Using Reader Profiles as Snapshots to Investigate Students' Reading Performance

Explanatory patterns regarding situational differences in reading comprehension performance may be best captured by multidimensional reader profiles. Data from 56 third- and fifth-grade students were collected to investigate the applicability, scope, and convergent validity of a reader profiling scheme based on Alexander's (2005) reader profile framework and then compared with results from a hierarchical cluster analysis and a Bayesian cluster analysis. The reader profiling methodology used identified examples of all six of Alexander's reader profiles at each grade level, along with an additional hypothesized profile, the interest-reliant reader. The reader profiles related as expected to reading outcomes on a researcher-designed comprehension measure and a standardized comprehension assessment, with a few exceptions, and explained variance in those outcome measures better than the use of cluster analysis, except for the third-grade standardized scores. Finally, interesting differences emerged in the proportions of elementary students assigned to each profile across the grade levels.     

Development and validation of an educational robot attitude scale (ERAS) for secondary school students

Humanoid robots equipped with social skills have come to be used increasingly in the field of education across various subfields such as science education, special education, and foreign language education. In order to enhance the use of humanoid robots in educational settings, and to comprehensively evaluate its impact on the transformation of the class, understanding students’ attitudes towards the use of robots for educational purposes plays a critical role. This paper outlines the implementation and validation procedures of an educational robot attitude scale (ERAS) developed to measure the attitudes of secondary school students towards the use of humanoid robots in educational settings. The sample of the study comprised of 232 secondary school students. The development and validation process consisted of exploratory factor analysis and convergent validity. The developed scale consists of 17 items and represents four factors of students’ attitude: engagement, enjoyment, anxiety and intention. These four factors accounted for 66% of the total variance of the scale. Internal consistency coefficient for the whole scale was found .90 according to the reliability analysis. The results of the study suggest that the scale is a valid, reliable, and efficient tool for measuring the dimensions of students’ attitudes towards humanoid robots in educational settings.     

Seeing self as others see you: variability in self‐efficacy ratings in student teaching

The main objective of this study was to compare pre‐service English teachers' self‐efficacy beliefs with the instructors' views of the teaching competence of these pre‐service teachers. Thirty‐nine student teachers (13 males and 26 females) and five female instructors participated in the study. For data collection, student teacher and instructor versions of the same scale were used. The results of the research indicated that the student teachers' self‐efficacy judgments were higher than the instructors' judgments for the student teachers' teaching competence. Interviews with the instructors indicated that enactive experiences and verbal persuasion seem to be important factors which affect the personal efficacy beliefs of the prospective teachers in the current study.