YOU HAVE TO CONSIDER THE SOURCE: AN INVESTIGATION OF 8TH GRADE STUDENTS USING HISTORY’S SOURCING HEURISTIC TO LEARN ABOUT AMERICA’S PAST

Research in history education suggests disciplinary approaches to teaching and learning about the past lead to considerable growth in students' historical thinking capabilities. This study investigated how an historical inquiry approach to instruction influences the ways adolescents read, think and write about American history. The researcher created and taught a series of lessons centered on the sourcing heuristic and other aspects of the discipline of history to students in two sections of an 8th grade American history course in a major school district in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The lessons, exercises and pedagogical moves were based on a literature-based, theoretically-grounded framework for learning to think in history. In addition to exposure to curriculum and instruction based on historical investigation, students in one class received a structured intervention in historical thinking that gave them opportunities to critique and discuss each other's written historical arguments and engage in discourse about evidence and other history-specific concepts and strategic knowledge. It was assumed that these sessions of Peer Scrutiny and Discourse (PSD) would deepen students' knowledge of history (in a disciplinary sense) and lead them to outperform the students who did not engage in PSD on various measures of historical thinking and understanding. History-specific instruction took place over a five-month period. A range of data were collected to chart students' growth in historical thinking, including pre and post-study surveys of students' views and knowledge of history, journal entries they created after key lessons and exercises, six historical argumentation writing tasks, a think-aloud task on African Americans' experiences with Southern Reconstruction and exit interviews with primary informants, and the researcher's observations of the teaching and learning that took place. The data were also used to discern the influence of PSD. The researcher found that the majority of students in both classes made gains in historical thinking, especially in the area of written historical argumentation. There appeared to be changes in students' beliefs about history in both classes; and there was some indication that primary informants who experienced PSD developed slightly deeper ideas about evidence and interpretation. The quality of historical writing was higher among students who experienced PSD until the final historical argumentation task. This study suggests that learning about America's past through historical investigations informed and driven by a theoretical framework for learning to think in history causes forward movement along the novice-toward-expert continuum of historical thinking for most adolescents with little or no prior experience with disciplinary history

Open Networking Lab: online practical learning of computer networking

Learning to configure computer networks is a topic requiring a substantial practical component and suggesting a pedagogic approach that foregrounds experiential learning. However, providing appropriate computer networking hardware is expensive for classroom labs, and is not viable for individual distance learners. Simulation offers an alternative basis for practical learning and supports a range of modes, from individual distance learning to in-class blended learning. Sophisticated network simulation packages, such as Cisco’s Packet Tracer, have high fidelity to networking devices and can simulate complex network scenarios. Unfortunately their complex interfaces make it difficult for a novice student to engage productively. The Open Networking Lab (ONL) will provide online resources for students of introductory computer networking. It will take an activity-centred approach, supported with video and screencasts, in preference to lengthy text. Practical activity is based on PT Anywhere, a network simulator that provides students with an easy-to-use, browser-based interface over Cisco’s Packet Tracer. PT Anywhere thus provides fully authentic simulation but, by only revealing a subset of features, supports a carefully scaffolded approach to teaching and learning. We report at an early stage in the development of the ONL. Material is being piloted with students at UK Further Education colleges. Evaluation will include observation, surveys and interviews with students and staff; PT Anywhere also provides learning analytics. A further stage of development will culminate in a badged open course on the Open University’s OpenLearn platform. The ONL will provide vocational learning at scale in educational institutions, employment contexts and for individual learners

Evaluating a Course for Teaching Advanced Programming Concepts with Scratch to Preservice Kindergarten Teachers: A Case Study in Greece

Coding is a new literacy for the twenty-first century, and as a literacy, coding enables new ways of thinking and new ways of communicating and expressing ideas, as well as new ways of civic participation. A growing number of countries, in Europe and beyond, have established clear policies and frameworks for introducing computational thinking (CT) and computer programming to young children. In this chapter, we discuss a game-based approach to coding education for preservice kindergarten teachers using Scratch. The aim of using Scratch was to excite students’ interest and familiarize them with the basics of programming in an open-ended, project-based, and personally meaningful environment for a semester course in the Department of Preschool Education in the University of Crete. For 13 weeks, students were introduced to the main Scratch concepts and, afterward, were asked to prepare their projects. For the projects, they were required to design their own interactive stories to teach certain concepts about mathematics or physical science to preschool-age students. The results we obtained were more satisfactory than expected and, in some regards, encouraging if one considers the fact that the research participants had no prior experiences with computational thinking

The role of illness scripts in the development of medical diagnostic expertise: Results from an interview study

In this article, we describe a study in which some current ideas about illness scripts are tested. Participants at 4 levels of medical expertise were asked to describe either a prototypical patient or the clinical picture associated with a number of different diseases. It was found that participants at intermediate levels of expertise mentioned, both absolutely and relatively, many enabling conditions (patient contextual factors such as sex, age, medical history, and occupation) when asked to describe a prototypical patient with a disease, whereas the instruction to describe the clinical picture of a disease revealed a monotonic relation with expertise level. The amount of biomedical information in the descriptions decreased with increasing expertise level for both types of instruction. In addition, a positive relation was found between number of actual patients seen with a particular disease and number of enabling conditions mentioned. These results were interpreted as supportive of the present conceptualization of the illness script theory

Exploring student perceptions about the use of visual programming environments, their relation to student learning styles and their impact on student motivation in undergraduate introductory programming modules

My research aims to explore how students perceive the usability and enjoyment of visual/block-based programming environments (VPEs), to what extent their learning styles relate to these perceptions and finally to what extent these tools facilitate student understanding of basic programming constructs and impact their motivation to learn programming

Use of proofs-as-programs to build an anology-based functional program editor

This thesis presents a novel application of the technique known as proofs-as-programs. Proofs-as-programs defines a correspondence between proofs in a constructive logic and functional programs. By using this correspondence, a functional program may be represented directly as the proof of a specification and so the program may be analysed within this proof framework. CʸNTHIA is a program editor for the functional language ML which uses proofs-as-programs to analyse users' programs as they are written. So that the user requires no knowledge of proof theory, the underlying proof representation is completely hidden. The proof framework allows programs written in CʸNTHIA to be checked to be syntactically correct, well-typed, well-defined and terminating. CʸNTHIA also embodies the idea of programming by analogy — rather than starting from scratch, users always begin with an existing function definition. They then apply a sequence of high-level editing commands which transform this starting definition into the one required. These commands preserve correctness and also increase programming efficiency by automating commonly occurring steps. The design and implementation of CʸNTHIA is described and its role as a novice programming environment is investigated. Use by experts is possible but only a sub-set of ML is currently supported. Two major trials of CʸNTHIA have shown that CʸNTHIA is well-suited as a teaching tool. Users of CʸNTHIA make fewer programming errors and the feedback facilities of CʸNTHIA mean that it is easier to track down the source of errors when they do occur

Expertise development: how to bridge the gap between school and work

Boshuizen, H. P. A. (2003). Expertise development: how to bridge the gap between school and work. Inaugural address, Open University of the Netherlands, The Netherlands

ACER Research Conference Proceedings (2016)

The focus of ACER’s Research Conference 2016 will be on what we are learning from research about ways of improving levels of STEM learning. Australia faces significant challenges in promoting improved science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning in our schools. Research Conference 2016 will showcase research into what it will take to address these challenges, which include: the decline in Australian students’ mathematical and scientific ‘literacy’; the decline in STEM study in senior school; a shortage of highly qualified STEM subject teachers, and curriculum challenges. You will hear from researchers who work with teachers to engage students in studying STEM-related subjects, such as engineering in primary school, and science and maths at all levels. You will learn how to engage both girls and boys in STEM learning, through targeted teaching, activities like gaming, and applying learning from neuroscience

Reliability and validity of a model computerized simulation examination for nursing

Health care facilities and schools of nursing are beginning to utilize computer technology. There is limited availability of quality software in nursing for instruction and evaluation. In the present study, a computerized simulation examination to evaluate decision-making in nursing was developed and assessed in terms of its psychometric properties. A clinical situation was established and then converted into a computerized simulation program. The computerized simulation examination was given to groups of nurses and non-nurses in order to improve clarity of instructions and to insure the functioning of the computer program. To obtain data indicating reliability and validity, the computerized simulation examination was given to two additional groups: novices who were college students without nursing experience and experts who were masters in nursing prepared faculty. Each person\u27s performance was converted into three scores (performance index, efficiency index, and usefulness). The known-groups technique was then used to determine criterion-related validity. The faculty group was also given a questionnaire relating to the content validity of the simulation