Reciprocal influences between stressful life events and adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems

Investigated in this study were hypothesized reciprocal influences between stressful life events and adolescent maladjustment using data from a 6-year, prospective longitudinal study. Stressful life experiences, internalizing symptoms, and externalizing behaviors were assessed for a sample of adolescents (215 males, 236 females) living in the rural Midwest. From 7th to 12th grades, autoregressive analyses showed that stressful life events and these two forms of maladjustment were reciprocally interrelated over time. For example, stressful life events at one point significantly predicted delinquent behaviors 1 year later, which, in turn, significantly predicted stressful life events 1 year later, and vice versa. The findings provide evidence for the accumulating disadvantage for adolescents that results from the mutual reinforcement of problematic situations and adjustment problems over time.     

Fifth-graders’ ideas on bank functions and interest before and after a lesson on banking

Forty-three 5th graders participated in all phases of the study:

1. a pre-test to ascertain children’s concepts of deposits, loans, interest, etc.;
2. a classroom lesson;
3. a post-test two weeks after the lesson.

At pre-test almost none of the children realized how banks profit through the difference between loan and deposit interest. Approximately half the children did not connect deposits and loans, believing that deposit money is locked in a safe util it is returned to its owner. By post-test most children had progressed to speaking correctly about both kinds of interest and their relative amounts. The proportion of children showing progress was significantly higher in the subgroup who at pre-test had already connected deposit and loan. Incorrect ideas at pre-test on how the bank gets the money to pay its employees (e.g. revenue received from the local council, or obtained by “the boss” doing a second job) did not prevent the children from correctly answering at post-test. Such success following short training supports the hypothesis that, at 10 or 11 years of age, while children lack factual knowledge on banking there are no major cognitive obstacles to the understanding of its functioning once banking has been explicitly explained.     

韩国最新教师任用制度述评

韩国教师任用制度的诞生有着特定的历史背景,并在漫长的历史变迁中逐步得到完善。韩国教师任用制度的一个重要特征是,规定不论何种院校的大学毕业生都要参加严格的国家教师任用考试合格后才能被任用为新教师。介绍韩国教师任用制度建设的基本经验对于改革与完善中国的教师任用制度具有很强的现实意义。     

Exploring the alleged effect of lower academic achievement after the free semester in Korean Middle Schools

Asia Pacific Education Review - The Enforcement Decree of the Elementary and Secondary School Act (2015) mandates that from 2016 all middle schools in Korea must administer one semester as a free...     

Learning from scientific texts: personalizing the text increases transfer performance and task involvement

In an experiment with 65 high-school students, we tested the hypothesis that personalizing learning materials would increase students’ learning performance and motivation to study the learning materials. Students studied either a 915-word standard text on the anatomy and functionality of the human eye or a personalized version of the same text in which 60 definite articles (e.g., “the eye”) were replaced with 60 second-person possessive pronouns (e.g., “your eye”). Afterwards, participants answered comprehension and transfer questions. One week later, the participants were asked to restudy the text and to answer the same questions again with the aim to improve their performance. In the personalized text condition, students showed higher transfer performance, spent more time on restudying the text, and reported being more motivated than students in the standard text condition. However, only duration of restudying (not self-reported motivation) mediated the effect of personalization on transfer performance.     

Stabilizing Conditional Standard Errors of Measurement in Scale Score Transformations

The focus of this article is on scale score transformations that can be used to stabilize conditional standard errors of measurement (CSEMs). Three transformations for stabilizing the estimated CSEMs are reviewed, including the traditional arcsine transformation, a recently developed general variance stabilization transformation, and a new method proposed in this article involving cubic transformations. Two examples are provided and the three scale score transformations are compared in terms of how well they stabilize CSEMs estimated from compound binomial and item response theory (IRT) models. Advantages of the cubic transformation are demonstrated with respect to CSEM stabilization and other scaling criteria (e.g., scale score distributions that are more symmetric).     

Testing the model-observer similarity hypothesis with text-based worked examples

Example-based learning is a very effective and efficient instructional strategy for novices. It can be implemented using text-based worked examples that provide a written demonstration of how to perform a task, or (video) modelling examples in which an instructor (the ‘model’) provides a demonstration. The model-observer similarity (MOS) hypothesis predicts that the effectiveness of modelling examples partly depends on the degree to which learners perceive the models to be similar to them. It is an open question, however, whether perceived similarity with the person who created the example, would also affect learning from text-based worked examples. Therefore, two experiments were conducted to investigate whether MOS would also play a role in learning from worked examples. In Experiment 1 (N = 147), students were led to believe via pictures and a short story that the worked examples were created by a male or female peer student. Males showed higher performance and confidence, but no effects of MOS on learning were found. In Experiment 2 (N = 130), students were led to believe that a peer student or a teacher created the examples. Again, no effects of MOS were found. These findings suggest that the perceived origin of text-based worked examples is not important for learning.     

Educating science teachers for sustainability: questions,contradictions and possibilities for rethinking learning and pedagogy

In this review, we explore what educating science teachers for sustainability implies according to the 23 book chapters and many sampled teacher education and science methods courses in the edited book by Susan Stratton, Rita Hagevick, Allan Feldman and Mark Bloom, entitled Educating Science Teachers for Sustainability, published in 2015 by Springer as part of the ASTE Series in Science Education. We situate the review in the current complex landscape of discourses around sustainability education, exploring its grounding in an anthropocentric ideology next to emancipatory practices and a holistic vision of the world. We offer a quick overview of the chapters and themes addressed. We then take up some ideas to think with. We are particularly invested in thinking about the implications of sustainability education as going beyond science teachers and science education, and as implying a serious engagement with and critique of current unsustainable ways of living. We play with the idea of taking sustainability education beyond neoliberal ideals of education and offer some suggestions by bringing in voices of students, youth, land-based learning and the idea of living sustainability. We also explore what indigenous scholars and epistemologies could have contributed to an exploration of sustainability education, a voice that was absent in the book, yet helps desettle the conversation and actions taken, moving the discourse beyond an Eurocentric grounding.     

NAPLAN and the role of edu-business: New governance,new privatisations and new partnerships in Australian education policy

This paper provides a critical analysis of the edu-businesses currently working in partnership with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority to deliver the Commonwealth government policy initiative of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). These emerging public–private partnerships (PPPs) exemplify new heterarchical governance structures in Australia, where a network of public and private agents now contribute to education policy processes. In analysing the NAPLAN policy network, this account seeks to proffer a critical analysis on the evolving PPPs in Australia and ascertains in whose interests and with what outcomes these PPPs operate. The NAPLAN policy network is analysed in relation to the contemporary state and its changing modus operandi, in which I draw on the notions of heterarchies, networks and new governance structures in education to understand these developments. Network ethnography is employed to document the network of PPPs that are associated with NAPLAN and other government initiatives in Australia, and in particular, I reflect on the activities of Pearson and the Australian Council for Educational Research to problematise what these policy networks mean.     

“冰雪+营地教育”产业融合机制研究

采用文献资料法和逻辑分析法,在产业融合理论基础上对"冰雪+营地教育"产业融合进行了概念界定,并对其融合机理进行了归纳,分别对"冰雪+营地教育"的内在需求和外在动力对其融合发展的动力机制进行了解释,提出从推进政府"放管服"改革、建立组织领导部门、注重政策文件落实和加强人才培养4个方面以期为推动"冰雪+营地教育"产业融合的可持续发展提供参考。