Critical thinking efficacy and transfer skills defend against 'fake news' at an international school in Finland

In this study, tasks measuring digital media literacy developed by Stanford University were administered at a school in Finland to consider the efficacy and transfer of critical thinking (CT) skills of a 'pre-IB' cohort preparing to enter the two year International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) and a graduating 'IB2' cohort. While the IB2 cohort outperformed the pre-IB cohort, both outperformed Stanford's U.S. cohorts to a statistically significant degree. Utilising a framework of curricular approaches to facilitating CT skills development as a variable of interest for causal-comparison, it was determined that the Finnish curricula and the IBDP explicitly facilitate CT skills as a separate course while embedding CT into subject coursework, whereas the curriculum in the U.S. implicitly embeds CT into subject coursework only. Implications for improving facilitation of CT in curricula design, professionalising CT across the field, and the benefits of replicating existing studies in differing socio-educational environments are discussed

Implementing virtual collaborative inquiry practises in a middle-school context

The aim of the present study was to investigate the challenges that relate to the implementation of virtual inquiry practises in middle school. The case was a school course in which a group of Finnish students (N = 14) and teachers (N = 7) completed group inquiries through virtual collaboration, using a web-based learning environment. The task was to accomplish a cross-disciplinary inquiry into cultural issues. The students worked mainly at home and took much responsibility for their course achievements. The investigators analysed the pedagogical design of the course and the content of the participants' interaction patterns in the web-based environment, using qualitative content analysis and social network analysis. The findings suggest that the students succeeded in producing distinctive cultural products, and both the students and the teachers adopted novel roles during the inquiry. The web-based learning environment was used more as a coordination tool for organizing the collaborative work than as a forum for epistemic inquiry. The tension between the school curriculum and the inquiry practises was manifest in the participants' discussions of the assessment criteria of the course.The aim of the present study was to investigate the challenges that relate to the implementation of virtual inquiry practises in middle school. The case was a school course in which a group of Finnish students (N = 14) and teachers (N = 7) completed group inquiries through virtual collaboration, using a web-based learning environment. The task was to accomplish a cross-disciplinary inquiry into cultural issues. The students worked mainly at home and took much responsibility for their course achievements. The investigators analysed the pedagogical design of the course and the content of the participants' interaction patterns in the web-based environment, using qualitative content analysis and social network analysis. The findings suggest that the students succeeded in producing distinctive cultural products, and both the students and the teachers adopted novel roles during the inquiry. The web-based learning environment was used more as a coordination tool for organizing the collaborative work than as a forum for epistemic inquiry. The tension between the school curriculum and the inquiry practises was manifest in the participants' discussions of the assessment criteria of the course.The aim of the present study was to investigate the challenges that relate to the implementation of virtual inquiry practises in middle school. The case was a school course in which a group of Finnish students (N = 14) and teachers (N = 7) completed group inquiries through virtual collaboration, using a web-based learning environment. The task was to accomplish a cross-disciplinary inquiry into cultural issues. The students worked mainly at home and took much responsibility for their course achievements. The investigators analysed the pedagogical design of the course and the content of the participants' interaction patterns in the web-based environment, using qualitative content analysis and social network analysis. The findings suggest that the students succeeded in producing distinctive cultural products, and both the students and the teachers adopted novel roles during the inquiry. The web-based learning environment was used more as a coordination tool for organizing the collaborative work than as a forum for epistemic inquiry. The tension between the school curriculum and the inquiry practises was manifest in the participants' discussions of the assessment criteria of the course.Peer reviewe

Promoting Self-Directed Learning in Simulation Based Discovery Learning Environments Through Intelligent Support.

Providing learners with computer-generated feedback on their learning process in simulation-based discovery environments cannot be based on a detailed model of the learning process due to the "open" character of discovery learning. This paper describes a method for generating adaptive feedback for discovery learning based on an "opportunistic" learning model that takes the current hypothesis of the learner and the experiments performed to test this hypothesis as input. The method was applied in a simulation-based learning environment in the physics domain of collisions. Additionally, the method was compared to an environment in which subjects received predefined feedback on their hypotheses, not taking the experimentation behavior into account. Results showed that overall both groups did not differ on knowledge acquired. A further analysis indicated that, in their learning processes, the learners in the experimental condition built upon their intuitive knowledge base, whereas the learners in the control condition built upon their conceptual knowledge base. In addition, measures of the learning process showed that the subjects in the experimental condition adopted a more inquiry-based learning strategy compared to the subjects in the control condition. We concluded, therefore, that providing learners with adaptive feedback had a different and beneficial effect on the learning process compared to more traditional predefined feedback

Mind-wandering and Narrative Transportation: The Effects of Reading Stance

This research examines if the contents of mind-wandering and narrative transportation and reading enjoyment depend on task instructions