Engagement in learning: a comparison between Asian and European international university students

Drawing on research on both engagement in learning and approaches to learning, we examine the associations between international students’ approaches to learning, factors in the teaching/learning environment and self-assessed academic outcomes. A total of 307 students responded to our survey. Their experience of the purposefulness of their course assignments and the relevance of their studies was related to students having a deep approach to learning and being organised in their studies. Moreover, students applying a deep approach to learning and being organised in studying seemed to perceive their study success more positively. Furthermore, the better students’ perception of how well their courses were organised and aligned with other studies, the lower their stress level was. The Asian students in our study exhibited a slightly more surface approach to learning, and were more organised in their studies than the European students, but the differences were very small.     

Reification in the Learning of Square Roots in a Ninth Grade Classroom: Combining Semiotic and Discursive Approaches

This paper reports on combining semiotic and discursive approaches to reification in classroom interactions. It focuses on the discursive characteristics and semiotic processes involved in the teaching and learning of square roots in a ninth grade classroom in Japan. The purpose of this study is to characterize the development of mathematical discourses in a series of mathematics lessons in terms of the commognitive framework and the model of semiotic chaining. To achieve this objective, the notion of reification is revisited from cognitive, semiotic, and discursive points of view, and classroom activities are observed and analysed in terms of the combined theoretical framework. The results suggest that the model of semiotic chaining is not incommensurable with a strong discursive approach and the changes of meta-discursive rules—an essential aspect of the reification of new signifiers—that take place in the phases of the learning of addition on square roots.