Personal and Situational Factors Influencing Intrinsic Interest of Adolescent Girls in School Physical Education: a structural equation modelling analysis

This study assessed the influence of individual and contextual factors on adolescent girls’ interest in school physical education (PE). Specifically, girls (N = 700) were assessed on: (a), perceptions of their PE class climate, using the Perceived Motivational Climate Scale (PMCS, Cury et al., 1994; (b) dispositional achievement goal orientations, using the French version of the Perception of Success Questionnaire (POSQ, Durand et alM in press; and (c) the interest and competence subscales from the French version of the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI, Cury et al., 1994a). Structural equation modelling analysis, using LISREL VII, showed an excellent fit with the hypothesised model. Specifically, situational class climate was found to be more important than individual goals in influencing pupil interest in PE. However, perceived competence also influenced interest, as did a mastery goal orientation. Results are discussed in the context of theoretical propositions of goal perspectives theory and practical issues of enhancing adolescent girls’ interest in physical education.     

Teaching strategies to promote concept learning by design challenges

Background: This study is the second study of a design-based research, organised around four studies, that aims to improve student learning, teaching skills and teacher training concerning the design-based learning approach called Learning by Design (LBD).

Purpose: LBD uses the context of design challenges to learn, among other things, science. Previous research shows that this approach to subject integration is quite successful but provides little profit on (scientific) concept learning. For this, a lack of (knowledge of) proper teaching strategies is suggested as an important reason. This study explores these strategies and more specific the interaction with concept learning.

Sample: Six Dutch first-year bachelor’s degree science student teachers, between the ages of 16 and 18, and two science teacher trainers (principal investigators included) were involved.

Design and methods: A mixed methods study was used to study LBD’s teaching practice in depth. Based on a theoretical framework of (concept) learning-related teaching strategies video recordings of a guided LBD challenge were analysed to unravel teacher handling in detail. Complemented by questionnaire and interview data and students’ learning outcomes (pre- and post-exam) the effectiveness of teaching strategies was established and shortcomings were distracted.

Results: Students reached medium overall learning gains where the highest gains were strongly task-related. Teacher handling was dominated by providing feedback and stimulating collaboration and only 13% of all teacher interventions concerned direct explication of underlying science. And especially these explicit teaching strategies were highly appreciated by students to learn about science.

Conclusions: In accordance with insights about knowledge transfer, LBD needs to be enriched with explicit teaching strategies, interludes according to poor-related science content important for cohesive understanding and de- and recontextualisation of concepts for deeper understanding.     

Visual constraints in written word recognition: evidence from the optimal viewing‐position effect

In this paper we review the literature on visual constraints in written word processing. We notice that not all letters are equally visible to the reader. The letter that is most visible is the letter that is fixated. The visibility of the other letters depends on the distance between the letters and the fixation location, whether the letters are outer or inner letters of the word, and whether the letters lie to the left or to the right of the fixation location. Because of these three factors, word recognition depends on the viewing position. In languages read from left to right, the optimal viewing position is situated between the beginning and the middle of the word. This optimal viewing position is the result of an interplay of four variables: the distance between the viewing position and the farthest letter, the fact that the word beginning is usually more informative than the word end, the fact that during reading words have been recognised a lot of times after fixation on this letter position and the fact that stimuli in the right visual field have direct access to the left cerebral hemisphere. For languages read from right to left, the first three variables pull the optimal viewing position towards the right side of the word (which is the word beginning), but the fourth variable counteracts these forces to some extent. Therefore, the asymmetry of the optimum viewing‐position curve is less clear in Hebrew and Arabic than in French and Dutch.     

Cross-linguistic analysis of vocabulary in young children: spanish, dutch, French, hebrew, italian, korean, and american english

The composition of young children's vocabularies in 7 contrasting linguistic communities was investigated. Mothers of 269 twenty-month-olds in Argentina, Belgium, France, Israel, Italy, the Republic of Korea, and the United States completed comparable vocabulary checklists for their children. In each language and vocabulary size grouping (except for children just learning to talk), children's vocabularies contained relatively greater proportions of nouns than other word classes. Each word class was consistently positively correlated with every other class in each language and for children with smaller and larger vocabularies. Noun prevalence in the vocabularies of young children and the merits of several theories that may account for this pattern are discussed.     

Latent Variable Analysis: A New Approach to University Ranking

This study applies a Bayesian latent variable analysis to the task of determining rankings of universities in the UK and US, on the basis of a set of quality‐related measures. It estimates the degree of uncertainty in the rankings and permits the assessment of statistically significant differences across universities. It also provides a methodology for determining the weighting of various measures that is based on the patterns embedded in the data and compares the latent variable rankings with traditional weight‐and‐sum rankings. Overall, the methodology contributes to a better understanding of ranking efforts and illustrates the need for caution in interpreting distinctions published in traditional ranking systems.     

Graduate teacher motivation for choosing a job in education

This article compares individuals already in teaching and non-teaching teacher graduates, and explores the motivation to pursue a teaching job based on job motives and work values. From the response of 241 recently graduated teachers it may be concluded that teachers consider intrinsic, altruistic and interpersonal features as strong job-specific motivators. Furthermore, teachers prefer altruistic and interpersonal work values, while non-teachers are more attracted by individualistic work values such as career opportunities and executive power.