Review of "Conducting Educational Research: A primer for teachers and administrators"

Book Title: Conducting Educational Research: A primer for teachers and administrators Book Authors: Morrell, P.D. and Carroll, J.B. Publisher: Sense Publishers Reviewers: Steve Keirl (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Christine Edwards-Leis (St Mary's University College) ISBN: 978-94-6091-202-3 (paperback) ISBN: 978-94-6091-204-7 (e-book

Distributed cognition in the middle years: using a forum format to elicit mental models of assessment

The project, Mental Models and Robotics and Middle Schooling, was an empirical qualitative study centred within information processing theory and linked with the introspection mediating process tracing paradigm. The study involved students and their teacher in a socio-economically diverse urban primary school and aimed to establish how the identification of participants’ mental models can assist in the authentic assessment of learning through a richer understanding of the cognitive development taking place in a technology-based learning experience. Semi-structured and stimulated recall interviews, questionnaires, teach-back episodes, and teacher and student journals were used to externalise participants’ mental models. However, the effect of distributed cognition and the shared understanding of the nature, process, and response to assessment could not be determined by these instruments alone. A videoed forum of the student participants, held subsequent to an assessment episode designed by them, was used to elicit the mental models of assessment from teacher and learner points of view. Results of this forum indicates that middle years students can inform us of their understanding and need for authentic assessment practices that would clearly demonstrate their individual learning journey while adhering to systemic principles

Variations to Stimulated Recall Protocols to Enhance Student Reflection: I did, I saw, I remembered.

The project, Mental Models and Robotics and Middle Schooling, was an empirical qualitative study centred within information processing theory and linked with the introspection mediating process tracing paradigm. The study involved students and their teacher in a socioeconomically diverse urban primary school and aimed to establish how the identification of participants’ mental models can assist in the authentic assessment of learning through a richer understanding of the cognitive development taking place in a technology based learning experience. The strict protocols of Stimulated Recall methodology were used to externalise participants’ ‘in-action’ mental models, using the opening question ‘What were you thinking?’ The use of this rigid questioning technique elicited insufficient responses from the students. An additional opening question, ‘What were you doing?’ was added in the second episode of Stimulated Recall prior to the question, ‘What were you thinking while you were doing that?’ This change elicited increased quantity and quality of responses because students were able to link their thoughts and feelings with associated actions and reactions. Richer mental models of procedural knowledge but more crucially, conceptual knowledge, were evident in the recall of journaling activities. Social construction mental models were also richer as students more willingly linked thought to action

Distributed cognition in the middle years: using a forum format to elicit mental models of assessment.

The project, Mental Models and Robotics and Middle Schooling, was an empirical qualitative study centred within information processing theory and linked with the introspection mediating process tracing paradigm. The study involved students and their teacher in a socio-economically diverse urban primary school and aimed to establish how the identification of participants’ mental models can assist in the authentic assessment of learning through a richer understanding of the cognitive development taking place in a technology-based learning experience. Semi-structured and stimulated recall interviews, questionnaires, teach-back episodes, and teacher and student journals were used to externalise participants’ mental models. However, the effect of distributed cognition and the shared understanding of the nature, process, and response to assessment could not be determined by these instruments alone. A videoed forum of the student participants, held subsequent to an assessment episode designed by them, was used to elicit the mental models of assessment from teacher and learner points of view. Results of this forum indicates that middle years students can inform us of their understanding and need for authentic assessment practices that would clearly demonstrate their individual learning journey while adhering to systemic principles

The United States COVID-19 Forecast Hub dataset

Academic researchers, government agencies, industry groups, and individuals have produced forecasts at an unprecedented scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. To leverage these forecasts, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with an academic research lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to create the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub. Launched in April 2020, the Forecast Hub is a dataset with point and probabilistic forecasts of incident cases, incident hospitalizations, incident deaths, and cumulative deaths due to COVID-19 at county, state, and national, levels in the United States. Included forecasts represent a variety of modeling approaches, data sources, and assumptions regarding the spread of COVID-19. The goal of this dataset is to establish a standardized and comparable set of short-term forecasts from modeling teams. These data can be used to develop ensemble models, communicate forecasts to the public, create visualizations, compare models, and inform policies regarding COVID-19 mitigation. These open-source data are available via download from GitHub, through an online API, and through R packages

Challenging learning journeys in the classroom: Using mental model theory to inform how pupils think when they are generating solutions

This paper presents a discussion about the interplay between Mental Model Theory and the generation of solutions to learning challenges in the primary classroom. It explores how pupils negotiate the problem solving spaces that can arise in the two learning areas of Mathematics and Design and Technology although the cross-curricula nature of learning in the primary classroom can conflate the two domains.\ud Learning challenges engage thinking. Teachers will think about, and subsequently design, challenging scenarios that will stimulate their pupils to generate a range of possible solutions. In turn, pupils will think about how they will meet the challenges. Mental Model Theory informs teachers’ knowledge about thinking: it explains how mental models arise from the idiosyncratic methods of developing the dialogue and relationships necessary to guide thinking. Mental models are purposeful cognitive structures that have a process/product nature. They also have several functions that enable them to store data and enact strategies to generate outcomes. The theory explains how pupils engage in the thinking process to assimilate memory, new data and personalised strategies to find solutions to challenges. When faced with a novel challenge, pupils retrieve, restructure and/or create, and store useable mental models in accordance with their perceived relevance to generate an acceptable outcome.\ud This paper explores how a challenge, be it finding a solution to a mathematical conundrum or creating a response to a brief in Design and Technology, stimulates thinking processes. The discussion will consider how an understanding of the functions of mental models, through the use of the Mental Model Mode, can enhance constructive and inventive thinking in classrooms. It proposes implications for pedagogical practice and some key considerations for teachers as reflective practitioner – and designer of learning challenges

Where are they going wrong? Finding solutions to problems using the Mental Method Mode

The contradictions and juxtapositions that arise for learners when they are bombarded with a cacophony of media in this postmodern world create an imperative for teachers to gain a better understanding of the way in which information is processed particularly in problem situations. Perspicacity of information processing can contribute to learner and teacher well-being by reducing anxiety and increasing confidence through ameliorating competence and self-knowledge. This chapter presents a discussion about the interplay between Mental Model Theory and soltions for moving learners forware when confronted with anxiety about their inability to solve problems. It advocates the use of the Mental Model Mode to create shared learning experiences underpinned by greater metacognitive awareness

Knowing Where the Shoe Pinches: Using the Mental Model Mode to Understand How Primary Pupils Can Design Intelligently

This paper uses the English proverb, “Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches” (Scheffler, 1997, p.73) as a metaphor for the often hard to explain difficulties that individual Primary pupils can face when meeting design challenges. Blisters on toes and heels are hidden beneath the firm leather of the shoe just as the obstacles to designing are embedded in internal, idiosyncratic mental models. Mental model theory provides a theoretical exegesis of the individuality that emerges when pupils seek to respond to authentic problems in Design and Technology. But, an explanation of the originality of process and product is insufficient if pupils are either stultified by mundane tasks or stalled by their own inability to complete the design process due to cognitive ‘blisters’. The Mental Model Mode (Mode) (Edwards-Leis, 2012) explains what happens when pupils are encouraged to take off their cognitive shoes when they pinch and how to deal with the blisters that impede progress. The Mode emerged from a longitudinal research project into primary pupils’ mental models of problem solving in robotics (Edwards-Leis, 2010). It comprises six mental model functions and its efficacy to explicate the problem-solving process was validated through tests with pupils. This paper continues its exploration of pupils overcoming challenges in designing through a critical discussion of how the Mode can contribute to centering Fry’s (2009) design intelligence in general education. The Mode delineates a pedagogical approach to Design and Technology that foregrounds metacognition and celebrates the diversity of individuality of thought because it helps to investigate thinking (Freire, 1972). The clarification of a pupil’s nature of thinking enables them to walk freely and be risk-takers; creating unique ways to view, critique and redesign the future can only emerg

Understanding learning through Mental Model Theory

The research in this book aimed to determine how a study of a teacher's and students' mental models can inform the educational community about effective pedagogy. The research questions included the identification of the participants' mental models before, during, and immediately after applied problem-solving in a robotics programme. A more in-depth investigation exposed the teacher's and four of her students' mental models of teaching, learning, and assessment. Once these mental models had been established, the matches, mismatches, and/or changes over time of such mental models and the effect, if any, on teaching, learning, and assessment were examined. This empirical qualitative study was centred within information processing theory and linked with the introspection mediating process tracing paradigm and involved close contact with the participants over an extended period of time. The methodology focussed on learner centredness and how the participants integrated new experiences with existing conceptual, declarative, and procedural knowledge in the areas of teaching, learning, and assessment. (Publisher's description