Refine
Document Type
- Working Paper (40)
Language
- English (40) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- no (40) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (40)
Keywords
- Postkommunismus (4)
- Sonderpädagogik (3)
- Unterricht (3)
- Bevölkerung (2)
- Digitale Medien (2)
- Erziehung (2)
- Gender (2)
- Hochschule (2)
- Informatikunterricht (2)
- Inklusion (2)
The article analyses the strategies of Hungarian higher education interest organisations against the encroachments on academic freedom by Viktor Orbán's governments. We contrast the 2012–2013 and 2017–2019 protest waves and find that innovations in strategy came from new organisations in both periods, whereas established ones were rather passive or opted for the status quo. However, in the second period, new actors consciously declined to pursue wider systemic goals and aimed at building up formal organisations instead of loose, movement-like networks. The focus on keeping a unified front and interest representation on the workplace level did not change the overall outcome. Just like during the first period, the government was able to reach its goals without major concessions. Nevertheless, during the second protest wave the government was unable to divide and pacify its opponents, which stripped it of its legalistic strategy and revealed its authoritarianism.
This volume is largely about nontraditional data; this paper is about a nontraditional visualization: classification trees. Using trees with data will be new to many students, so rather than beginning with a computer algorithm that produces optimal trees, we suggest that students first construct their own trees, one node at a time, to explore how they work, and how well. This build-it-yourself process is more transparent than using algorithms such as CART; we believe it will help students not only understand the fundamentals of trees, but also better understand tree-building algorithms when they do encounter them. And because classification is an important task in machine learning, a good foundation in trees can prepare students to better understand that emerging and important field. We also describe a free online tool—Arbor—that students can use to do this, and note some implications for instruction.
In this text, the findings of cognitive psychology will be used to tackle certain misconceptions in academic philosophical learning contexts. It will be shown that some techniques that university teachers often recommend and on which students often rely on for working on texts and acquiring the contents of them and other contents – like for example highlighting, notetaking, and summarization – are not that effective for long-term retention. At least not if some aspects are not considered. The aim is to show what empirical research has found out about effective learning and how this can help to create tasks that foster long-term retention of philosophical contents which also helps with training higher-order skills such as applying, reflecting, evaluating, and modifying these contents.
The article raises the question of whether and how education systems produce social differences internally rather than reproducing pre‐existing “external” inequalities. Linking Niklas Luhmann’s theory of inclusion/exclusion with Charles Tilly’s theory of categorical inequalities, and based on empirical data from various qualitative studies, the article identifies an “observation regime” epistemically constituting the social classification of students and legitimising organisational closure mechanisms in the school system. As an alternative to the “reproduction paradigm,” a research approach guided by differentiation theory is proposed that takes into account that educational inequality operationally arises on the “inside” of the educational system and is caused by unequal inclusion processes.
In the educational context, graph literacy describes the competence to read, comprehend, and interpret formative assessment data in terms of data-based decision-making (DBDM) in order to derive and justify individual adaptations of instruction based on them. Since misconceptions may arise in predicting a future learning progress due to the characteristics of the data base as well as the approach to graph literacy, effective supports are needed, especially for inexperienced teachers. We present two interrelated studies to broaden the field of support in graph literacy. In Study I, graph literacy procedures are collected from N = 196 university student teachers using an online survey that includes six case vignettes with learning progress prediction tasks. Results show that both regular and special education student teachers intuitively neglect important data points in interpretation and they do not use a consistent strategy in prediction across the case vignettes (Fleiss’ κ = 0.071; p < 0.001). Building on the results of Study I, a 3-min video intervention for linear trend identification using Tukey Tri-Split was developed. Study II tested the efficacy of the video intervention on the accuracy of future learning progress among student teachers and in-service teachers (N = 198) using randomized group assignment compared to a brief text hint. With a large effect size of Cohens’ f = 0.39, the video instruction shows high efficacy compared to the text hint. The increasing importance of DBDM in inclusive and special education is discussed.
The data on the formations and dissolutions of Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Slovenian national-level healthcare, higher education and energy policy interest groups show that there were relatively large organizational populations in these countries already at the outset of post-communist transition in 1990. In other words, there was no tabula rasa – the evolution of interest organizations did not start completely anew. There was, however, a substantial variation between policy fields and countries in the sizes of these pre-transition populations. What explains this variance? The chapter explores in detail the formation rates across the four countries and three policy fields through time. In their explanation, the authors focus on the nature of the communist regime, its overall repressiveness, the periods of political and economic liberalizations and the political mobilization and fragmentation in the period leading up to regime change. On the basis of the Hungarian sub-sample, where such data are reliably available, the chapter also compares the mortality rates of organizations founded before and after transition. The findings shed new light on the debates on civil society development and democratization in post-communist societies. The chapter also draws attention to the importance of the proper operationalization of fundamental political changes to the polity in population ecology theory in general, and in the energy–stability–area model of organizational density in particular.
Reading research shows that phonological decoding skills and intelligence work mostly independent from each other. However, there is a variety of results on the relationship between reading skills and IQ measures. Studies in this field mainly focus on students with reading disabilities (RD) or students with intellectual disabilities (ID) and less on pupils with Special Educational Needs in Learning (SEN-L). We performed a secondary data analysis to evaluate differences in reading skills and fluid intelligence between students with (N = 144) and without (N = 157) SEN-L and the relationship between SEN-L, reading skills, and fluid intelligence. Participants completed a standardized screening of reading skills (SLS 2-9) and a German culture fair intelligence test (CFT 20-R). Students with SEN-L had lower scores in both tests. Correlations between both scores were smaller within the two groups than in the total sample. Implications of the findings are discussed.
The problem-solving performance of primary school students depend on their attitudes and beliefs. As it is not easy to change attitudes, we aimed to change the relationship between problem-solving performance and attitudes with a training program. The training was based on the assumption that self-generated external representations support the problem-solving process. Furthermore, we assumed that students who are encouraged to generate representations will be successful, especially when they analyze and reflect on their products. A paper-pencil test of attitudes and beliefs was used to measure the constructs of willingness, perseverance, and self-confidence. We predicted that participation in the training program would attenuate the relationship between attitudes and problem-solving performance and that non-participation would not affect the relationship. The results indicate that students’ attitudes had a positive effect on their problem-solving performance only for students who did not participate in the training.
The effect of direct instruction and web quest on learning outcome in computer science education.
(2018)
Answers to the questions of which instructional methods are suitable for school and should be applied in teaching individual subjects and also how instructional methods support the act of learning represent challenges to general education and education in individual subjects. This study focuses on the empirical examination of learning outcome with respect to two instructional methods: direct instruction and web quest. An SPF-2 × 2•2 design is used to control instructional method, time and class context. Learning outcome on QR code is assessed with reference to multiple-choice test items. The empirical findings show that learning with direct instruction performs better than web quest.
Technology criticism and data literacy: The case for an augmented understanding of media literacy
(2020)
Reviewing the history of media literacy education might help us to identify how creating media as an approach can contribute to fostering knowledge, understanding technical issues, and to establishing a critical attitude towards technology and data. In a society where digital devices and services are omnipresent and decisions are increasingly based on data, critical analysis must penetrate beyond the “outer shell” of machines – their interfaces – through the technology itself, and the data, and algorithms, which make these devices and services function. Because technology and data constitute the basis of all communication and collaboration, media literate individuals must in the future also have a sound understanding of technology and data literacy. This article examines the relevance of this broader definition of literacy and delivers a forward-looking defense of media literacy education in schools. It also posits the thesis that the digital transformation represents a challenge, which is confronting society, politics, and education alike.
After a brief description of the four components of risk literacy and the tools for analyzing risky situations, decision strategies are introduced, These rules, which satisfy tenets of Bounded Rationality, are called fast and frugal trees. Fast and frugal trees serve as efficient heuristics for decision under risk. We describe the construction of fast and frugal trees and compare their robustness for prediction under risk with that of Bayesian networks. In particular, we analyze situations of risky decisions in the medical domain. We show that the performance of fast and frugal trees does not fall too far behind that of the more complex Bayesian networks.
Since students’ knowledge of scientific language can be one of the main difficulties when learning science, teachers must have adequate knowledge of scientific language as well as the teaching and learning of it. Currently, little is known about teachers’ practices and, thus, teachers’ knowledge of scientific language, in general, and the teaching and learning of it (Pedagogical Scientific Language Knowledge, PSLK) in particular. For this reason, with this systematic review, we seek to identify elements of pre- and in-service primary and secondary science teachers’ PSLK. The search was conducted on the database Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) and resulted in 35 articles with empirical evidence after the selection process. The results have been deductively and inductively categorized following the framework of the Refined Consensus Model of Pedagogical Content Knowledge, elaborating elements of different knowledge categories that shape PSLK, as well as PSLK itself (e.g., knowledge of (i) scientific language role models, (ii) making scientific terms and language explicit, (iii) providing a discursive classroom, and (iv) providing multiple representations and resources). We can conclude that more research on PSLK is needed as analyzed articles are mainly based on case studies. Additionally, this paper shows a need for a stronger focus on scientific language in teacher education programs. Implications for further research and teacher education are discussed.
We investigated whether retrieval-based learning can facilitate the acquisition of cognitive skills, focusing on the control-of-variables strategy. This core scientific experimentation skill is regularly taught in science education classes because understanding it is essential for understanding experimental investigations in science. In the present study, participants initially read a text explaining the control-of-variables strategy. We compared the effects of subsequent retrieval practice and restudy of the text in performing a transfer test requiring the application of the control-of-variables strategy by judging the validity of a number of experimental designs. In addition, recall of the initially studied text was assessed as well. Repeated retrieval practice in combination with restudy opportunities resulted in better performance in both the transfer test and the recall test as compared to mere restudy or a single study opportunity. These findings demonstrate that retrieval practice is a useful tool for promoting deep conceptual learning.
Retrieval-based learning has been investigated in various populations. The present study examined retrieval-based learning in a sample of students at a special-needs school with educational tracks for learning and mental development. In addition, a comparison group of students at a regular school was examined. Learning conditions were manipulated within participants. In a first session, participants either received restudy cycles only, or they received alternating test and restudy cycles. A second session then comprised the opposite form of practice. In both sessions, a final test assessed memory after a short distractor phase. This procedure was the same in two experiments but with different kinds of item material. For both kinds (images and image-word pairs), a testing effect occurred, that is higher recall of tested items. These results show that lower cognitive ability or lack of experience with regularly being tested in school do not prevent students from benefiting from retrieval-based learning.
In this study, the relationship between religiosity and value priorities is differentiated, based on a multidimensional model of religiosity (Structure-of-Religiosity-Test). The structure of values is conceptualized using Shalom H. Schwartz’s two orthogonal dimensions of self-transcendence vs. self-enhancement and openness to change vs. conservation. The relationship between these two dimensions and the centrality of religiosity, seven religious orientations, seven emotions toward God, and three political orientations were tested with a correlational analysis in a sample of members of Abrahamic religions, the non-denominational, and organized secularists in Switzerland (n = 1093). The results show, that different values are preferred (self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition, security, and power values) depending on the content of the religious orientations and emotions toward God. The results indicate the importance of the content of religious orientations and emotions for predicting value-loaded behaviors.
Leading Schools towards Sustainability. Fields of Action and Management Strategies for Principals.
(2020)
Education is expected to support the development of a more sustainable way of thinking, working, and living. Although there is a broad range of literature on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), the role of principals in the implementation of sustainability and ESD in schools has rarely been taken into consideration. However, based on the results of school effectiveness research, one can assume that school principals exert a significant influence on ESD. Sustainability is a leadership issue. When a school aims at integrating sustainability and ESD, the principal plays a pivotal role. She or he has to support the endeavor wholeheartedly and credibly, organize a participative process of school development, emphasize sustainability and ESD in the daily life of the school, support teaching staff in the application of ESD, and offer students opportunities to launch their own initiatives. This article for the special issue on “Sustainability in leadership and education” is a theoretical concept paper based on a literature review and the authors’ conceptual work. It offers a model and seeks to support principals in leading their schools towards sustainability. Therefore, a framework of four stages of the integration of sustainability and ESD in a school is defined. For each of these stages, a number of practical actions and management strategies are suggested and explained in detail.
Gamification and game-based learning have been established as powerful tools in education. Location-based games (geogames) have been established following mainly a ‘seek-and-find’ game-mechanic, challenging mechanics like simulations are rarely used. We describe an approach for creating an educational location-based game (geogame). The central design problem consists in integrating an ecological simulation into the location-based game flow. We show how to combine these two game mechanics by simplifying complex simulations while maintaining their validity. In an empirical study we evaluate our geogame with secondary school students (N = 329). Our quasi-experimental pre-post-test design focuses on the game-related enjoyment provided by a simplified simulation task within a geogame compared to a more complex desktop simulation and to a geogame without simulation. The results show that the players of the Geogame spend much less time on interacting with the simulation than on other tasks. Nevertheless, the simulation within the geogame contributes positively to the game playing experience. Player enjoyment is even found to be slightly higher in the simulation geogame than in the indoor simulation. A critical threshold of time for using simulations within location-based game mechanics is discussed and related design-pattern for geogames are presented to support educators and game developers in the co-design of challenging location-based games. This study contributes to locate ecological simulations in areas where they actually take place. Complex topics and competencies in education become “real” for players in an outdoor experience.
This article introduces and discusses a theoretically and empirically founded integrated framework model of the principal's leadership role for inclusive education. Leadership is widely discussed as a key factor for success in inclusive education. Additional systematic research efforts are required with respect to this topic, particularly in the context of the German school system. This study analyses principals' leadership roles in one German federal state. Interviews were conducted with fifteen school principals from schools that are assigned to implement inclusive education. Findings from the qualitative content analysis draw a complex picture that is summarised in an integrated framework model. This model addresses (1) the multilevel hierarchical character of the school system and (2) the role of social discourse in shaping principals' perspectives. This model integrates different theoretical approaches such as the four-frame model of leadership orientation, the theory of recontextualisation, and educational governance to describe principal leadership and its contribution for inclusive education.
To successfully cope with global challenges such as climate change or loss of biodiversity, it will require a substantial change in the ways societies make use of the natural resources of our planet. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is expected to support the transformation of societies towards more sustainable ways of thinking, working, and living. Although there is a broad range of literature on ESD, little is known about the role of school leadership in ESD. However, leadership is crucial for the implementation of ESD in schools. This article gives a short overview of the status of ESD within Germany, Macau, and the United States and a literature review on leadership for ESD in schools. It reports on a study that seeks to investigate what principals do in Germany, Macau, and the United States; specifically, what management strategies they use and which competences they need to successfully establish ESD in their schools.
Two experiments examined effects of including an information about a disability in a person description on memory about that person’s traits. In Experiment 1, this information impaired correct recognition of traits of a person that had been described in correspondence to gender stereotypes. In Experiment 2, it induced false memories in accordance with stereotypes about people with disabilities. Participants’ false alarms for traits belonging to the dimension of warmth increased, whereas false alarms for traits belonging to the dimension of competence decreased. Thus, activating stereotypes through a disability prime influenced what could be recognized correctly or falsely was assumed to be recognized about a person.
Although raised in the early days of research on teacher noticing, the question of context specificity has remained largely unanswered to this day. In this study, we build on our prior research on a specific aspect of noticing, namely teachers’ analysis of how representations are dealt with in mathematics classroom situations. For the purpose of such analysis, we examined the role of context on the levels of mathematical content area and classroom situation. Using a vignette-based test instrument with 12 classroom situations from the content areas of fractions and functions, we investigated how teachers’ analyses regarding the use of representations are related concerning these two mathematical content areas. Beyond content areas, we were interested in the question of whether an overarching unidimensional competence construct can be inferred from the participants’ analyses of the different individual classroom situations. The 12 vignettes were analysed by N = 175 secondary mathematics teachers with different degrees of teaching experience and their written answers provided the data for this study. Our findings show that the data fit the Rasch model and that all classroom situations contributed in a meaningful way to the competence under investigation. There was no significant effect of the mathematical content area on the participants’ analyses regarding the use of multiple representations. The results of the study indicate that explicitly considering questions of context can strengthen research into teacher noticing.
We investigated retrieval-induced forgetting of motor sequences in samples of Chinese participants. Retrieval-induced forgetting occurs when selective retrieval of a subset of information stored in memory causes forgetting for the non-retrieved rest. This phenomenon critically depends on the organised storage of separate categories of memory representations. In studies with participants from a Western culture (Germany), a categorization in left- and right-hand movements previously had been supported by letter stimuli based on a spatial mental representation of the Roman alphabet. The same assignment of letters from the beginning or end of the alphabet to motor sequences performed either with the left- or the right-hand did not entail retrieval-induced forgetting in the present study, however (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, visual features of displaying to-be-learned sequences additionally supported a distinction into left and right. In Experiment 3, learning trials provided verbal category labels. The occurrence of retrieval-induced forgetting in the latter two experiments suggests language-dependent organisation of non-verbal items in memory.
The factor structure of the German edition of the KABC-II for ages 5 and 6 was examined in a clinical sample. Participants were 450 children ages 5 and 6 who had been assessed due to various behavioral, emotional, or developmental disorders in five Centers for Social Pediatrics (SPCs). Confirmatory factor analyses of the standard test structure including core subtests of the Cattell-Horn-Carroll model and of the Luria model were conducted using maximum likelihood estimation. Several modified structures derived from CHC ability classifications were evaluated. Second-order factor structures corresponding to the standard test structure of the KABC-II demonstrated an adequate global fit for both theoretical models and were superior to unidimensional models. The fit of bifactor models was comparable to second-order models. In all subtests, the general factor accounted for more variance than group factors (broad abilities). However, in more than half of the subtests, unique variance explained the largest portion of the variance. The scale Learning/Glr showed a lack of convergent validity. At age 6, a model omitting subtest Rover significantly improved the fit. In the combined sample of 5- and 6-year-old children, both second-order and bifactor models with nine subtests demonstrated excellent fit
What explains the formation rates of interest organizations in post-communist democracies over time? This chapter provides a bird’s eye view of the size and scope of the interest group populations in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia. To what extent did pre-communist organizations survive the transformation process and how radically was the interest group population transformed by the transition to a market economy, democracy and in some cases nation-building? The authors tackle these issues by exploring the formation and dissolution rates of organized interests in three non-related, yet critical policy areas for the viability of post-communist democracies – energy, healthcare and higher education. In doing so, they focus on a series of factors which might accelerate or decelerate the formation of organized interests. Besides the collapse of the communist regime and introduction of the market economy, the interest group landscape may also be profoundly affected by European Union accession, but also by key national legislation. Based on population ecology datasets which they compiled, the authors assess the volatility and continuity of each different interest group system from a cross-country and cross-policy perspective, while also comparatively exploring changes regarding the types of organizations (e.g. patients vs. medical profession, students vs. academic profession, energy producers vs. consumers, clean vs. dirty energy).
This article presents an analysis of the formation of organized interest groups in the post-communist context and organizational populations over time. We test two theories that shed doubt on whether vital rates of interest groups are explained by individual incentives, namely, the political opportunity structure and population ecology theory. Based on an analysis of the energy policy and higher education policy organizations active at the national level in Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia, we find that while the period of democratic and economic transition indeed opened up the opportunity structure for organizational formations, it by no means presented a clean slate. Communist-era successor and splinter organizations survived the collapse of communism, and all three countries entered transition with relatively high density rates in both organizational populations. We also find partial support for the density dependence hypothesis. Surprisingly, the EU integration process, the intensity of legislative activity, and media attention do not seem to have meaningfully influenced founding rates in the two populations
Englisch:
The article tests the energy–stability–area (ESA) model of interest group population density on a sample of different 2018 Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Slovenian energy, higher education and health care interest organisation populations. The unique context of recent simultaneous political, economic and in the cases of Czechia and Slovenia, national transitions present a hard test for population ecology theory. Besides the area (constituency size) and energy (resources, issue certainty) terms, the article brings the stability term back into the center of analysis. The stability term, that is, the effect of a profound change or shock to the polity is operationalised as Communist-era population densities. As all three policy domains are heavily state controlled and tightly regulated, the effect of neocorporatist interest intermediation is also tested. The article finds strong support for the energy and neocorporatism hypotheses and provides evidence for the effect of communist-era organisational population density on post-transition densities: The size of 2018 organisational populations is found to be dependent on pre-transition densities. The relationship is, however, not linear but curvilinear. Nevertheless, the analysis indicates that the effect of pre-transition population size is moderated by other environmental level factors.
Deutsch:
Der Artikel testet das Energie-Stabilitäts-Gebietsmodell (ESA) der Bevölkerungsdichte von Interessengruppen an einer Stichprobe verschiedener tschechischer, ungarischer, polnischer und slowenischer Bevölkerungen von Energie-, Hochschul- und Gesundheitsorganisationen aus dem Jahr 2018. Der einzigartige Kontext der jüngsten gleichzeitigen politischen, wirtschaftlichen und im Falle Tschechiens und Sloweniens nationaler Übergänge stellt die Theorie der Populationsökologie auf eine harte Probe. Neben den Begriffen Flächen (Wahlkreisgröße) und Energie (Ressourcen, Themensicherheit) rückt der Artikel den Stabilitätsbegriff wieder in den Mittelpunkt der Analyse. Der Stabilitätsbegriff, dh die Auswirkung einer tiefgreifenden Veränderung oder eines Schocks auf das Gemeinwesen, wird als Bevölkerungsdichte der kommunistischen Ära operationalisiert. Da alle drei Politikbereiche stark staatlich kontrolliert und streng reguliert sind, wird auch die Wirkung neokorporatistischer Interessenvermittlung getestet. Der Artikel findet starke Unterstützung für die Energie- und Neokorporatismus-Hypothesen und liefert Belege für den Effekt der organisationalen Bevölkerungsdichte der kommunistischen Ära auf die Dichte nach dem Übergang: Die Größe der Organisationsbevölkerung im Jahr 2018 hängt von der Dichte vor dem Übergang ab. Der Zusammenhang ist jedoch nicht linear, sondern krummlinig. Dennoch zeigt die Analyse, dass der Effekt der Bevölkerungsgröße vor dem Übergang durch andere Umweltfaktoren gemildert wird.
When “software takes command”, people take fright – a reaction which frequently accompanies change or novelty. Their fears are understandable, but they also cloud people’s view of the potentials that digital tools and digital media hold for society and especially educational contexts. Their fears also define societal debates and contribute to a general lack of ambition when it comes to seizing the opportunities for broad collaboration in the design of a “digital society”. This paper identifies a selection of conceptual digital potentials, presents the initial findings of an ongoing study and uses these as a basis to formulate recommendations for reclaiming society’s formative authority over the shape of the digital in its midst.
Research has identified 10 high-leverage teaching practices (HLTPs) that can impact student learning of a foreign language. While acknowledging the importance of this work, more research is needed to inform the preparation of novice teachers to enact these practices. In response, the researchers conducted a case study involving two foreign language teacher preparation programs in the United States and Germany, to better understand how the two very different programs prepare their candidates to implement HLTPs, which HLTPs are emphasized, and how successful they are at preparing their aspiring teachers to implement one practice that has been identified in the research as particularly important (facilitating target language comprehensibility). Survey, teaching observation, and interview data collected from teacher candidates and their instructors suggested the critical nature of select HLTPs, that some of the subcomponents of one of these practices may be more challenging for novice teachers to master than others, and that there may be multiple approaches to preparing foreign language teachers to implement HLTPs.
The different facets of professional performance of teachers are being debated in the current educational
research discussion. Both qualitative and quantitative test constructions exist for vignette-based measurement of
competence. For economic reasons, a procedure with closed-ended items is often favored, a reference is required for
determining and comparing alternative responses. This paper sketches out the procedure for identifying adequate
reactions to responses that we call a technical education expert norm (PCK-T). This expert norm is generated from
a multi-step expert survey and, in addition, reveals possible validation steps that can be derived for developing
teaching situations. After a content validation (N1 = 8) a multi-step quantitative survey with specialised subject
experts at schools and universities, departmental heads at public colleges for education and teacher training, as well
as experienced teachers of technology was carried out (N2 = 79; N3 = 76). In order to assess teaching competencies
of pre-service teachers using a vignette-based test procedure, the generated technical education expert norm (PCKT) allows adequate responses to be differentiated from (rather) inadequate responses in the teaching situations
cpm.4.CSE/IRT (compact process model for Competence Science Education based on IRT models) is a process model for competence measurement based on IRT models. It allows the efficient development of measuring instruments for computer science education. Cpm.4.CSE/IRT consists of four sub processes: B1 determine items, B2 test items, B3 analyze items according to Rasch model, and B4 interpret items by criteria. Cpm.4.CSE/IRT is modeled in IDEF0, a process modeling language that is standardized and widely used. It is implemented in R, an open-source software optimized for statistical calculations and graphics that allows users to interact using the web application framework Shiny. Through coordinated processes, cpm.4.CSE/IRT ensures the quality and comparability of test instruments in competence measurement. Cpm.4.CSE/IRT is demonstrated using an example from the competence area of Modeling.
A crucial aspect of learning about (linear) functions is being able to change between graph and equation. Common German and Slovak textbooks propose different procedures for these representational changes. Within a sample of 49 German and 56 Slovak teachers, we analyzed if these different procedures can also be observed in the teachers’ corresponding knowledge of content and students, i. e. if the teachers expected different student strategies and errors. The results confirm this assumption and emphasize the importance to consider this teacher's knowledge in a country-specific way and being careful when comparing such knowledge of teachers from different countries.
Competent use of the Internet to locate information is an important skill for today’s youth. Yet, many lack the knowledge and dispositions to engage in the processes necessary to effectively and efficiently find information on the Internet. As a result, various countries have incorporated references to the processes of online inquiry within their educational standards. Despite similarities in these standards, however, international comparisons are rare and have not produced insights into broader themes and patterns regarding how cognitive, metacognitive, and affective variables interact to influence outcomes on related measures of success, e.g., international assessments. The purpose of this research was two-fold: to examine the measurement invariance of a German-language version of the Survey of Online Reading Attitudes and Behaviors across a sample of participants from Germany and to compare the results with students from United States who completed the English-version of SORAB. The results justified comparisons across the samples with respect to the latent factor variables and comparisons yielded differences associated with cognitive and behavioral engagement, value/interest, and anxiety. No differences were noted with regard to self-regulation and efficacy for online reading. Implications are framed within broader contextual variables that may have been influential in producing the differences between the samples.
We report on a study on syllogistic reasoning conceived with the idea that subjects' performance in experiments is highly dependent on the communicative situations in which the particular task is framed. From this perspective, we describe the results of Experiment 1 comparing the performance of undergraduate students in 5 different tasks. This between-subjects comparison inspires a within-subject intervention design (Experiment 2). The variations introduced on traditional experimental tasks and settings include two main dimensions. The first one focuses on reshaping the context (the pragmatics of the communication situations faced) along the dimension of cooperative vs. adversarial attitudes. The second one consists of rendering explicit the construction/representation of counterexamples, a crucial aspect in the definition of deduction (in the classical semantic sense). We obtain evidence on the possibility of a significant switch in students' performance and the strategies they follow. Syllogistic reasoning is seen here as a controlled microcosm informative enough to provide insights and we suggest strategies for wider contexts of reasoning, argumentation and proof.
For some people with strong motor impairments, controlling a computer with theeyes is the only possibility for human-computer interaction. In addition, gaze controlis becoming a new option as an input device for the general population as wellbecause of the increasing availability of eye-tracking technology. Yet, little is knownabout additional cognitive demands involved in gaze control and how to handlepotentially high demands when using the eyes not only for perception but also foraction. The present study shows that cognitive offloading improves performancewhen using gaze control. Memory for to-be-studied items benefitted significantlyfrom saving another set of items just studied before for later restudy. Employing cog-nitive offloading in a targeted manner may be a useful means to assist in mastering eye-gaze control.
Females and students of non-dominant ethnicity are less likely to aspire to science careers. However, overcoming discrimination in science and chemistry is a challenging task, especially in vocational orientation. Thus, there is a need for strategies to support young women in their identity formation in science and chemistry. This article presents a scheme for supporting young women’s science identity formation in conversations about vocational orientation. The goal is to support young women in developing a positive attitude towards careers in chemistry. This attitude is part of cultural chemistry capital. The scheme was developed based on a study conducted as part of the project DiSenSu. Here, coachings for vocational orientation for young women in science and chemistry are provided, following the idea of Science in Public. In the coaching, the attitudes towards science and chemistry were determined using quantitative data. Based on these results, coaches conducted conversations with the participants. Qualitative analysis of 11 conversations revealed strategies coaches used to support young women in their vocational orientation. The study shows how the participants’ attitude towards careers in chemistry is used as a starting point for coachings. Also, it provides strategies that can be used to promote young women’s cultural chemistry capital.
Females and students of non-dominant ethnicity are less likely to aspire to science careers. However, overcoming discrimination in science and chemistry is a challenging task, especially in vocational orientation. Thus, there is a need for strategies to support young women in their identity formation in science and chemistry. This article presents a scheme for supporting young women’s science identity formation in conversations about vocational orientation. The goal is to support young women in developing a positive attitude towards careers in chemistry. This attitude is part of cultural chemistry capital. The scheme was developed based on a study conducted as part of the project DiSenSu. Here, coachings for vocational orientation for young women in science and chemistry are provided, following the idea of Science in Public. In the coaching, the attitudes towards science and chemistry were determined using quantitative data. Based on these results, coaches conducted conversations with the participants. Qualitative analysis of 11 conversations revealed strategies coaches used to support young women in their vocational orientation. The study shows how the participants’ attitude towards careers in chemistry is used as a starting point for coachings. Also, it provides strategies that can be used to promote young women’s cultural chemistry capital.
The notion of “bounded rationality” was introduced by Simon as an appropriate framework for explaining how agents reason and make decisions in accordance with their computational limitations and the characteristics of the environments in which they exist (seen metaphorically as two complementary scissor blades).We elaborate on how bounded rationality is usually conceived in psychology and on its relationship with logic. We focus on the relationship between heuristics and some non-monotonic logical systems. These two categories of cognitive tools share fundamental features. As a step further, we show that in some cases heuristics themselves can be formalized from this logic perspective. We have therefore two main aims: on the one hand, to demonstrate the relationship between the bounded rationality programme and logic, understood in a broad sense; on the other hand, to provide logical tools of analysis of already known heuristics. This may lead to results such as the characterization of fast and frugal binary trees in terms of their associated logic program here provided.
The saving of previously encoded information boosts both memory for subsequent information (saving-enhanced memory; SEM) as well as cognitive performance in general (saving-enhanced performance; SEP). These findings have been replicated in a setting that involves the assistance by an intelligent software that automatically structures and saves work content in an interactive sidebar. It is assumed that beneficial effects on cognitive performance due to (automatic) saving are caused by a reduction in current workload by means of cognitive offloading. We tested this assumption by measuring neural activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) via functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)—once after saving and once after deleting of previously collected information that had to be recalled later-on. On a behavioral level, there was a brief benefit of saving. However, cognitive offloading became most apparent on a neural level: after saving, participants showed significantly lower activation in the right DLPFC. Also, the more participants benefited from cognitive offloading, the more they were able to re-access previously collected, saved information. Thus, fNIRS results indicated reduced mental load after saving, confirming the assumption that saving triggers cognitive offloading.
We consider groups defined by non-empty balanced presentations with the property that each relator is of the form, where x and y are distinct generators and is determined by some fixed cyclically reduced word that involves both a and b. To every such presentation we associate a directed graph whose vertices correspond to the generators and whose arcs correspond to the relators. Under the hypothesis that the girth of the underlying undirected graph is at least 4, we show that the resulting groups are non-trivial and cannot be finite of rank 3 or higher. Without the hypothesis on the girth it is well known that both the trivial group and finite groups of rank 3 can arise.