Dynamics of undergraduate student generic problem-solving skills captured by a campus-wide study     

Andis Klegeris  Stephanie Barclay McKeown  Heather Hurren  Lindsay Joy Spielman  Maegan Stuart  Manpreet Bahniwal 《Higher Education》2017,74(5):877-896

The ability to effectively problem solve is a highly valued competency expected of university graduates, independent of their area of study. Evaluation of problem-solving skill (PSS) development is hindered by a shortage of available tools for monitoring student progress and by lack of defined instructional strategies for development of these skills. Our research is aimed at addressing these problems. We have developed an evaluation tool, which we applied to study the dynamics of undergraduate student PSS. We tested first- and upper-year students from 26 different courses (total enrollment of 2229 students). Overall improvement of PSS was detected for the first-year students over their first term of study. There were no significant differences between the PSS of first- and upper-year students, and no improvement was detected over a single term by measuring PSS in upper-year students. Only three courses were effective at facilitating PSS. Our data indicate that most of the standard lecture approaches do not develop undergraduate student PSS and that universities and individual instructors must take active steps to advance this critical skill set in university students.  相似文献   

The influence of grandparents’ social class on children’s aspirations     

Vanessa Moulton  Eirini Flouri  Heather Joshi  Alice Sullivan 《British Journal of Sociology of Education》2017,38(4):500-517

Social class mobility from grandparent to grandchild is a relatively neglected topic. Grandparents today are often healthier and more active, and have longer relationships with their grandchildren than in previous generations. We used data from the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study (n = 8570) to investigate the influence of maternal and paternal grandparents’ social class on the aspirations of children at age seven. Using path analysis and controlling for family income, mother’s and father’s education, lone motherhood, and child’s ethnicity and gender, we found very small direct effects from the paternal grandmother’s social class to the grandchild’s classed aspirations, and small, indirect effects, via parents’ class, of grandparents’ class on child’s classed aspirations. Multi-group analyses found few differences by ethnicity and gender. There was no evidence that, at this age, mixed-class parentage raises the aspirations of working-class children (the ‘sunken middle-class’ hypothesis).  相似文献   

Learning to play: A review and theoretical investigation of the developmental mechanisms and functions of cetacean play     

Heather M. Hill  Sarah Dietrich  Briana Cappiello 《Learning & behavior》2017,45(4):335-354

Play is a behavioral phenomenon most commonly observed in the young of both solitary and social species. Documentation of play in cetaceans varies across species and settings. Cetacean play behavioral repertoires include a broad range of actions, such as the manipulation of diverse objects, blowing bubbles, chasing conspecifics, and swimming in spirals through the water. As is common in research on animal play, cetacean play has been grouped into categories by its form, including locomotor play, object play, and different variations of social play, such as affiliative games, play fighting, and socio-sexual play. Research has primarily focused on recording the topography of cetacean play and the demographics of the individuals engaging in play. However, these classifications are insufficient to address the possible developmental and societal functions of cetacean play behaviors, or the mechanisms with which play behaviors are spread between conspecifics and acquired by young members of cetacean populations. This article applies several developmental and social learning theories in order to organize current knowledge and guide future research.  相似文献   

The Impact of a Professional Development Program on Teachers' Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching,Instruction, and Student Achievement     

Robin Jacob  Heather Hill  Doug Corey 《Journal of research on educational effectiveness》2017,10(2):379-407

In this paper, we describe findings from a three-year evaluation of a well-developed mathematics professional development program that is commercially available on a wide scale. The professional development is designed to improve teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching and to enable them to elicit more student thinking and reasoning during mathematics lessons. Specifically, it focused on helping teachers (a) learn more mathematics, (b) understand how children learn math, (c) use formative assessment to develop insight into what specific students know and do not know, and (d) develop effective classroom instructional strategies that enable student problem solving. Participants included 105 fourth- and fifth-grade teachers teaching in 19 low-income schools within a single district. Teachers were randomly assigned within schools either to a “business as usual” control group or to receive the professional development. The training consisted of a week-long summer institute and four to six in-service days during the school year. The training was run by full-time trained associates. We find some limited evidence of positive impacts on teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching, but no effects on instructional practice or student outcomes.  相似文献   

Benefits of practicing 4 = 2 + 2: nontraditional problem formats facilitate children's understanding of mathematical equivalence     

McNeil NM  Fyfe ER  Petersen LA  Dunwiddie AE  Brletic-Shipley H 《Child development》2011,82(5):1620-1633

This study examined whether practice with arithmetic problems presented in a nontraditional problem format improves understanding of mathematical equivalence. Children (M age = 8;0; N = 90) were randomly assigned to practice addition in one of three conditions: (a) traditional, in which problems were presented in the traditional "operations on left side" format (e.g., 9 + 8 = 17); (b) nontraditional, in which problems were presented in a nontraditional format (e.g., 17 = 9 + 8); or (c) no extra practice. Children developed a better understanding of mathematical equivalence after receiving nontraditional practice than after receiving traditional practice or no extra practice. Results suggest that minor differences in early input can yield substantial differences in children's understanding of fundamental concepts.  相似文献   

Event-related potentials: search for positive and negative child-related schemata in individuals at low and high risk for child physical abuse     

Milner JS  Rabenhorst MM  McCanne TR  Crouch JL  Skowronski JJ  Fleming MT  Hiraoka R  Risser HJ 《Child abuse & neglect》2011,35(4):249-266

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Implicit attitudes toward children may be unrelated to child abuse risk     

Risser HJ  Skowronski JJ  Crouch JL 《Child abuse & neglect》2011,35(7):514-523

Objective

To explore whether adults possess implicit attitudes toward children and whether those attitudes are especially negative among respondents who are high in child physical abuse (CPA) risk.

Methods

The present study used an implicit evaluative priming procedure. In this procedure, participants were instructed to make decisions about the evaluative implications of target words. These words were preceded by photographs of child faces or adult faces displaying positive, neutral, or negative expressions. Reaction times for the evaluative decisions were used as an index of the extent to which photos invoked negative or positive evaluative reactions.

Results

Results from 2 studies, the first conducted on a student sample (N = 90) and the second on a parent sample (N = 95), demonstrated that evaluative congruence between the facial expressions displayed in photographs and the target words facilitated responses. Furthermore, the results suggested that regardless of CPA risk, child faces, relative to adult faces, facilitated responses to negative target words, suggesting an out-group bias. This implicit out-group bias was not moderated by respondents’ CPA risk status.

Conclusions

Faces of children, relative to faces of adults, appear to activate negative information structures that facilitate evaluative decisions of negative stimuli, suggesting an out-group bias. Given that out-group biases typically lead to less favorable treatment of out-group members, additional research is needed to examine the pervasiveness of negative evaluative biases towards children and the potential implications of such biases on children's lives. Further, research examining whether high CPA risk parents and low CPA risk parents differ in how they manage initial negative evaluative reactions is needed.  相似文献   

Negotiating political identities: multiethnic schools and youth in Europe     

Heather Piper 《Cambridge Journal of Education》2011,41(2):243-244

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Fair Use in Face-to-Face Teaching     

Heather Leary  Preston Parker 《TechTrends》2011,55(4):16-18

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Fraud from the frontlines: the importance of being nice     

Heather Douglas 《Metascience》2011,20(3):553-556

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