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Learning to Crawl

The effects of infants' age, body dimensions, and experience on the development of crawling was examined by observing 28 infants longitudinally, from children's first attempts at crawling until they began walking. Although most infants displayed multiple crawling postures en route to walking, development did not adhere to a strict progression of obligatory, discrete stages. In particular, 15 infants crawled on their bellies prior to crawling on hands and knees, but the other 13 infants skipped the belly-crawling period and proceeded directly to crawling on hands and knees. Duration of experience with earlier forms of crawling predicted the speed and efficiency of later, quite different forms of crawling. Most important, infants who had formerly belly crawled were more proficient crawling on hands and knees than infants who had skipped the belly-crawling period. Transfer could not be explained by differences in infants' age or body dimensions alone. Rather, experience using earlier crawling patterns may have exerted beneficial effects on hands-and-knees crawling by shoring up underlying constituents common to all forms of crawling postures.     

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Novice supervisors’ practices and dilemmatic space in supervision of student research projects

Growing interest in student research projects in higher education has led to an emphasis on research supervision. We focus in this study on novice supervisors’ approaches to research supervision as they explore their practices and experience difficulties supervising medicalstudents. Teacher noticing was used as a sensitising concept and relations with teacher dilemmas were explored in the research supervision context. To provide in-depth insights into supervisors’ practices and pedagogical choices, twelve stimulated recall interviews with supervisors were analysed. The supervisors were involved in individual undergraduate or master degree student research projects at a research-intensive university. Analysis revealed four kinds of dilemmas which may influence research supervision practices, namely questions regarding regulation, student needs, the student-supervisor relationship and supervisors’ professional identity. We explain the relationship between novice supervisors’ practices and dilemmas in detail. Implications are given to enhance initiatives for professional development of supervisors.     

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SUBJECTIVE MISCONCEPTIONS IN PHYSICS IN RELATION TO INTELLIGENCE,SEX AND INSTRUCTION

Research on subjective misconceptions in physics has not systematically investigated interindividual differences or the impact of formal physics instruction. In this empirical study, two sets of more abstract and of more familiar kinematics tasks were given to a sample (N=201) consisting of two cohorts of German secondary school students (one having received 18 months of physics instruction and the other none), balanced according to level of intelligence (high versus average) and sex. The answers obtained in diagram form were analysed for correct versus incorrect solutions and for subjective misconceptions in physics. Quantitative and qualitative differences in the answers were found between male and female students as well as between students of high versus average intelligence, particularly for the abstract tasks. From the cross‐sectional analysis, it was concluded that only boys profited from physics instruction in school Considering these important subgroup differences, consequences for special schooling for gifted and for female students are discussed