Community-driven informal adult environmental learning: Using theory as a lens to identify steps toward concientización

Abstract

This article examines community-driven adult environmental learning in a volunteer watershed stewards program. We look for evidence of elements that portray steps toward “concientización”—the process of individuals and communities directing their own learning in nonhierarchical ways. Leveraging two theories from the learning sciences and community development research, affinity spaces and the Asset-Based Community Development model, we trace participants’ development toward concientización. Data collected through interviews with watershed stewards speaks to parts of these theories that in turn signal elements of concientización. Our findings point to the importance of providing communities with support that is flexible and easy to use for identifying and leveraging the resources in their community. We call for a new framework to understand how to help learners access community-driven environmental learning experiences and supporting resources at opportune times.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Mathematical sophistication</Emphasis> among preservice elementary teachers

This study explores the ways in which eleven preservice elementary teachers used a web-based teacher resource to apply a mathematical definition, to correct a procedural error in arithmetic, and to make sense of a story requiring the multiplication of fractions. In our analysis we propose a framework to compare the behaviors and values expressed by our participants with the values and norms of the mathematical community. This analysis suggests that many preservice elementary teachers are profoundly mathematically unsophisticated. In other words, they displayed a set of values and avenues for doing mathematics so different from that of the mathematical community, and so impoverished, that they found it difficult to create fundamental mathematical understandings.     

Effects of induced orthographic and semantic knowledge on subsequent learning: a test of the partial knowledge hypothesis

Word learning can build the high-quality word representations that support skilled reading and language comprehension. According to the partial knowledge hypothesis, words that are partially known, also known as “frontier words” (Durso & Shore, 1991), may be good targets for instruction precisely because they are already familiar. However, studies investigating this question have produced mixed findings, and individual differences in baseline knowledge have complicated results both within and across studies. We present two studies that took a different approach, controlling both familiarity and the nature of the familiarizing episode. We controlled familiarity with novel words through pre-exposure (“pre-familiarization”) in isolation, to induce form-based familiarity, or in sentences that provided few clues to meaning, to induce partial semantic knowledge. The number of pre-exposures varied (0, 1, or 4). After the pre-familiarization phase, we presented the words in several highly informative sentences to support meaning acquisition. Participants included both adults and typically developing children, ages 9–12. Participants’ self-rated familiarity with target words, and their knowledge of the words’ meanings and orthography were each measured at baseline, immediately after learning, and 1 week later. Orthographic and semantic word learning showed contrasting effects of pre-familiarization. For orthographic learning, it was the number, rather than the type, of pre-familiarizations that mattered most. By contrast, the number of pre-familiarizations had little impact on word semantic learning; further, pre-familiarization in low-constraint sentences did not consistently boost subsequent learning. These findings suggest that familiarity with a word prior to instruction does not necessarily improve word-learning outcomes, and they highlight the importance of repeated exposures to high quality contexts for robust word learning.     

Triggering play: electronic literature in the English classroom

ABSTRACT

With the anticipated increase in narrative video games entering the English classroom, the particular features of the genre need added attention. One of these features is the stronger perceived relationship between a player and the character than a reader and a character. While this has benefits for effective storytelling, it also creates the possibility of stronger triggering of trauma in the player. We must consider how to make accessible narrative games that discuss potentially triggering themes while not compromising other features of the genre such as multiple storylines and experiences of the text.     

Puberty Predicts Approach But Not Avoidance on the Iowa Gambling Task in a Multinational Sample

According to the dual systems model of adolescent risk taking, sensation seeking and impulse control follow different developmental trajectories across adolescence and are governed by two different brain systems. The authors tested whether different underlying processes also drive age differences in reward approach and cost avoidance. Using a modified Iowa Gambling Task in a multinational, cross‐sectional sample of 3,234 adolescents (ages 9–17; M = 12.87, SD = 2.36), pubertal maturation, but not age, predicted reward approach, mediated through higher sensation seeking. In contrast, age, but not pubertal maturation, predicted increased cost avoidance, mediated through greater impulse control. These findings add to evidence that adolescent behavior is best understood as the product of two interacting, but independently developing, brain systems.     

Conceptual understanding in history

There has been considerable interest in the topic of conceptual understanding especially as found in mathematics and the sciences. The present paper discusses recent studies related to conceptual understanding in the domain of history, comparing the nature of understanding as found in history to that other domains. Included are considerations of the role of the sources of historical knowledge, narrativization, causation and explanation. In addition, it is pointed out that conceptual change in history may differ from that in the sciences because of the former’s emphasis upon the motives of people and the central role of the historian.     

“Love Doesn’t Just Happen…”: Parent-Child Communication About Marriage

This study takes an exploratory, qualitative approach to examine the communication between parents and their children on the topic of marriage. Two research questions guide this study regarding what messages newlyweds recall receiving from their parents about marriage and how accurate the newlyweds perceive these messages to be. An inductive theme analysis revealed several meanings of marriage were transmitted from parent to child: Marriage means a lifelong commitment, marriage means work, and traditional values of marriage. Largely, these meanings of marriage were perceived to be accurate by the newlyweds.