Qualitative Outcomes of a Homestay Immersion With Critical Reflection

The authors explore the impact of a 3‐week homestay cultural immersion on 10 counselor trainees by analyzing their 210 structured journals using consensual qualitative research. Findings suggest that establishing meaningful relationships and engaging in critical reflection are central to increasing multicultural awareness. Implications for multicultural counseling training and research are provided.     

Empowering visuo-spatial ability in primary school: results from a follow-up study

The current study was primarily aimed at verifying the effect of a combined computer-assisted and pencil-and-paper training that was developed to empower visuo-spatial abilities in primary school pupils. One hundred and twenty third grade (mean average: eight years old) and fourth grade (mean age: nine years old) students attending several Italian primary schools were presented with several tests of the Primary Mental Abilities (PMA) battery by Thurstone and Thurstone. Of these, 64 children underwent the training “Recovery in visuo-spatial abilities” developed by Fastame and Antonini for 15 weekly sessions. The remaining students were assigned to the control group. Post-test scores and a follow-up assessment after six months by the end of the training highlight the positive impact of the intervention in enhancing visuo-spatial abilities.     

‘Not everything that the bourgeois world created is bad’: aesthetics and politics in women workers' education

In this paper, I look into the papers of Fannia Cohn, an immigrant labour organizer, who served the Education Department of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) between 1918 and 1962 and became one of its few women vice-presidents. As an internationally recognized figure in the history of workers' education, Cohn left a rich body of labour literature, wherein art is central in the ways she conceptualized, designed and organized women workers' educational programmes and curricula, as well as cultural activities for more than 50 years. For Cohn, however, art and politics were tightly interwoven in what I have called the artpolitics assemblage of women garment workers' life and work. It is entanglements between ethics, aesthetics and politics, considered in the light of the Rancièrian notion of ‘the distribution of the sensible’, that I discuss in this paper.     

Gaming personality and game dynamics in online discussion instructions

Gamification is the use of game mechanics to drive game-like engagements and actions. It applies game mechanics, dynamics and frameworks to promote desired learning behaviours. Positive and effective gamification could enhance learning and engage learners in more social and context-rich decision-making for problem-solving in learning tasks. Effective gamification design should understand the game personalities of learners, social engagement styles, and intrinsic- and extrinsic-motivated user styles initially and evaluate and select appropriate game mechanics, game dynamics, to create ideal gamification instructions. The research question this study investigated is: How will four types of gaming personalities (i.e. Explorer, Socialiser, Killer and Achiever) predict the level of game dynamics in online discussion environments? This study concluded that examining how gaming personalities relate to game dynamics in a gamified online discussion instruction is not sufficient to design effective gamification. It suggests future studies in game instructions should focus on the relationships between game dynamics, gamification contexts, gaming personalities or preferences, dynamic gaming engagement styles, etc.     

Design-Based Research Within the Constraints of Practice: AlgebraByExample

Superintendents from districts in the Minority Student Achievement Network (MSAN) challenged the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP) to identify an approach to narrowing the minority student achievement gap in Algebra 1 without isolating minority students for intervention. SERP partnered with 8 MSAN districts and researchers from 3 universities to design and rigorously test AlgebraByExample, a set of 42 Algebra 1 assignments with interleaved worked examples that target common misconceptions and errors. In a year-long random-assignment study, students who received AlgebraByExample assignments had an average 7 percentage point boost on a posttest containing released items from state assessments, and students in the bottom half of the performance distribution where minority students are disproportionately concentrated had an average 10 percentage point boost on a researcher-designed assessment of conceptual understanding. AlgebraByExample is easily incorporated into any existing curriculum, and naturally serves as a launch point for mathematically rich discussion.     

Significant networks and meaningful conversations observed in the first-round applicants for the Teachers’ Academy at a research-intensive university

The University of Helsinki established a Teachers’ Academy to reward excellence in teaching. This study focuses on teachers’ significant networks and their meaningful conversations about teaching and learning before the establishment of the Teachers’ Academy. The research data consisted of answers to open-ended questions, and were examined using social network analysis. The teachers’ network consisted of significant relations with (1) colleagues and other teachers, (2) peers in pedagogical courses and pedagogical experts, (3) students, and (4) family members and friends. The conversations with different parties varied in nature, content and the level of confidentiality.