Improving self-monitoring and self-regulation: From cognitive psychology to the classroom

Although there is abundant experimental metamemory research on the relation between students’ monitoring, regulation of learning, and learning outcomes, relatively little of this work has influenced educational research and practice. Metamemory research, traditionally based on experimental paradigms from cognitive psychology, can potentially contribute to designing and improving educational interventions that foster self-monitoring and self-regulation in children, adolescents, and young adult learners. We describe the metamemory paradigm, and provide a short overview of the insights it has generated with regard to improving metacognitive skills in these groups of learners. Moreover, we summarize the contributions to this special issue on translating insights from cognitive psychology research on metamemory to educational research and practice, and describe possible themes and directions for future research that could further bridge the gap between fundamental and more applied research on metacognition, so as to design effective educational interventions.     

Anatomy Dissection Course Improves the Initially Lower Levels of Visual-Spatial Abilities of Medical Undergraduates

Visual-spatial abilities are considered a successful predictor in anatomy learning. Previous research suggest that visual-spatial abilities can be trained, and the magnitude of improvement can be affected by initial levels of spatial skills. This case-control study aimed to evaluate (1) the impact of an extra-curricular anatomy dissection course on visual-spatial abilities of medical undergraduates and (2) the magnitude of improvement in students with initially lower levels of visual-spatial abilities, and (3) whether the choice for the course was related to visual-spatial abilities. Course participants (n = 45) and controls (n = 65) were first and second-year medical undergraduates who performed a Mental Rotations Test (MRT) before and 10 weeks after the course. At baseline, there was no significant difference in MRT scores between course participants and controls. At the end of the course, participants achieved a greater improvement than controls (first-year: ∆6.0 ± 4.1 vs. ∆4.9 ± 3.2; ANCOVA, P = 0.019, Cohen's d = 0.41; second-year: ∆6.5 ± 3.3 vs. ∆6.1 ± 4.0; P = 0.03, Cohen's d = 0.11). Individuals with initially lower scores on the MRT pretest showed the largest improvement (∆8.4 ± 2.3 vs. ∆6.8 ± 2.8; P = 0.011, Cohen's d = 0.61). In summary, (1) an anatomy dissection course improved visual-spatial abilities of medical undergraduates; (2) a substantial improvement was observed in individuals with initially lower scores on the visual-spatial abilities test indicating a different trajectory of improvement; (3) students' preferences for attending extracurricular anatomy dissection course was not driven by visual-spatial abilities.     

Response to fluency-oriented intervention of Dutch poor readers

Dysfluency is the major characteristic of dyslexia in languages with a relatively shallow orthography, particularly when unfamiliar words have to be processed. The present study investigated to what extent slow identification of unfamiliar words can be speeded up and whether the expected variation in response-to-intervention can be related to differences in the phonological recoding skills in order to gain insight in the core deficits of dyslexia. The intervention involved four months of continued individual practice of fluency after maximal accuracy was achieved. Response-to-intervention was made operational in terms of individual learning curves, derived from multilevel analysis with repeated measures of response times, number of trials and accuracy as dependent variables. Increasing fluency was indicated by response times getting shorter. An unselected group of poor grade 2 readers who received the intervention in addition to regular classroom practice improved their reading compared to a matched control group who received no additional training. As expected, there were substantial individual differences between students in terms of response-to-intervention (RTI). Good and poor treatment responders progressed comparably when the training was done in the relatively easy training condition with closed word sets of four letter words with one consonant cluster, repeating the overlapping cluster + vowel. Increasing the difficulty level of the training condition to word sets overlapping in consonant cluster only, resulted in substantial individual differences in all three dependent variables. In fact, the poor responders did not improve any more whereas the poor responders continued to do so. This particular characteristic of each student's individual learning curve appeared to be highly predictive of the overall response-to-intervention or intervention outcome. The contribution of this finding to the understanding of dyslexia is discussed in terms of RTI.     

Educational technology on a turning point: curriculum implementation in Flanders and challenges for schools

In this essay, we state that establishing technology curricula by national governments causes a shift in the policy actions of educational technology support: from a technical rationale with a main focus on funding and resources to a pedagogical rationale with a main focus on student competencies. We illustrate our point of view by describing the formal educational technology curriculum recently administered by the government in Flanders. This curriculum is written in terms of attainment targets and has clear implications on the nature of educational technology which is no longer dependent on teachers’ individual efforts or willingness, but is becoming compulsory at the school level. Furthermore, we present two levers that facilitate the integration process of educational technology in general and the realization of technology curricula in particular. Technology coordinators should act more as curriculum managers and change agents, and schools should jointly establish a technology policy plan.