Value for learning during this time of transformation: the first-year students’ perspective

ABSTRACT

Formal education was used by the apartheid government to prepare black South Africans for manual labour, thus there was little curricular focus on the development of higher-order cognitive skills. With the abolition of apartheid in 1994, the education system was re-valued and re-evaluated to provide wider access to quality education; the focus of education policies moved towards the development of self-regulation and higher-order cognitive skills for all learners. There is now a generation of learners who have experienced their schooling in the transformed education system, and it would be useful to understand, from their perspective, what they value in their development of learning within the higher education space. This study answers the question ‘Post-apartheid, what learning methods and resources do first-years perceive to be valuable to their learning when they enter university?’ Participants included 344 students taking a Biology course provided to medical science students at a South African university in 2018. Two questionnaires were administered towards the end of a six-week lecture period, responses were evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively. The first survey, comprised of Likert-style questions, was conducted to determine the students’ views on the mechanisms which they used to support their learning. The second questionnaire comprised open-ended questions and focused on the students’ perception of their learning experience in the course. The findings show that there was a significant (p?<?.001) percentage of first-years who thought that rote-learning would suffice for examination preparation at university, and preferred to engage with their peers and the textbook before they engaged with their lecturers when navigating challenging concepts. Schwartz's model of social values is used to show that more needs to be done for the development of higher-order thinking and self-regulation when students enter university, and to mitigate alienation between students and staff.     

媒介自律和受众注意力互动关系的经济学分析

本文从经济学视角解读了媒介自律和受众对媒介产品的注意力,媒介自律和消费的交叉弹性,媒介自律和受众效应最大化,媒介自律和媒介机构收益最大化的互动关系。     

Who are We?

This article scrutinises the usage of the words “we”, “us” and “our” by BBC radio journalists when reporting and discussing news and current affairs. By analysing reports and discussions on the “flagship” Radio 4 Today, a daily news programme whose centrality to political and public debate is widely recognised, the article raises substantive questions about clarity, accuracy and impartiality in senior broadcast journalists’ choice of language. In exploring the assumptions which may underlie the invocation, via such language choices, of an implied community, and against the backdrop of the BBC's commitment to impartiality in its Editorial Guidelines, the article identifies numerous recent examples where the choice of words and identifiers can be seen as undermining the BBC's impartiality and which show several of its senior journalists adopting the first-person plural “we” when reporting on matters of public policy. The findings therefore indicate a general need to codify norms which are seen to integrate the need for accuracy as well as impartiality, and for these norms to take into account issues which might at first glance seem to be inconsequential, micro-level features of the journalists’ language. The evidence suggests that more fine-grained guidelines on permissible circumstances for BBC journalists’ usage of “we” and “our” need revising and disseminating in the light of these findings.     

The Introduction of Portfolios in Higher Education: a comparative study in the UK and the Netherlands

This article describes a comparative study of the introduction of student portfolios in two departments of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Nottingham Trent University in the UK. Portfolios are designed to facilitate effective management of lifelong learning, to provide a record of achievements and to encourage self-reflection by students.
The justifications for the portfolio initiative are different in the two countries. At the Vrije Universiteit, the initiative arose within the University but is being implemented by individual faculties. There is no standard model of implementation. At Nottingham Trent University, portfolios are being introduced as a response to a government directive, as part of a lifelong learning portfolio that each individual will carry forward into their working life. The University's response to this imperative is top-down and a University-wide model is being sought. The department model is one of several models that are being evaluated for this purpose.
This research project investigates whether these alternative starting points lead to differential responses from student users or not. Data are drawn from quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (interviews with managers, consultants and teachers) sources. Similarities and differences in students' responses to the portfolio exercise are identified and discussed in terms of factors such as the way the portfolios are introduced, the incentives offered to complete them, the role of the lecturer and peers in the monitoring of study progress, the quality of self-regulative skills, and students' learning expectations.     

Minimalist Instruction for Learning to Search the World Wide Web

This study examined the efficacy of minimalist instruction to develop self-regulatory skills involved in Web searching. Two versions of minimalist self-regulatory skill instruction were compared to a control group that was merely taught procedural skills to operate the search engine. Acquired skills were tested on Web search tasks and search tasks in an online library catalogue. Self-regulatory skill instruction was found to increase practice time by 25%. However, it did not enhance search performance on the test tasks. Explanations are advanced for these findings and topics for further research are identified.     

学业成就中等生和学习优良生的自我监控与语、数、英学业成绩关系的研究

采用量表法对115名学业成就中等生和108名学习优良学生的自我监控与语文、数学、英语成绩的关系进行了具体研究。结果发现，学业成就中等生的自我监控水平显著低于学习优良学生，主要体现在执行性、反馈性、补救性、总结性尤其是方法性等方面。不同学科与自我监控的关系有各自的特点。其中，自我监控与数学的关系最为密切，补救性和总结性的自我监控能力的差异是造成学业成就中等生和学习优良生数学成绩差异的重要原因。自我监控与语文、英语的关系则因学生类型而异：学业成就中等生的自我监控与语文、英语成绩无显著关系。而学习 自我监控则与英语成绩有显著的正相关，主要体现在意识性、方法性、反馈性等方面。此外，其自我监控中的意识性、方法性维度也与语文成绩有显著的正相关，这说明提高学业成就中等生的语文和英语成绩，应把自我监控的意识性和方法性的培养放在重要位置上。     

Pupils’ Information Processing and Its Implications for Learning and Assessment: A Think-Aloud Study

A think-aloud study investigated 7th graders’ (N?=?30) information processing and seeking of feedback while reading four multiple partly contradictory texts. An extreme-case analysis shows that a highly-skilled reader uses deeper strategies, such as elaboration, evaluation, and paraphrasing of less contradictory information, than a less-skilled reader. Elaboration strategies are frequently used by the less-skilled reader, but often consist of irrelevant elaboration strategies, which seem to preclude comprehension and deeper learning. The highly-skilled reader seeks internal feedback on task-, process-, and self levels, while the less-skilled reader seeks feedback related to task- and self levels. The results provide useful knowledge regarding pupils’ trajectories into deeper learning and self-regulation processes in information-processing tasks.     

职业问责框架下的传媒自律

自律是传媒职业问责框架下的决定性因素.职业问责框架下的传媒自律以媒介专业主义为基本原则,包括传媒从业者个体、传媒组织和传媒行业三个层面的自律,其固有的缺陷近年来在欧美引发了尴尬的遭遇与尝试性突破.建立一个新型的职业问责框架下的传媒自律机制,应是当前重构我国传媒自律机制的一个可行方向.     

认知神经科学对元认知教育潜力的探索

近年来,由于建构主义对学生的自主学习及自我导向角色作用的推崇,元认知及其子结构——自我调控越来越得到重视。对于元认知的深度了解需要借助认知神经科学大量的实验研究,通过将这些实验研究与教育实践进行结合才能从根本上促进学生的自主学习和自我导向角色作用的发挥。认知神经科学中有关元认知的教育潜力的研究主要包括冲突解决、概念理解、错误检测等,理解这些对于掌握学生学习规律、提高教学质量具有重要的实践意义。     

二语习得视角的非英语专业大学生课外阅读

非英语专业大学生在课堂之外的学习中,阅读应占有相当的比例。本文分析了当今课外阅读的现状,有针对性地提出学习课外阅读的学习策略。该策略是指学习者对信息加工活动进行控制影响的过程。自我调控是学习策略的重要组成部分,对学生语言自主学习能力的形成具有显著作用。以自我调控为主要方式的英语课外阅读指导模式能培养大学生策略意识,形成自主学习,大大提高英语学习效率和成果。