Children's Social Self‐Concept and Internalizing Problems: The Influence of Peers and Teachers

This study aimed to understand how relationships with peers and teachers contribute to the development of internalizing problems via children's social self‐concept. The sample included 570 children aged 7 years 5 months (SD = 4.6 months). Peer nominations of peer rejection, child‐reported social self‐concept, and teacher‐reported internalizing problems were assessed longitudinally in the fall and spring of Grades 2 and 3. Teacher reports of support to the child were assessed in Grade 2. Results showed that peer rejection impeded children's social self‐concept, which in turn affected the development of internalizing problems. Partial support was found for individual (but not classroom‐level) teacher support to buffer the adverse effects of peer problems on children's self‐concept, thereby mitigating its indirect effects on internalizing problems.     

Learning in a game-based virtual environment: a comparative evaluation in higher education

The authors define the requirements and a conceptual model for comparative evaluation research of simulation games and serious games (SGs) in a learning context. A first operationalisation of the model was used to comparatively evaluate a suite of 14 SGs on varying topics played between 2004 and 2009 in 13 institutes of higher education in the Netherlands. The questions in this research were: what is the perceived learning effectiveness of the games and what factors explain it? How can we comparatively evaluate games for learning? Data were gathered through pre- and post-game questionnaires among 1000 students, leading to 500 useful datasets and 230 complete datasets for analysis (factor analysis, scaling, t-test and correlation analysis) to give an explorative, structural model. The findings are discussed and a number of propositions for further research are formulated. The conclusion of the analysis is that the students’ motivation and attitudes towards game-based learning before the game, their actual enjoyment, their efforts during the game and the quality of the facilitator/teacher are most strongly correlated with their learning satisfaction. The degree to which the experiences during the game were translated back into the underlying theories significantly determines the students’ learning satisfaction. The quality of the virtual game environment did not matter so much. The authors reflect upon the general methodology used and offer suggestions for further research and development.     

Responsible Research and Innovation as a Novel Approach to Guide Educational Impact of Mind,Brain, and Education Research

We propose a Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) framework to improve the alignment between mind, brain, and education (MBE) research, the educational practice, and other societal stakeholders. RRI is an approach that has successfully been used in different research fields, but not yet in MBE research. After substantiating the need for, and possibilities of using this framework within MBE research, we report a case study to demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of RRI within an MBE context. This case study entails developing an educational intervention to improve learners' sense of agency regarding their own learning processes using neurofeedback. Using RRI, we found that societal stakeholders (teenagers, parents, and teachers) anticipate different potential impacts of this neurotechnology‐based intervention than researchers did, enabling us to adapt the intervention according to these perspectives. This example demonstrates that RRI enables researchers to be reflexive and responsive to the stakeholders needs and values, to ultimately improve the educational and societal value of MBE research.     

The research and evaluation of serious games: Toward a comprehensive methodology

The authors present the methodological background to and underlying research design of an ongoing research project on the scientific evaluation of serious games and/or computer‐based simulation games (SGs) for advanced learning. The main research questions are: (1) what are the requirements and design principles for a comprehensive social scientific methodology for the evaluation of SGs?; (2) to what extent do SGs contribute to advanced learning?; (3) what factors contribute to or determine this learning?; and (4) to what extent and under what conditions can SG‐based learning be transferred to the real world? In the Netherlands between 2005 and 2012, several hundred SG sessions with 12 SGs were evaluated systematically, uniformly and quantitatively to create a dataset, which comprises data on 2488 respondents in higher education or work organizations. The authors present the research model, the quasi‐experimental design and the evaluation instruments. This focus in this paper is on the methodology and dataset, which form a sound foundation for forthcoming publications on the empirical results.