Sensation Seeking and Narrative Transportation: High Sensation Seeking Children's Interest in Reading Outside of School

High sensation seekers (HSS) prefer messages that allow them to maintain an optimal level of arousal (i.e., highly arousing messages). Transportation theory suggests that narrative immersion in a story may moderate reader arousal, and thus HSS message selection. To test this idea, a survey was administered to 120 fourth and fifth graders. In addition to measuring sensation seeking and transportation, the survey assessed interest in reading outside of school (i.e., leisure reading). HSS were found to be less likely to engage in leisure reading. Consistent with the activation model of information exposure, a moderated mediation analysis revealed that whether HSS engaged in leisure reading hinged on their level of narrative transportation (moderator) and subsequent reader boredom (mediator). HSS who successfully transported while reading were no different than their low sensation seeking peers. From a genre standpoint, high sensation seeking children with high narrative transportation scores were found to be especially interested in science fiction/fantasy books. Strategies for increasing leisure reading as well as constructing narratives that are engaging to high sensation seeking children are discussed.     

Universities and the public recognition of expertise

This article argues that new sites of knowledge production, increasingly cultivated by the mass media, are threatening the role of academics and universities as traditional sources of expertise. Drawing upon the conceptual categories of Pierre Bourdieu, the article suggests an alternative way of understanding this ‚crisis of legitimacy’.     

Latino children’s ability to interpret in health settings: A parent–child dyadic perspective on child health literacy

To determine children’s ability to interpret in medical settings, 100 dyads of low-income, Spanish-speaking parents and their bilingual children who interpret for the parents were surveyed. Seventy-four children demonstrated adequate health literacy in English. Three theoretical perspectives (social cognitive theory, role-reversal theory, and the team-effort model) guided hypotheses about how parent and child characteristics influenced child health literacy. Structural equation model results supported the team-effort model. Children were more health literate when they were older, had better English abilities, had higher self-efficacy, and had parents with lower self-efficacy and better English language abilities. Children and parents may work as a team in medical interpreting settings, with children simultaneously compensating for and learning from parents.     

Inquiry and flow in science education

Ellwood’s and Abrams’s paper, Students’s social interaction in inquiry-based science education: how experiences of flow can increase motivation and achievement, describes two groups of students and their experiences in an extended inquiry unit. For one of these, the Off-Campus group, several educational aspects were enhanced compared with the group that stayed on campus for their fieldwork. In the analysis this was related to the nature and quality of students’ social interactions during the project and their experiences of flow. This forum article seeks to expand and reframe some of the interpretations made by the authors concerning the role of time, place and attention for setting up conditions for experiences of flow in general, and in scientific inquiry in particular. A comparison with the result from research on wait-time is made, and the significance of place and social interactions are related to a typology of attention helpful for understanding Flow theory. It is suggested that an additional finding may be that there are certain moments in an inquiry unit where slowing down the tempo of instruction to allow for feedback and discussion is particularly important, because doing so can significantly alter the subsequent development and quality of students’ social interactions, experiences of flow, and consequently learning. Implications for science teaching and teacher education are discussed.     

Uncomfortable encounters between elite and “shadow education” in India—Indian Institutes of Technology and the Joint Entrance Examination coaching industry

India’s elite sector of engineering universities, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), are seen as safe gateways to a life in the politically hyped “new India” of the global knowledge economy. The Indian entrance exam coaching industry each year enrolls hundreds of thousands of students in classes strictly directed at “cracking” the institutes’ famous Joint Entrance Examination (JEE). Vast majorities of students at IITs are by now former coaching students, and coaching is increasingly supplanting performance in secondary education as the perceived prerequisite for IIT admission. This poses serious questions about the ability of the institutions to autonomously steer student selection and recruit the select exceptional students whom until now have kept “IITians” in the center of imaginaries of India’s future. This article explores the case of residential pre-entrance exam coaching to assess the coaching sector’s role in shaping India’s future technological leaders. It assesses the educational structure of the sector, its effect on student lives, the life aspirations it relies on, and how it is shaping IIT education itself. The case of entrance exam coaching in India, it is argued, prompt a reassessment of the concept of “shadow education” in order to begin a more thorough research agenda focused on the educational production and policy consequences of this “shadow” industry as an integrated (even if unwanted) and co-constitutive part of the higher education sector.     

Investigating the feasibility of using assessment and explanatory feedback in desktop virtual reality simulations

Educational technology research and development - There is great potential in making assessment and learning complementary. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of developing a desktop...     

How the existence of special schools affects the placement of students with special needs in inclusive primary schools

Although inclusion is the declared goal, the transition from a system based on special schools to an inclusive school system has only been progressing very slowly in individual countries. In an evolving school system, the existing special schools keep struggling to justify their existence. This study investigates the regional distribution effects based on official school data and shows the influence of a pull effect on special schools as a distance effect of special schools affecting the placement of students. For this purpose, official school statistics including all students at special and regular schools in the years 2010, 2015 and 2020 (N = 11 280 040) are evaluated in a spatiotemporal comparison using Educational Data Mining. In a hierarchical regression model on school placement in inclusive schools, the distance between primary and special schools has the highest influence (β = 0.48) on the inclusion rate (i.e., the proportion of students with special needs who are educated in regular schools in relation to all students with disabilities), along with the size (β = −0.14) and the density of special schools in a district (β = −0.12). The effects differ according to the population density of the region and are stronger in large cities. When the proportion of students with and without SEN in regular schools is considered (support rate), the density of special schools has the greatest impact on school placement (ß = 43.44). Self-preservation of schools, traditional funding systems and regional differences between urban and rural areas are discussed as possible reasons.