptable values.     

The Impact of Expertise on Performance: illustrations from developmental research on memory and sports 1

Research on the impact of expertise on cognitive performance mostly conducted with adult samples has yielded impressive results, documenting the outstanding role of domain knowledge for memory and problem — solving skills. In this paper, the available research on the development of expertise in children and adolescents is reviewed in order to explore the respective roles of domain knowledge and basic intellectual abilities in determining exceptional performance. Most developmental studies conducted in different fields such as memory or sport seem to validate findings obtained from adult samples in that individual differences in domain knowledge account for the lion's share of variance explained in the performance variables. However, a closer analysis of effects reveals that individual differences in aptitude cannot be ignored and seem reliable even in homogeneous (expert) samples. Thus the developmental findings do not completely support the view proposed by Ericsson and colleagues that “deliberate practice” is the only predictor of exceptional performance. Instead, “threshold” or “partial compensation” models seem more appropriate to describe the interplay between aptitude and domain knowledge in predicting peak performance

     

he Challenges of Teaching Good Information Processing to Learning Disabled Students

A MODEL of good information processing is sketched, describing how metacognitive knowledge influences strategy selection and use. Three factors pose particular problems for learning disabled students as they attempt to acquire metacognitive knowledge and to use study strategies productively: neurological impairments; deficiencies in general world knowledge; and negative beliefs, attitudes, and styles that limit self‐efficacy. Creating an educational atmosphere that explicitly builds conceptual (domain‐specific) knowledge and teaches positive beliefs about learning potential is essential in promoting metacognitively‐oriented instruction.     

Reading,metacognition and motivation: A follow-up study of German students in Grades 7 and 8

This follow-up study to van Kraayenoord and Schneider (1999) examined the performance in reading, metacognition and motivation related to reading of students in Grades 7 and 8. Results showed significant correlations between all of the variables. A multivariate analysis of variance showed that “good” and “poor” readers differed in reading self-concept and metacognitive measures related to reading and memory. A stepwise regression analysis suggested that the metacognitive variables were the best predictors of reading. Furthermore, a comparison of the results of the previous study with those of the current investigation revealed that the findings were stable over time. Since the period between the two studies is the time during which students make important decisions related to enrolment in one of three distinct school-types in Germany, we examined the results of various groups of students: those in “Gymnasium” (high educational track), “Realschule” (middle educational track), and “Hauptschule” (low educational track). Students in the Gymnasium scored significantly better than students in the other two groups on almost all variables related to reading. A re-analysis of the data from our first investigation found that the results of the Gymnasium students in the second study could be predicted from their results obtained during elementary school.     

Focus of attention and choice of text modality in multimedia learning

The term ‘modality effect’ in multimedia learning means that students learn better from pictures combined with spoken rather than written text. The most prominent explanations refer to the split attention between visual text reading and picture observation which could affect transfer of information into working memory, maintenance of information in working memory or the effective size of working memory. The assumption of a continuous need for split attention is questionable, however. Learners can keep pictorial information in working memory, when they have seen the picture before, especially if they have higher prior knowledge. Instead of suffering from a permanent split attention, learners frequently show tendencies to simply ignore pictures. This suggests guiding learners towards picture analysis by picture-related text paragraphs. We assume that these paragraphs are associated with stronger modality effects than content-related paragraphs, especially if the pictures are new to learners. These assumptions were tested in an experiment with 120 students learning about volcanism from illustrated text consisting of segments each including a content-related paragraph followed by a picture-related paragraph describing the accompanying visualization. Content-related and picture-related paragraphs were presented as visual or auditory texts leading to 2x2 conditions of text presentation. Picture novelty was manipulated by presenting a picture throughout the whole segment or only when the picture-related paragraph was read. As expected, picture-related paragraphs were associated with stronger modality effects than content-related paragraphs if picture novelty is high. The distinction between different kinds of paragraphs seems to be important for the prediction of modality effects.     

Extra‐credential experiences and social closure: Working‐class students at university

Human capital theorists perceive of educational expansion as beneficial to individuals, corporations and national economies, while social closure theorists have claimed that inflation of credential requirements maintains traditional status inequalities. In this paper I argue that status inequalities are not only maintained by credential inflation, but also the inflation of extra‐credential experiences. As undergraduate degrees become more common, access to employment and further education opportunities increasingly depend on extra‐curricular and ‘enriching’ educational experiences. Using qualitative data from a longitudinal study of working‐class university students in Canada, I will address the mechanisms by which they have gained or were denied access to such experiences. The data suggest that working‐class students’ relative lack of financial resources and social networks are barriers to the development of extra‐credential experiences, which in turn leads to the change of educational and career plans for some.     

Education for Democracy: reasons and strategies

According to social scientists Herfried Münkler in Germany and Colin Crouch in England, major developments in Western industrial societies — individualism, increasing social complexity, globalisation — present serious threats to basic requirements of stable societies and expose democracy to the corrosion of its socio-moral resources such as social trust and civic commitment to the public good. In order to grow and to flourish, the competences and capabilities that constitute these resources require systematic cultivation through educational processes.The school is the only institution that can provide the appropriate experience of a democratic life to all members of society. At present, however, schools are generally far from this goal. This article describes strategies for providing the experience of schools as democratic lifeworlds from an early age: classroom councils as tools for democratic self government and sites for sociomoral learning; projects of service learning in the community which can be successfully organized by these councils; and early experiences of civic engagement in community contexts as part of democratic classroom practice.