The effect of design education using virtual reality-based coding on student competence and educational satisfaction

Education and Information Technologies - Virtual reality (VR) technology is playing a crucial role in the changing paradigm of education. In many cases, however, VR technology is not being taught...     

Revisioning Fairness as Social Justice in Early Childhood Education

Early Childhood Education Journal - Young children’s ideas of fairness have been studied in a range of laboratory settings with findings that children see fairness as equal distribution of...     

Teacher agency and transformation at the crossroads of a diffused school change movement: An empirical typology of the Hyukshin Schools in South Korea

Journal of Educational Change - This study aimed to provide an empirical typology of a diffused school change movement in South Korea, known as the Hyukshin School movement. This movement has been...     

Nutrition and Physical Activity Practices in Childcare Centers Versus Family Childcare Homes

Obesity rates among preschool-aged children have doubled in the past 10 years, and 60 % of these children spend the majority of their day in childcare facilities. Few studies have examined the quality of nutrition and physical activity practices in childcare centers as compared to family childcare homes. The purpose of this study is to determine if a pattern of differences exist in these two settings. As part of a CDC-funded study to reduce the obesity epidemic in young children, directors of 1,140 childcare facilities (842 out-of-home and 298 in-home) in one large county completed a survey that detailed their practices related to child nutrition and physical activity. Results showed that compared with out-of-home facilities, in-home facilities were more likely to report excellent indoor physical activity (87.2 vs. 85.5 %, p = 0.059), less likely to report excellent outdoor physical activity (92.8 vs. 96.5 %, p = 0.018), more likely to serve fruit (80.3 vs. 51.2 %), and less likely to serve 1 % milk (45.2 vs. 55 %). This study’s present findings revealed that ample opportunity exists to significantly improve the health of young children in both in-home and out-of-home facilities.     

A methodological framework for instructional design model development: Critical dimensions and synthesized procedures

Instructional design (ID) models have been developed to promote understandings of ID reality and guide ID performance. As the number and diversity of ID practices grows, implicit doubts regarding the reliability, validity, and usefulness of ID models suggest the need for methodological guidance that would help to generate ID models that are relevant and appropriate to the ever-changing design challenges in our world. Because the construction of an ID model involves an intricate externalization of unique sets of design experiences as well as a logical synthesis of relevant research, the purpose of this study was to formulate a methodological framework for ID model development. Through the analysis of 20 selected studies, four critical dimensions and ten synthesized procedures for constructing ID models were formulated. The resulting framework is intended to provide a useful theoretical and practical contribution to the field of ID.     

IMPACT OF EXPLICIT PRESENTATION OF SLOPES IN THREE DIMENSIONS ON STUDENTS’ UNDERSTANDING OF DERIVATIVES IN MULTIVARIABLE CALCULUS

In two dimensions (2D), representations associated with slopes are seen in numerous forms before representations associated with derivatives are presented. These include the slope between two points and the constant slope of a linear function of a single variable. In almost all multivariable calculus textbooks, however, the first discussion of slopes in three dimensions (3D) is seen with the introduction of partial derivatives. The nature of the discussions indicates that authors seem to assume that students are able to naturally extend the concept of a 2D slope to 3D and correspondingly it is not necessary to explicitly present slopes in 3D. This article presents results comparing students that do not explicitly discuss slopes in 3D with students that explicitly discuss slopes in 3D as a precursor to discussing derivatives in 3D. The results indicate that students may, in fact, have significant difficulty extending the concept of a 2D slope to a 3D slope. And that the explicit presentation of slopes in 3D as a precursor to the presentation of derivatives in 3D may significantly improve student comprehension of topics of differentiation in multivariable calculus.

     

Do American and Korean education systems converge? Tracking school reform policies and outcomes in Korea and the USA

This study examines key school reform policies and outcomes of the USA and Korea over the past three decades from comparative perspectives. Since the two nations’ unique educational problems brought divergent educational reform paths—standardization versus differentiation, high-stakes testing versus individualized assessment, and centralization versus decentralization—the study tracks international policy benchmarking efforts and potential impact on educational convergence. The study employs mixed methods, including the content analysis of research and media documents and the trend analysis of TIMSS and PISA datasets. The results indicate that, despite significant changes in policy discourse, the gaps between Korea and the USA in student math achievement and school climates did not narrow. The policy lessons from these cases and the issues of international education benchmarking are discussed.