Undergraduates’ learning experience and learning process: quantitative evidence from the East

This article examines the construct validity of the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) in Hong Kong and investigates the similarities and differences in the process of learning among students in different disciplinary studies. It is based on a survey of 1,563 undergraduate students in two disciplines, humanities and sciences, and of principally Chinese ethnicity. Findings from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses support the scale structure of the four subscales of a modified version of the CEQ (good teaching, clear goals and standards, appropriate work, and appropriate assessment) in a non-Western context and could provide a basis for cross cultural research and international benchmarking. While there was variation across subgroups, there was a genuine pattern of relationships between the perceptions of learning environment and learning strategies shown by structural modeling. This information could be used to inform the design of discipline-specific programs in the new curriculum.     

Differences in transitional needs of high school students with and without learning disabilities

Studies investigating the post-high-school vocational status of individuals with disabilities have frequently found that these individuals are more likely to be unemployed, underemployed, or employed part-time, when compared to nondisabled peers. Transition programs are needed for adolescents with disabilities to facilitate their vocational success. The current study surveyed 80 high school students with learning disabilities (LD) and 80 nondisabled (NLD) peers to determine their transitional needs. Results indicated that (a) more students with LD than NLD students are involved in transition programs; (b) career goals were established by the majority of both groups; (c) parents provided most of the assistance in making career decisions; and (d) twice as many NLD students as students with LD wanted to go to college, while twice as many students with LD as NLD students wanted to enter the job market. More students with LD than NLD students were aware of vocational rehabilitation (VR) services, but the number was still below 50%. The majority of the information about VR services came from the school.     

Some determinants of second-order conditioning

In a Pavlovian conditioning situation, an initially neutral stimulus may be made excitatory by nonreinforced presentations in compound with an established conditioned excitor [i.e., second-order conditioning (SOC)]. The established excitor may be either a punctate cue or the training context. In four conditioned suppression experiments using rats, we investigated whether SOC phenomena parallel other cue interaction effects. In Experiment 1, we found that the response potential of a target stimulus was directly related to the intertrial interval when SOC was mediated by a punctate cue, and inversely related to the intertrial interval when SOC was mediated by the training context. Experiment 2 demonstrated that punctate- and context-mediated SOC are oppositely affected by posttraining context extinction, and Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that context- and punctate-mediated SOC are differentially affected by conditioned stimulus (Experiment 3) and unconditioned stimulus (Experiment 4) preexposure treatments. These findings parallel phenomena in conditioned inhibition and cue competition situations.     

Construct validity of self-concept in TIMSS’s student background questionnaire: a test of separation and conflation of cognitive and affective dimensions of self-concept among Saudi eighth graders

The aims of this study are to: (a) assess if cognitive self-concept (competence) and affective self-concept in mathematics and science are different constructs, (b) evaluate the construct validity of self-concept in the context of conflation and separation, and (c) test if the relationships among cognitive and affective variables are invariant across gender. The data for this study were obtained from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2007 database. Data about 2,687 out of 4,099 eighth grade Saudi students were subject to various analyses. The variables used in this study were mathematics and science self-concepts, and mathematics and science subject value as part of the Students Background Questionnaire. The relationships among constructs were examined with the use of SPSS16 and the structural equation modeling software, AMOS16. The results demonstrated that subject value and self-concept were different constructs. Also, the results demonstrated that cognitive and affective self-concepts were independent, but strongly related constructs, and the structure of the construct was clearer when self-concept was separated into cognitive and affective components than when it was conflated. The relationships among cognitive, affective, and subject value in mathematics and science were invariant across gender. However, their relationships with achievement were not invariant across gender.     

Is having more prerequisite knowledge better for learning from productive failure?

A critical assumption made in Kapur’s (Instr Sci 40:651–672, 2012) productive failure design is that students have the necessary prerequisite knowledge resources to generate and explore solutions to problems before learning the targeted concept. Through two quasi-experimental studies, we interrogated this assumption in the context of learning a multilevel biological concept of monohybrid inheritance. In the first study, students were either provided or not provided with prerequisite micro-level knowledge prior to the generation phase. Findings suggested that students do not necessarily have adequate prior knowledge resources, especially those at the micro-level, to generate representations and solution methods for a multilevel concept such as monohybrid inheritance. The second study examined how this prerequisite knowledge provision influenced how much students learned from the subsequent instruction. Although the prerequisite knowledge provision helped students generate and explore the biological phenomenon at the micro- and macro-levels, the provision seemingly did not confer further learning advantage to these students. Instead, they had learning gains similar to those without the provision, and further reported lower lesson engagement and greater mental effort during the subsequent instruction.