Fostering collaborative knowledge construction with visualization tools

This study investigates to what extent collaborative knowledge construction can be fostered by providing students with visualization tools as structural support. Thirty-two students of Educational Psychology took part in the study. The students were subdivided into dyads and asked to solve a case problem of their learning domain under one of two conditions: 1) with content-specific visualization 2) with content-unspecific visualization. Results show that by being provided with a content-specific visualization tool, both the process and the outcome of the cooperative effort improved. More specifically, dyads under that condition referred to more adequate concepts, risked more conflicts, and were more successful in integrating prior knowledge into the collaborative solution. Moreover, those learning partners had a more similar individual learning outcome

Chinese high-school students in physics classroom as active, self-regulated learners: cognitive, motivational and environmental aspects

The present study investigates whether Chinese high-school students are self-regulated learners. A social-cognitive model that distinguishes environmental, motivational, and cognitive components of this active approach to learning is described. This provides an appropriate framework for investigating this complex issue with eighth and tenth graders attending a high-school in Beijing. By contrasting components of selfregulated learning and components indicating a more passive approach to learning that were both measured with self-report instruments, it could be shown that these students may indeed be considered as self-regulated physics learners. Comparisons of the grade levels revealed that tenth graders are not more active in self-regulating their learning processes than are eighth graders, and that they might even experience a motivational decline in learning physics. The same applies to girls versus boys. The physics-related self-efficacy belief of girls turned out to be considerably lower than with boys, a result that corresponds to findings with students from Western nations. Finally, assumptions about the causal role of motivational factors for using self-regulatory strategies could be confirmed. Possible consequences for further fostering self-regulated learning in physics instruction are discussed