Exzellenz durch Internationalität

Like excellence, internationality has evolved into a key concept for German universities. This article reconstructs the manifold genesis of internationality as a principle for stratificatory claims on the basis of science policy documents. At the levels of student exchange, researcher mobility, and university cooperation, three changes are elaborated upon: the transition from the medieval universitas of the nationes to the national university, the increasing competitive orientation of a concept of internationality based on cooperation and cultural exchange, and the transformation of internationality under the auspices of excellence. At the same time, it will be shown how international understanding, exchange, and competition as guiding principles of an internationalization discourse are enacted differently in varying historical contexts. It will be demonstrated that internationality as a sign of excellence becomes a strategy for universities to position themselves as superior in their respective fields.     

Effects of disfluency and test expectancy on learning with text

Do students learn better with texts that are Open image in new window (i.e., disfluent)? Previous research yielded discrepant findings concerning this question. To clarify these discrepancies, the present study aimed at identifying a boundary condition that determines when disfluent text is, and is not, beneficial to learning. This boundary condition is knowledge about whether a test will follow (high test expectancy) versus not (low test expectancy). Participants with high test expectancy may already engage in effortful processing, so that making text harder-to-read (disfluent) might not change their processing mode any further. Thus, particularly when no test is expected, disfluency is supposed to exert its beneficial effect. This assumption was tested in a 2?×?2 design (N?=?97) with text legibility (fluent vs. disfluent) and test expectancy (low vs. high) as factors, and learning outcomes (retention, transfer) and learning times as main dependent variables. Results revealed that high test expectancy led to better learning outcomes (for retention and transfer), but disfluent text did not. Unlike expected, there was no interaction between the two factors. Moreover, both high test expectancy and disfluency led to longer learning times, resulting in a lower efficiency when learning with disfluent compared to fluent text. Hence, the present results further question the stability and generalizability of a positive disfluency effect on learning, because only high test expectancy – but not disfluency - stimulated better learning through more effortful processing the way it was supposed to.     

Motivational and emotional components affecting male’s and female’s self-regulated learning

The relationship between self-referenced feelings and cognitions and self-regulated learning has become an important area of research. But to what extent can differences in self-regulation be explained by differences in motivation and emotion? And how facilitating or debilitating is the effect of motivation and emotion on the use of regulatory study activities? In this study, 292 freshmen were assessed on self-referenced cognitions and feelings. Three months later, regulatory study activities were measured by self-report. The canonical correlation between self-referenced cognitions and feelings and regulatory activities was very substantial (.52), and even invariant of ability differences. Task value and the tendency to achieve success were positively related to self-regulation for both males and females. An impressive gender difference was noticed, however, for the tendency to avoid failure. For female students, a high level of fear of failure acted as a detrimental agent upon regulatory activities. It is concluded that attention should be paid to facilitating and debilitating mechanisms underlying the use of metacognitive activities while being engaged in a cognitive endeavour.     

Accounting for diverse missions: can classification systems contribute to meaningful assessments of institutional performance?

Tertiary Education and Management - Although they have been developed for a variety of purposes, classification systems for tertiary or postsecondary education institutions offer a foundation for...     

Relations between intelligence and the development of metaconceptual knowledge

Across two studies, we developed and tested a declarative metacognitive interview to investigate the effects of developmental level and verbal intelligence on children's metaconceptual understanding of processes related to concept use and object categorization. Metaconceptual knowledge developed throughout elementary school, with near ceiling scores for adults. IQ scores correlated positively with metaconceptual interview scores for all groups of children. Study 2 confirmed a relationship between scores on the metaconceptual interview and performance on a Twenty Questions task for which strategic performance was presumed to depend on such knowledge, though metaconceptual knowledge was most important when IQ was lower. Implications for theory development and hypotheses about how metaconceptual knowledge develops are discussed.     

Cognitive load in algebra: element interactivity in solving equations

Central to equation solving is the maintenance of equivalence on both sides of the equation. However, when the process involves an interaction of multiple elements, solving an equation can impose a high cognitive load. The balance method requires operations on both sides of the equation, whereas the inverse method involves operations on one side only. In an experiment, middle school students (N?=?71) were randomly assigned to the balance and inverse methods to complete a pre-test, an acquisition phase and a post-test. Pre-test and post-test comparisons found that the inverse group outperformed the balance group for those equations that involved high element interactivity. Instructional efficiency measures further confirmed that the balance method imposed higher cognitive load. The inverse method was capable of reducing cognitive load due to the interacting elements.     

First-graders’ knowledge of multiplicative reasoning before formal instruction in this domain

Our study investigated children’s knowledge of multiplicative reasoning (multiplication and division) at the end of Grade 1, just before the start of formal instruction on multiplicative reasoning in Grade 2. A large sample of children (N = 1176) was assessed in a relatively formal test setting, using an online test with 28 multiplicative problems of different types. On average, the children correctly answered more than half (58%) of the problems, including several bare number problems. This indicates that before formal instruction on multiplicative reasoning, children already have a considerable amount of knowledge in this domain, which teachers can build on when teaching them formal multiplication and division. Using analysis of variance and cross-classified multilevel regression analysis, we identified several predictors of children’s pre-instructional multiplicative knowledge. With respect to the characteristics of the multiplicative problems, we found that the problems were easiest to solve when they included a picture involving countable objects, and when the multiplicative situation was of the equal groups semantic structure (e.g., 3 boxes of 4 cookies). Regarding student characteristics, pre-instructional multiplicative knowledge was higher for children with higher-educated parents. Finally, the mathematics textbook used in school appeared to have influenced children’s pre-instructional multiplicative knowledge.