Distinguishing between knowledge and beliefs: students’ epistemic criteria for differentiating

“I believe that he/she is telling the truth”, “I know about the solar system”: what epistemic criteria do students use to distinguish between knowledge and beliefs? If knowing and believing are conceptually distinguishable, do students of different grade levels use the same criteria to differentiate the two constructs? How do students understand the relationship between the two constructs? This study involved 219 students (116 girls and 103 boys); 114 were in 8th grade and 105 in 13th grade. Students had to (a) choose which of 5 graphic representations outlined better the relationship between the two constructs and to justify their choice; (b) rate a list of factual/validated, non-factual/non-validated and ambiguous statements as either knowledge or belief, and indicate for each statement their degree of truthfulness, acceptance and on which sources their views were based. Qualitative and quantitative analysis were performed. The data showed how students distinguish knowledge from belief conceptually and justify their understanding of the relationship between the two constructs. Although most students assigned a higher epistemic status to knowledge, school grade significantly differentiated the epistemic criteria used to distinguish the two constructs. The study indicates the educational importance of considering the notions of knowledge and belief that students bring into the learning situation.     

Social inequality in education and the use of extramural support services: access and parental experiences in disadvantaged families

European Journal of Psychology of Education - As low socioeconomic status (SES) and ethnic minority students often experience barriers during their school career, increased levels of referral of...     

Simplifying informational text structure for struggling readers

Direct instruction of reading strategies, such as the ‘structure strategy’, is demonstrated to be effective for the development of more mature and skilled reading processes in struggling readers. This instructional intervention approach, aimed at directly improving reading ability, can be used in combination with text simplification. Text simplification is the modification of the text in order to make it more understandable or readable for target groups of readers. In this article, we discuss a theoretically-driven text simplification approach, inspired by cognitive models of reading comprehension. Differently from classical approaches to linguistic text simplification, the aim of cognitive text simplification is not simply to reduce the linguistic complexity of the text, but to improve text coherence and the structure of information in the text. This can be achieved by using rhetorical devices, like signaling or discourse markers, which specify relationships among ideas at a global level (macrostructural) and work as processing instructions for the reader, scaffolding reading comprehension. The goal of this paper is to discuss, in light of the literature, the effectiveness of these adaptations for improving struggling readers’ understanding and learning from informational texts.     

Effects of polyurethane matrices on fungal tannase and gallic acid production under solid state culture

The influence of the physical structure of polyurethane matrix as a support in a solid state culture in tannase production and gallic acid accumulation by Aspergillus niger Aa-20 was evaluated. Three different polyurethane matrices were used as the support: continuous, semi-discontinuous and discontinuous. The highest tannase production at 2479.59 U/L during the first 12 h of culture was obtained using the discontinuous matrix. The gallic acid was accumulated at 7.64 g/L at the discontinuous matrix. The results show that the discontinuous matrix of polyurethane is better for tannase production and gallic acid accumulation in a solid state culture bioprocess than the continuous and semi-discontinuous matrices. Project supported by the Agricultural, Livestock and Fishing Department (SAGARPA, No. 12385) and the National Forest Commission (CONAFOR, No. 2004-C01-13), and the Council of Science and Technology, Mexico     

Mentoring practices in workplace-based professional preparation: a critical analysis of policy developments in the Italian context

In recent years, the issue of early childhood staff professionalisation has been taking an increasingly prominent position in policy-making and academic debates at the international level. Despite this growing interest, studies investigating the content and delivery of professional preparation programmes for early childhood practitioners are still quite rare in European literature. Against this background, the article will describe and critically analyse the characterising features of the university degree for the professional preparation of pre-school teachers in Italy, with a special focus on workplace-based training. In particular, the theoretical underpinnings and shared understandings related to the implementation of mentoring practices within the university course will be explored by drawing on the data collected from documentary sources and interviews with local experts. Findings highlight that the main strengths of mentoring practices within such a programme are: (a) the extended placement periods in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings which allow prospective teachers to live the culture of practice; (b) the critically reflective component of tutoring practices, which combines theoretical and experiential learning; (c) the strong partnerships built at the local level between ECEC services and universities, which generates reciprocal influences between academic research and educational practices and thus sustains pedagogical innovation. At the same time, the fact that the mentoring role of placement tutors in ECEC institutions is not adequately supported in terms of competence development and workload allocation might potentially undermine the benefits of workplace-based training for students. In addition, the contextualisation of our analysis within the broader landscape of national policy developments in the field of ECEC staff professionalisation revealed that the increased academisation of pre-school teachers professional preparation might lead – in the long term – to a risk of ‘schoolification’ of pedagogical practices enacted within ECEC services. In regards to these issues, the article will raise questions for further consideration and debate.     

Whole-school antibullying interventions: A systematic review of 20 years of publications

A systematic literature review on whole-school antibullying interventions was conducted. Twelve databases were consulted, considering as inclusion criteria: scientific article, published between 1998 and June 2018, in English or Portuguese, describing empirical studies on whole-school antibullying interventions. Seventeen studies were analyzed, indicating that the interventions had the reduction of bullying prevalence as main goal, and secondary goals as improvements in reporting bullying occurrences, bullying identification, and attitudes toward bullying. Six interventions had experimental designs, five were quasiexperimental, and six were preexperimental. Data collection in 14 studies involved exclusively students, in two studies measurements also encompassed teachers, and one study applied questionnaires to parents only. Intervention effects on bullying prevalence were inconsistent, with eight studies finding significant decreases in bullying involvement, while seven studies did not show significant effects on bullying prevalence or found negative results, such as an increase of its prevalence. However, the interventions had significant positive effects on increasing the reporting of bullying occurrences, attitudes toward bullying, and perceived peer and teacher intervention. Thus, whole-school antibullying interventions, incorporating multiple strategies and targeting multiple individuals, should be encouraged to address the complexity of bullying.     

Oral sentence generation training to improve fifth and 10th graders’ writing

Reading and Writing - Text generation—the mental translation of ideas into language at word, sentence, and discourse levels—involves oral language abilities. However, oral language...     

Four- to six-year-old children's conceptions of the mechanism of rainfall

The purpose of this study was to describe four- to six-year-old children's understandings of the mechanism of rainfall and to reveal possible differences due to age. A total of 22 children participated in the study (mean age = 60.4 months; range 48–73 months), including 14 boys and 8 girls, all from middle-SES families. To reveal children's understanding of the mechanism of rainfall, semi-structured interviews were conducted using a set of interview questions. Children were individually interviewed, and interviews were audio-taped and transcribed. The constant comparative method was used to analyze the transcribed audio tapes. A framework of codes was developed based on previous studies of children's understanding of the mechanism of rainfall. This partial framework of codes served as the basis for describing children's conceptual understandings of the mechanism of rainfall. A nonparametric statistical test was used to test for age differences in children's conceptions of the mechanism of rainfall. The results indicated that older preschool children were more likely to have synthetic or naturalistic conceptions than the younger children. Implications of the findings for instructional practices in early childhood classrooms are discussed.