The effect of egruleg versus ruleg and teacher-centredness versus student-centredness on pupil gain and satisfaction

Concerning the course construction project Engineering Design, a decision had to be made about the instructional procedures of the seminar stage of the course. In order to come to this decision in a more justifiable way an experiment was designed to compare four instructional procedures (viz. a teacher-centred egruleg-, a student-centred egruleg-, a teacher-centred ruleg-, and a student-centred ruleg procedure) on cognitive pupil gain and satisfaction. For testing the hypotheses an analysis of variance design was used. Twelve groups of ca. 20 students were divided into the four cells of a 2×2 factorial design with one completely nested factor.The results of the experiment have shown that there are no differences between the procedures as to pupil gain and satisfaction. However, differences were found between the separate student groups (nested factor), irrespective of the instructional procedures. A plausible explanation seems to be the effect of interaction between instructional procedures, teachers and students.Translated from the Dutch by Mrs. Rommes-Ruyters.     

Language development in deaf children's interactions with deaf and hearing adults: a Dutch longitudinal study

The language development of two deaf girls and four deaf boys in Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) and spoken Dutch was investigated longitudinally. At the start, the mean age of the children was 3;5. All data were collected in video-recorded semistructured conversations between individual children and deaf and hearing adults. We investigated the lexical richness and syntactic complexity of the children's utterances in SLN and spoken Dutch, as well as language dominance and interactional participation. Richness and complexity increase over time, as well as children's participation. An important outcome is that syntactic complexity is higher in utterances with both sign and speech. SLN does not have higher outcomes on richness or complexity, but is dominant in terms of frequency of use.     

Different courses, different students, same results? An examination of differences in study progress of students in different courses

An important issue in higher education researchis how to keep study progress at a good pace.In this article we will deal with the studyprogress of first-year students in variouscourses in Dutch higher education. Why are somecourses more effective than others? Dosuch aspects as the composition of studentpopulation and different curricula influencevariation in study progress, after controllingfor individual factors? Multilevel analysisshows that there is in fact such variationbetween courses and this variation is onlypartially explained by individualcharacteristics and course characteristics. Atthe individual level, sex, initial ability,academic fit, expectation and commitment areimportant factors. After controlling for theseindividual factors, some courses still turn outto be more effective than others in gettingtheir students to earn credits. Students incourses with a high proportion of women makemore progress than students in courses with ahigh proportion of men. Furthermore, courseswith a high average number of student studyhours per week do better. Courses are ranked inan `order of effectiveness' before and afterimportant factors in the models are taken intoaccount. Comparing courses before and aftercontrolling for any characteristics clearlyprovides a different picture of effectivecourses.     

Implementing environmental education in pre‐service teacher training

Implementing environmental education is a complex, unpredictable and time‐consuming process, which, despite the introduction of cross‐curricular attainment targets, is often ignored in Flemish teacher training curricula. This article reports on implementing environmental education in two teacher training colleges using seven criteria: participant engagement, instructor credibility, intention, functionality, self‐efficacy, school climate and evaluation. One college has a long history of cross‐curricular education, whereas the other college has just started. It was found that the implementation processes in the two teacher training institutions stagnated owing to personal and organizational obstructions. To deal with these constraints, several recommendations are suggested.     

Development and Challenges of the Credit Point System in Dutch Higher Education

This article will focus on the credit point system and especially on the Dutch system. In many countries such a system has a long history, but in others it is a relatively new phenomenon. In the first section, the objectives of credit point systems will be introduced. In the second section the emergence and characteristics of the credit point system in the Netherlands will be presented. In the third section, some results of student behaviour in the first year in Higher education will be shown for different groups of students, such as how many credit points on average they earned and how many hours per week on average they studied. The findings demonstrate how empirical results from student behaviour, combined with the norms of the credit point system, can be used to evaluate the accountability of the academic programmes. In the last section, some challenges for the use of credit point systems in the nearby future will be discussed. Recently, one can see a rapid change from the traditional ways of testing to the assessment of competencies of students and student portfolios.     

The dynamics of ethnic identity and student life

Students entering higher education need to integrate themselves into a new study community. Those coming from minority ethnic backgrounds may experience this phase more intensely since they may feel themselves to be different or consider that they are being treated differently. This article approaches ethnic identity as a dynamic concept. The differences characterizing students with varying ethnic self‐definitions are explored as subjective factors that are important for good study progress. Finally, study progress after one year is analyzed.     

扩张与遏制

一方面，跨国公司竞相在中国积累足够的资产、技术和一流员工，来支持品牌组合的进一步拓展和市场份额的扩大；但另一方面，中国的新兴企业也在日益发展壮大，开始利用自己的成本优势向跨国企业发起挑战。[编者按]     

Self-controlled amount and pacing of practice facilitate learning of a sequential timing task

ABSTRACT

Allowing learners to control the number of practice trials has been shown to facilitate motor learning (Lessa & Chiviacowsky, 2015; Post et al., 2011; 2014). However, it is uncertain the extent to which prior findings were influenced by the combined effects of allowing participants to control both the pacing- and amount-of-practice. The present study examined the independent effects of self-controlled amount- and pacing-of-practice on learning a sequential timing task. Participants were assigned to a self-controlled-amount-of-practice (SCA), self-controlled-pacing-of-practice (SCP), yoked-amount-of-practice (YKA), or a yoked-pacing-of-practice (YKP) group. Participants completed acquisition, immediate retention/transfer and delayed retention/transfer. During acquisition, SCA controlled the number of acquisition blocks completed with a fixed inter-trial interval while SCP controlled the inter-trial interval with a fixed number of blocks. Yoked groups were matched to a self-control counterpart so the amount (YKA) and pacing (YKP) were equivalent. Self-control groups demonstrated lower absolute constant error during immediate-retention and lower absolute constant error and variable error during delayed retention (p < .05). For intrinsic motivation, SCA scored significantly higher than SCP for the subscale Interest/Enjoyment (p < .05). Findings indicated that self-control, regardless of type, facilitated motor learning. Further work is needed to continue to examine the relationship between controlling the amount and pacing of practice on skill acquisition.     

Explaining Academic Progress via Combining Concepts of Integration Theory and Rational Choice Theory

In this article, elements of rational choice theory and integration theory are compared on the basis of their explanatory power to explain variance in academic progress. It is argued that both theoretical concepts could be combined. Furthermore the distinction between social and academic integration which integration theory makes is abandoned. Empirical tests, using AMOS (Analysis of Moment Structures), show that an extended model, comprising both integration and rational choice theory, provides the best explanation of academic progress.