Social information processing and coping strategies of shy/withdrawn and aggressive children: does friendship matter?

The primary objectives of this investigation were to examine the attributions, emotional reactions, and coping strategies of shy/withdrawn and aggressive girls and boys and to examine whether such social cognitions differ within the relationship context of friendship. Drawn from a sample of fifth and sixth graders (M age = 10.79 years; SD = .77), 78 shy/withdrawn, 76 aggressive, and 85 control children were presented with hypothetical social situations that first involved unfamiliar peers, and then a mutual good friend. Results revealed group and gender differences and similarities, depending on the relationship context. From our findings emerges a central message: friends' involvement during interpersonal challenges or stressors mitigates children's attributions, emotions, and coping responses.     

A System of Student Feedback: Considerations of Academic Staff Taken into Account

As a consequence of the suspension of a system of yearly evaluations of individual courses with student questionnaires, the University of Leuven organised a broad consultation of the academic community focussing on what they expect from a system based on student feedback. The study revealed that this community attaches great importance to a clear definition of the goals of student feedback, improvement and accountability, and a logical translation of these goals into a concrete approach. The study also confirmed the need of academic staff for a concrete response to the importance they give to quality improvement and enhancement besides accountability.     

Academic socialization of doctoral students through feedback networks: a qualitative understanding of the graduate feedback landscape

ABSTRACT

Scholars focus on the social nature of academic writing to refine an understanding of feedback interactions in higher education. However, studies on the various sources of feedback – feedback networks – have been scarce, particularly during the initial years of doctoral education. Using a qualitative case study approach, multiple sources of feedback for four students in one doctoral program in the United States were identified in line with broader trends focusing on feedback as a social practice. Informed by the academic socialization framework [Duff, Patricia A. 2012. “Second Language Socialization.” In Handbook of Language Socialization, edited by Alessandro Duranti, Elinor Ochs, and Bambi B. Schieffelin, 564–586. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell], this study aims (1) to navigate the landscape of graduate feedback, including interactions beyond class as well as oral and written feedback, and (2) to elucidate the socialization process. Findings suggest that academic writing development is defined as how feedback is situated within disciplinary, academic communities of interaction. This article describes how the larger network of feedback creates the types of interaction that characterizes the community.     

Mapping beliefs about teaching to patterns of instruction within science,technology, engineering,and mathematics

In this paper, we identify beliefs about teaching and patterns of instruction valued and emphasized by science, technology, engineering, and mathematics faculty in higher education in the USA. Drawing on the notion that effective teaching is student-centered rather than teacher-centered and must include a balance of knowledge-, learner-, community-, and assessment-centered learning environments; we use qualitative interview data to explore how faculty's reported beliefs about teaching are associated with their consideration of these four types of environments. Findings indicated that although a range of beliefs about teaching emerged, most were firmly located in knowledge-centered learning environments, with little or no focus on the remaining three learning environments. Furthermore, even patterns of instruction that were heavily student-centered were situated within a knowledge-centered learning framework. We argue that for student-centered instruction to be truly successful, faculty must consider all four learning environments in crafting and facilitating the classroom environment.     

Assessing mentoring in organizations: an evaluation of commercial mentoring instruments

The purpose of this article is to inform readers about the types of instruments available for assessing and improving mentoring in organizations. Extensive review of the psychological, business and medical literature was conducted to identify commercially published, practitioner‐oriented instruments. All of the instruments that were identified – including the Alleman mentoring activities questionnaire, Mentoring in the moment, Mentoring skills assessment, and Principles of adult mentoring scale – are evaluated herein. Each instrument’s target audience, raters, subscales, response options, psychometric properties, and relative strengths and weaknesses are described. Although these instruments are reported to be used extensively, evidence of their validity is not always available. This review presents information that, in combination with first‐hand inspection of the instruments, should enable practitioners to differentiate between instruments that may be a fit for their needs from those that are not. Furthermore, it may introduce academic readers to instruments that are not covered in the scholarly literature in spite of their common use for non‐research purposes.     

Enhancing Project-Based Learning Through Online Between-Group Collaboration

This research explored how between-group collaboration enhanced the co-construction of knowledge and performance on project-based learning tasks of collaborative learning groups. The findings of 2 case studies, one that focused on between-group mentoring and one that focused on between-group project review, revealed that both strategies were perceived favorably by the students and had a positive impact on the collaborative learning skills, the knowledge revealed through their online dialogue, and the project performance of all students, especially the less effective groups. The results provide some insights into the computer-supported collaborative learning process among students in a higher education context.     

Situated Self-Regulation: Modeling the Interrelationships Among Instruction,Assessment, Learning Strategies and Academic Performance

To succeed academically, college students must actively construct course information, synthesize this information with information from texts and other resources, understand this information so that they can succeed on various forms of assessments and ultimately retain this information for the long term. While the complexity of these demands has been modeled somewhat metaphorically, there has been little ecologically valid research into learning in authentic classroom contexts. The present study examines the interrelationships among student perceptions of the learning context, test complexity, study strategies, and academic performance. Results of a path analysis demonstrated that perceptions of the teaching format and test complexity were positively related to the study strategies reported, and these study strategies were further related to the reported course performance.     

Managing change in the primary school: What we have learnt about the role of external support

Criteria for placement of pupils into bands and the subsequent effect of banding on educational and post‐educational careers were investigated in a longitudinal study of two cohorts of comprehensive school pupils. The abiding influence of social class and measured ability in early assignment of pupils to bands was observed, and a disjunction demonstrated between a banding system with the potential for flexibility and the reality of the situation where it was marked by ossification and early tracking of pupils to differential educational destinations. The notion of the school as an enduring conservative force is investigated, the banding system being both an outcome and a determinant of this conservatism. The data is used to raise methodological questions involved in investigating complex issues, and implications are drawn for teacher behaviour in banded comprehensive schools.     

Influential factors for knowledge creation practices of CTE teachers: mutual impact of perceived school support, transformational leadership, and work engagement

This study examined the structural relationships among perceived school support, transformational leadership, teachers’ work engagement, and teachers’ knowledge creation practices. It also investigated the mediating effects of transformational leadership and work engagement in explaining the association between perceived school support and knowledge creation practices. Samples included 284 career and technical education teachers in the United States. Structural equation modeling was employed. Perceived school support was positively associated with transformational leadership and teachers’ work engagement, but had no direct impact on knowledge creation practices. Transformational leadership was found to affect knowledge creation practices, but not work engagement of teachers. Although a supportive school climate had no direct relationship with knowledge creation practices, it indirectly affected this outcome variable through transformational leadership and teachers’ work engagement. The results suggest that in order to increase teachers’ knowledge creation activities, a supportive school climate should be provided with efforts to improve teachers’ work engagement and transformational behaviors of the principal.     

Estimating the Effect on Grades of Using Multiple-Choice Versus Constructive-Response Questions: Data From the Classroom

This study investigates the degree to which grades based solely on constructed-response (CR) questions differ from grades based solely on multiple-choice (MC) questions. If CR questions are to justify their higher costs, they should produce different grade outcomes than MC questions. We use a data set composed of thousands of observations on individual students in introductory economics classes at a large public university. We note that the instructors of these classes made conscientious efforts to write CR questions that assessed higher levels of learning (Bloom, 1956 Bloom, B. S. 1956. Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals, handbook 1: Cognitive domain. New York: McKay..  [Google Scholar]). Despite this, we find relatively little difference in grade outcomes. Our analysis suggests that switching from an all-CR assessment to an all-MC assessment would produce grade variations that are similar to the differences that are observed for students across different tests. Although other studies have focused on test scores, frequently AP test scores, our study is the first to focus attention on university grades. We hope that our inability to identify substantial benefits to CR questions in terms of grades will stimulate further research to identify substantive benefits from using the more costly CR questions.