Curiosity, interest and engagement in technology-pervasive learning environments: a new research agenda

This paper identifies the need for developing new ways to study curiosity in the context of today’s pervasive technologies and unprecedented information access. Curiosity is defined in this paper in a way which incorporates the concomitant constructs of interest and engagement. A theoretical model for curiosity, interest and engagement in new media technology-pervasive learning environments is advanced, taking into consideration personal, situational and contextual factors as influencing variables. While the path associated with curiosity, interest, and engagement during learning and research has remained essentially the same, how individuals tackle research and information-seeking tasks and factors which sustain such efforts have changed. Learning modalities for promoting this theoretical model are discussed leading to a series of recommendations for future research. This article offers a multi-lens perspective on curiosity and suggests a multi-method research agenda for validating such a perspective.     

Effective methods for institutional research: How important is institutional type?

Despite the view that institutional research is most successful when it is an extension of the administrators who need its products, most institutional research offices are centralized. In this paper a newly-organized, small college model that is both decentralized and integrated is described. Evaluation of the model is reported. Goals and activities are related to recently identified external and organizational factors that seem to contribute to the proliferation of institutional research.Susan H. Frost is director of institutional planning and research and adjunct assistant professor of education at Emory University. She holds degrees from Agnes Scott College and the University of Georgia. Since 1990 she has organized the first offices of institutional research at both a comprehensive college and at a research university. Currently she is investigating patterns of institutional decision making on university campuses.     

Research in the Department of Education at the State University of Utrecht‡

This study concerns students’ ideas about the superposition of electric fields. Two paper‐and‐pencil questionnaires were given to university students to investigate possible obstacles to a correct use of this principle.

The results confirm an expected difficulty about Gauss's theorem, i.e., the idea that only ‘internal’ charges create a field on a given closed surface. Another more surprising finding is that students are reluctant to admit that a field can penetrate into, or go out of, an insulator, particularly because ‘charges cannot move’.

These first findings are discussed in connection with common features of students’ reasoning about mechanics and about multivariable problems. Some directions of future research are proposed.     

Early Childhood Teachers as Socializers of Young Children’s Emotional Competence

Young children’s emotional competence—regulation of emotional expressiveness and experience when necessary, and knowledge of their own and other’s emotions—is crucial for social and academic (i.e., school) success. Thus, it is important to understand the mechanisms of how young children develop emotional competence. Both parents and teachers are considered as important socializers of emotion, providing children experiences that promote or deter the development of emotional competence. However, compared to parents, early childhood teachers’ roles in socializing young children’s emotional competence have not been examined. Based on the findings from research on parental socialization of emotion, in this theoretical review we explore possible teacher roles in the development of young children’s emotional competence. Additionally, we suggest future research focusing on early childhood teacher socialization of emotion, and discuss theoretical and practical benefits of such research.     

Developing a tobacco survey for deaf youth

Formidable barriers hinder use of standard data collection methods among deaf youth. Culturally and linguistically sensitive data collection strategies are needed to identify the unmet health and programming needs of this population. Unfortunately, researchers often fail to describe the issues involved in developing such targeted methods. The authors describe development of a culturally appropriate data collection instrument for a study of tobacco-related knowledge, attitudes, and practices among deaf youth. The instrument uses interactive multimedia technology to administer a questionnaire translated into the primary languages used by the Deaf. The procedures taken to accommodate this technology to these languages and to Deaf culture are described. This process yielded useful insights with respect to data collection not only among the Deaf, but among other frequently overlooked and underserved populations as well.     

Choice and goal-directed behavior in preschool children

Preschool children (3–4 years old) were trained to perform two actions to gain different outcomes, in the form of video clips from different cartoons, before one of these outcomes was devalued by noncontingent exposure. The effect of outcome devaluation was subsequently assessed in an extinction test by giving children the opportunity to perform both actions in the absence of any outcomes. When the two actions were trained concurrently, performance during the test was modulated by outcome value and children showed a preference for the action trained with the currently valued outcome. By contrast, when each action was trained separately on different trials, test performance was insensitive to outcome devaluation. These effects of the training schedules are interpreted in terms of dual-process theories of action control.     

Detecting Differential Item Functioning Using Logistic Regression Procedures

A logistic regression model for characterizing differential item functioning (DIF) between two groups is presented. A distinction is drawn between uniform and nonuniform DIF in terms of the parameters of the model. A statistic for testing the hypothesis of no DIF is developed. Through simulation studies, it is shown that the logistic regression procedure is more powerful than the Mantel-Haenszel procedure for detecting nonuniform DIF and as powerful in detecting uniform DIF.