Cooperative learning: a methodological innovation in teacher training / El aprendizaje cooperativo: una innovación metodológica en la formación del profesorado

Cooperative learning is an important methodological strategy to develop students’ general competencies. In this paper, we show an educational innovation experience of cooperative learning developed as part of the ‘Educational contexts and processes’ subject of the Speciality in Technology and Industrial Processes of the Master’s Degree in Secondary Education Teaching at the University of Valencia, during the 2011–12 academic year. The innovation experience becomes ‘meta-experience’ since it allows students to reflect on their own knowledge in building the learning process. The overall objective of this experience is to develop attitudes and skills for cooperative learning in future secondary education teachers. To this end, we designed the activity ‘Short Film’ that employs cooperative learning as a methodological strategy to foster learning and media literacy. The experience gave students the opportunity to reflect, discuss and be involved in their learning process. Furthermore, the academic results were excellent and students valued the educational innovation in a positive way.     

Training Planning and Working Memory in Third Graders

Working memory and planning are fundamental cognitive skills supporting fluid reasoning. We show that 2 games that train working memory and planning skills in school‐aged children promote transfer to 2 different tasks: an attentional test and a fluid reasoning test. We also show long‐term improvement of planning and memory capacities in 8‐year‐old children after playing adaptive computer games specifically tailored to entrain these cognitive functions. Working memory capacity expanded from 5 to 7 items by using our games. Furthermore, steady progression in the task indicates that this capacity can be trained rapidly. Planning abilities persisted in a nonmarkovian form of play, where a move is highly influenced by previous moves, avoiding back‐ups. Here, we introduce a public and growing platform ( http://www.matemarote.com.ar/ ) developed for this research which has the potential for wide use in educational research.     

Hard Cash and Soft Skills: Experimental Evidence on Combining Scholarships and Mentoring in Argentina

Abstract

We evaluate a long-standing program run by one of the largest education foundations in Argentina that offers scholarships and nonacademic mentoring to secondary school students. We randomly assigned 408 grade 6 students within 10 public schools in the Province of Buenos Aires to either receive the program throughout secondary school or not to receive it. After three years, the program improved students’ academic behaviors (e.g., studying before an exam or catching up on missed work), but we find little evidence that these changes translated into broader improvements in students’ academic mindsets (e.g., self-beliefs about performance and efficacy), perseverance (e.g., grit), or learning strategies (e.g., metacognition). The program also improved students’ performance in school during the first year (e.g., grades, attendance, and passing rates), but we do not find similar gains in subsequent years. This may be due to a large share of treatment students being expelled from the program for not meeting its requirements. The program did not improve student learning or personality traits (e.g., conscientiousness). Finally, we find some heterogeneous effects for female students and students from low-income families.     

High school boys’ and girls’ writing conceptions and writing self-efficacy beliefs: what is their role in writing performance?

This study investigated the conceptions about writing and writing self-efficacy beliefs held by high school students in relation to the students’ gender as well as their associations with writing achievement. The results show that female students have more sophisticated writing conceptions than their male counterparts but no gender differences were found in writing self-efficacy beliefs. In addition, results reveal that writing self-efficacy beliefs and gender play an important role in predicting writing performance and that writing performance is moderated by students’ writing conceptions. Educational implications and further research are discussed.     

Teachers’ enactments of curriculum: Fidelity to Procedure versus Fidelity to Goal for scientific argumentation

Fidelity of implementation (FOI) has received attention in calls for funding and research; however, there are numerous ways of conceptualising and measuring this construct. We argue that this conceptualisation is important for recent reform efforts focused on science practices. Consequently, we explored FOI in the context of the enactment of a middle-school curriculum focused on one particular science practice, argumentation. We coded videos of five teachers’ enactments of argumentation lessons using two different fidelity coding schemes. First, Fidelity to Procedure targeted teachers’ adherence to the order and types of procedures. Second, Fidelity to Goal examined teachers’ adherence to the overarching argumentation goals. This analysis resulted in case studies that illustrate distinct patterns in the teachers’ curriculum enactments. One case in particular, Ms Newbury, received a low score for Fidelity to Procedure, but a high score for Fidelity to Goal. She altered procedures to provide her students, all of whom were English Language Learners, with different linguistic supports, but maintained the overarching argumentation goals. Consequently, we argue that FOI for goals may better capture whether teachers’ enactments are supporting students in the science practices. Furthermore, the results suggest the importance of educative curriculum including rationales for the curricular goals.     

The academic writing process in Spanish universities: perceptions of students and faculty / El proceso de escritura académica en la universidad española: percepciones de estudiantes y profesores

Abstract

This paper is intended as an exploration of university faculty and students’ perceptions of a number of dimensions involved in the written composition of academic texts. We analysed the responses to scale 3 in the European Writing Survey (EUWRIT) (in its Spanish version: Encuesta Europea sobre la Escritura Académica, EEEA) by a group of social science and humanities students (n = 1,030) and faculty (n = 230) from nine Spanish universities. We then examined the similarities and differences in their perceptions and established a factorial structure of the different dimensions underlying the writing process. The data indicate that both groups concur in the value assigned to both changing ideas in the course of the composition process (although this process seems to be understood differently by each group) and the revision and feedback processes. The students, however, claim to be involved in more planning and previous reading activities than the teachers perceive them to be. The significance of these results for a process-oriented perspective in academic writing is discussed.     

Scaffolding young children’s understanding of symbolic objects

Symbolic objects are cognitive tools children must learn to master very early in life. A crucial factor in cognitive development is the instruction or informational support children receive in social contexts. While numerous studies have investigated the relation between instruction and development in various domains, like language or symbolic play, still little is known concerning the role of this factor in the comprehension of symbolic objects. The purpose of this article is to illustrate with an overview of the results of the authors’ research how instruction scaffolds the comprehension and use of symbolic objects. In this framework instruction is conceived as a process that mediates the skills that children develop and meanings they build. Some educational implications are discussed.     

‘Approaches to the Teaching of Special Relativity Theory in High School and University Textbooks of Argentina’

In this work, we presented an analysis of the representation of the special relativity theory (SRT) in the most used texts in high school, Polimodal level and university level in the teaching in the Argentine Republic, from a historic, epistemological and didactic perspective. The results show that none of the analyzed texts would allow a contextualized approach on such theory.