What Do We Teach When We Teach the Learning Sciences? A Document Analysis of 75 Graduate Programs

The learning sciences, as an academic community investigating human learning, emerged more than 30 years ago. Since then, graduate learning sciences programs have been established worldwide. Little is currently known, however, about their disciplinary backgrounds and the topics and research methods they address. In this document analysis of the websites of 75 international graduate learning sciences programs, we examine central concepts and research methods across institutions, compare the programs, and assess the homogeneity of different subgroups. Results reveal that the concepts addressed most frequently were real-world learning in formal and informal contexts, designing learning environments, cognition and metacognition, and using technology to support learning. Among research methods, design-based research (DBR), discourse and dialog analyses, and basic statistics stand out. Results show substantial differences between programs, yet programs focusing on DBR show the greatest similarity regarding the other concepts and methods they teach. Interpreting the similarity of the graduate programs using a community of practice perspective, there is a set of relatively coherent programs at the core of the learning sciences, pointing to the emergence of a discipline, and a variety of multidisciplinary and more heterogeneous programs “orbiting” the core in the periphery, shaping and innovating the field.     

Multiple-pair training enhances transposition in pigeons

We studied transposition in pigeons by training them to select the smaller (or the larger) of a pair of circles. In training, different groups of pigeons were given one pair, two pairs, or three pairs of circles along the size dimension. Testing included two stimulus pairs for which, according to theoretical postdiscrimination generalization gradients, transposition should decrease from one-pair to two-pair to three-pair training. On the basis of the results of our earlier study (Lazareva, Wasserman, & Young, 2005) and contrary to these predictions, we expected that transposition should increase from one-pair to two-pair to three-pair training. We found that multiple-pair discrimination training enhanced transposition, which, on average, rose from 47% (one-pair training) to 52% (two-pair training) to 64% (three-pair training). In addition, we found that the overall similarity of the testing pair to the training pair(s) modulated the strength of relational responding. These results demonstrate that encountering multiple instances of a rule leads to stronger relational learning, even when reinforcement history predicts the opposite trend. These results also provide strong evidence against stimulus generalization as the sole determinant of relational responding in transposition.     

Arts‐Based Educational Research in Museums: ‘Art for Learning Art’, an A/r/tographic Mediation

This article discusses forms of arts‐based mediation in museums that use creation as the primary tool in the learning process. We present four mediation experiences based on the arts‐based teaching methodologies promoted by the project ‘Art for Learning Art’. These experiences have been developed in four museums: the Centre Pompidou Málaga, the State Russian Museum in Málaga and the Espai d'Art Contemponeo [Center of contemporary art] in Castellón in Spain and the Modern Art Murilo Mendes Museum of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Four experiences in three cities of two countries that work in a methodology which involves participative and collaborative visitor connections with the works exhibited using arts‐based strategies. In all cases, the artistic works of the exhibitions are the conceptual basis for mediation proposals that are offered to the public in order to encourage participation. We link the aesthetic experience as the origin of the mediation process in two fundamental aspects: creation and appreciation. In the act of creative appreciation, most art education objectives are met. The actions and processes are directed by collaborative and contemporary creation strategies around two axes: museum educator‐artists in training and visitors‐artists as learners. In the four experiences that we present here, this confluence takes place. The four events have been adapted to the conditions of the place, public and art exhibitions, contributing new approaches to the model that has been promoted from the University of Granada since 2013.     

A study regarding the spontaneous use of geometric shapes in young children’s drawings

The studies regarding how the comprehension of geometric shapes evolves in childhood are largely based on the assessment of children's responses during the course of tasks linked to the recognition, classification or explanation of prototypes and models. Little attention has been granted to the issue as to what extent the geometric shape turns out to be an expressive tool that young children spontaneously use in their pictorial productions and also, whether or not methodological research approaches aimed at the examination of unprompted usage of geometric shapes in childhood may be useful regarding the study of the development of geometric thinking. This evidence provided by this study is coherent with the assumption that before starting primary education, internal representation of closed curves, quadrilaterals and triangles should have been developed by a significant number of children and, more interestingly, that young children’s graphical expressivity appears liaised to their skill to depict two-dimensional geometric shapes.     

Collaborative pedagogy: 3-year-olds bring pedagogical cues into alignment with analogical reasoning to extract generic knowledge

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Although there is wide evidence on young children’s category learning, questions concerning how cognitive mechanisms and social mediation work...     

Dialogue in religious education lessons – possibilities and hindrances in the Estonian context

This paper discusses the limitations and potentials for dialogue in religious education (RE) classes on the basis of observations of Estonian RE lessons. I investigated how the way of asking questions contributes to the dialogue in the classroom. Additionally I investigated how students’ readiness to engage in dialogue is influenced by others’ responses to their contributions. I examined what happens in a classroom, by observing and analysing patterns of interaction in RE lessons in two schools. Video‐ethnographic data collection was combined with stimulated recall. Incident‐analysis stemming from conversational analysis was used to interpret the data. On the basis of these analyses and interpretations, we can conclude that the teacher‐centred habit of instruction is a main impediment to dialogue. A teacher’s positive reinforcement of answers does not contribute to dialogue between students but rather to the assumption that the correct answer has already been given and to reliance on the teacher’s arguments. Also, open questions do not work always as facilitators of dialogue, but rather can be felt as intimidating.     

The mediating role of socio-motivational support in the association between individual school self-concept and achievement motivation amongst adolescent students

It is now well known that adolescence is frequently marked by a decline in students' achievement motivation, which in turn is often associated with a decline in individual school self-concept. Less is known about the mediating role of socio-motivational support in the association between individual school self-concept and achievement motivation. The current study examined the interplay of individual school self-concept, socio-motivational support and achievement motivation in a large sample of seventh and eighth grade students (N?=?1,088; M _Age?=?13.7) in secondary schools in Brandenburg, Germany. Structural equation modeling was used to test the associations between individual school self-concept, socio-motivational support, and achievement motivation. The results showed that the teacher–student relationship as well as “teachers as positive motivators” mediated the association between individual school self-concept and achievement motivation. In contrast, neither “peers as positive motivators” nor the student–student relationship mediated this association. These results support the notion that maintaining a positive teacher–student relationship as well as encouraging teachers in the role of positive motivators could be an effective starting point for prevention and intervention programs aimed at offsetting the decline in individual school self-concept and achievement motivation during adolescence.     

Measuring faculty learning in curriculum and teaching competence online courses

Online education is used for a variety of purposes in higher education. Two such purposes are improving one's performance over time and understanding one's professional development in the context of online teaching and learning. Relying on data from online staff development courses delivered in five Spanish universities, this article explores online faculty learning through the lens of staff development theory. This theoretical perspective emphasizes the universities' quality assurance contexts and offers an empirical examination of the ways in which faculty members learn curriculum and teaching competencies (CTCs) in online staff development programmes. At the core of this analysis is the contention that faculty members understand and respond to quality teaching lessons and activities. Finally, this study highlights the points deemed important when designing, implementing, and evaluating Internet CTC training courses.