High-School Teachers’ Attempts to Promote Self-Regulated Learning: “I may learn from you, yet how do I do it?”

This study examined how urban high-school students responded to increased academic expectations. The intervention included increased expectations for reading and writing, collaboration, and the completion of multi-day assignments. Twenty-four students (8 lower, 8 average, and 8 higher performers) from 4 classrooms were interviewed across a 9-week period to evaluate their reactions to the increased expectations. While students approached lessons with learning versus performance orientations, they were unsuccessful because they could not transfer classroom successes to their outside of school studying efforts. Their difficulties were related to a lack of strategies, a failure to manage distractions, or an inability to monitor studying behaviors. Discussion focuses on the difficulties among students based on performance levels and on the challenges of increasing academic expectations within a climate of high-stakes testing.     

Learning from multimedia presentations: Facilitation function of animations and spatial abilities

Animations may facilitate learning by providing external support for visual–spatial mental processing. Facilitation is challenged by findings that demonstrate involvement of spatial abilities in learning from animations, because this involvement indicates active internal visual–spatial processing. In the present study, learners attended to a system-paced multimedia presentation in which a verbal–auditory explanation was concurrently synchronized either with animation, with static core pictures, or with enriched static pictures that showed additional intermediate steps and arrows indicating motion. Results demonstrated better learning success with animations and with enriched static pictures than with static pictures. Spatial abilities were not substantively related to learning success with animations or with static pictures, but they played a crucial role for learning success with enriched static pictures. It is concluded that active visual–spatial processing was recruited with enriched static pictures. With animations, learning was truly facilitated by external support for visual–spatial mental processing.     

Relationship of College Students' Current Attachment to Appraisals of Parental Conflict

This study assessed the relationship of parental attachment and gender to appraisals of conflict with parents in an effort to clarify the psychological mechanisms that mediate the relationship between attachment and psychological well-being. Appraisals of conflict with parents were found to be related to level of attachment and gender.     

Teachers’ perceptions of the benefits of online instruction for students with special educational needs

This article discusses the perceptions of ‘virtual’ teachers with regard to the benefits of online education for students with special educational needs. Surveys were distributed to teachers from one educational management company about their experiences of teaching in asynchronous (self‐paced) virtual school classrooms. The survey responses revealed the following findings: online education has made it easier for students with limitations to access learning activities; improvements have been made in student academic performance; students have had success with asynchronous (self‐paced) education; student motivation has increased; and more individualised support has been available. Even though these results focused on positive outcomes, some negative perceptions were also recorded. These included discrepancies related to cyber‐bullying in asynchronous learning programmes, matters related to student accommodations, and problems associated with student use of online classroom resources.     

你好，米奇

“我只希望人们不要忘记一件事，那就是一切都始于一只老鼠。”——华特·迪士尼1928年11月侣日，米奇在首部有声动画片《威利号汽船》中登场，这是米奇的银幕首秀，此后，它主演了120余部动画片，成为了最受欢迎的迪士尼明星。     

A Conceptual Approach to Teaching Mathematics to Students With Intellectual Disability

Swedish compulsory school for students with intellectual disability (ID) has been criticized for focusing on care and not presenting the students with enough knowledge-related challenges. The purpose of this study is to investigate how a conceptually-based mathematics curriculum can be interpreted and constructed for students with ID. A total of 18 mathematics lessons in 6 classes for students with ID were filmed, and the teachers were interviewed in connection with the lessons. A qualitative content analysis approach was used to identify aspects of mathematical competency content and to analyze the teaching. Three major groups of teaching strategies are identified: pedagogical mathematics activities, focusing on students’ perceptions of mathematical content, and encouraging dialogue between students.     

Curtailing marking variation and enhancing feedback in large scale undergraduate chemistry courses through reducing academic judgement: a case study

Variation in marks awarded, alongside quality of feedback, is an issue whenever large-scale assessment is undertaken. In particular, variation between sessional teaching staff has been studied for decades resulting in many recorded efforts to overcome this issue. Attempts to curtail variation range from moderation meetings, extended training programmes, electronic tools, automated feedback or even audio/video feedback. Decreased marking variation was observed whenever automated marking was used, potentially due to less academic judgment being used by the markers. This article will focus on a case study of three interventions undertaken at Monash University that were designed to address concerns around the variability of marking and the feedback between sessional teaching staff employed in the chemistry teaching laboratories. The interventions included the use of detailed marking criteria, Excel marking spreadsheets and automated marked Moodle reports. Results indicated that more detailed marking criteria had no effect whilst automated processes caused a consistent decrease. This was attributed to a decrease in the academic judgment markers were expected to use. Only the Excel spreadsheet ensured the provision of consistent feedback to students. Sessional teaching staff commented that their marking loads were reduced and the new methods were easy to use.     

The role of student characteristics in studying micro teaching–learning environments

This study explored the role of student characteristics in studying micro teaching–learning environments. The overarching hypothesis is that teachers teach differently to micro environments in their classrooms. This study is the first of a series exploring the following four questions: (1) What student profiles are identified at the beginning of a school year with respect to cognitive and motivational-affective factors? (2) How do students with different profiles perceive conditions in their learning environment? (3) To what degree do classrooms differ in the composition of student profiles? (4) What are possible consequences for examining micro teaching–learning environments? The study investigated 82 randomly selected high school science classrooms. Student characteristics were assessed at the beginning of the school year. After a video taped teaching unit, students were asked to rate the degree to which they experienced learning conditions as supportive. Latent class analysis (LCA) showed five distinct student profiles that varied along cognitive and motivational-affective dimensions. Multilevel analyses showed effects of student profiles assessed at the beginning of the school year on the students’ perception of learning conditions in a teaching unit 4 months later. To illustrate consequences for examining micro teaching–learning environments, student profiles were linked to video examples. The examples point to the special value of LCA in studying micro teaching–learning environments: they make it possible to focus on the individual student and to investigate the interplay of student characteristics and the learning environment.     

Using camels to teach probability and expected value

There is much debate about the place of probability in an introductory statistics course. While students may or may not use probability distributions in their post‐collegiate lives, they will likely be faced with day‐to‐day decisions that require a probabilistic assessment of risk and reward. This paper describes an innovative way to teach students in an introductory statistics course how to reason about probability and expected value through the board game Camel Up. The in‐class activities described here can be scaled to fit the needs and abilities of the students in a wide range of introductory statistics courses at a variety of levels.