Effects of counterstereotypic training on preservice teachers’ assessment of students’ academic performance

Studies have provided empirical evidence, that teachers’ judgments of students’ academic performance are biased by social stereotypes. Thus, in the present study it was tested whether the impact of stereotypes about immigrant students, students with a low socioeconomic status and male students on preservice teachers‘ evaluations can be reduced by a counterstereotypic training. For this purpose, one hundred and forty-seven preservice teachers first read a short text in which a fifth grader male student was described who could respectively be allocated to one of these three stereotypical categories. Half of the participants then completed the training. After that, all subjects were asked to evaluate an essay of the fictive target and to give a prognosis about his level of graduation. The results showed that the training lead to a reduction of the stereotype-based judgment bias only with regard to the gender stereotype. Accordingly, in the training condition the male target’s essay was marked better and the prognosis of his level of graduation was higher as in the no-training condition. No training effects were found for the other two stereotypes. The implications of the study are discussed with reagard to teacher eduaction and vocational trainings

RSVP-Based Tasks for Examining Working Memory Capacity

In diesem technischen Bericht werden drei Aufgaben zur Prüfung bzw. zur Beanspruchung unterschiedlicher Facetten der Arbeitsgedächtniskapazität beschrieben. Die Aufgaben beruhen zum Teil auf Material von Oberauer (1993) sowie Oberauer et al. (2000, 2003). Sie wurden in RSVP programmiert und sind auf Apple-Macintosh-Rechnern lauffähig. Die Aufgaben eignen sich zur computerunterstützten Erfassung oder Beanspruchung der Arbeitsgedächtniskapazität im Einzelversuch, teilweise auch im Gruppenversuch und werden hauptsächlich in Forschungskontexten benutzt. Für jede Aufgabe werden das Konzept, die Durchführung, Auswertungs- und Anwendungsmöglichkeiten sowie gegebenenfalls Vergleichsdaten geschildert

RSVP-Based Tasks for Examining Working Memory Capacity

In diesem technischen Bericht werden drei Aufgaben zur Prüfung bzw. zur Beanspruchung unterschiedlicher Facetten der Arbeitsgedächtniskapazität beschrieben. Die Aufgaben beruhen zum Teil auf Material von Oberauer (1993) sowie Oberauer et al. (2000, 2003). Sie wurden in RSVP programmiert und sind auf Apple-Macintosh-Rechnern lauffähig. Die Aufgaben eignen sich zur computerunterstützten Erfassung oder Beanspruchung der Arbeitsgedächtniskapazität im Einzelversuch, teilweise auch im Gruppenversuch und werden hauptsächlich in Forschungskontexten benutzt. Für jede Aufgabe werden das Konzept, die Durchführung, Auswertungs- und Anwendungsmöglichkeiten sowie gegebenenfalls Vergleichsdaten geschildert

Visual attention while solving the test of understanding graphs in kinematics : an eye-tracking analysis

This study used eye-tracking to record the students' visual attention while taking the test of understanding graphs in kinematics (TUG-K). A total of $N=115$ upper-secondary-level students from Germany and Switzerland took the 26-item multiple-choice instrument after learning about kinematics graphs in the regular classroom. Besides choosing the correct alternative among research-based distractors, the students were required to judge their response confidence for each question. The items were presented sequentially on a computer screen equipped with a remote eye tracker, resulting in a set of approx. 3000 paired responses (accuracy and confidence) and about 40 hours of eye movement-data (approx. 500.000 fixations). The analysis of students' visual attention related to the item stems (questions) and the item options reveal that high response confidence is correlated with shorter visit duration on both elements of the items. While the students' response accuracy and their response confidence are highly correlated on the score level, $r(115)=0.63, p<0.001$, the eye-tracking measures do not sufficiently discriminate between correct and incorrect responses. However, a more fine-grained analysis of visual attention based on different answer options reveals a significant discrimination between correct and incorrect answers in terms of an interaction effect: Incorrect responses are associated with longer visit durations on strong distractors and less time spent on correct options while correct responses show the opposite trend. Outcomes of this study provide new insights into the validation of concept inventories based on students' behavioural level.peerReviewe