Does early reading failure decrease children's reading motivation?

The authors used a pretest-posttest control group design with random assignment to evaluate whether early reading failure decreases children's motivation to practice reading. First, they investigated whether 60 first-grade children would report substantially different levels of interest in reading as a function of their relative success or failure in learning to read. Second, they evaluated whether increasing the word reading ability of 15 at-risk children would lead to gains in their motivation to read. Multivariate analyses of variance suggest marked differences in both motivation and reading practice between skilled and unskilled readers. However, bolstering at-risk children's word reading ability did not yield evidence of a causal relationship between early reading failure and decreased motivation to engage in reading activities. Instead, hierarchical regression analyses indicate a covarying relationship among early reading failure, poor motivation, and avoidance of reading.     

Strength vs. temporal-order information in delayed-matching-to-sample performance by monkeys

The usual procedure in delayed-matching-to-sample (DMTS) experiments is that the most recently presented sample stimulus is correct on choice tests. The present paper reports two experments in which the first of two samples was always correct. Theories based on trace strength, such as the Roberts and Grant trace strength competition model, predict that such a procedure will yield below chance performance, because on the average the more recently presented stimulus will have the greater trace strength. In contrast, D’Amato and others have proposed that DMTS performance is mediated by a temporal discrimination process and, since either stimulus may act as S+ in a discrimination problem, monkeys should be capable of learning to choose either the secondor the first of two sample stimuli. Performance did not exceed chance in either experiment. The generality of these results is tentatively explored.     

Action research: a methodology for transformative learning for a professor and his students in an engineering classroom

ABSTRACT

An engineering professor of a first-year thermodynamics course and a PhD student with a focus in engineering education in a large research university in Canada participated in an ethnographic action research study with the intention of increasing active learning in the classroom to enhance student engagement and learning. Unexpected findings included transformative changes to the professor’s epistemology of teaching and learning. Through the action research cycle of planning, implementing, observing, and critically reflecting, modifications were made to the instructional strategies and the learning environment that created a micro engineering community of practice where both students and teaching assistants engaged in deep learning and legitimate peripheral participation on the trajectory to ‘becoming engineers’. Qualitative interview data from the professor, three students, and three teaching assistants are analysed through approaches to learning research and situated learning theory. Engaging in action research had profound repercussions in this case. The authors make the argument for action research as a catalyst for transformative learning required for teachers to engage students in the twenty-first century classroom.     

The level of abstraction of textual materials: a new and an old measure compared

The level of abstraction of textual material is one factor affecting the difficulty it presents to the reader and so effective ways of assessing it are potentially useful for the teacher and researcher. A ‘new’ measure was compared with an old one and some similarity found in their assessment of science texts. The earlier measure may be the easier one for the non-specialist to use. The results also suggested a rule of thumb which practising teachers might find useful.     

Do NESB University Students with Poor English Skills Make Rapid Linguistic Gains in Mainstream Studies?

This paper reports the testing and retesting two years later of 147 first‐year medical students for English language proficiency (ELP). A group of 66 with low initial proficiency, all of non‐English‐speaking background (NESB), improved from an average language age of 14.3 years to 15.2 years over the period. A comparison group of 81, randomly drawn from those who were of adequate ELP, 48% of whom were NESB, were close to the test ceiling on both occasions with an age equivalence of 33 years. Generalisation to other courses and samples may be limited but this study did not indicate great linguistic gains associated with mainstream studies for those whose English was poor at the beginning of their course.     

Do Differential Grading Standards Across Fields Matter for Major Choice? Evidence from a Policy Change in Florida

Research in Higher Education - Grading standards in college vary substantially across fields, especially among STEM fields that tend to give lower grades than non-STEM fields. Prior research has...     

University students’ perceptions of a fair learning environment: a social justice perspective

This study aimed to identify the manner in which university students construe ‘fair treatment’ and how justice related processes are perceived to influence students’ psychological identification with their academic department. In the first study, 342 undergraduate psychology students completed two questionnaires: one measured various aspects of interpersonal, procedural and outcome fairness in their department, and the other measured their level of psychological identification with the department. Students construed the fairness of their learning environment in terms of two conceptually distinct justice factors: respectful partnership between staff and students reflecting primarily interpersonal justice considerations; and systemic fairness reflecting a concern for accessible information and effective problem‐solving procedures. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that although both justice factors significantly influenced students’ psychological identification with their department, interactional justice concerns (i.e., respectful staff–student partnership) were most strongly predictive. In the second study (n = 87), students’ perceptions of fairness were found to share substantial variance with their ratings on the good teaching and clear goals scales of the Course Experience Questionnaire.     

Lawson's Shoehorn, or Should the Philosophy of Science Be Rated ‘X’?

Lawson's (2002) interpretations of Galileo's discovery of the moons of Jupiter and other cases exhibit several historical errors, addressed here both specifically and generally. They illustrate how philosophical preconceptions can distort history and thus lessons about the nature of science.