Secondary-Task Effects on Learning With Multimedia: An Investigation Through Eye-Movement Analysis

This study investigates secondary-task interference on eye movements through learning with multimedia. We focus on the relationship between the influence of the secondary task on the eye movements of learners, and the learning outcomes as measured by retention, matching, and transfer. Half of the participants performed a spatial tapping task while studying the instructional materials, whereas the other half studied the materials, without spatial tapping. The results revealed suboptimal learning outcomes under the secondary task, which was accompanied by fewer transitions of gaze between the text and the figure. We propose that the suboptimal learning outcomes might be due to the disrupted processing of pictures, and possibly due to the less efficient integration, of the information gathered from the text and figures.     

Representational competence: towards a distributed and embodied cognition account

Multiple external representations (MERs) are central to the practice and learning of science, mathematics and engineering, as the phenomena and entities investigated and controlled in these domains are often not available for perception and action. MERs therefore play a twofold constitutive role in reasoning in these domains. Firstly, MERs stand in for the phenomena and entities that are imagined, and thus make possible scientific investigations. Secondly, related to the above, sensorimotor and imagination-based interactions with the MERs make possible focused cognitive operations involving these phenomena and entities, such as mental rotation and analogical transformations. These two constitutive roles suggest that acquiring expertise in science, mathematics and engineering requires developing the ability to transform and integrate the MERs in that field, in tandem with running operations in imagination on the phenomena and entities the MERs stand for. This core ability to integrate external and internal representations and operations on them – termed representational competence (RC) – is therefore critical to learning in science, mathematics and engineering. However, no general account of this core process is currently available. We argue that, given the above two constitutive roles played by MERs, a theoretical account of representational competence requires an explicit model of how the cognitive system interacts with external representations, and how imagination abilities develop through this process. At the applied level, this account is required to develop design guidelines for new media interventions for learning science and mathematics, particularly emerging ones that are based on embodied interactions. As a first step to developing such a theoretical account, we review the literature on learning with MERs, as well as acquiring RC, in chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics and engineering, from two perspectives. First, we focus on the important theoretical accounts and related empirical studies, and examine what is common about them. Second, we summarise the major trends in each discipline, and then bring together these trends. The results show that most models and empirical studies of RC are framed within the classical information processing approach, and do not take a constitutive view of external representations. To develop an account compatible with the constitutive view of external representations, we outline an interaction-based theoretical account of RC, extending recent advances in distributed and embodied cognition.     

From body to culture: the need for a developmental psychology view. A commentary on the article Learning beyond the body by Juan-Ignacio Pozo / Del cuerpo a la cultura: la necesidad de una mirada desde la psicología del desarrollo. Un comentario sobre el artículo Aprender más allá del cuerpo de Juan-Ignacio Pozo

The necessity of adopting a developmental perspective to understand the role that the body and action play in children’s representations is argued in proposals made by Pozo in his article Learning beyond the body: from embodied representations to explicitation mediated by external representations. The transformative power of action is valued from this developmental perspective, while at the same time revealing the close link between action, cognition and communication. Similarly, the explicitation and implicitation processes are considered to be recurrent phases that occur in any stage of development, applied to embodied knowledge as well as to more elaborate and explicit knowledge.     

Analysing the socio-psychological construction of identity among pre-service teachers

A teacher’s representation of self is crucial in how they construct their identity. In this article, it is argued that pre-service teachers’ identities are intricately linked to their perceptions of the teaching profession. This paper explores the social construction of identity among pre-service teachers and the implications for professional identity. It focuses on pre-service teachers in Kenya. The findings presented here are primarily based on semi-structured interviews distributed among students enrolled in a Kenyan university. They highlight pre-service teachers’ difficulty in overcoming the negative perceptions of the profession and building positive identities of self as teacher. They also underscore the need for training programmes that take perceptions and representations of the teaching profession into account when formulating training curricula.     

About cooperative engineering: theory and emblematic examples

In this article we focus on ‘cooperative engineering’, in which teachers and researchers co-design didactic sequences. In the first part of the article, we present cooperative engineering by describing some of the main principles on which it is grounded. The second part is dedicated to a case study, which enables us to illustrate some elements of the collective work in a specific cooperative design in kindergarten. The designed learning game, the ‘Treasure Game’, aimed to assist kindergarten students to build a system of graphical representations, which was implemented in a series of phases in which students were asked to memorise a series of items with increasing levels of difficulty. The game demonstrated the students’ growing competence in recalling items using strategies such as making lists and working collaboratively to collectively recall items through a ‘treasure box’. In the third part of the article, we show how this case study embodies some of the main principles put forward in the first part.     

Reading gender: a feminist,queer approach to children's literature and children's discursive agency

Children's literature helps young people make sense of gender. However, while books offer children the imaginative ability to create their own worlds, normative gender can manifest in characters and stories. The study described in this article draws upon ‘disruptive’ storytimes with 114 preschool children, interviews with 20 parents and staff, and observations at 20 preschools. Employing a feminist, queer approach, I develop two derivative books that switch a boy-hero for a girl and vice versa. These books are read to children in educational settings. This method interrogates gendered characters and stories’ attachments to such concepts as love, acceptance, bodily agency, and adventure. Results show how children interact with these characters and stories and how they use categorisation and narrative construction to make sense of gender. I focus on the gender discourses at play and moments of childhood discursive agency. Themes include literature, doing and being, positioning, bodies, and feminist tales.     

Quantifizierung des zu erwartenden Nutzens von Datenbankreorganisationen

Stetig wachsende Datenmengen und hohe Verfügbarkeitsanforderungen an Datenbanken führen dazu, dass Wartungsarbeiten (wie z.B. Datenbankreorganisationen) oft nicht mehr (oder nicht mehr vollst?ndig) offline in zur Verfügung stehenden Zeitfenstern durchgeführt werden k?nnen bzw. dass die Kosten oder die Behinderungen des normalen Datenbankbetriebs bei online durchgeführten Wartungsarbeiten nicht mehr vernachl?ssigt werden k?nnen. Deshalb sollte vorab bestimmt (quantifiziert) werden, ob der zu erwartende Nutzen den mit der Reorganisation verbundenen Aufwand rechtfertigt. Es ist daher wichtig, die Datenbankobjekte zu lokalisieren und einzugrenzen, bei denen ein hoher Wartungsbedarf besteht. Weiterhin ist es wünschenswert, zun?chst den durch Wartungsma?nahmen erreichbaren Nutzen vor ihrer Durchführung quantifizieren zu k?nnen. Dieser Nutzen ist auch von der Workload abh?ngig, also von den gegen die Datenbankobjekte gerichteten Datenbankanweisungen und deren Ausführungsh?ufigkeiten. Insbesondere der zur Workload-Abarbeitung anfallende I/O-Aufwand, der einen dominierenden Anteil am Gesamtaufwand ausmacht, l?sst sich mit einer Datenbankreorganisation u.U. wesentlich beeinflussen (reduzieren). In diesem Beitrag wird eine Methode vorgestellt, die es erm?glicht, die Auswirkungen einer Datenbankreorganisation auf den zur Workload-Abarbeitung notwendigen I/O-Aufwand abzusch?tzen und damit den haupts?chlichen Nutzen der Reorganisation zu quantifizieren. über erste Erfahrungen mit der Methode, die anhand von Beispielen gesammelt wurden, wird berichtet. The permanent increasing amount of data and the requirement of high availability cause that maintenance of databases (e.g. database reorganizations) often is not or not completely (off-line) possible in the available time spans. On-line database reorganizations are often expensive and cumbersome during the normal database processing. To reduce performance impacts it is important to locate the database objects that have a high level of disorganization and so a high need of maintenance. Furthermore, it is desirable to be able to estimate the benefit of expensive maintenance operations before their processing. This benefit depends on the degree of disorganization and on the instructions that are processed on the database objects (workload). In particular, the costs for I/O-operations dominate the total costs for database operations. With database reorganizations it is possible to reduce the I/O-costs. In this paper we present a method to calculate the benefit of database reorganizations before the processing. The presented method allows to calculate the possible reduction of the I/O-cost for processing a given workload caused by a database reorganization.

CR Subject Classification E.2,H.2.7,H.3.2,H.3.3     

“三个代表”:创新高校“两课”教学的指针

“两课”教学的创新,最基本的是以“三个代表”为根本理念,创新指导思想、衡量尺度、根本目的与任务以及教学实施中一些重要原则,确立相应的根本方法和根本方针。以学生为中心,实施服务型教学;正确对待课程特殊性,按政治教育、形势教育和思想教育整合“两课”教学,实施具体教学、专题教学,使思想政治教育发挥切实的作用。     

唯物史观与"三个代表"建党思想

"三个代表"思想是马克思主义唯物史观的生动体现.它不仅从党的建设的现实需要出发提出了一个哲学问题,而且从唯物史观的高度回答了新时期党的建设的根本方针.因此,"三个代表"对于我们加强党的世界观建设具有非常深远的意义.     

论中国共产党理论创新的历史发展

坚持理论创新是中国共产党永葆生机、领导中国革命和建设走向成功的源泉和动力.以毛泽东、邓小平和江泽民为核心的三代中央领导集体在实践理论创新方面取得了重大成果.实践证明,只有不断加强理论创新,才能不断提高党的领导水平和执政水平.