Managing Uncertainty During Collaborative Problem Solving in Elementary School Teams: The Role of Peer Influence in Robotics Engineering Activity

This study investigated how interaction with peers influenced the ways students managed uncertainty during collaborative problem solving in a 5th-grade class. The analysis focused on peer responses to individuals’ attempts to manage uncertainty they experienced while engaged in collaborative efforts to design, build, and program robots and achieve assignment objectives. Patterns of peer response were established through discourse analysis of work sessions for 5 teams engaged in 2 collaborative projects. Three socially supportive peer responses and 2 unsupportive peer responses were identified. Peer interaction was influential because students relied on supportive social response to enact most of their uncertainty management strategies. This study provides a useful theoretical contribution to understanding the roles of peer interaction in collaborative problem solving. Conceptualizing collaborative problem solving as a process of negotiating uncertainties can help instructional designers shape tasks and relational contexts to facilitate learning.     

Anatomy as a Model Environment for Acquiring Professional Competencies in Medicine: Experiences at Harvard Medical School

Anatomy education provides students with opportunities to learn structure and function of the human body, to acquire professional competencies such as teamwork, interpersonal skills, self-awareness, and to reflect on and practice medical ethics. The fulfillment of this wide potential can present challenges in courses that are part of an integrated curriculum and shorter than traditional courses. This new reality, together with students' increasing concern about the stresses within medical education, led to efforts at Harvard Medical School to implement practical steps toward an optimal learning environment in anatomy. These were based on core elements of ethical anatomy education and principles of trauma-informed care. Anatomy is conceptualized here as the “first clinical discipline,” with relational interactions between anatomical educators, medical students, and body donors/patients. Essential prerequisites for the implementation of this work were support by the medical school leadership, open partnership between engaged students and faculty, faculty coordination, and peer-teaching. Specific interventions included pre-course faculty development on course philosophy and invitations to students to share their thoughts on anatomy. Student responses were integrated in course introductions, combined with a pre-dissection laboratory visit, an introductory guide, and a module on the history and ethics of anatomy. During the course, team-building activities were scheduled, and self-reflection encouraged, for example, through written exercises, and elective life-body drawing. Students' responses to the interventions were overall positive, but need further evaluation. This first attempt of a systematic implementation of an optimal learning environment in anatomy led to the identification of areas in need of adjustment.     

Individualizing through treatment matching: A necessary but not sufficient approach

The effects of various alternative treatments (modules), designed to compensate for student differences in precourse memory abilities (processing and retrieval skills) and motivation (anxiety, curiosity), were investigated for lessons differing in content and task requirements. Performance on each module was compared to performance on the original (mainline) instructional module for 63 to 171 students in the Air Force Advanced Instructional System’s inventory management course. Interaction analyses on lesson times-to-criterion and criterion test scores indicated that the compensating treatments were partially effective in improving the performance of low-memory or low-reading ability students, low-curious students, or high-anxious students. Additional benefits that may be expected from an individualization approach that attempts to modify students’ cognitive and affective learning strategies are discussed. This research was supported by Air Force Human Resources Laboratory Contract F33615-73-C-4004. Requests for reprints should be sent to Barbara L. McCombs, Denver Research Institute, Social Systems Research and Evaluation Division, University of Denver, Denver, CO 80208.     

Examining Chi-Square Test Statistics Under Conditions of Large Model Size and Ordinal Data

This study examined the effect of model size on the chi-square test statistics obtained from ordinal factor analysis models. The performance of six robust chi-square test statistics were compared across various conditions, including number of observed variables (p), number of factors, sample size, model (mis)specification, number of categories, and threshold distribution. Results showed that the unweighted least squares (ULS) robust chi-square statistics generally outperform the diagonally weighted least squares (DWLS) robust chi-square statistics. The ULSM estimator performed the best overall. However, when fitting ordinal factor analysis models with a large number of observed variables and small sample size, the ULSM-based chi-square tests may yield empirical variances that are noticeably larger than the theoretical values and inflated Type I error rates. On the other hand, when the number of observed variables is very large, the mean- and variance-corrected chi-square test statistics (e.g., based on ULSMV and WLSMV) could produce empirical variances conspicuously smaller than the theoretical values and Type I error rates lower than the nominal level, and demonstrate lower power rates to reject misspecified models. Recommendations for applied researchers and future empirical studies involving large models are provided.     

Using a mathematical model of motivation,volition, and performance to examine students’ e-text learning experiences

This empirical study used Keller’s (Technol Instr Cogn Learn 16:79–104, 2008b) motivation, volition, and performance (MVP) theory to develop and statistically evaluate a mathematical MVP model that can serve as a research and policy tool for evaluating students’ learning experiences in digital environments. Specifically, it explored undergraduate biology students’ learning and attitudes toward e-texts using a MVP mathematical model in two different e-text environments. A data set (N = 1334) that included student motivation and e-text information processing, frustration with using e-texts, and student ability variables was used to evaluate e-text satisfaction. A regression analysis of these variables revealed a significant model that explained 77% of the variation in student e-text satisfaction in both e-text learning environments. Student motivation and intrinsic cognitive load were positive predictors of student satisfaction, while extraneous cognitive load and student prior knowledge and background variables were negative predictors. Practical implications for e-text learning and generalizability of a mathematical MVP model are discussed.     

Children's Literature as Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse

This article addresses the issue of child sexual abuse, providing contextual information about the problem, such as the fact that in 85–95% of cases, the offender is known to and trusted by the victim. Because children are greatly influenced by situations depicted in books (and other media), positive and negative influences of general children's literature are discussed. More importantly, the author argues that carefully selected children's literature can help to prevent child sexual abuse. Since statistics reveal that the average sexually abused victim is eight years old, this study focuses on current and suggested literature for children ages four through eight. Content and evaluative criteria are discussed, followed by a survey of thirteen children's books that deal with child sexual abuse. Finally, ideal characteristics of prevention are suggested and some literary models are proposed.     

Speaking Like a State: Listening to Benjamin Franklin in Times of Terror

This essay reconstitutes Benjamin Franklin's characteristic political style as a particular inflection of liberal irony, arguing for a way of speaking today that checks arrogance with humility and attempting to unlock the psychosocial economy of political enjoyment implicit in this rhetoric. To do so, the essay traverses four bodies of discourse (including recent political thinking about civic character, Franklin's oratory in 1787 at the constitutional convention, passages from his letters, and an excerpt from his autobiography) in order to extract strategies for managing situations in which democracy becomes prone to the enjoyments of terror and tyranny.