Promoting Interest by Supporting Learner Autonomy: the Effects of Teaching Behaviour in Biology Lessons

Research in Science Education - In self-determination theory, Ryan and Deci (2017) propose that psychological well-being is based on three innate psychological needs: relatedness, competence, and...     

Encouraging Engagement with Students and Integrating Librarians into the Curriculum through a Personal Librarian Program

Five years ago, the Harriet F. Ginsburg Health Sciences Library created a Personal Librarian Program (PLP) to encourage librarian engagement with first- and second-year medical students and to promote awareness of library resources and services. Prior to the creation of the PLP, the library struggled with finding ways to connect with its medical students, especially because the library is 98% digital. The PLP was created to give students an individualized library experience and an easier way to interact with librarians. As a result, opportunities for librarian-student engagement increased, and Personal Librarian groups facilitated the integration of librarians into two first- and second-year medical school courses.     

Multiple-pattern learning by rats on an eight-arm radial maze

Rats were trained over a number of sessions on an eight-arm radial maze with eight trials on each session. Each of four arms on the maze contained a different pattern formed by sequences of reward (two pellets) or nonreward (no pellets) over successive trials within sessions. The patterns were single alternation, double alternation, and two patterns in which four rewards or four nonrewards were preceded and followed by two nonrewards or two rewards, respectively. The other four arms on the maze served as control arms and always contained one pellet. It was found that rats tracked all of these patterns when they were required to climb over barriers to enter and leave arms. However, rats showed no ability to extrapolate patterns beyond the training trials. These findings, and a further analysis of arm-choice stereotypy, led to the conclusion that rats tracked by using a trial-number strategy.     

Toddlers Help a Peer

Toddlers are remarkably prosocial toward adults, yet little is known about their helping behavior toward peers. In the present study with 18‐ and 30‐month‐old toddlers (n = 192, 48 dyads per age group), one child needed help reaching an object to continue a task that was engaging for both children. The object was within reach of the second child who helped significantly more often compared to a no‐need control condition. The helper also fulfilled the peer's need when the task was engaging only for the child needing help. These findings suggest that toddlers’ skills and motivations of helping do not depend on having a competent and helpful recipient, such as an adult, but rather they are much more flexible and general.     

Students embracing change towards more powerful learning environments in vocational education

Students’ educational engagement is both an important predictor of study success and a key preventive factor for dropout. Vocational tracks in secondary education show high dropout rates. There is strong evidence that the solution to educational disengagement lies in student‐centred, powerful learning environments (PLEs). This study investigates characteristics of PLEs from the perspective of students in vocational secondary education. Students’ perspectives on a learning environment are crucial for their satisfaction and learning engagement. Therefore, we investigated whether the perceived learning environment meets the requirements of PLEs, and to what extent it meets students’ preferences. Additionally, it was investigated whether students who perceive their learning environment as more powerful, are also more engaged for school. Survey data of 532 students showed that student perceptions of their current learning environment were largely discrepant from the characteristics of PLEs. Students strongly asked for more challenging learning pathways, in combination with adaptive learning support. Students who perceived the characteristics of PLEs as being present, reported higher satisfaction and stronger engagement than students who perceived their education to be a less powerful environment. There is a need to redesign curricula in vocational education in such a way that these more intensely implement characteristics of PLEs.     

Model based assessment of learning dependent change within a two semester class

The following empirical study examines the acquisition of expertise. The model structures in the domain of empirical methodologies were examined in a time period of two semesters. At each measurement point (N = 5), the model structures of the reference groups were compared with those of the group of learners. The group of learners consisted of (N = 31) students who did not have any experience with research methods and their theoretical foundations. The results indicate that the external criteria enabled a precise assessment of learning dependent model change.     

Contribution of temporal processing skills to reading comprehension in 8-year-olds: evidence for a mediation effect of phonological awareness

This study tested whether the association between temporal processing (TP) and reading is mediated by phonological awareness (PA) in a normative sample of 615 eight-year-olds. TP was measured with auditory and bimodal (visual-auditory) temporal order judgment tasks and PA with a phoneme deletion task. PA partially mediated the association between both auditory and bimodal TP and reading, above nonverbal abilities, vocabulary, and processing speed. PA explained a larger proportion of the association between auditory TP and reading (56% vs. 39% for bimodal TP), and most of the association between bimodal TP and reading was direct. This finding is consistent with a dual-phonological and visual-pathway model of the association between TP and reading in normative reading skills.     

Partition-based Field Normalization: An approach to highly specialized publication records

Field normalized citation rates are well-established indicators for research performance from the broadest aggregation levels such as countries, down to institutes and research teams. When applied to still more specialized publication sets at the level of individual scientists, also a more accurate delimitation is required of the reference domain that provides the expectations to which a performance is compared. This necessity for sharper accuracy challenges standard methodology based on pre-defined subject categories. This paper proposes a way to define a reference domain that is more strongly delimited than in standard methodology, by building it up out of cells of the partition created by the pre-defined subject categories and their intersections. This partition approach can be applied to different existing field normalization variants. The resulting reference domain lies between those generated by standard field normalization and journal normalization. Examples based on fictive and real publication records illustrate how the potential impact on results can exceed or be smaller than the effect of other currently debated normalization variants, depending on the case studied. The proposed Partition-based Field Normalization is expected to offer advantages in particular at the level of individual scientists and other very specific publication records, such as publication output from interdisciplinary research.     

Action research and collaborative research: their specific contributions to professional development

The increasing complexity of the teaching profession calls for engaged professionals in their professional development. This article claims that participative types of research contribute differently to professional development. Its intent is to explore the different contributions action research and collaborative research bring. One action research and one collaborative research have been conducted involving school personnel. They have been assessed mid‐course with regard to various components of professional development, including the learning taking place, changes made to professional practices and development of the collective competencies. Group interviews were conducted and each participant produced a written summary. The results show that participants’ individual competencies are strengthened, as well as collective competencies emerging such as the development of a common vocabulary and a shared vision about the school’s mission and mathematics curriculum. Learning is more relational in the action research project, and more connected to knowledge in the collaborative research project. Tensions are also present. They deal with the need to come up with concrete results, the urgency of action, the need to be open to the unknown, a tacit agreement to expose one’s vulnerability to others, the need for interdependence and for accountability. In conclusion, researchers identify their own sources of tensions and recognize that those types of research are important situations of learning.