The effects of musical training on the decoding skills of German‐speaking primary school children

This paper outlines the results of a long‐term study of 159 German‐speaking primary school children. The correlations between musical skills (perception and differentiation of rhythmical and tonal/melodic patterns) and decoding skills, and the effects of musical training on word‐level reading abilities were investigated. Cognitive skills and socioeconomic factors were controlled as covariates in all analysis. The experimental group received special musical training for 9 months. A comparison sample received alternative training (visual arts) for the same amount of time. Another comparison sample did not receive any additional classes during the study period. The results show that rhythmical abilities are correlated significantly positively with decoding skills (both reading accuracy and reading prosody). Tonal skills, however, were not correlated with reading skills. Additionally, the special musical training had a significant effect on reading accuracy in word reading, as analysis of covariance revealed. In this paper, implications for reading development are discussed.     

Fish out of water: refugee and international students in mainstream Australian schools

In this paper, the authors combine Pierre Bourdieu's concept of hysteresis (the ‘fish out of water’ experience) with the discourse historical approach to critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a theoretical and analytical framework through which they examine specific moments in the schooling experiences of one refugee student and one international student, both enrolled in post-compulsory education in Australian mainstream secondary schools. We examine specific moments – as narrated by these students during interviews – in which these students can be described as ‘fish out of water’. As such, this paper takes up the concerns of researchers who call for an examination of the lived geographies and the everyday lives of individual students in mainstream schools. We find that our students' habitus, conditioned by their previous schooling experiences in their home countries, did not match their new Australian schools, resulting in frustration with, and alienation from, their mainstream schools. However, we also note that schools, too, need to adapt and adjust their habitus to the new multicultural world, in which there are international and refugee students among their usual cohort of mainstream students.     

Mother–child joint writing and storybook reading and their effects on kindergartners’ literacy: an intervention study

This study assessed the effects of three different intervention programs on low-SES mother?Cchild joint activities and on their kindergarten-age children??s progress in early literacy and language. Parents in three groups (119 mothers, 5 fathers) were coached to mediate child learning, respectively, in: interactive storybook reading, writing, or visuomotor skills. A group-specific workshop was followed by 7?weeks of tri-weekly structured dyadic interactions and weekly tutorial home visits. A fourth group (control) received no intervention. Results showed implementation success: Mothers coached in interactive storybook reading or writing mediation improved in the coached activity from pretest to immediate posttest and to delayed posttest. Interactive storybook reading improved less for older than younger children, whereas writing mediation improved more for older than younger children. No transfer emerged from one activity to the other: Coaching on reading had no effect on writing or visuomotor skills, and coaching of writing had an effect only on writing. Children??s alphabetic skills were enhanced in the writing mediation-coached group, whereas linguistic competencies, unexpectedly, were not enhanced in the interactive storybook reading-coached group. The significance of writing mediation as a dyadic activity promoting literacy is emphasized.     

Supporting self-regulated hypermedia learning through prompts

The aim of this research was to develop and evaluate tools and supports for self-regulated learning with hypertext information structures, such as Web pages. Two kinds of supports for self-regulated learning were developed and tested experimentally: Prompting and Prompting with Training. In Experiment 1, Prompting was tested with a pre-post-test between subject design, including thinking-aloud data. Students of the experimental group (n = 20) were prompted for self-regulation activities that had to be followed while learning basic learning theory. No self-regulation support was offered in the control group (n = 20). In Experiment 2 (Prompting with Training), the experimental group (n = 20) received a short training, in addition to the prompting: the self-regulated learning activities were explained in detail, demonstrated and practiced right before the learning session. Again, no self-regulation support was offered in the control group (n = 20). Analyses of learning processes and learning outcomes confirm partly the positive effects of both measures of self-regulated learning prompts. The more extended measure (with training) had superior effects on students’ learning transfer performance and acceptance. Implications for the design of instructional support to improve self-regulated learning with computer-based learning environments are discussed.     

`A historical angle’, a survey of recent literature on the use and value of history in geometrical education

In this article we give a survey of recent literature on the use and value of the history of geometry in mathematics education. It turns out that many authors have contributed to the debate why we should apply history. Their arguments can be divided into conceptual, (multi-) cultural and motivational ones. The number of authors who concentrated on the methodological question “How could we introduce history into mathematics lessons?” is considerably smaller. Those who want to make history an integral part of mathematics education have to bridge the gap between theoretical arguments and practical ideas, and, connected with this,between historians and teachers, and ultimately between mathematicians from the past and present day students. We divided the various surveyed publications, mainly journal articles, into categories according to a framework in order to clarify the discussion on the role of the history of geometry in education. Details about content and purpose of the articles are presented in two appendices, which make the articles more accessible both for further research and for practical teacher purposes.     

Relationships among Singaporean secondary teachers’ conceptions of assessment and school and policy contextual factors

This study examines teachers’ conceptions of assessment and related contextual factors at the classroom, school and national levels. A representative survey of Singaporean secondary school teachers resulted in a final sample consisting of 229 teachers from 9 secondary schools. Findings on that, teachers endorse views of assessment for school accountability, student accountability and student improvement, but little endorsement of assessment as irrelevance. Teachers report feeling capable and qualified to use assessments, but concerned about how much they are trusted as assessors at school and national levels. Follow-up latent class analysis identified groups of teachers based on their responses to the irrelevance of assessment; teachers who found assessment irrelevant were present across all schools and subjects, but showed lower sense of preparation for assessment, school-level support and importance of academic success in society.     

Conceptualizing Debates in Learning and Educational Research: Toward a Complex Systems Conceptual Framework of Learning

This article proposes a conceptual framework of learning based on perspectives and methodologies being employed in the study of complex physical and social systems to inform educational research. We argue that the contexts in which learning occurs are complex systems with elements or agents at different levels—including neuronal, cognitive, intrapersonal, interpersonal, cultural—in which there are feedback interactions within and across levels of the systems so that collective properties arise (i.e., emerge) from the behaviors of the parts, often with properties that are not individually exhibited by those parts. We analyze the long-running cognitive versus situative learning debate and propose that a complex systems conceptual framework of learning (CSCFL) provides a principled way to achieve a theoretical rapprochement. We conclude with a consideration of more general implications of the CSCFL for educational research.     

Characteristics of teachers’ choice of examples in and for the mathematics classroom

The main goal of the study reported in our paper is to characterize teachers’ choice of examples in and for the mathematics classroom. Our data is based on 54 lesson observations of five different teachers. Altogether 15 groups of students were observed, three seventh grade, six eighth grade, and six ninth grade classes. The classes varied according to their level—seven classes of top level students and six classes of mixed—average and low level students. In addition, pre and post lesson interviews with the teachers were conducted, and their lesson plans were examined. Data analysis was done in an iterative way, and the categories we explored emerged accordingly. We distinguish between pre-planned and spontaneous examples, and examine their manifestations, as well as the different kinds of underlying considerations teachers employ in making their choices, and the kinds of knowledge they need to draw on. We conclude with a dynamic framework accounting for teachers’ choices and generation of examples in the course of teaching mathematics.

Policy Documents: On the Wall or in the Waste Bin?

It has always been quite fashionable to have a disparaging view about school policy documents and many teachers will have had experiences of being given such documents with great flourish and then never opening them again. Yet, as Iris Keating and her colleagues point out, policy documents could be extremely helpful to teachers as guides to appropriate classroom action and ensurers of a continuity of approach. They clearly need further study as objects in their own right.