Relationships between student characteristics and self‐, peer and tutor evaluations of oral presentations

There are many influences on how assessors grade themselves and others. Oral presentations are useful for exploring such factors in peer, self‐ and tutor marked assessments, being rapidly completed and assessed, commonly used in HE and very difficult to anonymize. This opportunistic study examined the effects of gender and level of attainment on the triangulation of marks awarded to student presenters. Grades generated by peer assessment were associated more strongly with tutor‐awarded marks than those from self‐assessment. For self‐assessment there was a strong effect of gender (female students undervalued their performance compared with tutor grades). Peer assessment produced higher marks than from tutors, perhaps because of the close‐knit community developed during residential courses. For tutor marks, the greatest variability was at the lower end of the scale, whereas peer assessors were most variable when marking students who self‐evaluated or peer assessed highly. Students awarded a narrower range of marks to peers compared with tutors, but when self‐assessing used a larger range. Presentations by students who admitted to little sleep the night before received lower grades from both peers and tutors, but this was not reflected by self‐assessments, suggesting they were unaware of their poorer performances. Sessions with fewer talks (four rather than seven) reduced the ‘dip’ in marks previously observed in the middle of sessions. Findings are discussed in the context of bias in this mode of assessment.     

An Illusion of Self-Sufficiency for Learning About Artifacts in Scaffolded Learners,But Not Observers

Two studies ask whether scaffolded children (n = 243, 5–6 years and 9–10 years) recognize that assistance is needed to learn to use complex artifacts. In Study 1, children were asked to learn to use a toy pantograph. While children recognized the need for assistance for indirect knowledge, 70% of scaffolded children claimed that they would have learned to use the artifact without assistance, even though 0% of children actually succeeded without assistance. In Study 2, this illusion of self-sufficiency was significantly attenuated when observing another learner being scaffolded. Learners may fail to appreciate artifacts’ opacity because self-directed exploration can be partially informative, such that learning to use artifacts is typically scaffolded instead of taught explicitly.     

The Vestiges of Childhood Interparental Conflict: Adolescent Sensitization to Recent Interparental Conflict

This study examined whether childhood interparental conflict moderated the mediational pathway involving adolescent exposure to interparental conflict, their negative emotional reactivity to family conflict, and their psychological problems in a sample of 235 children (M_age = 6 years). Significant moderated-mediation findings indicated that the mediational path among Wave 4 interparental conflict during adolescence, change in youth negative reactivity (Waves 4–5), and their psychological problems (Waves 4–6) was significant for teens who experienced low, rather than high, levels of childhood interparental conflict (Waves 1–3). Supporting the stress sensitization model, analyses showed that adolescents exposed to high interparental conflict during childhood evidenced greater increases in negative reactivity than their peers when recent parental conflicts were mild.     

The Immigrant Paradox in the Problem Behaviors of Youth in the United States: A Meta-analysis

This meta-analysis synthesizes the empirical data on problem behaviors among foreign- (G1) and U.S-born (G2+) youth and explores the effects of immigrant status on youth internalizing and externalizing problems. A random effects meta-regression with robust variance estimates summarized effect sizes for internalizing and externalizing problems across 91 studies (N = 179,315, M_age = 13.98). Results indicated that G1 youth reported significantly more internalizing problems (g = .06), and fewer externalizing problems than G2+ youth (g = −.06). Gender and sample type moderated the effects. The findings provide a first-step toward reconciling mixed support for the immigrant paradox by identifying for whom and under what conditions the immigrant experience serves as a risk or protective factor for youth.     

Evaluating effects of different forms of revision instruction in upper-primary students

Reading and Writing - This study aimed to establish (a) whether teaching students revision skills provides benefit over and above teaching strategies for setting explicit goals for the...     

排汗衬衣

汗水皮肤上蒸发会降低体温，但是由于衣服吸附湿气，反而使体温升高，让人出更多汗为了解决这个问题，服装生产商向运动服市场推出具有“控制湿气”功能的面料，它可以通过毛细管作用将汗液带走，因此衣服很容易干，这是第一批即将推出的高科技面料。     

Science and the British Empire

The last few decades have witnessed a flowering of interest in the history of science in the British Empire. This essay aims to provide an overview of some of the most important work in this area, identifying interpretative shifts and emerging themes. In so doing, it raises some questions about the analytical framework in which colonial science has traditionally been viewed, highlighting interactions with indigenous scientific traditions and the use of network-based models to understand scientific relations within and beyond colonial contexts.     

Maximum temperature in fixed-bed sorption columns and isosteric heats of adsorption

Heat effects in fixed-bed sorption columns are often quite large and have a pronounced effect on the sorption kinetics. Proper design of such systems must include consideration of these effects.A method is developed for computing the maximum possible bed temperature. The model is tested on two systems: (1) the Linde molecular sieve 4 A/water system and (2) the Alcoa activated alumina F-1/water system. Since the predicted temperatures appeared to be low for the latter system, the model was refined by the inclusion of the isosteric integral heat of adsorption. Tests on the activated alumina show considerable improvement.The isosteres of two sorption therm correlations are investigated. The results show that the heat of adsorption of water on the alumina varies logarithmically with sorbate concentration—approaching high values at low concentrations and approaching the heat of vaporization of water at high concentrations. The results also suggest that the isosteric heat of adsorption behavior may be of use in assessing the “goodness of fit” of sorption therm correlations.