First Draft Thinking: Reading, Writing, and Researching at the Doctoral Level Using Social Annotation

This study addressed doctoral students’ academic challenges in earning their degrees. A mixed method needs assessment conducted in October 2020 of U.S. doctoral students in various fields (n = 270) indicated that the top academic challenges were reading the primary literature (PL), understanding research methods, finding information, and writing. These findings corroborated prior research indicating that reading, writing, and researching skills are co-constructed. The main study focused on one of these factors, reading PL because it is foundational to developing the others. This is the first study to examine PL skills at the doctoral level. Reading PL is part of a hidden curriculum often assumed and unaided by coursework in doctoral programs, although it is essential for degree progress. The study examined how participation in a four-week online intervention changed doctoral students' reading skills, annotation practices, and reading self-perceptions. The findings indicated that assessed pre-posttest skills improved significantly with participation. The pre-post reading comprehension (RC) assessment indicated that the intervention resulted in a statistically significant improvement in RC as critical reading of PL outside the participants' fields of study, t(23) = 13.6, p<.0001 with a large effect size, Cohen's d =1.68. The pre-post research self-efficacy (RSE) scores indicated that the intervention increased RSE, t(23) = 4.9, p<.0001 with a medium effect size, Cohen's d = 0.72. Finally, the pre-post reading apprehension (RA) scores indicated that the intervention decreased RA of PL outside the participants' fields of study, t(23) = 4.3, p<.0001 with a medium effect size, Cohen's d =0.71. In addition, participants reported significant positive changes in self-perceptions of their PL reading abilities in terms of ease and confidence. They received the most benefit from learning a structured reading method combined with low-stakes peer-based discussion. The study findings update doctoral preparation pedagogy concerning critical reading of the primary literature. The main implication is that doctoral students need and benefit from explicit instruction in critical reading skills related to the PL. The main recommendation is that all doctoral programs should explicitly teach critical reading. Another recommendation is explicitly teaching critical reading in higher education wherever students encounter PL

Doing Their Best: How Teachers in Urban Social Studies Classrooms Integrate Culturally Relevant Pedagogy with Historical Literacy Instruction

What occurs when teachers in urban social studies classrooms want to do their best by incorporating culturally relevant pedagogy into their historical literacy instruction? While culturally relevant pedagogy and historical literacy are complementary in theory and a few scholars have demonstrated how teachers have integrated the two approaches in practice, I questioned the ease or seamlessness of the integration within an urban context. This dissertation examined how three teachers in an urban high school managed the tensions and possibilities of teaching historical literacy and culturally relevant pedagogy in U.S. and global history classes. In this case study, I explored how each teacher’s lived experiences affected their conceptions and enactments of historical literacy and culturally relevant pedagogy, and its effects on student perceptions of instruction and their academic achievement. In recent years, educators have promoted teaching social studies and other subjects using culturally relevant pedagogy as a means to promote the academic achievement, cultural competence and sociopolitical consciousness of urban youth of color. In addition, many states have enacted Common Core Learning Standards that in the case of history, require students to develop historical literacy skills or the ability to interpret primary and secondary historical sources and make historical claims or arguments based on evidence from the sources. In theory, culturally relevant teaching and instruction in historical literacy can be seen as complementary. Teachers can instruct students to interpret evidence and make claims by employing historical texts and stimulating historical discussions that use counter-narratives to connect students’ cultures and experiences to historical events and develop young people’s political consciousness. However given the contemporary contexts of schooling in urban spaces, I found that teachers faced challenges in trying to integrate both approaches. Findings suggest teachers are cultural beings whose lived experiences influenced their perception of students and approaches to instruction. The two teachers of color in the study broadened the purpose of historical literacy instruction as a means to build positive student academic identity and self-empowerment. They also exhibited a social justice orientation towards history and offered alternative ways of knowing and doing history that questioned the historical literacy research stance on what counts as evidence and contextualization. All three teachers struggled with the systematic integration of historical literacy instruction and culturally relevant pedagogy. Overall when attending to the context and academic needs of students, the teachers focused mostly on providing students with general literacy rather than historical literacy skills. Exploring the tensions teachers faced and the ways in which they resolved them provides knowledge of ways to manage the obstacles that teachers may encounter in attempting to integrate the two approaches in the teaching of history to students of color in urban spaces

EXTENT OF UTILIZATION OF PAPERLESS TECHNOLOGY: BASIS FOR A PROPOSED INTERVENTION PROGRAM

The purpose of this study was to assess the extent of utilization of paperless technology by the teachers in Bula District. The respondents of this study were the 204 teachers in the five different schools in Bula District namely: Bula Central Elementary School, Jose Divinagracia Elementary School, Dadiangas East Elementary School, Bula National School of Fisheries and Baluan National High School. A descriptive evaluative research design was utilized in this study. Based on the results of this study, it was revealed that the teachers have perceived that the utilization of paperless technology has been highly useful in grade management and test bank management; however, they found it moderately useful in user management. Nevertheless, the utilization of paperless technology by the teachers was highly recommended to utilized by the teachers. Finally, this study shows educators how paperless technology can reduce teacher workload, save money, and protect the environment while improving the teaching and learning process.  Article visualizations

Knowledge Modelling and Learning through Cognitive Networks

One of the most promising developments in modelling knowledge is cognitive network science, which aims to investigate cognitive phenomena driven by the networked, associative organization of knowledge. For example, investigating the structure of semantic memory via semantic networks has illuminated how memory recall patterns influence phenomena such as creativity, memory search, learning, and more generally, knowledge acquisition, exploration, and exploitation. In parallel, neural network models for artificial intelligence (AI) are also becoming more widespread as inferential models for understanding which features drive language-related phenomena such as meaning reconstruction, stance detection, and emotional profiling. Whereas cognitive networks map explicitly which entities engage in associative relationships, neural networks perform an implicit mapping of correlations in cognitive data as weights, obtained after training over labelled data and whose interpretation is not immediately evident to the experimenter. This book aims to bring together quantitative, innovative research that focuses on modelling knowledge through cognitive and neural networks to gain insight into mechanisms driving cognitive processes related to knowledge structuring, exploration, and learning. The book comprises a variety of publication types, including reviews and theoretical papers, empirical research, computational modelling, and big data analysis. All papers here share a commonality: they demonstrate how the application of network science and AI can extend and broaden cognitive science in ways that traditional approaches cannot

Educational use cases from a shared exploration of e-books and iPads

E-books and e-book readers are becoming increasingly widely available, particularly for the general reader, and there have been many studies on their adoption. However, less is known about their use for educational and academic purposes. We report here on work carried out on e-books and e-book applications using iPads by academic and teaching staff. After considering pedagogical issues and reporting survey results, we identify a spiral of six key use case areas for e-books. This spiral of use cases moves from basic e-book use, through situational reading, e-books and learning, using multiple learning resources, collaborative/group learning, to e-book production. We discuss each of these use case areas and provide guidelines that will be of interest to practitioners and researchers alike

2019 EURēCA Abstract Book

Listing of student participant abstracts