Elementary School Students’ Epistemic Perspective and Learning Strategies in History

The present study explores possible relations between students’ epistemic perspective, learning strategies and text comprehension. In Study 1, seventy-nine sixth graders completed paper-and-pencil instruments to measure their epistemic perspective and learning strategies. Students’ epistemic perspective was assessed using the Livian problem (Kuhn, Iordanou, Pease, & Wirkala, 2008), which presented two contradicting accounts about the fictitious fifth Livian war and asked students questions regarding the certainty of their knowledge. Students were epistemically profiled as Absolutists, Multiplists and Evaluativists in their approaches to knowing. Students’ learning strategies were assessed through the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire – MSLQ − (Pintrich & De Groot, 1990). In Study 2, twenty of the students who participated in Study 1 were individually interviewed to measure their learning strategies, where they were asked to read a text about Columbus’ uncovering of the New World. Results revealed that students who were profiled as Evaluativists showed greater self-efficacy, intrinsic value, use of cognitive strategies and self-regulation. In addition, students who were profiled as Evaluativists engaged in more effective learning strategies and exhibited better text comprehension compared to students who were profiled as Absolutists. In particular, students who exhibited an Evaluativist epistemic perspective engaged in the strategies of understanding vocabulary, summarizing and underlining, while students who exhibited an Absolutist epistemic perspective engaged more in repeating information and quick reading. Our findings show that a mature epistemic perspective is associated with effective usage of learning strategies and text comprehension

Et ord med i laget? Verneombudenes medvirkning i HMS-arbeidet i bygge- og anleggsprosjekter

Ansattes medvirkning i helse-, miljø-, og sikkerhetsarbeidet (HMS) gjennom verneombudsordningen har lange tradisjoner. I denne artikkelen diskuterer vi hvilken rolle verneombudene har i HMS-arbeidet på bygge- og anleggsplasser i dag, og i hvilken grad verneombudene medvirker i HMS-arbeidet. En hovedkonklusjon er at verneombudene spiller en viktig rolle, men at deres medvirkning i HMS-arbeidet først og fremst blir av reaktiv karakter. Artikkelen bygger på en spørreundersøkelse blant arbeidsgivere i bygg og anlegg våren 2017 samt kvalitative intervjuer fra fem store bygge- og anleggsprosjekter. En spørreundersøkelse blant arbeidsgivere i 2012 inngår også som en del av datagrunnlaget

The Orchestration of a Collaborative Information Seeking Learning Task

The paper describes our novel perspective on ‘searching to learn’ through collaborative information seeking (CIS). We describe this perspective, which motivated empirical work to ‘orchestrate’ a CIS searching to learn session. The work is described through the lens of orchestration, an approach which brings to the fore the ways in which: background context – including practical classroom constraints, and theoretical perspective; actors – including the educators, researchers, and technologies; and activities that are to be completed, are brought into alignment. The orchestration is exemplified through the description of research work designed to explore a pedagogically salient construct (epistemic cognition), in a particular institutional setting. Evaluation of the session indicated satisfaction with the orchestration from students, with written feedback indicating reflection from them on features of the orchestration. We foreground this approach to demonstrate the potential of orchestration as a design approach for researching and implementing CIS as a ‘searching to learn’ context