Instructional Support for Enhancing Students’ Information Problem Solving Ability

Brand-Gruwel, S., & Gerjets, P. (Eds.). (2008). Instructional Support for Enhancing Students’ Information Problem Solving Ability [Special issue]. Computers in Human Behavior, 24(3).This special issue discusses European research on instructional support to foster students’ ability to solve information-based problems. In this introduction, the concept of information problem solving (IPS) and research in this field of interest will be placed in the broader perspective, which is called information behavior. The focus of this special issue is an educational one and the papers all go into a specific kind of instructional support. The main research questions, findings and conclusions of the six contributions will be outlined. It is concluded that the most important directions for future research deal with how instructional support for different aspect of the process, like for instance how to regulated the process, best can be designed in order to make the instruction adaptive and fit to the learners needs

Improving School Improvement

PREFACEIn opening this volume, you might be thinking:Is another book on school improvement really needed?Clearly our answer is yes. Our analyses of prevailing school improvement legislation, planning, and literature indicates fundamental deficiencies, especially with respect to enhancing equity of opportunity and closing the achievement gap.Here is what our work uniquely brings to policy and planning tables:(1) An expanded framework for school improvement – We highlight that moving from a two- to a three-component policy and practice framework is essential for closing the opportunity and achievement gaps. (That is, expanding from focusing primarily on instruction and management/government concerns by establishing a third primary component to improve how schools address barriers to learning and teaching.)(2) An emphasis on integrating a deep understanding of motivation – We underscore that concerns about engagement, management of behavior, school climate, equity of opportunity, and student outcomes require an up-to-date grasp of motivation and especially intrinsic motivation.(3) Clarification of the nature and scope of personalized teaching – We define personalization as the process of matching learner motivation and capabilities and stress that it is the learner's perception that determines whether the match is a good one.(4) A reframing of remediation and special education – We formulate these processes as personalized special assistance that is applied in and out of classrooms and practiced in a sequential and hierarchical manner.(5) A prototype for transforming student and learning supports – We provide a framework for a unified, comprehensive, and equitable system designed to address barriers to learning and teaching and re-engage disconnected students and families.(6) A reworking of the leadership structure for whole school improvement --We outline how the operational infrastructure can and must be realigned in keeping with a three component school improvement framework.(7) A systemic approach to enhancing school-community collaboration – We delineate a leadership role for schools in outreaching to communities in order to work on shared concerns through a formal collaborative operational infrastructure that enables weaving together resources to advance the work.(8) An expanded framework for school accountability – We reframe school accountability to ensure a balanced approach that accounts for a shift to a three component school improvement policy.(9) Guidance for substantive, scalable, and sustainable systemic changes –We frame mechanisms and discuss lessons learned related to facilitating fundamental systemic changes and replicating and sustaining them across a district.The frameworks and practices presented are based on our many years of work in schools and from efforts to enhance school-community collaboration. We incorporate insights from various theories and the large body of relevant research and from lessons learned and shared by many school leaders and staff who strive everyday to do their best for children.Our emphasis on new directions in no way is meant to demean current efforts. We know that the demands placed on those working in schools go well beyond what anyone should be asked to do. Given the current working conditions in many schools, our intent is to help make the hard work generate better results. To this end, we highlight new directions and systemic pathways for improving school outcomes.Some of what we propose is difficult to accomplish. Hopefully, the fact that there are schools, districts, and state agencies already trailblazing the way will engender a sense of hope and encouragement to those committed to innovation.It will be obvious that our work owes much to many. We are especially grateful to those who are pioneering major systemic changes across the country. These leaders and so many in the field have generously offered their insights and wisdom. And, of course, we are indebted to hundreds of scholars whose research and writing is a shared treasure. As always, we take this opportunity to thank Perry Nelson and the host of graduate and undergraduate students at UCLA who contribute so much to our work each day, and to the many young people and their families who continue to teach us all.Respectfully submitted for your consideration,Howard Adelman & Linda Taylo

Addressing barriers to learning: In the classroom and schoolwide.

IntroductionPublic education is at a crossroads. Moving in new directions is imperative. Just tweaking and tinkering with old ideas is a recipe for disaster.Continuing challenges confronting public education highlight why moving school improvement policy and practice in new directions is imperative. With a view to enhancing graduation rates and successful transitions to post-secondary opportunities and well-being, pressing challenges include:Increasing equity of opportunity for every student to succeed, narrowing the achievement gap, and countering the school to prison pipeline Reducing unnecessary referrals for special assistance and special education; Improving school climate and retaining good teachers Reducing the number of low performing schools.As education leaders well know, meeting these challenges requires making sustainable progress inimproving supports for specific subgroups (e.g., English Learners, immigrant newcomers, lagging minorities, homeless students, students with disabilities) increasing the number of disconnected students who re-engage in classroom learning and thus improving attendance, reducing disruptive behaviors (e.g., including bullying and sexual harassment), and decreasing suspensions and dropouts increasing family and community engagement with schools responding effectively when schools experience crises events and preventing crises whenever possible.In some schools, continuous progress related to these concerns is being made. For many districts, however, sustainable progress remains elusive – and will continue to be so as long as the focus of school improvement policy and practice is mainly on improving instruction. Efforts to expand the use of instructional technology, develop new curriculum standards, make teachers more accountable, and improve teacher preparation and licensing all have merit; but they are insufficient for addressing the many everyday barriers to learning and teaching that interfere with effective student engagement in classroom instruction.Most policy makers and administrators know that good instruction delivered by highly qualified teachers cannot ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to succeed at school.Even the best teacher can’t do the job alone. Teachers need student and learning supports in the classroom and schoolwide in order to personalize instruction and provide special assistance when students manifest learning, behavior, and emotional problems. Unfortunately, school improvement plans continue to give short shrift to these critical matters.We recognize, as did a Carnegie Task Force on Education, that school systems are not responsible for meeting every need of their students. But as the task force stressed: when the need directly affects learning, the school must meet the challenge.The most pressing challenge is to enhance equity of opportunity by fundamentally improving how schools address barriers to learning and teaching. The future of public education depends on moving in new directions to accomplish this.Now is the time to fundamentally transform how schools address factors that keep too many students from doing well at school. And while transformation is never easy, pioneering work across the country is showing the way. Trailblazers are redeploying existing funds allocated for addressing barriers to learning and weaving these together with the invaluable resources that can be garnered by collaboration with other agencies and with community stakeholders, family members, and students themselves.The first step in moving forward is to escape old ideas. The second step is to incorporate a new vision in school improvement planning for addressing barriers to learning and teaching and re-engaging disconnected students. Our analyses envision a plan that designs and develops a unified, comprehensive, and equitable system of student and learning supports. The third step is to develop a strategic plan for systemic change, scale-up, and sustainability.This book highlights each of these matters. We invite you to join us in the quest to enhance equity of opportunity for all students to succeed at school and beyond. And we look forward to hearing from you about moving schools forward to make the rhetoric of the Every Student Succeeds Act a reality

Pedagogical methodologies in teaching critical thinking skills to basic police recruits at Madison Area Technical College

Includes bibliographical references

Teaching and learning algebra word problems : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Educational Studies in Mathematics, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

This study reports on a classroom design experiment into the teaching and learning of algebra word problems. The study was set in the mathematics department of a coeducational secondary school, and involved two teachers and 30 Year 12 students. The teachers and the researcher worked collaboratively to design and implement an intervention that focused explicitly on translation between word problems and algebra. Two issues were considered: the impact of the intervention on students, and the impact of the study on teachers. Students' responses to classroom activities, supported by individual student interviews, were used to examine their approaches to solving algebra word problems. Video-stimulated focus group interviews explored students' responses to classroom activities, and informed the ongoing planning and implementation of classroom activities. Data about the impact on teachers' understandings, beliefs and practices was gathered through individual interviews and classroom observations as well as the ongoing dialogue of the research team. The most significant impact on students related to their understandings of algebra as a tool. Some students were able to combine their new-found translation skills with algebraic manipulation skills to solve word problems algebraically. However, other students had difficulties at various stages of the translation process. Factors identified as supporting student learning included explicit objectives and clarity around what was to be learnt, the opportunity for students to engage in conversations about their thinking and to practise translating between verbal and symbolic forms, structured progression of learning tasks, time to consolidate understandings, and, a heuristic for problem solving. Participation in the project impacted on teachers in two ways: firstly, with regards to the immediate intervention of teaching algebra; and secondly, with regards to teaching strategies for mathematics in general. Translation activities provided a tool for teachers to engage students in mathematical discussion, enabling them to elicit and build on student thinking. As teachers developed new understandings about how their students approached word problems they gained insight into the importance of selecting problems for which students needed to use algebra. However, teachers experienced difficulty designing quality instructional activities, including algebra word problems, that pressed for algebraic thinking. The focus on translation within the study encouraged a shift in teacher practice away from a skills-focus toward a problem-focus. Whilst it was apparent that instructional focus on translation shifted teachers and students away from an emphasis on procedure, it was equally clear that translation alone is insufficient as an intervention. Students need both procedural and relational understandings to develop an understanding of the use of algebra as a tool to solve word problems. Students also need to develop fluency with a range of strategies, including algebra, in order to be able to select appropriate strategies to solve particular problems. This study affirmed for teachers that teaching with a focus on understanding can provide an effective and efficient method for increasing students' motivation, interest and success

Development and evaluation of a web-based learning system based on learning object design and generative learning to improve higher-order thinking skills and learning

This research aims to design, develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a Webbased learning system prototype called Generative Object Oriented Design (GOOD) learning system. Result from the preliminary study conducted showed most of the students were at lower order thinking skills (LOTS) compared to higher order thinking skills (HOTS) based on Bloom’s Taxonomy. Based on such concern, GOOD learning system was designed and developed based on learning object design and generative learning to improve HOTS and learning. A conceptual model design of GOOD learning system, called Generative Learning Object Organizer and Thinking Tasks (GLOOTT) model, has been proposed from the theoretical framework of this research. The topic selected for this research was Computer System (CS) which focused on the hardware concepts from the first year Diploma of Computer Science subjects. GOOD learning system acts as a mindtool to improve HOTS and learning in CS. A pre-experimental research design of one group pretest and posttest was used in this research. The samples of this research were 30 students and 12 lecturers. Data was collected from the pretest, posttest, portfolio, interview and Web-based learning system evaluation form. The paired-samples T test analysis was used to analyze the achievement of the pretest and posttest and the result showed that there was significance difference between the mean scores of pretest and posttest at the significant level a = 0.05 (p=0.000). In addition, the paired-samples T test analysis of the cognitive operations from Bloom’s Taxonomy showed that there was significance difference for each of the cognitive operation of the students before and after using GOOD learning system. Results from the study showed improvement of HOTS and learning among the students. Besides, analysis of portfolio showed that the students engaged HOTS during the use of the system. Most of the students and lecturers gave positive comments about the effectiveness of the system in improving HOTS and learning in CS. From the findings in this research, GOOD learning system has the potential to improve students’ HOTS and learning

Responsible research and innovation in science education: insights from evaluating the impact of using digital media and arts-based methods on RRI values

The European Commission policy approach of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is gaining momentum in European research planning and development as a strategy to align scientific and technological progress with socially desirable and acceptable ends. One of the RRI agendas is science education, aiming to foster future generations' acquisition of skills and values needed to engage in society responsibly. To this end, it is argued that RRI-based science education can benefit from more interdisciplinary methods such as those based on arts and digital technologies. However, the evidence existing on the impact of science education activities using digital media and arts-based methods on RRI values remains underexplored. This article comparatively reviews previous evidence on the evaluation of these activities, from primary to higher education, to examine whether and how RRI-related learning outcomes are evaluated and how these activities impact on students' learning. Forty academic publications were selected and its content analysed according to five RRI values: creative and critical thinking, engagement, inclusiveness, gender equality and integration of ethical issues. When evaluating the impact of digital and arts-based methods in science education activities, creative and critical thinking, engagement and partly inclusiveness are the RRI values mainly addressed. In contrast, gender equality and ethics integration are neglected. Digital-based methods seem to be more focused on students' questioning and inquiry skills, whereas those using arts often examine imagination, curiosity and autonomy. Differences in the evaluation focus between studies on digital media and those on arts partly explain differences in their impact on RRI values, but also result in non-documented outcomes and undermine their potential. Further developments in interdisciplinary approaches to science education following the RRI policy agenda should reinforce the design of the activities as well as procedural aspects of the evaluation research

Applying science of learning in education: Infusing psychological science into the curriculum

The field of specialization known as the science of learning is not, in fact, one field. Science of learning is a term that serves as an umbrella for many lines of research, theory, and application. A term with an even wider reach is Learning Sciences (Sawyer, 2006). The present book represents a sliver, albeit a substantial one, of the scholarship on the science of learning and its application in educational settings (Science of Instruction, Mayer 2011). Although much, but not all, of what is presented in this book is focused on learning in college and university settings, teachers of all academic levels may find the recommendations made by chapter authors of service. The overarching theme of this book is on the interplay between the science of learning, the science of instruction, and the science of assessment (Mayer, 2011). The science of learning is a systematic and empirical approach to understanding how people learn. More formally, Mayer (2011) defined the science of learning as the “scientific study of how people learn” (p. 3). The science of instruction (Mayer 2011), informed in part by the science of learning, is also on display throughout the book. Mayer defined the science of instruction as the “scientific study of how to help people learn” (p. 3). Finally, the assessment of student learning (e.g., learning, remembering, transferring knowledge) during and after instruction helps us determine the effectiveness of our instructional methods. Mayer defined the science of assessment as the “scientific study of how to determine what people know” (p.3). Most of the research and applications presented in this book are completed within a science of learning framework. Researchers first conducted research to understand how people learn in certain controlled contexts (i.e., in the laboratory) and then they, or others, began to consider how these understandings could be applied in educational settings. Work on the cognitive load theory of learning, which is discussed in depth in several chapters of this book (e.g., Chew; Lee and Kalyuga; Mayer; Renkl), provides an excellent example that documents how science of learning has led to valuable work on the science of instruction. Most of the work described in this book is based on theory and research in cognitive psychology. We might have selected other topics (and, thus, other authors) that have their research base in behavior analysis, computational modeling and computer science, neuroscience, etc. We made the selections we did because the work of our authors ties together nicely and seemed to us to have direct applicability in academic settings