Bedeutung der familialen Lebenswelt für die Gesundheit von Kindern und Jugendlichen

Family is the central place of socialization during childhood and adolescence. What are the determining factors of family life that are important for the health of children and adolescents and in which stages of their life do these factors take effect? The question is answered with reference to the general health of children and adolescents as rated by their parents. The analysis is conducted with data from the KiGGS study 2003–2006 which is representative of Germany (n?=?17641, age: 0–17 years). The gender-specific effects of different family factors on good health are analysed in five age groups using binary logistic regression analysis including structural, socioeconomic and origin-related factors of family as well as housing conditions and family cohesion. Bivariate analysis indicates significant effects on general health for almost all included factors (at least in some age groups). Multivariate analysis shows family cohesion to be the most important factor for good health. In boys a bilateral migration background also has an adverse effect on good general health until the beginning of adolescence.     

Family background, entry selectivity and opportunities to learn: What matters in primary teacher education? An international comparison of fifteen countries

First findings of IEA’s “Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M)” had revealed differences in the demographic background, opportunities to learn (OTL), and outcomes of teacher education between student teachers from different countries. Two hypotheses are examined: OTL and teacher background are significant predictors of mathematics content knowledge (MCK) and mathematics pedagogical content knowledge (MPCK) as outcomes. OTL effects are partly mediated by differential student teacher intake. Data from multi-level models support our hypotheses with respect to gender, high-school achievement, motivation, OTL in mathematics and the mediating effect of student teacher intake. Background affects only MCK but not MPCK.     

Cross‐ and mono‐linguistic text processing in bilingual children

Bilingual German fourth‐graders are expected to develop greater linguistic awareness than monolingual children and therefore should habitually apply different text‐processing strategies compared with German monolingual fourth‐graders when comprehending and recalling a text. Bilingual children are expected to process texts from the bottom up, from the text base to the gist, whereas monolingual children should engage in top‐down processing, which is indicated, for example, by more text intrusions and inferences. This research attempts to clarify whether bilinguals show this shift in direction of processing when they process cross‐linguistic versus mono‐linguistic texts. The results of Experiment 1 supported our main hypothesis. Monolingual German fourth‐graders had more intrusions than same‐aged German–English (L1–L2) bilingual children. In Experiment 2, nearly balanced German–English and German‐dominant children were tested separately in within‐language free recall in both languages and in across‐language text recall. For nearly balanced bilingual children, within‐ and cross‐language recall was equally efficient in both languages but not for German‐dominant bilingual children – in their recall, more intrusions appeared in their L2 recall. Top‐down processing seems to increase when it is in the weaker language. Engaging in bottom‐up processing apparently is associated with cognitive functioning in L1.     

技能培养——一项面向未来的任务:变化中的德国图书馆员培养

在德国,图书馆员是具有适应图书馆工作多方面技能和知识的人。德国的图书馆员职业教育,是三年制双轨式教育。其图书馆员高等教育分布于9所高等专科学校和1所综合性大学里,学制一般为7-8学期,以培养硕士为主。     

Toward a Science of Learning Games

Reinforcement learning involves a tight coupling of reward‐associated behavior and a type of learning that is very different from that promoted by education. However, the emerging understanding of its underlying processes may help derive principles for effective learning games that have, until now, been elusive. This article first reviews findings from cognitive neuroscience and psychology to provide insight into the motivating role of uncertain reward in games, including educational games. Then, a short experiment is reported to illustrate the potential of reward‐based neurocomputational models of behavior in the understanding and development of effective learning games. In this study, a reward‐based model of behavior is shown to predict recall of newly learned information during a simple learning game.     

Assessing conceptual knowledge using similarity judgments

This study evaluates the validity of a similarity judgments test (SJT) for assessing conceptual knowledge. 89 high school seniors judged the semantic similarity of a set of concepts. The resulting scores are calculated using a correlational approach as well as the MDS and Pathfinder approaches, respectively. The validity of the SJT is estimated by comparing (a) the scores with the test scores resulting from a multiple-choice test, (b) the scores resulting from pre- and post-instruction, and (c) the scores of students with high vs. low expertise. Our results support the validity of the SJT and show that both the correlational and the Pathfinder approach outclass the MDS approach. Recommendations to evaluate the SJT are provided.     

How strongly does statistical reasoning influence knowledge and acceptance of evolution?

A large body of research has examined students' conceptions of evolution and their relationships to acceptance of evolution. Proficiency in statistical and probabilistic reasoning has long been considered to be an essential feature of evolutionary reasoning, yet almost no empirical work has explored these putative connections. The RaPro instruments have recently been developed to measure statistical reasoning in the contexts of mathematics (RaProMath) and evolution (RaProEvo). Our study provides additional validation of these instruments using Rasch analysis and quantifies the contribution of statistical reasoning to both understanding and accepting evolution. We recruited a large sample (N = 564) of undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory biology course at a large public research university in the United States. Students completed a suite of published instruments that assessed statistical reasoning, evolutionary understanding, and evolutionary acceptance. Our findings indicate that validity inferences derived from RaPro scores generalized to the new sample, and that proficiency in statistical reasoning explained 28% of the variance in evolutionary knowledge and 19% of the variation in evolutionary acceptance. The inclusion of demographic variables into the model significantly increased the explained variance in acceptance. Notably, the variance in evolution acceptance explained by statistical reasoning was comparable to that of thinking dispositions or evolutionary knowledge reported in the literature. This work provides the first large-scale evidence of the role of statistical reasoning in evolutionary knowledge and acceptance and motivates future work to explore how statistical literacy should be integrated into evolution education efforts.     

How effective is instructional support for learning with computer simulations?

The study examined the effects of two different instructional interventions as support for scientific discovery learning using computer simulations. In two well-known categories of difficulty, data interpretation and self-regulation, instructional interventions for learning with computer simulations on the topic “ecosystem water” were developed and tested using a sample of 124 eighth graders in science classes. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of instructional support for domain-specific factual, conceptual, and procedural knowledge acquisition. Students who received either only instructional support for data interpretation or only for self-regulation achieved the highest learning outcomes. However, a combination of instructional support for data interpretation and self-regulation seemed detrimental for knowledge acquisition. Students who received instructional interventions for both data interpretation and self-regulation also showed the highest values of perceived cognitive load. High cognitive load could be a reason for why a combination of particular instructional interventions does not lead to the expected positive learning outcomes.