Statistical learning of past participle inflections in French

The purpose of this research was to understand better how morphemic units are encoded and auto-organised in memory and how they are accessed during writing. We hypothesised that the activation of morphemic units would not depend on rule-based learning during primary school but would be determined by frequency-based learning, which is a process that automatically encodes whole orthographic forms encountered during reading. To evaluate gradual changes in the impacts of each process, the ability to inflect a verb was investigated in a spelling-to-dictation task utilising simple sentences that included past participle inflections in three participant populations: 2nd to 5th primary-school graders, 6th and 8th secondary-school students with varying print linguistic abilities and young adults. Two frequency indicators were manipulated: past participle inflection frequency (the frequency of a particular suffix irrespective of the word root) was used to index the use of a rule-based procedure, and orthographic-form frequency was used to index the use of a frequency-based procedure. The results revealed the following: (a) the younger spellers mainly used a frequency-based procedure that produced many spelling errors that were mostly due to the selection of the most frequent orthographic forms in their orthographic lexicon; (b) the rule-based procedure is notably late and led to fewer errors only at the 5th grade in primary school; and (c) the frequency-based procedure is still operating in the less skilled spellers of grades six and eight. The results are discussed in light of statistical learning, which seems to jeopardise the use of an efficient grammatical processing by younger children and less skilled spellers.     

Detecting bias in meta-analyses of distance education research: big pictures we can rely on

This article has two interrelated purposes. The first is to explain how various forms of bias, if introduced during any stage of a meta-analysis, can provide the consumer with a misimpression of the state of a research literature. Five of the most important bias-producing aspects of a meta-analysis are presented and discussed. Second, armed with this information, we examine 15 meta-analyses of the literatures of distance education (DE), online learning (OL), and blended learning (BL), conducted from 2000 to 2014, with the intention of assessing potential sources of bias in each. All of these meta-analyses address the question: “How do students taking courses through DE, OL, and BL compare to students engaged in pure classroom instruction in terms of learning achievement outcomes?” We argue that questions asked by primary researchers must change to reflect issues that will drive improvements in designing and implementing DE, OL, and BL courses.     

How Canadian universities use social media to brand themselves

This paper explores social media marketing strategies applied by Canadian universities as a tool for institutional branding, recruitment and engagement of home and international students. The target sample involves the total population of Canadian university-status institutions (N = 106). Qualitative data were collected from two major social networking websites, Facebook and Twitter, over the span of six months to provide a comprehensive picture. Additionally, student enrolment data were compiled with the purpose of associating social media implementation with fluctuations of student enrolment. Results reveal that the Twitter platform is generally much more popular to carry conversations, but that Facebook remains the preferred website for university-initiated postings; most of these university-led postings, whether on Twitter or Facebook, relate to campus/student news and events. Findings point to institutions as only one of many message generators, while students and a host of third parties have become the dominant ones.     

Families’ Selection of Children’s Literature Books

This study examined families’ choices of children’s literature books for joint story reading. Teachers, parents, and their children from five kindergarten classrooms participated in the study. Over a 4 months period, family members joined other parents twice a week to learn and practice story reading techniques. They selected children’s literature books that were of interest to both of them and their children and were developmentally appropriate. Family members were interviewed and responded to a questionnaire before the intervention. The results provided insight in relation to the parents’ perceptions about literacy, reading with families, and story reading. All members of the families read to their children frequently or daily and engaged the children in conversations about the books read. The books chosen to be read to the children were categorized by genre, with modern fiction being the most popular genre.     

Conditioning-specific reflex modification of the rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) nictitating membrane response is sensitive to context

Conditioning-specific reflex modification occurs when an unconditioned response is modified in theabsence of the conditioned stimulus as a result of pairings of the conditioned stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus. In two experiments, we assessed conditioning-specific reflex modification in either a novel context (Experiment 1) or a context different from, but equally familiar in relation to, the training context (Experiment 2). Conditioning-specific reflex modification did not demonstrate sensitivity to a novel context but did demonstrate sensitivity to a change in familiar context. The data cannot be explained by unconditioned stimulus preexposure, overtraining, or context insensitivity. The results suggest that conditioning-specific reflex modification models normal stress and may be used to evaluate theories of and treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder.     

Schulfächer: Vermittlungsinstanzen von Bildung

The concept of “Bildung”, substantially developed by Wilhelm von Humboldt, and the French concept of “instruction”, substantially defined by the Marquis de Condorcet, have heavily influenced schools in German and French speaking cultures. School subjects as the general principles of ordering school knowledge prevail as soon as Bildung/instruction becomes granted by state institutions. I maintain that school subjects are the socio-historical form of the modern school system, through which Bildung/instruction continually develops in contradictory ways. On the basis of a concise definition of “Bildung”, mirrored by the contemporaneous concept of French “instruction”, the paper shows that school subjects become the common form and measure for organizing and distributing knowledge and know how to be taught and learned during the 19th century. Four theses are discussed concerning the way school subjects realize the ideals of Bildung in many contradictory forms: 1. The canon of school subjects guarantee manifold contents for developing capacities for students, in part through a realization of Humboldt’s and Condorcet’s concepts. 2. They integrate contradictory demands of society: Bildung, moralization in the sense of “governing the soul” on the one side, national cohesion, selection and distinction between students on the other. 3. They allow contents coming from higher education levels to enter primary schools. 4. They combine universal contents with local and regional ones.