Opportunities to analyse pupils’ learning within coursework on campus: a remaining challenge in teacher education

To support pupils’ learning, teachers must understand what and how their pupils have learned, and teacher education should teach candidates how to do this. This article reports on survey data (n = 270) from three programmes and observation data (N = 104 h) from six programmes, located in Norway, Finland and the US. It examines the candidates’ opportunities to analyse pupils’ learning within their coursework. The authors argue that such opportunities might constitute profound possibilities to examine the complexity of teaching and learning. However, the study finds that the candidates have few opportunities to analyse pupils learning and that the full potential of these opportunities is unrealized. The authors argue for increased, specific attention to pupils’ learning within teacher education coursework, through a pedagogy of teacher education informed by existing research on how to elicit pupils’ learning.     

The Moving Window Technique: A Window Into Developmental Changes in Attention During Facial Emotion Recognition

The strategies children employ to selectively attend to different parts of the face may reflect important developmental changes in facial emotion recognition. Using the Moving Window Technique (MWT), children aged 5–12 years and adults (N = 129) explored faces with a mouse‐controlled window in an emotion recognition task. An age‐related increase in attention to the left eye emerged at age 11–12 years and reached significance in adulthood. This left‐eye bias is consistent with previous eye tracking research and findings of a perceptual bias for the left side of faces. These results suggest that a strategic attentional bias to the left eye begins to emerge at age 11–12 years and is likely established sometime in adolescence.     

Foot strike patterns of recreational and sub-elite runners in a long-distance road race

Although the biomechanical properties of the various types of running foot strike (rearfoot, midfoot, and forefoot) have been studied extensively in the laboratory, only a few studies have attempted to quantify the frequency of running foot strike variants among runners in competitive road races. We classified the left and right foot strike patterns of 936 distance runners, most of whom would be considered of recreational or sub-elite ability, at the 10 km point of a half-marathon/marathon road race. We classified 88.9% of runners at the 10 km point as rearfoot strikers, 3.4% as midfoot strikers, 1.8% as forefoot strikers, and 5.9% of runners exhibited discrete foot strike asymmetry. Rearfoot striking was more common among our sample of mostly recreational distance runners than has been previously reported for samples of faster runners. We also compared foot strike patterns of 286 individual marathon runners between the 10 km and 32 km race locations and observed increased frequency of rearfoot striking at 32 km. A large percentage of runners switched from midfoot and forefoot foot strikes at 10 km to rearfoot strikes at 32 km. The frequency of discrete foot strike asymmetry declined from the 10 km to the 32 km location. Among marathon runners, we found no significant relationship between foot strike patterns and race times.     

Environmental policy vs. public pressure: Innovation and diffusion of alternative bleaching technologies in the pulp industry

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, concern over dioxin in both paper products and wastewater led to the development of techniques that reduced the use of chlorine in the pulp industry. Both regulatory and consumer pressure motivated this change. Unlike previous studies, we use patent data to examine the evolution of two competing bleaching technologies in five major paper-producing countries, both of which reduce the use of chlorine in the pulping process. The use of patent data allows us to focus on the invention stage. However, adoption data are also presented, and by the end of the 1990s, nearly all pulp production in these countries used one of these technologies. While previous studies emphasize the importance of regulation for inducing innovation, here we find substantial innovation occurring before regulations were in place. Instead, pressure from consumers and the public at large to reduce the chlorine content of paper drove invention, prior to the introduction of environmental policies in any of the countries concerned.     

The effects of practice schedule on learning a complex judgment task

The effects of practice schedule on learning a complex judgment task were investigated. In Experiment 1, participants' judgment accuracy on a retention test was higher after a random practice schedule than after a blocked schedule or operational schedule. Experiment 2 demonstrated that judgment on a transfer test was also better after a random practice schedule than after a blocked schedule. Both experiments failed to show any effects of practice schedule on performance during learning. These findings show that benefits of random practice for retention and transfer apply to learning a complex judgment task, and may be achieved without performance degradation during practice.     

Effects of worked examples, example-problem, and problem-example pairs on novices’ learning

Research has demonstrated that instruction that relies more heavily on example study is more effective for novices’ learning than instruction consisting of problem solving. However, ‘a heavier reliance on example study’ has been implemented in different ways. For example, worked examples only (WE), example-problem pairs (WE-PS), or problem-example pairs (PS-WE) have been used. This study investigated the effectiveness of all three strategies compared to problem solving only (PS), using electrical circuits troubleshooting tasks; participants were secondary education students who were novices concerning those tasks. Based on prior research, it was hypothesized and confirmed that WE and WE-PS would lead to lower cognitive load during learning and higher learning outcomes than PS. In addition, the open questions of whether there would be any differences between WE and WE-PS, and whether there would be any differences between PS-WE and PS were explored. Results showed no differences between WE and WE-PS or between PS-WE and PS. This study can inform instructional designers on which example-based learning strategies to implement: it does not seem necessary to alternate example study and problem solving, but when doing so, example-problem pairs should be used rather than problem-example pairs.     

面向当代学习环境设计教学

日益变化的学习环境对设计教学提出了严峻的挑战。其中,最重要的是考虑如何面向现实生活和完整任务开展学习;如何学会解决非良构的问题,实现学习迁移;如何从扶到放设计学习任务;如何推行个性化的教学;本文概要地讨论了综合学习设计理论和认知负荷理论的若干重要主张和认识。