Test-enhanced learning in third-grade children

Several recent studies have shown that retrieval is more efficient than restudy in enhancing the long-term retention of memories. However, studies investigating this effect in children are still rare. Here, we report an experiment in which third-grade children initially read a brief encyclopaedic text twice and then either performed a cued recall test on selected target contents of the text or reread the same text twice. A final four-choice memory test about the text’s contents was administered to all children after seven days as well as tests measuring their IQ and reading skills. In the final four-choice memory test, children who took the initial cued recall test showed significantly greater performance in comparison with children who restudied the text twice (their responses were 87 and 53% correct, respectively). The results suggest that cued recall tests can elicit very robust testing effects in young children, even when complex, educationally relevant materials are used as stimuli.     

Pacing in lane-based head-to-head competitions: A systematic review on swimming

ABSTRACT

Athletes’ energy distribution over a race (e.g. pacing behaviour) varies across different sports. Swimming is a head-to-head sport with unique characteristics, such as propulsion through water, a multitude of swimming stroke types and lane-based racing. The aim of this paper was to review the existing literature on pacing behaviour in swimming. According to PRISMA guidelines, 279 articles were extracted using the PubMed and Web of Science databases. After the exclusion process was conducted, 16 studies remained. The findings of these studies indicate that pacing behaviour is influenced by the race distance and stroke type. Pacing behaviours in swimming and time-trial sports share numerous common characteristics. This commonality can most likely be attributed to the lane-based racing set-up. The low efficiency of swimming resulting from propulsion through the water induces a rapid accumulation of blood lactate, prompting a change in swimmers’ biomechanical characteristics, with the goal of minimising changes in velocity throughout the race. Although the literature on youth swimmers is scarce, youth swimmers demonstrate more variable pacing profiles and have more difficulty in selecting the most beneficial energy distribution.     

Advancing text-analysis to tap into the student voice: a proof-of-concept study

Abstract

Student evaluations of teaching and courses (SETs) are part of the fabric of tertiary education and quantitative ratings derived from SETs are highly valued by tertiary institutions. However, many staff do not engage meaningfully with SETs, especially if the process of analysing student feedback is cumbersome or time-consuming. To address this issue, we describe a proof-of-concept study to automate aspects of analysing student free text responses to questions. Using Quantext text analysis software, we summarise and categorise student free text responses to two questions posed as part of a larger research project which explored student perceptions of SETs. We compare human analysis of student responses with automated methods and identify some key reasons why students do not complete SETs. We conclude that the text analytic tools in Quantext have an important role in assisting teaching staff with the rigorous analysis and interpretation of SETs and that keeping teachers and students at the centre of the evaluation process is key.     

“You're going to want to find out which and prove it”: collective argumentation in a mathematics classroom

One of the proposals of the North American educational reform movement is that teachers should stress scientific argumentation more than the manipulation of symbols and algorithms in their mathematics instruction. The aim of this article is to apply some theoretical concepts, drawn from the fields of sociolinguistics and rhetoric, to the analysis of argumentation in a lesson conducted in an urban middle school classroom. Our analysis focuses on the implementation of the classroom teacher's instructional goals during a lesson on area measurement. As a result of our analyses, we found that she achieved her instructional goals of being nondirective in her teaching and getting students actively involved in arguing about mathematical concepts. The teacher was able to orchestrate discussion by recruiting attention and participation from her class, aligning students with argumentative positions through reported speech, highlighting positions through repetition, and pointing out important aspects of their arguments through expansion. In addition, we also found that her students differed in the way they framed the mathematical content of the lesson in terms of the facts or grounds, algorithms or warrants, premises or backings, as well as solutions or claims. Their arguments also varied in terms of explicitness and ability to integrate their classmates' arguments. In conclusion, we feel that discourse analysis, based on sociolinguistic and rhetorical theoretical frameworks, can be a valuable tool for the evaluation of educational reform in mathematics.     

A contingency management day program for adolescents excluded from public school

This contingency management adolescent school program integrated vocational training with academic instruction. The students, who were unserved by public education because of emotional handicaps, were afforded an individual treatment program by the staff of the day program. They demonstrated significant gains in educational skills and exhibited an exceedingly low dropout rate, inasmuch as 95% either continued in the program beyond their first year or reentered public school.     

The Force of Personality: Gottfried Keller's Educational Philosophy

We set out to identify the benefits and drawbacks of using more than one instructor to teach single section science courses at a large research university. Nine courses were investigated involving widely differing subjects and levels. Teaching models included: sequential teaching with two to six instructors each covering only their own modules, two teachers present in class at all times, and hybrids of these two models. A three-question survey was answered by 957 students and 17 instructors. Dominant advantages identified by both groups were variety of teaching style or perspectives and instructor expertise, with instructors being more likely to identify expertise as the primary advantage. Dominant disadvantages identified were adjustment to teaching style and expectations and confusion and communication issues. Data suggest that advantages are maximized and disadvantages minimized either in courses with two or more instructors interacting and collaborating in class or when special care is taken with coordination and collaboration if the course is sequentially taught. We conclude with specific recommendations to instructors and departments based on evidence from the data.     

Case Study on the Implementation of School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports in an Alternative Educational Setting

School-wide positive behavior interventions and supports (SW-PBIS) can effectively reduce problem behaviors and simultaneously increase pro-social behaviors in general education settings. SW-PBIS is not a “packaged” intervention, but a framework through which schools create systemic changes for promoting expected behaviors, while also monitoring and intervening with students who have behavior concerns through a tiered model of service delivery. A case study documenting the SW-PBIS implementation process in an alternative educational setting is presented. Alternative schools typically serve students who qualify to receive special education services, have a lower staff-to-student ratio, and often warrant more intensive student interventions as compared to general education settings. These differences from traditional environments pose unique challenges to the SW-PBIS implementation process. Suggestions for neutralizing these challenges such as providing enhanced Tier 1 supports and extensive staff training are explained in depth in this case study.     

The optimum clustering framework: implementing the cluster hypothesis

Document clustering offers the potential of supporting users in interactive retrieval, especially when users have problems in specifying their information need precisely. In this paper, we present a theoretic foundation for optimum document clustering. Key idea is to base cluster analysis and evalutation on a set of queries, by defining documents as being similar if they are relevant to the same queries. Three components are essential within our optimum clustering framework, OCF: (1) a set of queries, (2) a probabilistic retrieval method, and (3) a document similarity metric. After introducing an appropriate validity measure, we define optimum clustering with respect to the estimates of the relevance probability for the query-document pairs under consideration. Moreover, we show that well-known clustering methods are implicitly based on the three components, but that they use heuristic design decisions for some of them. We argue that with our framework more targeted research for developing better document clustering methods becomes possible. Experimental results demonstrate the potential of our considerations.     

The Evolution of Reading and Writing in the Networked Era

As the Director of the Institute for the Future of the Book, Bob Stein has been involved with several endeavors to create a technological solution that will meet the evolving needs of information dissemination in the digital age. His experiences working with Encyclopedia Britannica and later creating an interactive media company, The Voyager Company, have led him in this direction. This talk seeks to raise questions about how books are evolving, what the end product should be, and who is responsible for getting them there.