Education Commons^™

Fostering Creativity: Ontario Teachers’ Perceptions, Strategies, And Experiences, Catharine M. Dishke Hondzel

Catharine Dishke Hondzel

This study provides a broad overview of perceptions elementary school teachers hold regarding creativity, the strategies those teachers use to foster creative thinking and behaviour in their students, and the environmental challenges and opportunities they navigate when striving to develop 21st century skills in students. Earlier research examining teachers’ perceptions and creativity-fostering behaviours have typically asked teachers to describe their classroom practices, or self-report their perceptions regarding creative children or children’s creative actions. Using a mixed-methods approach, in this study 22 Grade 5-7 teachers working in Ontario completed an online questionnaire which measured their creativity-fostering behaviours. Following the survey, 12 …

Cross-Grade Analysis Of Chinese Students' English Learning Motivation: A Mixed-Methods Study, Qian-Mei Zhang, Tae-Young Kim

Dr. Tae-Young Kim (김태영, 金兌英)

This mixed-methods study investigated the changes in Chinese students’ motivation to learn English from elementary to high school and explored the reasons for these changes at different school levels. A motivational questionnaire was designed and administered to 3,777 elementary, junior high, and high school students, and followup interviews were then conducted with nine students in order to investigate their perceptions of their motivations. Seven subcomponents of motivation were identified. The statistical results revealed that junior high school students had the highest learning motivation, followed by those in elementary school and those in high school. The interview data indicated that parents’ …

The Impact Of Race And Ethnicity On The Identification Process For Giftedness In Utah, Russell Warne, Braydon Anderson, Alyce Johnson

Russell T Warne

Many gifted education experts have found that Black, Hispanic, and Native American students are less likely to be identified for gifted programs than Asian American and White students. A study was conducted to ascertain the degree of underrepresentation of these groups in gifted programs in Utah. Using state-collected data from 14,781 students in six representative school districts in Utah, it was found through multiple logistic regression analysis that there was no statistically significant difference in the likelihoods that Black, Hispanic, or Native American students and White students would be identified as gifted; Asian American and Pacific Islander students were more …

Theory Guided Professional Development In Early Childhood Science Education, Soo-Young Hong, Julia Torquati, Victoria J. Molfese

Soo-Young Hong

The importance of early and developmentally appropriate science education is increasingly recognized. Consequently, creation of common guidelines and standards in early childhood science education has begun (National Research Council (NRC), 2012), and researchers, practitioners, and policy makers have shown great interest in aligning professional development with the new guidelines and standard. There are some important issues that need to be addressed in order to successfully implement guidelines and make progress toward accomplishing standards. Early childhood teachers have expressed a lack of confidence in teaching science and nature (Torquati, Cutler, Gilkerson, & Sarver, in press) and have limited science and pedagogical …

Gendered Socialization With An Embodied Agent: Creating A Social And Affable Mathematics Learning Environment For Middle-Grade Females, Yanghee Kim, J. Lim

Yanghee Kim

This study examined whether or not embodied-agent-based learning would help middle-grade females have more positive mathematics learning experiences. The study used an explanatory mixed-methods research design. First, a classroom-based experiment was conducted with one hundred and twenty 9th-graders learning introductory algebra (53% male and 47% female; 51% Caucasian and 49% Latino). The results revealed that learner gender was a significant factor in the learners’ evaluations of their agent (η2 = .07), the learners’ task-specific attitudes (η2 = .05), and their task-specific self-efficacy (η2 = .06). In-depth interviews were then conducted with 22 students selected from the experiment participants. The interviews …

Learning And Fearing Mathematics, Sarah Buckley, Kate Reid

Dr Sarah Buckley

Findings from psychology and neuroscience can help educators to better understand the processes underlying children’s learning of, and feelings towards, mathematics. Sarah Buckley and Kate Reid explain.

Session M - From Experimental Psychology To A Science Of Learning, Ottmar Lipp, Sacha Develle

Dr Sacha DeVelle

Concurrent Session Block 3

Towards A Science Of Learning, Sacha Develle

Dr Sacha DeVelle

Recent discoveries in neuroscience, psychology and education have raised new questions about how learning takes place, emphasising the need for inter-disciplinary collaboration for a new ‘science of learning’, as Sacha DeVelle explains.

Celebrating Student Scholars: An Introduction, Maureen A. Scully, Esther Kingston-Mann

Maureen Scully

The essays in this issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge have received awards in The Kingston-Mann Student Achievement Awards for Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Scholarship. Written by undergraduate students who address deeply urgent and important issues, each essay possesses a clear, distinctive voice. The authors do not turn away from difficult questions and do not waffle, even when they are dealing with questions and data that are ambiguous or contradictory. Although faculty may be accustomed to academic articles rife with qualifiers, indirect points, jargon, and a limited concern for relevance, the essays included here are …

High School To College Transition: A Profile Of The Stressors, Physical And Psychological Health Issues That Affect The First-Year On-Campus College Student, Terence Hicks, Samuel Heastie

Terence Hicks, Ph.D., Ed.D.

The purpose of this article is to provide identified stressors, physical and psychological health issues that affect first year campus college students as they transition from high school to college. The Health Behaviors, Self-Rated Health and Quality of Life (QOL) questionnaire was administered to 514 university college students. Results from this study determined that there were significant differences among student life stressors and physical and psychological health status between first-year on-campus and first-year off-campus college students. Most importantly this study documented compelling information regarding selection of roommate, poor housing, chronic and temporary diseases, injury and prescription medicine among college students …

Session B - Measuring Learning In Complex Environments, Michael Timms

Dr Michael J Timms

Concurrent Session Block 1

Reading In Online Environments, Juliette Mendelovits

Juliette Mendelovits

Juliette Mendelovits examines the results of an international assessment of 15-year-old students’ ability to read digital texts.

Session O - Do Boys And Girls Read Differently Online? Evidence From Pisa 2009 Digital Reading Assessment, Tom Lumley, Dara Ramalingam, Juliette Mendelovits

Juliette Mendelovits

Concurrent Session Block 3

Session P - Challenges And Opportunities For Neuroscience : How To Explain The Connection Between Socio-Cultural Practices And Cognition?, David Clarke, Hilary Hollingsworth

Dr Hilary Hollingsworth

Concurrent Session Block 3

The Associations Between Fatigue And Need For Recovery With Anxiety And Depression, Vicki Bitsika, Christopher Sharpley, Kate Morrison

Vicki Bitsika

The relative associations between fatigue and need for recovery with anxiety, depression and combined anxiety-depression, were compared in a sample of 400 students at an Australian university. Analyses were performed at total score and factor structure levels. Results showed that fatigue had a stronger association with anxiety and depression than did need for recovery. Despite some overlap between one factor from the fatigue scale with both factors from the need for recovery scale, overall data suggested that these scales (and the constructs they measured) were relatively discrete and refer to different aspects of the individual’s experience of fatigue. Implications for …

Session J - Learning And Fearing Mathematics : Insights From Psychology And Neuroscience, Sarah Buckley, Kate Reid

Dr Kate Reid

Concurrent Session Block 2

Session J - Learning And Fearing Mathematics : Insights From Psychology And Neuroscience, Sarah Buckley, Kate Reid

Dr Sarah Buckley

Concurrent Session Block 2

Young Children's Mental Health Outcomes: Flinders University Evaluation Of An Australia-Wide 2-Year Mental Health Promotion Initiative In Early Childhood And Care Settings, Helen Askell-Williams, Rosalind Murray-Harvey, Phillip Slee, Katherine Dix, Grace Skrzypiec

Dr Katherine Dix

Inhibition & Mental Effort: A Moderation Hypothesis, David Anthony Yeigh

Dr Tony Yeigh

This investigation addresses the relationship between cognitive inhibition as an executive function of the working memory system and cognitive load as the mental effort experienced in relation to classroom learning. The argument advanced and tested is that cognitive inhibition moderates cognitive load, and thereby provides an explanatory mechanism for extrinsic forms of cognitive load. The implications of this relationship are identified and discussed in relation to instructional design.

The relevant literature shows a limited appreciation of the importance of the role played by cognitive inhibition in relation to cognitive load, and, indeed, in relation to learning outcomes in general. Against …

Interpreting Children's Dreams Through Humanistic Sandtray Therapy, Karrie Swan, April Schottelkorb

Karrie L Swan

Children’s dreams often depict waking life events and experiences. Although dream work therapy for adults is fairly established, recommendations for processing children’s dreams appear fractional. Because of the distinct developmental needs of children, we postulated that sandtray therapy might assist children to express and discover enlarged meanings in dreams. In this article, we present the Sandtray for Interpreting Childhood Dreams (SICD) intervention for the purpose of potentially helping children gain insight into how their dreams may be related to past and present waking life experiences. An explanation and application of the model is presented, and the developmental rationale for using …

Towards A Learning For Disaster Resilience Approach: Exploring Content And Process, Neil Dufty

Neil Dufty

This paper is a first attempt to scope the possible content and learning processes that could be used in a holistic Learning for Disaster Resilience (LfDR) approach as a possible improvement to current disaster education, communications and engagement practices. The research found that LfDR should not only cover public safety aspects, but also learning about the community itself, including how to reduce its vulnerabilities and strengthen resilience. In relation to learning process, a review of learning theory found four broad learning theory groups - behavioural, cognitive, affective, social – that have relevance to LfDR. The research identified a range of …

The Impact Of Varied Discrimination Parameters On Mixed-Format Item Response Theory Model Selection, Tiffany Whittaker, Wanchen Chang, Barbara Dodd

Wanchen Chang

Whittaker, Chang, and Dodd compared the performance of model selection criteria when selecting among mixed-format IRT models and found that the criteria did not perform adequately when selecting the more parameterized models. It was suggested by M. S. Johnson that the problems when selecting the more parameterized models may be because of the low variance of the discrimination parameters used to generate the data. This simulation study reproduced the Whittaker et al. study by incorporating more variability in the discrimination parameter estimates used to generate the data. The results indicated that the majority of the criteria performed more accurately when …

Professional Development Of History Content And Skills: Measuring Effects On Teachers And Students, Teresa J. Wanser

Teresa J Wanser

National and local standards in history are evolving from standards on history content to standards on critical thinking and analyzing historical documents. The purpose of this research was to determine the effects of professional development received by K-12 teachers on infusing historical thinking skills into their history instruction. Changes in teacher use and application as well as impacts on students’ self-efficacy were examined. Forty-eight (48) teachers from a mid-western public school district participated in an accredited masters of historical studies degree program at a mid-western liberal arts university. The two and one-half years masters degree program infused historical thinking skills …

Finding Evidence Of Metacognition In An Eportfolio Community: Beyond Text, Across New Media, Kathryn Wozniak, Jose Zagal

Kathryn Wozniak

Finding evidence of how metacognition is demonstrated in educational ePortfolios is often limited to written artifact analysis and ignores new media such as images, video, links, and navigation schema. This study seeks to begin to fill this gap through a qualitative content analysis of 30 learners’ ePortfolios developed in a networked ePortfolio community. We found evidence of learners’ metacognition in their choices, integration, and organization of new media content in the ePortfolio. We propose that intentional analysis of learners’ choices and arrangement of new media can help educators and researchers find additional evidence of metacognition beyond text within digital learning …

A Qualitative Research For Interlanguage Strategies-, Grace Hui Chin Lin

Dr. Grace Hui Chin Lin 林慧菁 英語教學 語文學哲學博士 886 933 503 321

The major purpose of this qualitative research was to find out how the Taiwanese university EFL learners felt about learning the five communication strategies of reduction and achievement sets. Besides displaying their teachability (Maleki, 2007; Ogane, 1998) in university classrooms, this study collected qualitative data about students’ feelings and their reflections as they learned the five communication strategies. The samples of this training were twenty-four Taiwanese university students, none of whom majored in English in a Freshman Non-English Majors’ class. The results showed, for the reduction set of communication strategy, seven respondents tended to feel topic avoidance was an applicable …

The Development Of The Lunchtime Enjoyment Of Activity And Play Questionnaire, Brendon P. Hyndman, Amanda Telford, Shahid Ullah, Caroline Finch, Amanda Benson

Dr Brendon P Hyndman

BACKGROUND: Enjoyment of physical activity is as an important determinant of children’s participation in physical activity. Despite this, there is an absence of reliable measures for assessing children’s enjoyment of play activities during school lunchtime. The purpose of this study was to develop and assess the reliability of the Lunchtime Enjoyment of Activity and Play (LEAP) Questionnaire. METHODS: Questionnaire items were categorized employing a social-ecological framework including intrapersonal (20 items), interpersonal (2 items), and physical environment/policy (17 items) components to identify the broader influences on children’s enjoyment. An identical questionnaire was administered on 2 occasions, 10 days apart, to 176 …

English Learning Demotivation Studies In The Efl Contexts: State Of The Art, Yoon-Kyoung Kim, Tae-Young Kim

Dr. Tae-Young Kim (김태영, 金兌英)

This paper reviews the studies conducted on English learning demotivation in the EFL contexts. Demotivation research in the EFL contexts is significant given the learners’ less opportunities to use the target language outside school and consequent difficulties in maintaining their interest in learning it. In order to look into how this issue of demotivation has been addressed, the previous EFL demotivation studies are analyzed based on (a) their research methods and (b) perspectives on the definition of demotivation. The research methods adopted by the previous research include quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. In terms of different underlying assumptions on what …

Same Environment, Different Affordances: Ecological Analysis Of Four Different Learners In A University Context, Miso Kim, Tae-Young Kim

Dr. Tae-Young Kim (김태영, 金兌英)

This study investigates the subjective realization of objective environmental factors and learners’ agency in constructing their meaning potential. According to van Lier’s (2000, 2002, 2004) ecological perspective, the environment is yet an unrealized set of potential, and affordance is what was felt meaningful to the learner. Also, learners actively construct their terms and conditions of learning with their agency (Lantolf & Pavlenko, 2001). Based on van Lier’s ecological framework, two pairs of students enrolled in two same English classes were recruited. Life history, semi-structured interview, and task recall data revealed that for some students, affordance of the English classroom was …

The Place Of Education In Building Disaster Resilience: A Strategic Examination, Neil Dufty

Neil Dufty

No abstract provided.

Increasing College Football Attendance: An Exploratory Study Of Fan Typology, Oscar T. Mcknight, Ronald Paugh, Jordan Mcknight, Wenhui Jin

Oscar T McKnight Ph.D.

No sport enjoys more popularity in the USA than football. However, not every college can fill their stadium. This study examined spectator typology and college football attendance. Four typologies emerged as well as a chronology of expectations for game events. Presented is PUNT a sport marketing strategy to increase football game attendance.