How Junior High School Students Look at the Texts and Maps in Geography Textbooks: An eye tracking study

Textbook research is usually conducted from a teacher’s point of view. Thus, little is known about how students actually read textbooks. This study analyzed how junior high school students refer to maps and sentences in a geography textbook using the eye tracking method. The participants were 32 junior high school students who took the comprehension test after reading the geography textbook of a fictional island. The textbook consisted of four paragraphs and five maps. Eye tracking analysis showed that the total fixation time of the sentence area was six times longer than that of the map area. Compared to the university students in the previous study, we found that junior high school students have a stronger tendency to adopt sentence-oriented reading. Further, this sentence-oriented tendency was more remarkable in readers with low score in the comprehension test. The readers with high scores fixated relatively longer on maps. These results suggest that junior high school students do not refer to maps which are necessary for understanding the geographical causality. We also found that the graphic-oriented reading style was related to the comprehension of the geographical causality

Impact of cognitive counseling among undergraduate trainee teachers: Analysis of change in responses of participants.

In recent years, teachers have been required to possess high level of expertise, such as acquiring practical teaching skills alongside offering psychoeducational services. In order to develop such expertise, any knowledge acquired need to be put to practice. This study investigated the impact of cognitive counseling on university students who wanted to become teachers. A quantitative test analysis was carried out on free description answers, and an exploratory study was conducted. As a result, it became clear that trainee teachers’ experience of cognitive counseling helped them to think about supporting children in becoming “self-organized learners.” However, little mention was made of the psychological knowledge necessary for cognitive counseling. Further guidance is needed to understand how to apply such knowledge practically.本研究の一部は平成27年度広島大学教育学研究科研究科長裁量経費の補助を得て行われた

Neuropathologic Studies of Acute Multiple Sclerosis Mimicking Acute Encephalitis

Neuropathologic findings of acute multiple sclerosis mimicking acute encephalitis were described. The patient was a 42-year-old man with acute febrile encephalitic symptoms and signs such as high fever, unconsciousness and convulsive seizures, and a monophasic course of 18 days duration. Pathologically, numerous inflammatory demyelinating lesions were scattered mainly in the cerebral and cerebellar white matter, the internal capsules, the putamen, the brainstem and the optic nerves. In particular, the demyelinating lesions of the brainstem were extensive and confluent, whereas those in the right occipital lobe were small and perivenous, reminiscent of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis. Axons in these demyelinating lesions were well preserved, with a considerable number of macrophages and partial proliferation of protoplasmic astrocytes. There were no demyelinating lesions of concentric sclerosis type, which may occur in cases with acute multiple sclerosis. Pathological features in this case were typical of acute multiple sclerosis despite the symptoms and signs mimicking acute encephalitis and a clinical course of only 18 days duration

The effect of the speaker's confmnatory question on understandability of verbal explanation

Previous studies have shown that confirmatory questions enhance the understandability of an explanation. Examples include asking a degree of understanding of the listener and current state of the description target in verbal explanation. In the current study, we examined the effect of two types of confirmatory question by tbe speaker on tbe degree of understanding of the listener. The experimenter verbally explained to participants how to draw a geometric figore. We manipulated tbe types of explanation: (a) tbe speaker aaks a degree of understanding of the listener dwing explanation, (b) the speaker asks a current state of the description target during explanation, and (c) the speaker simply repeats the explanation. As a result, tbe highest understandability score was attained when tbe explanation was repeated. Accuracy scores of the drawing were high in all three situations; we therefore conclude that conimnatory questions are not effective in every situation of verbal explanation. Repetition of the explanation is sufficient to increase the listener's understanding if the content of the description is simple

Why do we recall bizarre things better? : A review of the literature <Article>

本論文は,奇異なイメージや文のほうが,ごくー般的で普通なイメージや文より記憶成績が良いという奇異性効果研究についての文献的検討である。奇異性効果は,文やイメージを用いた実験において古くから報告されており,頑健に得られる効果である。しかし,奇異性効果が生じるメカニズムについては諸説あり,現在も論争が続いている。本論文では、奇異性効果の生じる条件,および,奇異性効果をもたらすクリティカルな処理段階が符号化段階か検索段階かという論争を中心に,奇異性効果研究の動向について述べた。奇異性効果の定義や他の効果との境界については暖昧な部分もあるため,最後に,さまざまな刺激を用いた奇異性効果研究や他の類似した効果の研究についても触れている

Recent studies on expository text with non-continuous text <Article>

2000年から実施されたOECDの学力調査において,図表などの非連続型テキスト,あるいは非連続型テキストを含んだ説明文における成績の低さが報告され,教育現場をはじめ,それらのテキス卜形式の読解力の向上が注目されるようになってきた。本論文は,非連続型テキストを含んだ説明文における文章理解について,学習者はどのように読んでいるのか。また教師はどのように指導していくとよいかという視点で研究を報告する。最後に,非連続型テキストを用いた授業の実践研究も報告する

Study support for an elementary school child who has difficulty with solving ratio word problems.

This study is a case report of the cognitive counseling for a child who has difficulty with solving ratio word problems. The child in this study was a girl of an elementary school sixth grader. It was difficult for her to solve ratio problems in arithmetic, so she often made careless mistakes through the process of solving. To support her learning, we supported her on ratio word problems solving processes by using diagrams, and urged her to use diagrams spontaneously. The second support point, we helped her use a lesson induction to reduce her careless mistakes in learning. Our assistance resulted in the improvement of her performance in ratio word problems solving and careless mistake of calculation, but she did not used diagrams spontaneously in ratio word problems solving because she solved the problem by using her teacher's strategy that was not using diagram. This study, we could not support enough for her to integrate the strategy with diagram and the usual strategy. In the future, to establish the integrated both strategies and use it in the learning situation for her is the problem which now confront us