Designing student peer assessment in higher education: analysis of written and oral peer feedback

The nature of written and oral peer feedback will be described as it occurred in seven writing courses, each with a different design of peer assessment. In all courses, peer feedback was focused on evaluation, which is one of the four feedback functions. Feedback on structure was hardly provided. Relating feedback to design features, we suggest that feedback is adequate when (1) peer assessment has a summative (on the basis of a writing product) as well as a formative character (during the writing process); (2) the assessment is performed in small feedback groups; (3) the written feedback is orally explained and discussed with the receiver.     

Students’ Learning Activities While Studying Biological Process Diagrams

Process diagrams describe how a system functions (e.g. photosynthesis) and are an important type of representation in Biology education. In the present study, we examined students’ learning activities while studying process diagrams, related to their resulting comprehension of these diagrams. Each student completed three learning tasks. Verbal data and eye-tracking data were collected as indications of students’ learning activities. For the verbal data, we applied a fine-grained coding scheme to optimally describe students’ learning activities. For the eye-tracking data, we used fixation time and transitions between areas of interest in the process diagrams as indices of learning activities. Various learning activities while studying process diagrams were found that distinguished between more and less successful students. Results showed that between-student variance in comprehension score was highly predicted by meaning making of the process arrows (80%) and fixation time in the main area (65%). Students employed successful learning activities consistently across learning tasks. Furthermore, compared to unsuccessful students, successful students used a more coherent approach of interrelated learning activities for comprehending process diagrams.     

Diagrammatic Literacy in Secondary Science Education

Students in secondary science education seem to have difficulties with understanding diagrams. The present study focused on explanatory factors that predict students’ difficulties with process diagrams, i.e., diagrams that describe a process consisting of components that are related by arrows. From 18 compulsory national Biology exams of secondary school pre-university students, all process diagram tasks (n?=?64) were included in corpus. Features of the task, student, and diagram were related to the difficulty of that particular task, indicated by the cohort mean exam score. A hierarchical regression analysis showed main effects for (1) the cognitive task demand, (2) the familiarity of the components, and (3) the number of components in a diagram. All these main effects were in the expected direction. We also observed interactions. Within the category of tasks with a high cognitive demand, tasks about a diagram of which students have low prior content knowledge were more difficult than tasks about a diagram of which students have high prior content knowledge. Tasks with a high cognitive demand about a diagram with familiar arrows were, surprisingly, more difficult than tasks with a high cognitive demand about a diagram with unfamiliar arrows. This latter finding might be attributed to compensation for task difficulty by the large number of components in the diagrams involved. The final model explained 46 % of the variance in exam scores. These results suggest that students have difficulties (1) with tasks that require a deeper understanding when the content is new, (2) with diagrams that use unfamiliar component conventions, and (3) with diagrams that have a small number of components and are therefore probably more abstract.     

Gestaltungsmerkmale und Effekte ganztägiger Angebote im Grundschulbereich

Zusammenfassung Ganzt?gige schulische Angebote spielen in der aktuellen Debatte um eine Bildungsreform eine zentrale Rolle. Erwartungen an ihre erzieherischen und leistungsbezogenen Wirkungen werden hier zun?chst theoretisch auf dem Hintergrund der Schuleffektivit?tsforschung diskutiert. Empirisch werden — erstmals repr?sentativ für Deutschland — p?dagogische Angebote und Schülerleistungen an Grundschulen mit und ohne Ganztagsangebot verglichen. Basis ist eine Sekund?ranalyse von Daten der internationalen Grundschul-Leseuntersuchung IGLU in Verbindung mit einer nachtr?glichen Schulleiterbefragung. Schulen mit ganzt?gigen Angeboten verfügten demnach über ein breites Spektrum von p?dagogischen Ma?nahmen, wobei in Ganztagsschulen mit systematischem Konzept die kognitive F?rderung relativ stark gewichtet war. Effekte auf das Niveau des Leseverst?ndnisses oder dessen Zusammenhang mit der sozialen Herkunft fanden sich nicht.      

Preparing pre-service teachers to integrate technology into K–12 instruction: evaluation of a technology-infused approach

The quality of how technology is addressed in teacher education programmes is conditional for how student teachers apply technology in secondary schools after their graduation. Two technology-infused courses of one teacher education programme were evaluated. In line with studies on the development of pre-service teachers’ technological, pedagogical and content knowledge, two important enablers were distinguished: (1) teaching practice to enact what was learned in teacher education institution as well as to receive feedback from students on this enactment, and (2) modelling of teacher educators and teachers in school. Both enablers might require further development of knowledge and skills of both teacher educators and cooperating school teachers.     

Reconsidering group cognition: From conceptual confusion to a boundary area between cognitive and socio-cultural perspectives?

Various strands of research in educational, social and organizational psychology focus on structures of collectively created meaning that emerge in and coordinate activities of groups. Despite expanding, this field still lacks conceptual clarity, enhanced by the multitude of terms used, such as common ground, shared understanding, collective mind, team mental models, and distributed cognition.We conducted a review of the conceptual frameworks being used in empirical studies, focusing on the premises of the conceptualizations. Therefore, we connected these conceptualizations to either cognitive or socio-cultural perspectives on the social nature of cognition. Some studies are identified as representing initial ways of boundary crossing between these perspectives. To conclude, we explore ways for boundary crossing and cross-fertilization in future research.     

Video narratives to assess student teachers’ competence as new teachers

In teacher education programmes, written portfolios or text-based self-evaluations are generally used to document the development of student teachers’ competence. However, such approaches do no justice to the complex nature of teaching as they tend to lead to evidence in which teacher competencies are disconnected and removed from the actual teaching practice. In one postgraduate teacher education programme, video narratives were evaluated as a valid way to assess student teachers’ teaching competencies, promoting connections amongst different competencies, situating these in practice and showing their development over time. Data were gathered from self-reports of both teacher educators and student teachers as well as student teachers’ completed video narratives. Most student teachers succeeded in meeting the set criteria for the video narrative assignment with connected video clips and text frames. However, student teachers also came up with only a few video episodes and loosely connected clips, reflections and other sources. Although most of the students during the programme did explicitly reflect upon their personal development towards becoming a teacher, almost none of them explicitly connected these ideas to their long-term development. We conclude that video narratives show potential to be used as a valid assessment of student teachers’ teaching competence. Yet, structured guidance as well as ill-structured assignments are needed in framing assessment of student teachers in teacher preparation: the former to clarify the aims, format and criteria and the latter to enable student teachers to reflect on their teaching in a personally, meaningful way.     

The quasi-experimental attitude of teachers: the development of a questionnaire

This article reports on the development and testing of a questionnaire that can be used to measure the quasi-experimental attitude (QEA) of teachers. This attitude is reflected in the willingness of teachers to assess and organise their core activities (planning, implementing and analysing lessons) by analogy with experiments in the field of research, in order to gain meaningful experiences from this cyclical process, to evaluate critically these experiences and to draw from them conclusions on how to improve lessons in the future. The sample comprised 512 trainee teachers who had already been teaching independently for 15 months following the conclusion of their university studies. The analysis of the questionnaire showed that the reliability of the scale was satisfactory. Confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the assumption that the quasi-experimental attitude could be modelled in two ways: A first-order model with four intercorrelated factors (meticulous lesson planning, confidence in the predictability of how the lesson will turn out, evidence-based analysis of the lesson and scepticism about mere experience) and a second-order model in which these four factors are loading on the overarching factor QEA. Additionally, the instrument yielded plausible correlations to several validity criteria.     

德国宪法中的所有权保障

所有权在德国宪法中被理解为行使自由的实质推动力和个人存在的基础,不存在天赋的所有权,立法一般须抽象规定且不断更新所有权的规范内容。所有权基本权利虽不由国家创制．却不得因此而干涉他人权利或破坏自然环境。对所有权的限制性．规定针对的是恣意行使权利的人,该限制不得恣意进行,必须是为了公共福祉．且须合理。