Emergent interactions: rethinking the relationship between teaching and learning

The relationship between teaching and learning is represented in contemporary higher education research which has looked at the correlations between students’ approaches to learning and teachers’ approaches to teaching. This article proposes a rethinking of this relationship, building on a critical realist perspective. Here, the teaching–learning interaction is argued to be emergent from the activities of teaching and of learning, and it is this emergent property which provides the explanatory mechanism for the relationship between them. Support for this position is located in recent work by Paul Ashwin and also in the sociology of Margaret Archer.     

Online multiplayer games for the social interactions of children with autism spectrum disorder: a resource for inclusive education

ABSTRACT

This article describes the support for social interactions received by three students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) through their multimodal engagements with Minecraft®. The data were collected through at-screen observations and semi-structured interviews. Multimodal analysis of the data demonstrated that online multiplayer games supported social interactions through modes, such as speech, writing and gesture, and within physical and virtual spaces. The analysis revealed that online multiplayer games provided platforms for the students to use speech to engage in reciprocal conversations, to share information, to make requests, to give commands and to direct others. Additionally, screen-based written texts were used to attract the attention of others, send messages, communicate rules and maintain engagements with others within the students’ physical and virtual worlds. Furthermore, the findings showed that online multiplayer games supported the students’ uses, interpretations and mirroring of gestures for social interactions. The findings have implications for providing opportunities to support social interactions in multimodal ways that social spaces in face-to-face and offline contexts do not allow. The findings offer implications for targeting the students’ interests in online multiplayer games to support their capacity to initiate and sustain social interactions in inclusive educational settings.     

“Can you tell me more about this?”: Agentic written feedback,teacher expectations,and student learning

Teachers are not only tasked with communicating facts, figures, and skills to their students, but they are also responsible for equipping students to be self-sufficient learners who believe in their own capacity to learn and improve. In this paper, we propose that written feedback that offers students agency (what we call ‘agentic feedback’) can be a way for teachers to build more independent and self-efficacious learners, and to instill in students the trust that their teacher believes in them. In the first study, we develop a novel qualitative coding scheme to measure the degree of agency offered in teachers’ written feedback (N = 136) and produce a coherent ‘agentic feedback’ variable. In the second study, we find that middle and high school students (N = 1,260) are sensitive to the amount of agency provided in teachers’ feedback: they perceive that agentic feedback affords more choice and requires more effort for revision, encourages greater learning and improvement on writing, and that teachers who offer more agentic feedback have higher expectations. We discuss implications for future research and application in classrooms.     

Change trajectories for parent-child interaction sequences during parent-child interaction therapy for child physical abuse

ObjectiveParent-child interaction therapy (PCIT) has been found to reduce future child abuse reports among physically abusive parents. Reductions in observed negative parenting behaviors mediated this benefit. The current study examined session-by-session interaction sequences in order to identify when during treatment these changes occur and how much the trajectory varies from case-to-case.MethodSession-by-session parent-child interaction sequences, using the Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System-II (DPICS-II) categories, were coded for 22 child welfare involved parent-child dyads undergoing PCIT for child physical abuse. A total 5,436 interactions across PCIT were coded and analyzed using growth curve analysis.ResultsAt pre-treatment baseline, negative and positive parental responses were about equally likely to follow a child positive behavior. This pattern changed rapidly during PCIT, with rapid increases in positive parental responses and decreases in negative parental responses to appropriate child behavior. A quadratic growth pattern accounted for 70% of observed variance and virtually all change occurred during the first three sessions.ConclusionChanges in observed abusive parent-abused child interaction patterns can occur early in PCIT, a parenting intervention that involves direct coaching and practice of skills. These benefits sustained throughout treatment.Practice implicationPrior to receiving behavioral parent training (PCIT), parents who have physically abused their children failed to match their parental response to their children's behavior. This pattern of interaction improved rapidly and substantially during the first three sessions of PCIT. The changes in the patterns of interaction also remained relatively stable for the remainder of treatment while parents continued to practice positive parental responses as well as began practicing effective discipline techniques. This suggests that use of immediate parent feedback through coaching, explicit directions to parents in how to respond to child behavior, and customization of the application of skills to the problems that arise in session are important components to effective parenting programs with physically abusive parents. Targeting these behaviors with PCIT has been found to reduce rates of recidivism, further supporting clinical application of PCIT in these cases.     

How community interactions contribute to harmonious community relationships and customers’ identification in online brand community

As a proxy for the vitality of online brand community, effective interaction has always been viewed as a prerequisite for the formation of harmonious organization atmosphere and high degree of organizational identity. To investigate the process, this study proposes a model delineates the relationship among community interactions, harmonious community relationships, and customers’ community identification. The findings, based on 665 valid samples, reveal that different community interactions (product-information, human-computer, and interpersonal) have different effects on harmonious community relationships (customer-brand and customer-other customers’ relationships), which in turn influences customers’ identification with community. Furthermore, these community interactions have an interactive effect on harmonious community relationships. Based on the analytical results, this study concludes with some managerial and research implications.     

Harnessing the power of fantastic attempts: Kindergarten teacher perspectives on student mistakes

Now, more than ever, American students at all grade levels face intense pressure to increase academic performance—including kindergarteners. Given that prior research has well established that mistakes and corrective feedback are key elements of the learning endeavor, it is critical to closely examine teachers’ mistake-related experiences within the current educational context. The author reports on an interview study of 25 public school kindergarten teachers, who articulate in their own words how they perceive and respond to student mistakes in practice. Five central themes drawn from thematic analysis reflect commonly reported ways that teachers strive to respond to mistakes in their real-world classrooms: differentiating responses to the learner, building a positive classroom culture, facilitating student self-correction, adjusting instruction, and considering outside factors. The author concludes with a discussion connecting these themes to existing research and considering implications for research, policy, and classroom teaching.     

Collaborative Meaning-Making and Dialogic Interactions in Critical Friends as Co-Authors

ABSTRACT

From this year-long study, we offer new perspectives for being and becoming critical friends as co-authors. Informed by the Transactional Theory of Reading, a narrative view of experience and feminist communication theory, we positioned ourselves as collaborative, active meaning makers who could read and make meaning from our lived experiences and who could disrupt and problematize our narrative lives as teacher researchers. Through use of a collaborative conference protocol, we discovered what it means to be and to become critical friends who can co-author narrative understanding of self in the study. We have revisited the concept of critical friendship by repositioning our coauthoring as not just a resource for the completion of a better end product, but also as a way of being and knowing that enables an individual to revisit, reignite, disrupt, problematize and challenge one’s past and present storied lives.     

一种新的计算预测alpha-synuclein蛋白质相互作用网络的方法

Alpha-synuclein plays an important role in Parkinson＇s disease （PD）. The current study of alpha-synuclein mainly concentrates at the gene level. However, it is found that the study at the protein level has special significance. Meanwhile, there is free information on the Internet, such as databases and algorithms of protein-protein interactions （PPIs）. In this paper, a novel method which integrates distributed heterogeneous data sources and algorithms to predict PPIs for alpha- synuclein in silico is proposed. The PPIs generated by the method take advantage of various experimental data, and indicate new information about PPIs for alpha-synuclein. In the end of this paper, the result illustrates that the method is practical. It is hoped that the prediction result obtained by this method can provide guidance for biological experiments of PPIs for alpha-synuclein to reveal possible mechanisms of PD.     

‘Good-fit’ teacher-child play interactions and the subsequent autonomous play of preschool children

The purpose of this study was to test a model of adult-child play interactions in preschool classrooms, based on the work of Vygotsky and neo-Vygotskian scholars. The model predicts that adults will tailor the play support they provide to the immediate needs of individual children, and that this will lead to subsequent independent play. Classroom interactions between eight preschool teachers and 32 students were videotaped, transcribed, and analyzed over a six-month period. Interviews were conducted with the eight adult participants to confirm and elucidate findings from observed classroom behaviors. Distinct types of play support needed by children and given by teachers were identified. These were operationally defined; definitions were used to create a coding system that was found to have high inter-rater reliability. Sequential analyses were conducted to determine goodness-of-fit between teacher responses and children's needs. Behavioral outcomes of a good fit were also examined. Findings support the model tested here. Teachers often responded to children's play with behaviors matching the level of support needed. Good-fit interactions more frequently led to autonomous subsequent play than poor-fit interactions.     

师生互动与大学英语课堂教学

课堂是师生互动和学生获取知识的主要场所。大学英语教学应该努力创设良好的师生互动的课堂氛围,激发学生的学习兴趣,提高教学质量。本文分析了大学英语课堂教学中影响师生良性互动的主要因素以及教师应该注意的问题,提出了促进师生和谐互动的教学策略,最终实现良好的大学英语课堂教学效果。