Achievement emotions with location-based mobile augmented reality: An examination of discourse processes in simulated guided walking tours

The purpose of this study is to experimentally manipulate discourse processes hypothesized to impact the emotions students experience when interacting with handheld augmented reality devices in informal learning settings. Research conducted in the field is often limited by practical constraints, requiring heavy investments in time and resources to collect data from large samples of students. To demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed method, a guided walking tour with 60 students using a location-based augmented reality app was simulated in the context of a controlled laboratory setting. The difference between groups of students clustered into distinct profiles of positive and negative self-reported emotions was attributed to patterns in the mined dialog between students and tour guide. Furthermore, student engagement predicted the ability to recall topics covered in the tour. We discuss the implications and directions for future research in tour simulations conducted in a laboratory setting as a means to evaluate the role of mobile technologies in enhancing learning and desirable emotions.     

Fostering the Development of Reading Skill through Supplemental Instruction: Results for Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Students

This paper reports the effects of a two-year supplemental reading program for kindergarten through third grade students that focused on the development of decoding skills and reading fluency. Two hundred ninety-nine students were identified for participation and were randomly assigned to the supplemental instruction or to a no-treatment control group. Participants' reading ability was assessed in the fall, before the first year of the intervention, and again in the spring of years 1, 2, 3, and 4. At the end of the two-year intervention, students who received the supplemental instruction performed significantly better than their matched controls on measures of entry level reading skills (i.e., letter-word identification and word attack), oral reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The benefits of the instruction were still clear two years after instruction had ended with students in the supplemental-instruction condition still showing significantly greater growth on the measure of oral reading fluency. Hispanic students benefited from the supplemental reading instruction in English as much as or more than non-Hispanic students. Results support the value of supplemental instruction focused on the development of word recognition skills for helping students at risk for reading failure.     

Multiple description coding with spatial-temporal hybrid interpolation for video streaming in peer-to-peer networks

INTRODUCTION Multimedia services over the Internet are be- coming popular due to the widespread deployment of broadband access. However, the conventional cli- ent-server architecture severely limits the number of simultaneous users, especially for bandwidth inten- sive applications such as video streaming. P2P net- works, on the other hand, offer a solution to the scalability problem. As a node joins a P2P network, it not only consumes resources but also contributes its bandwidth or comp…     

Improving Malay Educational Achievement in Singapore: Problems and Policies

This article traces the development since 1959 of various policies aimed at upgrading Malay educational achievement in order to close the socio-economic gap between the Malay and non-Malay communities in Singapore. It analyses the various economic and political factors that have shaped policy decisions. Several recurrent themes in official discourse on the Malays' educational problems are highlighted, along with the tensions inherent in these policies. The article concludes by discussing the extension of the strategies initiated in the 1980s to encompass the economically disadvantaged sections of the Indian and Chinese communities as well.     

Post-secondary Science Students’ Explanations of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Randomness</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Variation</Emphasis> and Implications for Science Learning

The concepts of randomness and variation are pervasive in science. The purpose of this study was to document how post-secondary life science students explain randomness and variation, infer relationships between their explanations, and ability to describe and identify appropriate and inappropriate variation, and determine if students can identify sources of variation. An instrument designed to test statistical concepts was administered to 282 college students from three universities, ranging from introductory non-science majors to science graduate students. Students readily distinguished between causes of variation. A naïve no-pattern concept of randomness persisted from first-year non-science majors to senior-level science majors, contributing to incorrect responses on the variation instrument. Students’ expressions of randomness were better predictors of performance on the variation instrument than their expressions of variation. It is argued that inclusion of everyday language uses of randomness in instruction can bridge the gap between vernacular and scientific uses of this term.     

Can teachers and mathematicians communicate productively? The case of division with remainder

Is it possible that a meeting of mathematicians and primary school teachers will be productive? This question became intriguing when one professor of mathematics initiated a professional development course for practicing primary school teachers, which he taught alongside a group of mathematics Ph.D. students. This report scrutinizes the uncommon meeting of these two communities, who have very different perspectives on mathematics and its teaching. The instructors had no experience in primary school teaching, and their professed goal was to deepen the teachers’ understanding of the mathematics they teach, while teachers were expecting the course to be pedagogically relevant for their teaching. Surprisingly, despite this mismatch in expectations, the course was considered a success by teachers and instructors alike. In our study, we analyzed a lesson on division with remainder for teachers of grades 3–6, taught by the professor. The framework used for the data analysis was mathematical discourse for teaching, a discursive adaptation of the well-known mathematical knowledge for teaching framework. Our analysis focuses on the nature of the interactions between the parties and the learning opportunities they afforded. We show how different concerns, which might have hindered communication, in fact fueled discussions, leading to understandings of the topic and its teaching that were new to all the parties involved. The findings point to a feasible model for professional development where mathematicians may contribute to the education of practicing teachers, while they are gaining new insights themselves.     

The North Wind and the Sun

The north wind and the sun are good friends.But one day they quarrelabout something. “I am stronger than you.”the cold north wind says.“Indeed you arenot.I’m stronger than you,”answers the soft,warm sun. Just then they see a man walking along the road. “I can get that man’s hat off his head,”the wind says.     

Bottling fog? The quest for instructional management

Elsewhere, the authors have unpacked instructional leadership and have documented that such leadership is associated with more effective schools. Indeed, there has been for a considerable time nearly universal acceptance that learning-centered leadership should provide the central platform on which leadership is enacted. In this paper, a less sanguine narrative is provided on instructional management. Specifically, it documents that for all the evidence and recognition of importance, learning-focused leadership remains a small domain of action for leaders at the school and district levels. It then focuses on both the culture of the profession of school administration and the nature of schooling to explain why in the face of considerable energy and effort only marginal improvements have been realized in deepening instructional leadership. It closes with an analysis of possible paths going forward.