Alone or together: The role of gender and social context prior to Aha-experiences

Prior research indicates that boys show more interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) than girls do. Given that Aha-experiences yield positive affect and increase interest, the question arises whether there are gender differences in Aha-experiences that could help explainthe gender differences in interest. Derived from social role theory, we hypothesized that men report having Aha-experiences alone, whereas women reporthaving Aha-experiences together with others. In a retrospective survey study comprising three independent samples (N=899), we conducted chi- squareanalyses to explore the relationship of gender, social context (alone; not alone), domain, and situational interest. Across all participants, we found that menwere more probably alone and women more probably together with others when they had an Aha-experience. Morefine-grained analyses revealed that theeffect was especially pronounced when the Aha-experience increased situational interest within STEM or the personal domain. The study suggests thatsocial context played a different role in the occurrence of Aha-experiences in men and women. We discuss the implications of ourfindings for STEMinstruction at school.publishedVersio

Inclusion in the heat of the moment: Balancing participation and mastery

Individual and social explanatory models provide different frameworks for teachers’ practice. This study addresses how teachers’ understanding of inclusion and challenging behaviors affects their work with an inclusive practice in school. The chosen research design can be characterized as a qualitatively driven mixed-method case design, and the data collection was based on an explorative sequential design. All teachers from two schools that both have a vision linked to being inclusive were invited to participate, and the first five teachers who signed up from each school were included in this study. The data are based on interviews with and observations of 10 teachers as well as a survey conducted at 16 schools in Western Norway distributed across eight different municipalities. Based on an inductive analysis, the findings show that physical participation in the classroom is central to teachers’ understanding of inclusion. At the same time, they emphasize the importance of social and academic mastery. The study, nevertheless, shows that classroom participation and coping can conflict with each other. This means that teachers must often balance different considerations related to both practical and ethical dilemmas. When they encounter challenging behavior, they are additionally forced to make assessments in stressful situations. It is also in these situations that the underlying and often unconscious explanatory models provide the greatest guidance for the teachers’ decisions. Nevertheless, decision-making in stressful situations seems to be an almost absent topic in both teacher training and the professional community in schools. The authors of this article, therefore, argue that decision-making in stressful situations seems to be underestimated in the work on developing inclusive practices.publishedVersio

Infodemi og pandemisk risikopersepsjon

Teksten er digitalt tilgjengelig her: https://psykologtidsskriftet.no/fagessay/2022/03/infodemi-og-pandemisk-risikopersepsjonSubkulturer som finner fellesskap gjennom konspirasjonsteorier, kan forklare noe av den pågående vaksinemotstanden internasjonalt. For fremtidig kriseberedskap blir det viktig å kartlegge hvordan digitalt utenforskap spiller inn på dette bildet.publishedVersio

Experiences of WNGER II Ph.D.Fellows During the COVID-19 Pandemic – A Case Study

Since January 2020 there have been over 97 million reported cases and 2 million deaths worldwide from COVID-19 and it is not over yet. In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic is a slow-motion disaster and an ‘external intervention’ that suddenly began in early 2020 and has maintained its grip on the world. The pandemic has influenced the education sector strongly as well, and Ph.D. candidates enrolled in Ph.D. programs during COVID-19 (‘the Ph.D. corona generation’) at Western Norway Graduate School of Educational Research II (WNGER II) were examined in this case study. WNGER II is a research school consortium with seven universities and universities colleges, 97 Ph.D.-candidates, and 48 supervisors and was established in 2018 to complement the Ph.D.-programs and strengthen the Ph.D. education in Western Norway. A pilot phase (2016–2017) was used to identify and address specific challenges in Ph.D. education as experienced in the seven universities and university colleges in Western Norway. The pandemic has presented an urgent need for a better knowledge base to understand the professional, social, and existential conditions for doctoral fellows when society is shut down for an extended period. This explorative case study examined what the doctoral fellows experienced when home office, digital teaching, and digital supervision suddenly replaced physical presence in the workplace (more or less) from March 12, 2020 to November 30, 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. A mixed-methods research, formative dialog research, and case study design was applied to try to bridge the conceptual and contextual understanding of this phenomenon. The main data sources were a survey (N = 62, 85% women, 15% men, response rate 70%) and semi-structured interviews (with six Ph.D. fellows). Supplementary data collection was based on formative dialog research and comprised field dialog (13 seminars, eight Ph.D. courses, three Ph.D. supervision seminars, and two Ph.D. gatherings, N = 26), one focus group (n = 11), 21 online observations, and document analysis of Ph.D. policy documents and course evaluations (N = 15). The explorative case study found that the WNGER II Ph.D. fellows are satisfied with the educational quality concerning digital teaching and supervision (micro-level) but have experienced several research-related and psycho-social challenges during the pandemic (meso-level). These changed frame factors have impeded their feasibility and doctoral progression. Even if the WNGER II Ph.D. fellows experienced support during the pandemic, it seems like it entailed incremental measures that have not been sufficient. The Ph.D. regulations were created before the pandemic under normal conditions for normal conditions, but it appears that no substantial adjustments have been made for these extraordinary pandemic conditions in which frame factors attached to data collection, publication delays, childcare responsibilities, social distancing, etc. have changed the premises for their feasibility. This has been particularly critical for these Ph.D. fellows, who have been in this slow-motion disaster for up to 20 months (55% of their 3-year scholarship). Therefore, results from the case study indicate it is more important than ever to understand the gap between formulation, -transformation, and realization arena when it comes to the distinction between incremental, semi-structural changes and fundamental changes in Ph.D. regulations and guidelines caused by societal crises. Even if time compensation has been offered, it seems like the overall Ph.D. guidelines, regulations, and assessment norms have remained unchanged in the transformation arena (meso-level), which might have given some unforeseen implications for some Ph.D.-candidates, which calls for better crisis preparedness on a doctoral level in the years to come.publishedVersio

Moments of Brilliance: Understanding the Aha-experience through Bayesian Statistics

Regarded as the product of prolonged and sustained efforts, creativity is still often associated with the rare moments when a solution to a problem suddenly bursts into consciousness: the hallmark of sudden insight. The present thesis aims to provide evidence for a better understanding of the phenomenology connected with these moments, colloquially termed as the Aha-experience. Founded on an integrative fluency account, linking sudden insight to the ease with which information is processed, positive affect and subjective certainty in the newfound solution, the thesis delves into different aspects of educational, cognitive, personality and social psychology, providing diverse and new understanding of motivation and creativity associated with the Aha-experience. Paper I utilized the integrative fluency account to understand metacognitive feelings in relation to change in motivation and coping from Ahaexperiences. Paper II applied social role theory to help explain gender similarities and differences in Aha-experiences. Paper III examined elapsed time since last memorable Aha-experience to explore the relationship between Openness to Experience and the frequency of Aha-experiences. Based on a large, retrospective survey, utilizing multiple independent samples, the strength of the project is the overall coherence between the individual studies. The design allows drawing conclusions across the three papers, which is the main purpose of this dissertation. All three studies applied bfw, a Bayesian framework, developed in tandem with the ongoing PhD project. The framework provided several modules to conduct linear and non-linear, hierarchical analyses, and allowed the use of custom Bayesian models specifically devolved for the project. The goal of the framework was to easily estimate parameter values and the stability of estimates and conduct convergence diagnostics. In other words, to assess the certainty, and uncertainty, associated with the presented results. Thus, the development of bfw aided the process of gaining a deeper understanding of the phenomenology of insight. An important aspect of this thesis is to present the methodological considerations of the Bayesian approach. Paper I aimed to test the integrative fluency account and examine the relationship between Aha-experiences and motivation within a given domain. Results indicated that fluency, positive affect and subjective certainty are underlying facets of metacognitive feelings elicited by sudden insight. The study strengthens the hypothesis that fluency is marked hedonically and epistemically, and therefore generally conforms to the proposed fluency account. Moreover, the study links the Aha-experience with an increase of motivation and coping. Paper II explored the situational aspects of Aha-experiences. Prior research indicates that boys show more interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) than girls, where traditional STEM education is marked as highly competitive and individualoriented. We applied a social role theory perspective to explain the role of gender in interest. Social role theory argues that society’s division of labor between men and women forms social roles and gender stereotypes, and that an interaction of biological and social processes influences sex-differentiated dispositions and behaviors. Results indicated that men, compared to women, were more likely to be alone during the Aha-experience. The effect was most credible for participants who reported increased interest in personal and STEM domains. The study is consistent with previous findings that women, relative to men, find more interest from cooperation. The study concludes that biosocial influences have led, in part, women to adopt more communal roles and men more agentic roles. Paper III examined the relationship between personality traits and the frequency of Ahaexperiences. Openness to Experience appears to be the strongest predictor of creativity and creative self-efficacy, and the Aha-experience is a phenomenon associated with creativity. Results linked Openness to Experience to recollecting autobiographical memories, and it is argued that feelings in the fringe of consciousness serve as a retrieval function, mainly through metacognitive feelings associated with a specific insight. Furthermore, the relationship between Openness to Experience and frequency of Aha-experiences was dependent on elapsed time since the last memorable Aha-experience, indicating that the relationship depends on creative achievement in the form of Aha-experiences and not just creative aptitude. Paper III concludes that to understand the relationship between Openness to Experience and Aha-experiences, and creativity in general, it is essential to consider the effect of motivational processes. Drawn together, the current thesis suggests that understanding situational aspects, phenomenological dimensions and individual differences are crucial in order to understand the Aha-experience itself. The thesis discusses these implications and draws inferences based on the overall perception of the independent studies. In sum, the work presented herein states that the Aha-experiences are multifaceted and without the context in which the sudden insight occurred, the Aha-experience will remain a mythical phenomenon

Matchstick tasks

JS, CSS and HTML codes for matchstick tasks in Qualtric

The Multimedia Expanse: Students' perceived learning outcome from, and attitudes toward, multimodal and traditional lectures

The purpose of this study was to examine students' attitudes toward multimodal presentations (AtMP) and traditional lectures (AtTL). A literature review of current research on this topic suggests that students generally have more positive attitudes toward the former rather than the latter, but few of these studies has a focal point on different study programmes and students within hard and soft sciences. Similarly, media literacy and technology ambivalence is seldom seen in relation with students' perception of instructional mediums, and the distinction between methods and mediums seems to be mostly ignored. Set within a Norwegian context and observed through the lens of what Richard Mayer and his colleagues define as the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, the current study intended to measure whether a relationship existed between students' attitudes toward the two instructional mediums, media literacy and four study programmes (psychology, dentistry, education and medicine). The study was quantitative in design addressing seven research questions. One hundred and sixty-five students, attending either the university or a university college in Bergen, completed a questionnaire presented during four separate plenary lectures. The attitude scales (AtMP and AtTL), serving as the main instruments in the study, were built upon four items measuring the students' perception of the lecture structure, learning outcome, motivation to attend lectures and interaction between students and lecturer when one of the two lecturing mediums were used. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were applied (correlation, one-way analysis of variance and regression). The results indicated a strong negative relationship between AtMP and AtTL, meaning positive attitudes toward one would likely signify negative attitudes toward the other. Medicine students differed significantly from all the other study programmes, favouring traditional lectures over multimodal presentations. Furthermore, there was a positive relationship between students' perception of their lecturers' media literacy, didactic awareness and AtMP, though no such relationship was found with AtTL. Implications of this study suggested that many of the students wish for more complex multimodal presentations in their lectures; moreover, it should not be taken for granted that students are undivided positive toward indiscriminate use of PowerPoint or similar software. The discussion concludes that more research is needed on the actual use of multimodal presentations in Norwegian higher education

Alone or Together: Supplemental materials

Data and R scripts for Skaar, Ø.O. and Reber, R. (2023), Alone or together: The role of gender and social context prior to Aha-experiences. Scand J Psychol. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.1288

Motivation through insight: the phenomenological correlates of insight and spatial ability tasks

In an experiment (n = 430), grounded in an integrative fluency account of the phenomenology of the Aha-experience, we tested the assumption that problem solving through insight is distinct from other strategies of problem-solving in that the affective response invoked by Aha-experiences is more influential than other solution strategies on motivational processes. Results indicated that insight tasks, compared to non-insight tasks, had the strongest affective and motivational outcomes both during and after task solution. Moreover, for insight tasks, sudden insight was the strongest predictor of correct solutions. Interestingly, step-by-step and guessing strategies were positive and negative predictors, respectively, of correct solutions. Finally, only trial and error significantly predicted correct solutions for non-insight tasks. We argue that solution strategies are not mutually exclusive. However, some strategies are more frequently used and possibly more adapted to different types of tasks. The study supports the integrative fluency account and motivational outcomes of Aha-experiences

Multimedia discrepancies - plenary lectures as perceived by students

Artikkelen ynskjer å skildre studentar i høgare utdanning sine haldningar til og oppfatningar av førelesing, og særskilt bruk av multimodale presentasjonsprogram (t.d. PowerPoint) og tradisjonell tavleundervising. Det vart utvikla to haldningsskalaar med fire påstandar, for å måle studentane sine oppfatningar av (1) undervisingsstruktur, (2) læringsutbytte, (3) motivasjon til å delta på undervising og (4) interaksjon mellom studentar og forelesar når ein av to undervisingsmedium vart brukt. Studentar (N = 174, 94,8% fullføringsrate) frå anten Universitetet i Bergen eller Norsk Lærarakademi (NLA) vart spurde om ta del i ein eksplorativ studie som tok i bruk eit personleg responssystem («clickers»). Studien gir indikasjonar på at mange studentar ynskjer meir bruk av komplekse multimodale presentasjonar, som inkluderer animasjonar og/eller videoar. Samstundes er positive haldningar til multimodale presentasjonsprogram avhengig av studenten sitt føretrekte undervisingsformat og studenten si oppfatning av forelesar sin digitale og didaktiske kompetanse