Media Effectiveness in a Malaysian Park System

Abstract

The effectiveness of three media formats (guides, booklets, and signs) were compared for use on a nature trail at Kinabalu Park, Malaysia. Based on a multiple-choice, cognitive test taken by 1,194 visitors, the guide treatment scores were significantly higher than the other media treatments. There was no difference between booklet and sign treatments, and all the media treatments scored higher than the control group (F _3,1190 = 173.76, α = .05). A second experiment compared only booklet and sign media. There was still no difference in effectiveness (Paired t test, t = 0.22, df = 566, p □ .05). The first language and educational backgrounds of visitors influenced media effectiveness. However, age, sex, residence, interest level, prior knowledge, and prior park visitation did not influence the relatively great effectiveness of the guide treatment. Other factors, such as cost, time, and numbers served, may justify use of media formats other than guides.     

The ‘dissertation marathon’ in doctoral distance education

Participation in “communities of practice” is often depicted as a central feature of various theoretical understandings of the social nature of learning. How are such communities of practice to be enacted in distance education, which, by definition, implies spatial detachment? This article reflects on the dimensions of communities of practice experienced by four students undertaking doctoral studies by distance education, working in different countries than the one in which the institution of their studies is based, and at four different phases of their doctoral program. In each writer’s experience, community of practice involvement was identified as critical in program completion, yet the source of the learning community was in each case outside of institutional provision.     

Long-term instructional development: A 20-year ID and implementation project

This article describes the development and implementation in the schools over a 20-year period of the Energy Source Program, a comprehensive K-12 energy education curriculum. The program was developed beginning in 1980 using state-of-the-art development procedures for that time and has been used to date by more than 12 million American students to learn about energy and energy issues. End-of-unit posttest scores for the elementary and high school units averaged above 80% for their field tests. Data obtained from a large sample during the first three years of installation of the program in the schools indicated that posttest scores remained at a level during installation similar to that during the field-test phase. A study conducted in the early 1990s by an independent research organization to assess the program's long-term effects revealed that grade 6 students who had used one or more units from the program had significantly greater energy knowledge and better energy conservation habits than students who had not used any units. A set of 10 guidelines are offered for long-term instructional development and implementation projects. He supervised the development of the Energy Source Program from 1980 to 1984 while serving as a consultant to EDS. Kay Ice was Director of Program Development at EDS, and she was a primary writer and developer of the Energy Source Program. She has been president of EDS since 1999. Fred Niedermeyer was the founding president of EDS. He was project director of the Energy Source project, and he played a major role in all aspects of the project from its inception until his retirement in 1999.     

Creativity in Art: The feasibility of assessing current conceptions in the school context

The article reviews different views of creativity, building on the work of Czikszentmihaly. It offers a definition of creativity in terms of trait/process/product. The issue of how creativity might be assessed is explored using this definition and some illustrative examples are provided. The article concludes that creativity can and should be assessed but that this must be with an appropriate methodology. Such assessment is important not only for assessing students' work but also for evaluating curriculum content, in order to promote curriculum development in the teaching of creativity.     

Teacher candidates research,teach, and learn in the nation's first net zero school

Teacher candidates conducted field hours in the nation's first net zero school, which uses the same amount of energy, measured annually, as it produces. These teacher candidates saw firsthand integration of the net zero advantages by completing a Collaborative Research Project and a Net Zero Lesson, which incorporated the use of the net zero building features as part of the lesson plan criteria. As a result, teacher candidates experienced how students can learn from their constructed environment and how that learning could contribute to a more sustainable world.     

Implicit theories of creativity: a comparison of student‐teachers in Hong Kong and Singapore

This study attempts to uncover the beliefs regarding various aspects of creativity among trainee‐teachers in Hong Kong and Singapore. Trainee‐teachers from Hong Kong (N = 188) and Singapore (N = 127) completed a questionnaire on beliefs about creativity. The 30‐item questionnaire covering 15 aspects of beliefs regarding creativity was presented to the respondents as a set of six‐point Likert scales. Through factor analysis, creativity was found to have five dimensions: (1) physiology, (2) generality, (3) culture, (4) individuality and (5) youth. Hong Kong respondents were found to hold more rigid views of creativity than their Singaporean counterparts. In particular, Hong Kong respondents believed more strongly that creativity is dependent on birth order, effort, health, logical thinking and youth and that there is a critical period beyond which creativity may not develop.     

Teachers' learning to facilitate high‐level student thinking: Impact of a video‐based professional development

Attaining the vision for science teaching and learning emphasized in the Framework for K‐12 Science Education and the next generation science standards (NGSS) will require major shifts in teaching practices in many science classrooms. As NGSS‐inspired cognitively demanding tasks begin to appear in more and more science classrooms, facilitating students' engagement in high‐level thinking as they work on these tasks will become an increasingly important instructional challenge to address. This study reports findings from a video‐based professional development effort (i.e., professional development [PD] that use video‐clips of instruction as the main artifact of practice to support teacher learning) to support teachers' learning to select cognitively demanding tasks and to support students' learning during the enactment of these tasks in ways that are aligned with the NGSS vision. Particularly, we focused on the NGSS's charge to get students to make sense of and deeply think about scientific ideas as students try to explain phenomena. Analyses of teachers' pre‐ and post‐PD instruction indicate that PD‐participants began to adopt instructional practices associated with facilitating these kinds of student thinking in their own classrooms. The study has implications for the design of video‐based professional development for science teachers who are learning to facilitate the NGSS vision in science classrooms.