Effects of Processing Time on Comprehension and Calibration in Print and Digital Mediums

This study explored the effects of processing texts in print or digitally on readers' comprehension, processing time, and calibration. Eighty-six undergraduates read print and digital versions of book excerpts about childhood ailments presented in counterbalanced order. Comprehension was tested at three levels (i.e., main idea, key points, and other relevant information). Direct comparisons between print and digital reading demonstrated a significant advantage for reading in print on students' recall of key points and other relevant information but not the main idea. When processing time was added as a mediator variable, it significantly affected the relation between medium and comprehension for all question levels. In terms of calibration, students read more quickly and judged their performance higher when engaged digitally, although their actual performance was much better when reading in print. Implications of these findings for subsequent research are considered.     

Measuring Pedagogy and the Integration of Engineering Design in STEM Classrooms

The present study examined changes in high school biology and technology education pedagogy during the first year of a three-year professional development (PD) program using the INSPIRES educative curriculum. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) calls for the integration of science and engineering through inquiry-based pedagogy that shifts the burden of thinking from the teacher to the student. This call is especially challenging for teachers untrained in inquiry teaching and engineering or science concepts. The INSPIRES educative curriculum materials and PD provided a mechanism for teachers to transform their teaching to meet the NGSS challenges. This study followed a longitudinal triangulation mixed methods design. Selected lessons were video recorded, scored on the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) rubric, and examined for qualitative trends. Year 1 results indicated that teachers had begun to transform their teaching and pointed to particular lessons within the INSPIRES curriculum that most facilitated the reform. Instructional practices of participants improved significantly as a result of the INSPIRES PD program and also aligned with previous, similar studies. These findings provide insights for rethinking the structure of professional development, particularly in the integrated use of an educative curriculum aligned with intended professional development goals.

     

In Search of Structures: How Does the Mind Explore Infinity?

When reasoning about infinite sets, children seem to activate four categories of conceptual structures: geometric (g-structures), arithmetic (a-structures), fractal-type (f-structures), and density-type (d-structures). Students select different problem-solving strategies depending on the structure they recognize within the problem domain. They naturally search for structures in challenging learning contexts. This tendency to search for structure might be a characteristic of human cognition and a necessary condition for human knowledge development. For example, specific fractal structures are intrinsic to concepts such as the numerical system that have been developed by the human race over a long period of time. When these structures are emphasized within teaching, they can facilitate the deep understanding of several basic concepts, in mathematics and beyond.     

Review Essay: Cultivating a Rhetoric of Agrarianism

CONTROL AND CONSOLATION IN AMERICAN CULTURE AND POLITICS: RHETORICS OF THERAPY. By Dana Cloud. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1998; pp. 224. Cloth $67.95; Paper $31.95.

DANGEROUS LIAISONS: GENDER, NATION, AND POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES. By Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997; pp. 560. Cloth $62.95; Paper $24.95.

WHITENESS: THE COMMUNICATION OF SOCIAL IDENTITY. Edited by Thomas Nakayama and Judith Martin. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1999; pp. xiv + 314. Cloth $73.95; Paper $36.95.     

A Comparison of Traditional versus Programed Methods of Learning Tennis

Abstract

Two college service classes, each containing 20 subjects, were taught beginning tennis skills. The traditionally taught Group (Group A), and the programed group (Group B), were first determined homogeneous in height, weight, the Hewitt Revised Dyer Backboard Tennis Test (HRDBTT), and the American College Test before the teaching methods were initiated. After 14 periods of instruction, the groups were compared on various measures. The results of the study indicated that: (1) the general skill level of the groups, as measured by the Hewitt Revised Dyer Backboard Tennis Test, and a single-elimination tournament, was not significantly different; (2) the traditionally taught group improved significantly in general skills while the programed group did not; and (3) the programed group received better subjective rating scores on form than did the traditionally taught group.     

Rivalry and externalities in secondary art markets

Summary As is the case with other field theories, Urban Economics, Environmental Economics, etc. the microeconomics of the arts attempts to derive a set of particular propositions from the general propositions of Economic Theory. In the process a substantial amount of cross-fertilization takes place. The specific characteristics of art markets require modification or amplification of some general propositions of economic theory, which in turn may offer novel and possibly useful insights as well as testable hypotheses. The following propositions appear to emanate from the present paper.In general markets R & D efforts are directed towards product or process innovation. For the most part, a known consumer technology exists. Innovation in art markets involves product creation as well as the creation of a consumer technology capable of deriving satisfaction from consumption of the new product. In open markets, a non-patentable product would entail excessive free ridership. Such a state of affairs may discourage innovation. Primary sellers would tend to adapt to narrowly changing consumer technologies. Such was the case during most of art history up to the late 19th century. At present, museums and art critics act as quasi patent offices, which fosters innovation by assuring a positive sum game.A new consumer technology is expected to be demand-augmenting. Not necessarily in the sence of McCain [12] where discontinuous jumps in demand are postulated. Even if such shifts were to occur in individual demand curves, market demand will nevertheless be continuous. The present model presumes that the augmentation is mostly due to increasing numbers of art buyers entering as the new consumer technology casues substitution of one style for another (or one fad for another). Syndicate behavior is induced by the winners of the race who have successfully established a new consumer technology and subsequently extend an umbrella over the membership. In this manner the spoils are shared more equitably. This is a peculiarly modern phenomenon. In the past one could not put a Teniers above a Rembrandt or a Polidoro above a Raphael. The generally accepted rules of decorativeness, that is, craftmanship and composition were obvious and immediately perceptible by all.In certain instances syndicate behavior favors single leadership by an established dealer, or a small group of dealers with a proven track record in spawning new technologies. Collectors, too, are involved, by overpaying for art. The discovering collector creates entry barriers for other collectors and thus has a monopoly of discovery of purely intellectual appeal art. Followers may opt to reduce their rivalry in exchange for assurances that once the new technology is in place, they will be given the opportunity to recycle the art brought into being by the leader or leaders. Under certain conditions, as analyzed in the foregoing, this constitutes an optimal strategy.As in the classical case, entry reduces investment and drives rents to zero, if each firm invests a roughly equivalent amount in support of the prevailing consumer technology. There arises the limiting case, equivalent to pure competition (see EQ. 10). On the other hand, several counterveiling strategies are possible. For example, overpayment, as in the case of Rothko. This limits the artists' output in the market. Leftover art is donated or acquired by museums. Such art is no longer competitive, as opposed to art held by other collectors, which, diminishes art'sscarcity value.The most probable outcome of a Cournot-Stackelberg type behavior is a succession of leader-follower or leader-recyler type syndicates, each successively dissolving as new consumer technologies replace old ones. It is, of course, possible for several specialized syndicates to operate contemporaneously. The rate of turnover clearly depends on the speed of dissemination of information. The curator, critic, trustee, consultant has a vested interest in episodic art and an spawning new consumer technologies: if this were not so, there would be no need for the pre-eminance of the critic. He is the magician, the priest, the medicine man who knows the secret language and penetrates the mysteries.