The paper beam: hands-on design for team work experience of freshman in engineering

The present research refers to the assigning of a hands-on group project to freshman engineering students, evaluating their performance, and deriving conclusions on student benefits and educational advances. The research procedure included action plans for the instructor and the students, instructions to the students on performing the work, organizational instructions to the teams and reporting guidelines, and evaluation of the success of the project. The main outcomes refer to the team co-operation, the performance of tasks, the quality of results and the reporting effectiveness. The ‘paper beam’ project benefited the student’s learning and proved the need of complementary learning styles in teams, of the appreciation of quality performance and results, as well as of the accuracy in project details.     

A potential for learning probability in young children

Sixty-one children, from 4 to 11 years old, were presented with two sets, each containing blue and yellow elements. Each time, one colour was pointed out as the payoff colour (POC). The child had to choose the set from which he or she would draw at random a POC element in order to be rewarded. The sets were of varying sizes with different proportions of the two colours. The problem was to select the higher of the two probabilities. Three kinds of materials were used: Pairs of urns with blue and yellow beads, pairs of roulettes divided into blue and yellow sectors, and pairs of spinning tops, likewise divided into two colours.Roughly around the age of six, children started to select the greater of the two probabilities systematically. The dominant error was selecting the set with the greater number of POC elements. Verbal concepts of probability and chance were explored and some egocentric thought processes were described. The study indicates that probability concepts could be introduced into school teaching even in the first grades. The deterministic orientation in the instruction for young ages should be attenuated, permitting concepts of uncertainty right from the beginning.     

Täuschungshandlungen im Sport

Experimental studies on the head fake in basketball showed that participant’s responses in a pass direction identification task were delayed for incongruent compared to congruent directions of the players gaze and pass (so-called head fake effect). In these studies on the head fake effect, static pictures were presented and responses on the pass direction were given with a simple key press. The present study examines whether an increase in the response complexity affects the head fake effect and whether it can also be transferred to the presentation of dynamic stimuli. In experiment 1, participants were presented with static pictures of a basketball player who passes a ball to the left or to the right. The player’s gaze direction was either oriented in the direction of the intended pass or in the opposite direction (i.?e., a head fake). The participants were asked to respond as quickly as possible to the pass direction and to ignore the gaze direction. Participants gave responses by pressing a key (simple response) or by executing a quasirealistic defense movement (complex response). Response complexity was blocked. In experiment 2, videos replaced the static stimuli. The responses were only given with the complex, full body movement. Results show that the head fake effect is independent of response complexity and that it can also be found when presenting dynamic stimuli.     

Misconceptions about Motion: Development and Training Effects

2 experiments were performed to examine whether children and adults possess a single-object/single-motion intuition. This intuition involves the view that because all parts of a rigid object move together, they all must move at the same speed. We found that third graders, sixth graders, ninth graders, and adults all responded in accord with this intuition. On problems where the intuition led to errors, a large majority of subjects of all ages answered incorrectly. On problems where it led to successful performance, subjects answered more accurately than on problems where the intuition was not applicable. In addition, the specific errors were those that the intuition yielded, and the intuition fit individual patterns of performance. The intuition not only influenced speed judgments but also judgments of distance traveled. Experiment 2 demonstrated that making sixth graders aware of the intuition and providing them kinesthetic experience that contradicted it produced significant improvements in the children's understanding. Implications for how scientific misconceptions in general can be overcome were discussed.     

Multi-level model of contextual factors and teachers’ assessment practices: an integrative review of research

We present a multi-level model of contextual factors that may influence teachers’ assessment practices, and use this model in a selected review of existing literature on teachers’ assessment knowledge, views and conceptions with respect to these contextual factors. Adapting Kozma’s model, we distinguish three levels of influence on teachers’ practices: micro, meso and macro. We searched for relevant articles in EBSCO, JSTOR and other databases, and review selected articles with a focus on the complex relationships within and across these levels. Findings reveal a large body of research at the micro-level (teacher), such as on teachers’ values, conceptions and knowledge. However, there is relatively less research at the meso-level (school) or connecting it with the micro- or macro-levels. Implications for future research are also discussed.     

Sequence Learning in 4‐Month‐Old Infants: Do Infants Represent Ordinal Information?

This study investigated how 4‐month‐old infants represent sequences: Do they track the statistical relations among specific sequence elements (e.g., AB, BC) or do they encode abstract ordinal positions (i.e., B is second)? Infants were habituated to sequences of 4 moving and sounding elements—3 of the elements varied in their ordinal position while the position of 1 target element remained invariant (e.g., A B CD, C B DA)—and then were tested for the detection of changes in the target’s position. Infants detected an ordinal change only when it disrupted the statistical co‐occurrence of elements but not when statistical information was controlled. It is concluded that 4‐month‐olds learn the order of sequence elements by tracking their statistical associations but not their invariant ordinal position.     

Language,Experience and Professional Learning (What Walter Benjamin Can Teach Us)

This essay raises questions about how language educators might construct and further develop their epistemology of practice in and through the situations in which they work from day to day. The occasion for this paper is our work as guest editors of a special issue of L-1: Educational Studies in Language and Literature, when we invited L1 teachers to reflect on the role that language plays in their professional learning, whether it be in the form of conversations with peers, reflective writing, or by other means. We begin this essay by locating our reflections within our current policy context, namely the standards-based reforms that have come to dominate educational thinking around the world, offering a brief critique of the values and attitudes embedded within them. We then outline a philosophical framework as an alternative to the world-view reflected by such reforms, focusing specifically on the work of Walter Benjamin. In the final sections, we review our work as guest editors of the special issue of L-1, reflecting on what we have learned from the papers we have assembled for this issue, and locating our learning within the philosophical framework that we have drawn from Benjamin. We argue that it is timely for language educators to articulate the assumptions that inhere within their work, in contradistinction to the common sense embedded in standards. Thus we might begin to reconceptualise the relation between language, experience and professional learning in opposition to the hegemony of standards.     

Linking the shapes of alphabet letters to their sounds: the case of Hebrew

Learning the sounds of letters is an important part of learning a writing system. Most previous studies of this process have examined English, focusing on variations in the phonetic iconicity of letter names as a reason why some letter sounds (such as that of b, where the sound is at the beginning of the letter’s name) are easier to learn than others (such as that of w, where the sound is not in the name). The present study examined Hebrew, where variations in the phonetic iconicity of letter names are minimal. In a study of 391 Israeli children with a mean age of 5 years, 10 months, we used multilevel models to examine the factors that are associated with knowledge of letter sounds. One set of factors involved letter names: Children sometimes attributed to a letter a consonant–vowel sound consisting of the first phonemes of the letter’s name. A second set of factors involved contrast: Children had difficulty when there was relatively little contrast in shape between one letter and others. Frequency was also important, encompassing both child-specific effects, such as a benefit for the first letter of a child’s forename, and effects that held true across children, such as a benefit for the first letters of the alphabet. These factors reflect general properties of human learning.     

Effectively feeding forward from one written assessment task to the next

Most studies into lecturers’ written feedback focus on the types of feedback found to be effective when students have the opportunity to act on that feedback, revise their written assignment and improve the mark they receive. But often students do not have this opportunity. Typically, they receive a mark and feedback on an assignment that they will never be able to rework and resubmit. This can leave students unsure about what to do with the feedback they receive. This paper reports on the use of high impact written feedback from lecturers that significantly improved student outcomes and grades from one assessment task to the next. It examines a range of factors which together make feedback in this context effective including: assessment design, use of grading standards and tutor training. These findings from a very large unit have significant implications for teaching staff who want to use feedback to feed forward and make a real difference to their students’ learning.