Trainee teachers' cognitive styles and notions of differentiation

Purpose – To compare the cognitive styles of trainee teachers with their notions of differentiation and perceptions of its place/location within their teaching and learning during a PGCE programme of ITE. Methodology – 80 trainee teachers completed the Cognitive Style Index (CSI) (Allinson & Hayes, 1996) at the beginning and at the end of their course. After completing the CSI measure trainees received instruction on cognitive styles. To assess their initial understanding and prior knowledge of differentiation, all trainees completed a questionnaire at the beginning at the end of their course. Findings – At the outset rudimentary understandings of differentiation were found to be held by the trainees, as well as stylistic differences between the four style groupings. Gains in understanding of differentiation and the use of cognitive style in school were evident in all trainees. Moderate changes in style were evident, with all trainees becoming more intuitive over the course of the programme. Research limitations – The sample size may be seen as a limitation in terms of generalisability. Practical implications –The predominant direction of cognitive style movement was from analytic to intuitive. The suggestion that cognitive style whilst relatively fixed is also something that can be developed, is a feature which should offer encouragement to those developing university courses through interventions such as this. Originality - Teaching sessions on how cognitive styles can be used in the classroom were used to enhance trainee understandings of individual learning differences and increase awareness of own style to facilitate understanding of differentiation

Servant Leadership and its Relationships with Core Self-Evaluation and Job Satisfaction

Servant leadership is a growing topic in the leadership literature. Our study considered servant leadership’s relationship to two outcomes, core self-evaluation and job satisfaction. The former is particularly noteworthy because if servant leadership predicts core self-evaluation this would confirm that servant leadership affects important changes in employees as people, a central tenet of servant leadership. In addition, if servant leadership predicts core self-evaluation, this could add to the question of whether core self-evaluation is a non-changeable personality trait or is potentially malleable. We conducted a field study of three firms and found that servant leadership predicts both core self-evaluation and job satisfaction, and that core self-evaluation also predicts job satisfaction. This study contributes to servant leadership, and in general to values-based leadership, by observing a predictive relationship to core self-evaluation, which potentially adds new information about the impact servant leadership can have on individuals. This study confirms the findings of previous authors who found that servant leadership predicts job satisfaction

When in Rome Think Like a Roman: Empirical Evidence and Implications of Temporarily Adopting Dialectical Thinking

As a result of increasing globalization, people are exposed to an even greater extent to other cultures, making it possible for individuals to assimilate mindsets that are typical of another culture. Recent work on extracultural cognition has shown that immediate cultural contexts exert powerful influences on cognition and behavioral patterns. This chapter reviews empirical support for extracultural cognition. Specifically, the chapter focuses on dialectical thinking and the well-established finding in the cultural literature that Westerners tend to anticipate linear continuity in the environment and East Asians anticipate change in existing patterns. Research shows, though, that cultural cues may shift these tendencies and—at least temporarily—alter cognitive mindsets to reflect the cognitions of another culture. After a review of the literature, the chapter addresses the implications of extracultural cognition for understanding the influence of dialectical thinking on judgment and decision-making

Enactivism and ethnomethodological conversation analysis as tools for expanding Universal Design for Learning: the case of visually impaired mathematics students

Blind and visually impaired mathematics students must rely on accessible materials such as tactile diagrams to learn mathematics. However, these compensatory materials are frequently found to offer students inferior opportunities for engaging in mathematical practice and do not allow sensorily heterogenous students to collaborate. Such prevailing problems of access and interaction are central concerns of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), an engineering paradigm for inclusive participation in cultural praxis like mathematics. Rather than directly adapt existing artifacts for broader usage, UDL process begins by interrogating the praxis these artifacts serve and then radically re-imagining tools and ecologies to optimize usability for all learners. We argue for the utility of two additional frameworks to enhance UDL efforts: (a) enactivism, a cognitive-sciences view of learning, knowing, and reasoning as modal activity; and (b) ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA), which investigates participants’ multimodal methods for coordinating action and meaning. Combined, these approaches help frame the design and evaluation of opportunities for heterogeneous students to learn mathematics collaboratively in inclusive classrooms by coordinating perceptuo-motor solutions to joint manipulation problems. We contextualize the thesis with a proposal for a pluralist design for proportions, in which a pair of students jointly operate an interactive technological device

The significance of motivation in student-centred learning : a reflective case study

The theoretical underpinnings of student-centred learning suggest motivation to be an integral component. However, lack of clarification of what is involved in motivation in education often results in unchallenged assumptions that fail to recognise that what motivates some students may alienate others. This case study, using socio-cognitive motivational theory to analyse previously collected data, derives three fuzzy propositions which, collectively, suggest that motivation interacts with the whole cycle of episodes in the teachinglearning process. It argues that the development of the higherlevel cognitive competencies that are implied by the term, student-centred learning, must integrate motivational constructs such as goal orientation, volition, interest and attributions into pedagogical practices

A synthesis of causal evidence linking non-cognitive skills to outcomes for children and adolescence

“Non-cognitive skills” is an umbrella term used to refer to a set of attitudes, behaviors and strategies that are thought to underpin success in school and at work, such as motivation, perseverance and self-control. Non-cognitive skills are increasingly considered to be as important, or even more important than, cognitive skills or IQ in explaining academic and employment outcomes. Despite growing interest in this topic, the causal relationship between non-cognitive skills and later outcomes is not well established. This chapter examines the experimental evidence on a diverse set of non-cognitive skills, assessing whether they can be improved and how far they can lead to better longer term outcomes in a variety of domains. We find that there does not seem to be one specific skill that predicts positive outcomes for young people. Rather, many skills are inter-linked and the enhancement of one of these skills without improvement of the others is unlikely to lead to lasting changes

Conceptual Issuess and Assessment of Implicit Theories

We reviewed fundamental conceptual issues and the state of research on the definition and assessment of implicit theories. We grappled with the following controversies related to the construct: (a) Are entity theory and incremental theory opposite ends of the same continuum? (b) How can scholars use more sophisticated methodologies to classify individuals into either the entity or incremental theory? (c) Given shifting conceptions of what intelligence is, how can scholars refine the implicit theory of intelligence construct? Given these conceptual issues, we then addressed practical issues related to the assessment of implicit theories. We point to the need for more sophisticated methods such as implicit association tests and the use of virtual environments as more “stealthy” ways to assess the construct

Learning dispositions and transferable competencies: pedagogy, modelling and learning analytics

Theoretical and empirical evidence in the learning sciences substantiates the view that deep engagement in learning is a function of a complex combination of learners’ identities, dispositions, values, attitudes and skills. When these are fragile, learners struggle to achieve their potential in conventional assessments, and critically, are not prepared for the novelty and complexity of the challenges they will meet in the workplace, and the many other spheres of life which require personal qualities such as resilience, critical thinking and collaboration skills. To date, the learning analytics research and development communities have not addressed how these complex concepts can be modelled and analysed, and how more traditional social science data analysis can support and be enhanced by learning analytics. We report progress in the design and implementation of learning analytics based on a research validated multidimensional construct termed “learning power”. We describe, for the first time, a learning analytics infrastructure for gathering data at scale, managing stakeholder permissions, the range of analytics that it supports from real time summaries to exploratory research, and a particular visual analytic which has been shown to have demonstrable impact on learners. We conclude by summarising the ongoing research and development programme and identifying the challenges of integrating traditional social science research, with learning analytics and modelling