Students’ educational use of Facebook groups

The aim of the article is to explore educational use of student-managed Facebook groups in upper secondary education (in Denmark). Much research on educational potentials of Facebook has studied groups managed by teachers. However, there is a lack of in-depth research on Facebook groups managed by students and without participation from teachers. As this study shows, students’ use of student-managed groups differs from their use of teacher-managed tools such as learning management systems (LMSs). The article presents an empirical study based partly on a content analysis of 3139 posts and 15,018 replies within five Facebook groups, and partly on a questionnaire answered by 1463 students and 148 teachers. The results of the study show that whereas LMSs were seen by students primarily as institutional systems of the teacher, Facebook groups have an educational potential to be used by students for peer-to-peer learning.     

Fungal genus Hypocrea/Trichoderma: from barcodes to biodiversity

Hypocrea/Trichoderma is a genus of soil-borne or wood-decaying fungi containing members important to mankind as producers of industrial enzymes and biocontrol agents against plant pathogens, but also as opportunistic pathogens of immuno-compromised humans and animals, while others can cause damage to cultivated mushroom. With the recent advent of a reliable, BarCode-aided identification system for all known taxa of Trichoderma and Hypocrea, it became now possible to study some of the biological fundamentals of the diversity in this fungal genus in more detail. In this article, we will therefore review recent progress in (1) the understanding of the geographic distribution of individual taxa; (2) mechanisms of speciation leading to development of mushroom diseases and facultative human mycoses; and (3) the possible correlation of specific traits of secondary metabolism and molecular phylogeny.     

Approaches for Effective Vocationalisation of Secondary School Agriculture in Nigeria: The Views of Agricultural Science Teachers in Delta State,Nigeria

Abstract

This paper describes a random sample of serving agricultural science teachers in Delta State, Nigeria, as a background to understanding their views on four selected approaches for effective vocationalisation of secondary school agriculture. These approaches were used to develop a 23-item questionnaire based on current literature. A five-point Likert-type scale was used to determine how well the views of the respondents corresponded with the items in the questionnaire. Results showed, among others, that the average teaching experience of the 322 sampled teachers was 12.9 years; 50.6 % of the respondents were BSc(Ed) degree holders; 38.8% had Nigerian Certificate in Education (NCE), while 10.6% were Higher National Diploma (HND) holders. The respondents agreed that the identified approaches were necessary for effective vocationalisation of secondary school agriculture. The paper therefore recommends that the identified approaches should be pursued by the Nigerian government to ensure that vocational agriculture in secondary schools achieves the goals of the National Policy on Education.     

Assessing study abroad students’ intercultural sensitivity with narratives

European Journal of Psychology of Education - This study analyzed study abroad students’ orientations to cultural differences as assessed with mixed methods, including traditional...     

Effects of critical thinking on multiple-document comprehension

European Journal of Psychology of Education - The purpose of this study was to test the relationships between critical thinking, prior topic knowledge and beliefs, and multiple-document...     

Behavioral and neurophysiological effects of morphological awareness training on spelling and reading

Behavioral and neurophysiological effects of a computer-aided morphological training protocol were examined in German-speaking children from Grades 3 to 9. Study 1 compared morphological awareness, reading, and spelling skills of 34 trained children with an untrained control group of 34 children matched for age, sex, and intelligence. All participants in the training group showed increases in morphological awareness, but only students from secondary school improved significantly in reading and spelling competences. In Study 2, a subsample of 8 trained children with poor spelling and reading abilities and 10 untrained children with higher language competencies underwent an electroencephalography testing involving three different language tasks. The training resulted in decreased theta-activity and increased activity in lower (7–10 Hz) and upper alpha (10–13 Hz). These findings reflect more effortful and attention-demanding processing after the training and suggest that children with poor spelling and reading abilities use the acquired morphological knowledge in terms of a compensatory strategy.     

Student attitudes that predict participation in peer assessment

Peer assessment has been widely applied to actively engage students in learning to write. However, sometimes students resist peer assessment. This study explores reviewers’ attitudes and other underlying factors that influence students’ participation in online peer assessment. Participants were 234 Chinese undergraduates from two different academic backgrounds: engineering majors (n = 168) and English majors (n = 66). Gender, academic background and prior experience with peer assessment were all related to participation levels. Moreover, factor analyses revealed three attitudinal factors: (1) positive attitude (a general endorsement of the benefits of peer assessment), (2) interpersonal negative (concerns about the negative effects on interpersonal relationships), and (3) procedural negative (doubts about the procedural rationality of peer assessment). Among the attitudinal factors, procedural negative was negatively associated with participation, as expected. Interestingly, interpersonal negative was associated with greater participation, and positive attitude was associated with lower participation, in part because students worked hard on each review rather than doing many reviews superficially. Implications for instruction are discussed.     

Personality Traits Are Associated With Cortical Development Across Adolescence: A Longitudinal Structural MRI Study

How personality traits relate to structural brain changes in development is an important but understudied question. In this study, cortical thickness (CT) and surface area (SA), estimated using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), were investigated in 99 participants aged 8–19 years. Follow‐up MRI data were collected after on average 2.6 years for 74 individuals. The Big Five personality traits were related to longitudinal regional CT or SA development, but limited cross‐sectional relations were observed. Conscientiousness, emotional stability, and imagination were associated with more age‐expected cortical thinning over time. The results suggest that the substantial individual variability observed in personality traits may partly be explained by cortical maturation across adolescence, implying a developmental origin for personality–brain relations observed in adults.     

Mental testing and educational streaming in Ontario and Denmark in the early twentieth century: a comparative and transnational perspective

ABSTRACT

This article compares and contrasts the use of mental testing and the formation of educational streaming in Denmark and Ontario during the interwar years. In this sense, the article adds nuances to the meaning of internationalism as well as contributing to our knowledge about how ideas of testing practices circulated among countries and continents. One way ideas and practices circulated was via informal networks promoted by the education traveller. Key proponents of mental testing in both Denmark and Ontario travelled to continental Europe, England, and the United States studying and observing the practices and institutional arrangements associated with educational streaming. Our main findings are that the processes used to implement mental testing in the two countries differed significantly. Mental testing was implemented much later in Denmark than in Ontario. This was due to different contextual, cultural, and historical factors that promoted changes to the existing system, or, alternatively, represented a barrier or even obstructed changes to it. Nevertheless, mental testing was implemented in both education systems as a relatively coherent technology rooted in transnational movements and exchange, but was attended by highly different practices and local meaning-making.     

Falling in love and staying in love with science: ongoing informal science experiences support fascination for all children

ABSTRACT

Ages 10–14 mark a period in which children develop a strong sense of whether science is ‘for them,’ a time that typically coincides with the start of middle school in the United States and their first exposure to more rigorous science classes and testing. Experiences with science in and out of school can shape children's motivation to choose science careers or participate in voluntary science classes later on, for better or worse. We explore the hypothesis that children who engage in more informal educational science experiences at the start of this period are more likely than their peers to obtain and maintain interest, curiosity, and mastery goals in science (together forming a construct called fascination). We measured 983 children's fascination with science at the beginning and middle of sixth grade. We found that the children who participated in informal science during this time were more likely to maintain or have greater fascination than at the start. These findings held while also controlling for many potentially confounding covariates and are robust across subgroups by gender and race/ethnicity. Further, the effects are largest for those children whose family generally supports their learning.