Time Limitations Enhance Reading Comprehension

Few studies in the domain of reading have explored the relation between time limitations and reading comprehension. Time limitations may enhance reading comprehension by promoting mindfulness in students, a construct which involves exertion of more effort and motivation. This study explored the effects of time constraints on reading comprehension in adult readers. Mild time constraints should create greater mindfulness in readers, resulting in enhanced comprehension. College students read passages under no time pressure, under mild time pressure, or under severe time pressure. Reading comprehension was assessed in each condition. The best reading comprehension was observed under mild time pressure. Implications are discussed. Copyright 1999 Academic Press.     

The influences of integrating reading,peer evaluation,and discussion on undergraduate students’ scientific writing

Scientific writing is related to the practice of communicating scientific knowledge. This study treats scientific writing as a social practice, taking as its premise the notion that participating in related activities such as reading, peer evaluation, and discussion would positively affect the competence of students’ scientific writing, by developing their epistemic cognition regarding scientific knowledge communication and legitimation. An empirical study was conducted with twenty-two Chinese undergraduate students to test this premise. These students were majoring in chemistry and undertook a researcher-designed intervention course (Advanced Organic Chemistry Experiment), which embodied the integrated strategy of reading, peer evaluation, and discussion on scientific writing. Based on data pertaining to those students’ performance in terms of the normativity, objectivity, and logicality of scientific writing drawn from a previous study by the current author (Deng, Kelly, & Xiao, 2019. The development of Chinese undergraduate students’ competence of scientific writing in the context of advanced organic chemistry experiment course. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 20, 270–287), alongside data drawn from students’ written texts in reading reflections and on-line discourse related to peer evaluation and discussion, this study claimed that the tasks of reading, peer evaluation, and discussion were seen gradually to lead to the development of Chinese undergraduate students’ greater competence in scientific writing regarding the synthetic experiments of organic chemistry.     

Metrics for Students’ Soft Skills

This article presents a systematic approach to defining, applying, evaluating, refining, and revising metrics for students’ soft skills—their abilities like critical thinking, problem solving, leadership and responsibility, communication, and collaboration. The importance of these skills in educational and work settings is growing rapidly. While such skills are easy to notice, they are hard to measure. Metrics do exist, but vary from one case to another, and are often rather implicit and vague. Contrary to that, this article proposes the use of precisely specified, measurable, low-inference indicators (metrics) to assess soft skills. The article also introduces an open set of principles that can be used to guide the specification of concrete, evidence-based metrics for different soft skills. Two case studies are used to illustrate the approach. These case studies are part of a larger research effort that has developed an open set of metrics for different soft skills; some of them are discussed in the article extensively. Generalizing the metrics used in specific educational contexts is also discussed.     

Examining emotional expressions in discourse: methodological considerations

This methodological paper presents an approach for examining emotional expressions through discourse analysis and ethnographic methods. Drawing on trends in the current literature in science education, we briefly explain the importance of emotions in science education and examine the current research methodologies used in interactional emotion studies. We put forth and substantiate a methodological approach that attends to the interactional, contextual, intertextual, and consequential aspects of emotional expressions. By examining emotional expressions in the discourse in which they are constructed, emotional expressions are identified through semantics, contextualization, and linguistic features. These features make salient four dimensions of emotional expressions: aboutness, frequency, type, and ownership. Drawing on data from a large empirical study of pre-service elementary teachers’ emotional expressions about climate change in a science course, we provide illustrative examples to describe what counts as emotional expressions in situ. In doing so we explain how our approach makes salient the nuanced nature of such expressions as well as the broader discourse in which they are constructed and the implications for researching emotional expressions in science education discourse. We suggest reasons why this discourse orientated research methodology can contribute to the interactional study of emotions in science education contexts.     

Using the Inquiry Process to Motivate and Engage all (Including Struggling) Readers

With increasingly rigorous standards and mounting high stakes testing, it seems harder than ever to motivate and engage struggling readers. In this article the authors provide an overview of the inquiry learning process, which details how providing students with choice and opportunities to collaborate with peers can keep students invested in their own learning and progress. Within the framework of standards and/or a unit of study, students are coached toward choosing a personally meaningful research question in which they are given freedom to explore the answer through a variety of self-selected texts. Inquiry learning can be woven into already existing units of study or can be used to create an entirely new classroom project. The authors walk readers through the inquiry process with a teacher vignette that provides a step-by-step plan that can be implemented in any classroom.     

Shape-shifting Davydov’s ideas for early number learning in South Africa

In this paper, we share details of a South African early grades’ number intervention informed by aspects of Davydov’s writing on early number teaching and learning. A key part of Davydov’s approach to early number teaching involves starting with attention to relationships between quantities rather than with counting. The Structuring Number Starters (SNS) intervention focused—over a nine-year period—on supporting early grades’ students to move beyond the calculating-by-counting approaches that are prevalent in South Africa. In attending to this focus, the intervention shifted increasingly towards an emphasis on relationships between quantities, though not in the same format or task sequence as advocated by Davydov. The contextual and cultural features that led to our adaptations—or shape-shifting—are highlighted in this paper. We interrogate key aspects of Davydov’s approaches to early number teaching in relation to key features typical of South African classroom mathematics teaching in order to understand the evolution of the SNS initiative. Quasi-longitudinal interview-based assessment data available from a cross-attainment sample of students in 2011, 2014 and 2018 indicate shifts over time from calculating-by-counting to calculating-by-structuring. These outcomes point to successes with moves into increasingly structured ways of working with early number, but suggest also that these successes may be contingent on some fluency with forward and backward number word sequences. The outcomes suggest that it is feasible to explore interventions directing attention to early number structure from the outset in larger scale studies.

     

Statistical variation in a chance setting: A two-year study

A series of 13 survey questions based on a 50-50 spinner is used to explore school students' understanding of statistical variation in a chance setting. Five questions set the context by assessing the understanding of theoretical expectation and representation of repeated trials in a stacked dot (line) plot. Four questions provide opportunity to display appreciation of variation from point expectation and four questions address variation from distributional expectation. Three hundred and seventy-five students in Grades 3–9 answered some or all of these questions. These students then took part in a unit of study on chance and data emphasizing variation. Of these students, 334 answered a post-test including the same items and a further subset of 199 students completed a longitudinal survey of the same items two years later. Analysis of the initial data showed a progression of understanding across the years of schooling, plateauing at Grade 7, improvement for all grades after instruction, and generally sustained and continuing improved performance after two years. Educational issues are considered. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Chingford Hall School Screening Project: Can we have some more educational psychologist time please?

This paper describes the development of a tailor-made Special Educational Needs screening device developed between an Educational Psychology Service (EPS) and a large primary school. Soft systems methodology was used to structure and evaluate the work. The project began when school staff requested a significant increase in Educational Psychologist time to undertake 40 additional child assessments. What was required was a way of prioritising the school's concerns in line with local Special Educational Needs audit procedures. Working in partnership, the EPS and school devised a screening checklist. Of note is the unique scoring key, which factored in the school's level of concern and values about children's needs. As a consequence, some items were emphasised more than others were. An evaluation study by Kelly revealed that school staff found the screening checklist to be generally useful, not only in prioritising children for assessment, but also in assisting the construction of individual education plans.