Early Cognitive Precursors of Children's Mathematics Learning Disability and Persistent Low Achievement: A 5-Year Longitudinal Study

Mathematical difficulties have been distinguished as mathematics learning disability (MLD) and persistent low achievement (LA). Based on 1,880 Finnish children who were followed from kindergarten (age 6) to fourth grade, this study examined the early risk factors for MLD and LA. Distinct groups of MLD (6.0% of the sample) and LA (25.7%) children were identified on the basis of their mathematics performance between first and fourth grades with latent class growth modeling. Impairment in the same set of cognitive skills, including language, spatial, and counting skills, was found to underlie MLD and LA. The finding highlights the importance of monitoring mathematical development across the early grades and identifying early cognitive precursors of MLD and LA for screening and intervention efforts.     

Pupil selection segments urban comprehensive schooling in Finland: composition of school classes in pupils’ school performance,gender, and ethnicity

The Finnish comprehensive school system is regularly referred to as a uniform and “no-tracking”. In this article, we show with novel urban case data in Finland that school performance differed significantly between schools, most strikingly between school classes, and was connected to the school's selectiveness in pupil admission. A comprehensive registry data of 13-year-olds in all schools and school classes of one Finnish city was used. Via the case of urban Finland, it is discussed how school choice policies, and thus pupil selection, has led to hidden ability grouping although applied among totally publicly run basic schooling. Thus the traditional perception of a uniform Finnish comprehensive schooling seems not to be valid in the urban contexts of our study.     

Meaningful learning with mobile devices: pre-service class teachers’ experiences of mobile learning in the outdoors

The authors consider the use of mobile learning environment ActionTrack in teacher education. Pre-service class teachers’ (N = 277) experiences of the mobile learning environment were measured with a 7-point Likert-scale questionnaire based on seven attributes of meaningful learning. Students’ ratings for different attributes were analysed quantitatively. The authors conclude that, based on this analysis, it is possible to create meaningful learning experiences using ActionTrack. All the measured attributes of meaningful learning obtained positive values. In the mobile learning events of this study, three attributes arose as the essential features: mobile learning in the outdoors was primarily considered collaborative, active and contextual.     

Event-related potentials and consonant differentiation in newborns with familial risk for dyslexia

We measured event-related potentials (ERPs) to synthetic consonant-vowel syllables (/ba/, /da/, /ga/) from 26 newborns with familial risk for dyslexia and 23 control infants participating in the Jyv?skyl? Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia. The syllables were presented with equal probability and with interstimulus intervals ranging from 3,010 to 7,285 ms. Analyses of averaged ERPs from the latencies identified on the basis of principal component analysis (PCA) revealed significant group differences in stop-consonant processing in several latency ranges. At the latencies of 50-170 ms and 540-630 ms, the responses to /ga/ were larger and more positive than those to /ba/ and /da/ in the right hemisphere in the at-risk group. Between 740 and 940 ms, the responses to /ba/ and /da/ differed between anterior and posterior electrode sites in the control group. These results indicate that the cortical electric activation evoked by speech elements differs between children with and without risk for dyslexia even immediately after birth. Group-related effects at early and late latency ranges of ERPs suggest differences both in the early sound processing based on activation of afferent elements and in later phases of syllable encoding.     

Creative and playful learning on technology-enriched playgrounds: an international investigation

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to determine the degree that creative and playful learning (CPL) in a technology-enriched playground influences academic achievement of students and what factors are responsible for successes. The participants were 276 students from 12 elementary classrooms in the Netherlands and Finland. The research used a pretest–posttest, without control design. The dependent variable was academic achievement on teacher-created tests; the independent variable was participation in the intervention; and the control variables were pretest scores, gender, academic subjects previously studied, age, satisfaction with schooling, country of the school, and classroom within the school. The results showed that there were significant gains in academic achievement and that the pretest was the only significant predictor of posttest achievement. Other variables, including gender, academic subjects studied, age, satisfaction with schooling, country of school, and classroom, were not statistically significant predictors of posttest scores. While students’ academic achievements are only one measure of progress in the current debate about learning in the education system, this article provides insight on education through analyses of the relationships among the integration of curriculum-based learning, CPL practices, and outdoor playgrounds.     

The Sequential Composition of Collaborative Groups’ Emotion Regulation in Negative Socio-emotional Interactions

Research indicates that to adjust a group’s emotional atmosphere for successful collaborative learning, group members need to engage in group-level emotion regulation. However, less is known about the whys and ways regulation is activated at a group level. This research explores what triggers 12-year-old primary school students’ (N = 37) negative socio-emotional interactions during a collaborative science task and whether the nature of the trigger makes a difference to group-level emotion regulation strategies and their sequential composition in these interactions. Groups’ collaborative working was videotaped, and triggers and strategies were analysed. The results reveal that the triggers of negative interactions are linked to the groups’ activated regulation strategies. Motivation control strategies were more represented in situations where negative interactions were triggered by task-related issues, whereas socially related triggers were associated with behavioural regulation strategies. Furthermore, the results illustrate that strategies are concatenated to a series of strategic actions, which mostly begin with sharing an awareness of the trigger. The results indicate a need to focus on the series of strategic actions activated in group interactions. This will help reveal how socially shared regulatory processes build a group’s emotional atmosphere.

     

Exploring groups’ affective states during collaborative learning: what triggers activating affect on a group level?

Educational technology research and development - During collaborative learning, affect is constantly present in groups’ interactions, influencing and shaping the learning process. The aim of...     

Building Bridges: Experiential Art Understanding

When building the bridge of experiential art understanding, the focus is set on the key stone of self in the centre of the arch. Art interpretation as a means of understanding and constructing self is based on the view of self as an unilinear collage of the accumulated life experiences each of us possesses. It is a whole consisting of different roles and relations, cultural identity being a crucial part of it. Self-identity is the experience of distinctness, agency, and continuity that is formed through one’s personal life history. In the model of experiential art interpretation, the process of art interpretation is understood as a series of events where the viewer’s past and present experiences are the basis for constructing new knowledge. The dialectics between personal and social knowledge happens through the different, coequal forms of grasping and transformation. Experiential art interpretation combines strategies from the disciplines of art history, aesthetics, and criticism, and connects them to the experientially-based processes of reflective observation, conceptualization, and production. A central concept in experiential art exploration is transfer, which means the ability to apply knowledge and skills learned in one context to other situations. Transfer leads to increased self-consciousness and metacognitive skills. For transfer to happen, learners have to be able to apply processes of artistic inquiry both in understanding other artworks and in making their own artworks. The second level of transfer has to do with the ability to apply the new ideas and attitudes adopted in the interpretation process in real-life situations.     

Finnish Mothers’ and Fathers’ Constructions of and Emotions in Their Daily Lives

This article focuses on parents’ construction of and emotions in their everyday lives. The study brings into focus the meanings in the foreground of everyday life, while also revealing new insights into cultural beliefs and prejudices. Interviews were conducted with five nuclear and four divorced families, and each participant (N?=?18) was interviewed twice. The second interview was a photo-narrative interview, for which each participant took photographs pertaining to their daily life. Content and thematic analysis were applied to the data. Three main categories of everyday life emerged from the data: family daily life, couples’ daily life, and one’s own daily life. The importance of and pleasure derived from one’s own daily life were emphasized as the foundation of well-being for both the individual and the whole family.     

Educational development within higher arts education: an experimental move beyond fixed pedagogies

This paper explores creative educational development by asking what it is or might become. It is based on a singular pedagogical process within the fields of arts, design, and architecture in higher education. The exploration is framed by Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of difference, which allows for a movement beyond educational certainties that might sometimes limit developmental efforts in higher education. With the intersection of artistic-pedagogical processes and theoretical investigations, the paper aims to imagine potentialities for thinking and doing otherwise in educational development. Thus, this paper strives to become open toward expanding difference and creation within educational development processes.