La naturaleza del conocimiento práctico y sus implicaciones en la formación de docentes

Resumen

The article utilised data from two intervention studies carried out in low SES preschools in order to address issues in the realm of literacy interventions: Which components are more productive in promoting literacy skills (storybook reading or alphabetic training); at what age should these components be introduced (three or four years old); and who should implement the interventions (MA students or preschool teachers). The studies describe preplanned intensive interventions. The results demonstrated that storybook reading is productive in promoting vocabulary and that alphabetic training is productive in promoting a scope of alphabetic skills. Interestingly enough, a combined programme that encompasses both components, though to a lesser extent, bears the widest range of influence on both alphabetic and language skills. Three year old children benefit as much as or possibly even more from storybook reading and alphabetic skills training than their four year old peers. Both MA students and preschool teachers are efficient implementers. MA students promoted the children's skills more than preschool teachers. Yet, we recommend and discuss the benefits of preschool teachers as implementers.     

Promoting assessment efficacy through an integrated system for online clinical assessment of practical skills

This paper presents evaluation outcomes from an externally funded research project involving the online clinical assessment of practical skills (eCAPS) using web-based video technologies within a university medical programme. eCAPS was implemented to trial this web-based approach for promoting the efficacy of practical skills assessment in knee joint examinations for a pre-clinical cohort of second year medical students. eCAPS involves a progressive organisation of online video experiences and task expectations for formative and summative assessments of selected competencies. Data are presented from semi-structured interviews with the medical students (N?=?40). eCAPS successfully supported students’ skill development in knee joint examinations on fellow students and allowed remote assessment of candidates’ performances by clinicians experienced in musculoskeletal examinations. An ‘indicative standard’ paradigm, involving formative assessment of one randomly selected performance from the submission of all students’ responses within a small group, offered an efficient and efficacious avenue for providing consolidated feedback to students and promoted desirable learning behaviours. Overall, there was evidence of reciprocal learning benefits to the ‘blending’ of an online learning and assessment approach with an existing face-to-face environment. The medical students were able to successfully engage online with high quality and consistent practical skill-based materials in a flexible, independent and individual manner.     

Assessing twenty‐first century skills through a teacher created video game for high school biology students

As twenty‐first century skills become a greater focus in K‐12 education, an infusion of technology that meets the needs of today’s students is paramount. This study looks at the design and creation of a Multiplayer Educational Gaming Application (MEGA) for high school biology students. The quasi‐experimental, qualitative design assessed the twenty‐first century skills of digital age literacy, inventive thinking, high productivity, and effective communication techniques of the students exposed to a MEGA. Three factors, as they pertained to these skills, emerged from classroom observations. Interaction with the teacher, discussion with peers, and engagement/time‐on‐task while playing the MEGA suggested that students playing an educational video game exhibited all of the projected twenty‐first century skills while being engrossed in the embedded science content.     

Gliding text: a new aid to improve the reading performance of poor readers by subconscious gaze control

In support of efforts at reducing the number of dyslexics and illiterates in industrialized countries it is proposed, for the first time, to use gliding text ‐ as known in television subtitles ‐ as a method of text display to help those learning to read. Beginners, having the difficult task of precisely directing their gaze letter by letter along the line of text, experience with gliding text automatic gaze guidance as in so‐called ‘optokinetic nystagmus’. This subconscious gaze control allows beginners to pay more attention to contextual processing. First training courses have shown that exercises with gliding text are very efficient. Reading difficulties were eliminated for 21 second‐grade elementary school children in only 24 training sessions, each of 15 min duration. The mean reading speed increased from ten to 24 words per minute (WPM).     

Life skills for ‘real life’: How critical thinking is contextualised across vocational programmes

Background: This article presents an analysis of how critical thinking is contextualised in everyday teaching in three vocational education and training (VET) programmes: Vehicle and transport, Restaurant and management, and Health and social care.

Purpose: The main question addressed is: What knowledge discourses permeate different VET-contexts, and hence what kinds of opportunities for critical thinking do they offer students?

Method: The qualitative analysis draws on data from a four-year ethnographic project exploring learning processes that can be characterised as civic education in Swedish vocational education. The analysis presented here used data collected during 85 days of observations of teaching in six VET classes, interviews with 81 students and 10 teachers, and collected teaching material. To explore why some contextualisations provided more opportunities and encouragement for critical thinking than others, we applied Bernsteinian concepts of ‘horizontal and vertical knowledge discourses’ and ‘discursive gaps’.

Findings and conclusions: Overall, teaching that was observed focused primarily on ‘doing’. However, in all three programmes, the analysis identified that there were also situations that touched upon critical thinking. Three major themes were identified: critical thinking related to ‘Personal experiences’, ‘The other(s)’ and ‘Wider perspectives’. It appeared that the frequency and nature of such situations varied with the knowledge discourses permeating the programme. Furthermore, we discuss the manifestations of critical thinking in relation to the wider context of what Bernstein refers to as pedagogic rights; individual enhancement, social inclusion and development of the competence and confidence to participate in political processes.     

Testing students under cognitive capitalism: knowledge production of twenty-first century skills

Abstract

Scholars studying the global governance of education have noted the increasingly important role corporations play in educational policy making. I contribute to this scholarship by examining the Assessment and Teaching of twenty-first century skills (ATC21S?) project, a knowledge production apparatus operating under cognitive capitalism. I analyze how ATC21S gains symbolic power and authority as it defines what counts in education through three key processes: (1) By legitimizing and disseminating new knowledge about twenty-first century skills; (2) By implementing this knowledge concretely in schools and (3) By embedding this new knowledge within a global alliance. I suggest that the knowledge produced by ATC21S in calculating and measuring twenty-first century skills contributes to the capture of living labor and its reproduction for the knowledge economy through the school system.     

Comparing creative thinking abilities and reasoning ability of deaf and hearing children

This study focuses on comparing the creative thinking and reasoning abilities of deaf and hearing children. Two groups of deaf (N = 210) and hearing children (N = 200) were chosen based on specific criteria. Two instruments were used in the study: theTorrance Tests of Creative Thinking‐Figural, Form A and Matrix Analogous Test. Canonical Correlation analysis and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) were used to analyze the data. The canonical correlation analyses revealed one significant dimension in both deaf and hearing children. The multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed that there are some similarities and differences between the deaf and hearing samples regarding creative thinking abilities.     

Learning arithmetic outdoors in junior high school – influence on performance and self-regulating skills

This study aims to explore the influence of outdoor teaching among students, aged 13, on arithmetic performance and self-regulation skills as previous research concerning outdoor mathematics learning is limited. This study had a quasi-experimental design. An outdoor and a traditional group answered a test and a self-regulation skills questionnaire before and after a 10 weeks unit in arithmetic. Findings suggest differences in changes in academic performance between the groups in favour of the outdoor group and no significant changes in self-regulation skills, apart from a decrease in intrinsic motivation in the traditional group.     

Perceptions of studying during adolescence: student typologies and the relationship with attainment

This research explores perceptions of studying among students taking public examinations at age 16. Cluster analysis was used to classify 826 Year 11 students, in their final year of compulsory schooling, according to their study typology. Pupils were drawn from eight outer London schools and completed a self-report questionnaire to assess perceptions of studying. The analysis revealed six distinctive groups with differences in the use of metacognitive, effort-management, time-management and study strategies. The groups differed in relation to attainment and the amount of homework that students reported completing. Clusters were identified with poor students, who had become disengaged with their studies, and hard working students, who valued the task and adopted a variety of strategies. Other clusters displayed poor time management strategies, use of planning and organisational strategies. For the future, it appears important to understand characteristics that are exhibited by individual students, if all are to be assisted in achieving their potential.     

The Effects of Concurrent Classroom and Home Instructional Video-Game Use on Student Achievement

ABSTRACT

This study focused on whether Internet use improves skills for practical use of information, which is termed information literacy in Japan. Data from Japanese elementary school children (n = 702) were analyzed in a two-wave panel study in order to estimate the causal relationship between Internet use and information literacy. Structural equation modeling was the specific technique applied in a cross-lagged effect model. Results of the analysis indicated that greater use of the Internet led to higher information literacy in the whole-scale measure of practical use of information, as well as in the subskill areas of collecting, judging, and expressing information.