Aging IQ Intervention with Older Korean Americans: A Comparison of Internet-Based and In-Class Education

Using the translated contents of the National Institute on Aging (NIA)'s Aging IQ, an educational intervention was delivered to older Korean Americans. The educational program was delivered via two different modalities, Internet-based education (n = 12) and in-class education (n = 11), and the overall feasibility and efficacy were evaluated by the Reach, Efficacy, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance (RE-AIM) framework. A high level of completion and overall satisfaction with the program was observed in both groups. Both groups also exhibited a significant improvement in their knowledge about aging after the completion of the educational program. However, at the one-month follow-up, the Internet-based group showed a greater retention of the knowledge gained. The findings not only support the value of education on aging for older ethnic minorities but also suggest the use of the Internet as an integral modality of intervention delivery.     

When ethnic minority students are judged as more suitable for the highest school track: a shifting standards experiment

When students are grouped into school tracks, this has lasting consequences for their learning and later careers. In Germany to date, some groups of students (boys, ethnic minority students) are underrepresented in the highest track. Stereotypes about these groups exist that entail negative expectations about their suitability for the highest track. Based on the shifting standards model, the present research examines if and how stereotypes influence tracking recommendations. According to this theory, members of negatively stereotyped groups will be judged more leniently or more strictly depending on the framing of the judgment situation (by inducing minimum or confirmatory standards). N = 280 teacher students participated in a vignette study in which they had to choose the amount of positive evidence for suitability they wanted to see before deciding to recommend a fictitious student to the highest track. A 2 (judgment standard: minimum vs. confirmatory) × 2 (target student’s gender: male vs. female) × 2 (target student’s ethnicity: no migration background vs. Turkish migration background) between-subjects design was used. No effects of target gender occurred, but the expected interaction of target’s ethnicity and judgment standard emerged. In the minimum standard condition, less evidence was required for the ethnic minority student to be recommended for the highest track compared to the majority student. In the confirmatory standards condition, however, participants tended to require less evidence for the ethnic majority student. Our experiment underlines the importance of the framing of the recommendation situation, resulting in a more lenient or stricter assessment of negatively stereotyped groups.

     

Does evidentiality support source monitoring and false belief understanding? A cross-linguistic study with Turkish- and English-speaking children

This study investigates the impact of evidentiality on source monitoring and the impact of source monitoring on false belief understanding (FBU), while controlling for short-term memory, age, gender, and receptive vocabulary. One hundred (50 girls) monolingual 3- and 4-year-olds from Turkey and the UK participated in the study in 2019. In Turkish, children's use of direct evidentiality predicted their source monitoring skills, which, in turn, predicted their FBU. In English, FBU was not related to source monitoring. Combined results from both languages revealed that Turkish-speaking children had better FBU than English-speaking children, and only for Turkish-speaking children, better source monitoring skills predicted better FBU. This suggests an indirect impact of evidentiality on FBU by means of source monitoring in Turkish.     

Buzzwords at play: gender,education, and political participation in Kenya

The discourse around development is full of buzzwords, including gender and a myriad of variants that underscore the importance of development policies addressing gender imbalances. Despite their prevalence in development policy and research, terminology related to gender is often used broadly, inappropriately, and without nuance. For international education policy in particular, discussions related to gender equality and equity in education are engaged in such a way that assumes shared meanings between policy designers and policy recipients. Using Kenya as a site of analysis, and in the spirit of a vertical case study for data collection, this study explores how the abstractness of a buzzword functions in the microcosm of the school classroom. In comparing gendered representations in textbooks with students' perceptions of those representations to explore how development discourse plays out in Kenyan schools, findings here demonstrate that there is minimal impact due to textbooks' mixed messages, reinforcing women's marginal position in community and political engagement and demonstrating that broad-based understandings of gender empowerment are not always translated in application.     

The influence of discussion groups in a case-based learning environment

The common practice of using discussion groups during case-based learning makes the role of discussion important in these learning environments. However, little empirical research has been done to investigate the influence of discussion on performance and motivation in case-based learning. The purpose of this article is to present the results of a study conducted to examine the role of discussion groups in a case-based environment. College students completed two cases either individually or in small discussion groups. Measures included two case analyses, an attitude survey, time on task, and document analysis. Results revealed significant performance and time differences between instructional methods on the first case, but not on the second case. In addition, results indicated significant differences in student attitudes between treatments. Overall, participants who worked in groups liked their method significantly better than those who worked alone, felt they learned more working in a group than they would have working alone, and expressed a preference for working in a group if they had to do the class over again. Implications for implementing case-based learning and future research are discussed. Anna E. Flynn is Vice President and NAPM Associate Professor with the National Association of Purchasing Management.     

A pedagogical analysis of science textbooks: How can we proceed?

This paper discusses some of the available frameworks for the pedagogical analysis of school science textbooks. First, it distinguishes between (a) studies which focus on elements of textbooks, such as the content, vocabulary, illustrations used, and the teaching methods promoted; and (b) those which consider the principles that organize the content and the form of presentation. In attempting to consider the sorts of principles that may be used in the studies categorised under (b), two crucial issues are discussed. The first issue refers to the relationship between scientific knowledge and school knowledge, which, as the relevant literature suggests, might not be conceived merely as a simplified “casting” of the scientific structure, but rather should be understood as a complex social process. The second issue explicitly addresses the nature of the pedagogic relationship and the place of the pedagogic text within it. Recent views about the nature of knowledge, it is argued, would suggest a reconceptualisation of the teaching activity, and indicate a model according to which the three elements of the teaching situation-the content, the pupil and the teacher—are seen as being (re)constituted in their articulation within and through the text(book). Thus, for example, what is to be a competent pupil in this approach is a function of the text. On the basis of these considerations, three approaches to the analysis of science textbooks are discussed: the socio-cognitive, the sociolinguistic and the socio-epistemic. The relative merits of the third approach are considered, and some examples are used from Greek science textbooks.     

Guiding Attention Aids the Acquisition of Anticipatory Skill in Novice Soccer Goalkeepers

Purpose: The ability to anticipate the actions of opponents can be enhanced through perceptual-skill training, though there is doubt regarding the most effective form of doing so. We sought to evaluate whether perceptual-skill learning would be enhanced when supplemented with guiding visual information. Method: Twenty-eight participants without soccer-playing experience were assigned to a guided perceptual-training group (n = 9), an unguided perceptual-training group (n = 10), or a control group (n = 9). The guided perceptual-training group received half of their trials with color cueing that highlighted either the key kinematic changes in the kicker's action or the known visual search strategy of expert goalkeepers. The unguided perceptual-training group undertook an equal number of trials of practice, but all trials were without guidance. The control group undertook no training intervention. All participants completed an anticipation test immediately before and after the 7-day training intervention, as well as a 24-hr retention test. Results: The guided perceptual-training group significantly improved their response accuracy for anticipating the direction of soccer penalty kicks from preintervention to postintervention, whereas no change in performance was evident at posttest for either the unguided perceptual-training group or the control group. The superior performance of the guided perceptual-training group was preserved in the retention test and was confirmed when relative changes in response time were controlled using a covariate analysis. Conclusions: Perceptual training supplemented with guiding information provides a level of improvement in perceptual anticipatory skill that is not seen without guidance.