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Abstract: Wealthy schools appoint better qualified teachers, less wealthy schools under qualified teachers. Added to this mix is a powerful teacher’s union whose policies attempt to entrench the job security of teachers in the less wealthy schools irrespective of whether they can teach their subjects or not. Can one isolate these effects from that of other socio-demographic factors that may also be affecting the performance of students when they enrol for a degree at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN)? An outcome variable that subtracts the number of courses that have been failed from the number of courses that have been passed, dividing this by the total number of years that they have spent studying for a particular degree will be used as a response variable for this paper. Objectives: The system of secondary education in South Africa is highly polarized. On the one hand, we have a group of mainly Black African students, forming about 80% of the total student population, that come from a vastly under-resourced rural or township based community. On the other hand, we have a group of predominantly White and Indian students who are able to attend a far better resourced set of private schools. Added to this mix, we have 240,000 of South Africa’s total number of 390,000 primary and secondary school teachers who belong to a powerful teacher’s union which enjoys a strong political alliance with the ruling party in South Africa. With most of their union members teaching in the less wealthy schools in South Africa, `school background’ now includes a politically motivated component that focuses on teacher self–interest rather than the education of the child. What sort of effect does school background have on the performance of students when they enter an institution of higher learning? More importantly, can one isolate the effect of school background from that of other possibly confounding factors such as gender, financial aid and the receipt of some form of residence based accommodation that will also impact on their performance while at university? Method: A total of 6,183 students enrolling for a degree at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) over the period 2008 to 2012 were used a dataset for this study. Permission to use this dataset was given by the Teaching and Learning Office at UKZN. The database that was used for this study was obtained from the Division of Management Information (DMI) office at UKZN. The percentage based marks that students have managed to record for Mathematics, English, Biology and Accounting in their school leaving exams together with some other important but observable socio-economic factors were included in a regression model to determine how students will perform at UKZN. Socio-economic variables relating to gender, race and whether they have receivd some form of financial aid or residence based accommodation while studying at university were also included as predictor variables in our regression based model structure. Results and Conclusions: An interaction effect associated with being a Black African student who has been privileged enough to attend a quintile five school was found to be significant. A main effect associated with being able to attend a more privileged quintile 5 school however was found to be nonsignificant even after an adjustment has been made for gender, race, the receipt of some form of financial aid and residence based accommodation. Given that UKZN already has a number of bridging programs in place that target students who have come from a less privileged background, for university based policymakers, this result may help to justify the targeted selection of Black African students from the less privileged schools that is taking place. Because some of the disparity in matric performance that we are observing may also be associated with teacher competency and the protective influence of a powerful teacher’s union, this paper may also help to highlight some of the economic costs related with having under-prepared students. “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”–United Negro College Fund. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, echo state network (ESN) has attracted a great deal of attention due to its high accuracy and efficient learning performance. Compared with the traditional random structure and classical sigmoid units, simple circle topology and leaky integrator neurons have more advantages on reservoir computing of ESN. In this paper, we propose a new model of ESN with both circle reservoir structure and leaky integrator units. By comparing the prediction capability on Mackey-Glass chaotic time series of four ESN models: classical ESN, circle ESN, traditional leaky integrator ESN, circle leaky integrator ESN, we find that our circle leaky integrator ESN shows significantly better performance than other ESNs with roughly 2 orders of magnitude reduction of the predictive error. Moreover, this model has stronger ability to approximate nonlinear dynamics and resist noise than conventional ESN and ESN with only simple circle structure or leaky integrator neurons. Our results show that the combination of circle topology and leaky integrator neurons can remarkably increase dynamical diversity and meanwhile decrease the correlation of reservoir states, which contribute to the significant improvement of computational performance of Echo state network on time series prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of ubiquitous technologies in the field of education has considerably enhanced our way of learning. Such technologies enable students to get a gradual feedback about their performance and to provide adapted learning materials. It is particularly important in the domain of foreign language learning which requires intense daily practice. One of the main inputs of adaptive learning systems is the user’s understanding of a reading material. The reader’s understanding can be divided into two parts: the objective understanding and the subjective understanding. The objective understanding can be measured by comprehension questions about the content of the text. The subjective understanding is the reader’s perception of his own understanding. The subjective understanding plays an important role in the reader’s motivation, self-esteem and confidence. However, its automatic estimation remains a challenging task. This paper is one of the first to propose a method to estimate the subjective understanding. We show that using the eye gaze to predict the subjective understanding improves the estimation by 13% as compared to using comprehension questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper estimates the effect of students’ position in the classroom register on their academic performance. We use a unique dataset from Poland which contains information on the academic outcomes of students in the humanities, science and mathematics lower secondary school exams as well as the position students occupy in their classroom register. We find that students whose names are recorded near the end of the class list have lower performance than those students whose names are recorded near the beginning of the list. The effect appears to be larger for performance in the humanities exam, and for low-achieving boys who attend large classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately describing the knowledge dissemination process is significant to enhance the performance of personalized education. In this study, considering the effect of periodic teaching activities on the learning process, we propose a periodic impulsive knowledge dissemination system to regenerate the knowledge dissemination process. Meanwhile, we put forward learning effectiveness which is an outcome of a trade-off between the benefits and costs raised by knowledge dissemination as objective function. Further, we investigate the optimal teaching strategy which can maximize learning effectiveness, to obtain the optimal effect of knowledge dissemination affected by the teaching activities. We solve this dynamic optimization problem by optimal control theory and get the optimization system. At last we numerically solve this system in several practical examples to make the conclusions intuitive and specific. The optimal teaching strategy proposed in this paper can be applied widely in the optimization problem of personal education and beneficial for enhancing the effect of knowledge dissemination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This scoping review presents an overview of cognitive and social congruence in peer assisted learning (PAL), as the positive effects of PAL have been shown to rely on these critical factors. The scoping review followed the guidelines of the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) statement. Databases were systematically searched for articles that focus on PAL and cognitive and social congruence. Participants of the studies included were medical, health science, polytechnic, law and paramedic students. Studies that assessed cognitive and social congruence by questionnaires with a 5-point Likert scale were regarded for meta-analytic pooling. Sixteen of 786 identified articles were included in the review, whereof 9 studies were considered for meta-analytic pooling. The meta-analytic pooling showed that tutees tend to see their student tutors as cognitively (Mweighted = 3.84; range of Mweighted = 2.69–4.56) and socially congruent (Mweighted = 3.95; range of Mweighted = 2.33–4.57). Further, characteristics of student tutors are summarized. This scoping review presents an overview and operationalization of cognitive and social congruence in PAL. Based on the presented meta-analytic pooling, cognitive and social congruence were found to represent relevant key factors in the PAL context. Thus, this theoretical background should be acknowledged as a core concept for tutorials within the medical curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical education professionals aim to develop quality programmes for physical education. This study aimed to develop and validate a scale using professionals’ perceptions of Quality Physical Education QPE in Asia using twenty-four items regarding QPE quality issues. The items covered status and roles, development of educational elements and supportive features in physical education. A sample of N = 799 sport and physical education professionals from eleven Asian cities participated in this questionnaire survey. Twenty-four items relating to QPE were examined via exploratory factor analysis (EFA) using maximum likelihood extraction and direct oblimin rotation methods. Nevertheless, only 20 items were extracted following the EFA examination. Items 1, 9, 14 and 18 were excluded because of low factor loadings. The remaining items were clustered into four subscales: Development and Supportive Elements for Quality Physical Education in Schools (DSFQPE; α = .918), Core Values of Quality Physical Education (CVPE; α = .908), Curriculum Arrangement of Physical Activities (CAPA; α = .884) and Provision and Norms in Physical Education (PNPE; α = .865). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (α = .875) indicated excellent internal consistency for the overall measure. Furthermore, the 4 retained factors from the EFA were assessed via robust confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The 4-factor model demonstrated a good fit with the data (CMIN/DF = 3.450, CFI = .928, TLI = .916, PCFI = .801, RMSEA = .078). The study identified a 4-factor structure with internal consistency and acceptable interfactor correlations. The structure seemed to be applicable, including the twenty items identified as useful and necessary tools for the framework of analysis in the investigation of diverse settings for the study of quality physical education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the relative importance of the three dimensions of need-supportive teaching (NST) and students’ self-efficacy to gain new knowledge about students’ achievement in higher education. NST assumes that teachers are key to the motivation of students, providing autonomy support, structure (support of competence), and involvement (support of relatedness). In turn, self-efficacy raises students’ confidence in their ability to succeed in academic tasks. Drawing on 86,000 records of teaching evaluations by students at the University of Girona (Spain), we present evidence that teachers’ involvement and students’ self-efficacy are the two elements most strongly and positively related to achievement. Students obtain higher marks when they believe that their teachers are dependable and available to offer resources, and when they feel capable of organizing and implementing the courses of action necessary to acquire knowledge. We also find that students’ experience of autonomy support and structure are negatively (or not) correlated with achievement. Subgroup analyses also indicate that students have different needs in different knowledge areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This RCT investigated the effect on children of integrating physical activity (PA) into math lessons. The primary outcome was math achievement and the secondary outcomes were executive functions, fitness and body mass index. Twelve Danish schools were randomized to either an intervention group or a control group. A total of 505 children with mean age 7.2 ± 0.3 years were enrolled in the study. Change in math achievement was measured by a 45-minute standardized math test, change in executive function by a modified Eriksen flanker task, aerobic fitness by the Andersen intermittent shuttle-run test, and body mass index by standard procedures. PA during the math lessons and total PA (including time spent outside school) were assessed using accelerometry (ActiGraph, GT3X and GT3X+). Children in the intervention group improved their math score by 1.2 (95% CI 0.3; 2.1) more than the control group (p = 0.011) and had a tendency towards a higher change in physical activity level during math lessons of 120,4 counts/min (95% CI -9.0;249.8.2, p = 0.067). However, the intervention did not affect executive functions, fitness or body mass index. Participation in a 9-month PA intervention (from 2012–2013) improved math achievement among elementary school children. If replicated, these findings would suggest that implementation of physical activity in school settings could lead to higher academic achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For students, cognitive and motivational-affective characteristics are the most powerful prerequisites for successful learning. For teachers, judgments on their students’ characteristics shape how they plan and implement instructional activities in order to offer individual learning support. On the student side, research is starting to find out more about the interplay of different characteristics within individual students. On the teacher side, studies still regard teacher judgment accuracy of only single characteristics. By taking a person-centered approach, regarding NS = 503 students and their NT = 41 mathematics and languages arts teachers, our manuscript joined teacher and student perspectives on student characteristics interplay and suggests methodology to compare them. We found that student assessments suggested ample diversity regarding this interplay–and teachers did not perceive this. In their views, “homogeneous” sets of average characteristics were dominant. Findings suggest addressing students’ views and the diagnosis of their characteristics in teacher education to enable individual support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel sensor-based Internet of Educational Things (IoET) platform named OBSY was iteratively designed, developed and evaluated to support education in rural regions in Thailand. To assess the effectiveness of this platform, a study was carried out at four primary schools located near the Thai northern border with 244 students and 8 teachers. Participants were asked to carry out three science-based learning activities and were measured for improvements in learning outcome and learning engagement. Overall, the results showed that students in the IoET group who had used OBSY to learn showed significantly higher learning outcome and had better learning engagement than those in the control condition. In addition, for those in the IoET group, there was no significant effect regarding gender, home location (Urban or Rural), age, prior experience with technology and ethnicity on learning outcome. For learning engagement, only age was found to influence interest/enjoyment. The study demonstrated the potential of IoET technologies in underprivileged area, through a co-design approach with teachers and students, taking into account the local contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of bilingual education triggers an important question: which language is preferred for a particular school activity? Our field experiment (n = 120) shows that students (aged 13–15) who process feedback in non-native English have greater self-serving bias than students who process feedback in their native Dutch. By contrast, literature on the foreign-language emotionality effect suggests a weaker self-serving bias in the non-native language, so our result adds nuance to that literature. The result is important to schools as it suggests that teachers may be able to reduce students’ defensiveness and demotivation by communicating negative feedback in the native language, and teachers may be able to increase students’ confidence and motivation by communicating positive feedback in the foreign language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tackling complex environmental challenges requires the capacity to understand how relationships and interactions between parts result in dynamic behavior of whole systems. There has been convincing research that these “systems thinking” skills can be learned. However, there is little research on methods for teaching these skills to children or assessing their impact. The Environmental Dashboard is a technology that uses “sociotechnical” feedback–information feedback designed to affect thought and behavior. Environmental Dashboard (ED) combines real-time information on community resource use with images and words that reflect pro-environmental actions of community members. Prior research indicates that ED supports the development of systems thinking in adults. To assess its impact on children, the technology was installed in a primary school and children were passively exposed to ED displays. This resulted in no measurable impact on systems thinking skills. The next stage of this research examined the impact of actively integrating ED into lessons on electricity in 4th and 5th grade. This active integration enhanced both content-related systems thinking skills and content retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successful communication between a teacher and a student is at the core of pedagogy. A well known example of a pedagogical dialog is ‘Meno’, a socratic lesson of geometry in which a student learns (or ‘discovers’) how to double the area of a given square ‘in essence, a demonstration of Pythagoras’ theorem. In previous studies we found that after engaging in the dialog participants can be divided in two kinds: those who can only apply a rule to solve the problem presented in the dialog and those who can go beyond and generalize that knowledge to solve any square problems. Here we study the effectiveness of this socratic dialog in an experimental and a control high-school classrooms, and we explore the boundaries of what is learnt by testing subjects with a set of 9 problems of varying degrees of difficulty. We found that half of the adolescents did not learn anything from the dialog. The other half not only learned to solve the problem, but could abstract something more: the geometric notion that the diagonal can be used to solve diverse area problems. Conceptual knowledge is critical for achievement in geometry, and it is not clear whether geometric concepts emerge spontaneously on the basis of universal experience with space, or reflect intrinsic properties of the human mind. We show that, for half of the learners, an exampled-based Socratic dialog in lecture form can give rise to formal geometric knowledge that can be applied to new, different problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on epistemic beliefs has been hampered by lack of validated models and measurement instruments. The most widely used instrument is the Epistemological Questionnaire, which has been criticized for validity, and it has been proposed a new instrument based in the Epistemological Questionnaire: the Epistemic Belief Inventory. The Spanish-language version of Epistemic Belief Inventory was applied to 1,785 Chilean high school students. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses in independent subsamples were performed. A three factor structure emerged and was confirmed. Reliability was comparable to other studies, and the factor structure was invariant among randomized subsamples. The structure that was found does not replicate the one proposed originally, but results are interpreted in light of embedded systemic model of epistemological beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined the predictors of information technology (IT) integration in secondary school mathematics lessons. The predictors pertained to IT resource availability in schools, school contextual/institutional variables, accountability pressure faced by schools, subject culture in mathematics, and mathematics teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and practices. Data from 32,256 secondary school students from 2,519 schools in 16 developed economies who participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). Results showed that after controlling for student-level (gender, prior academic achievement and socioeconomic status) and school-level (class size, number of mathematics teachers) variables, students in schools with more computers per student, with more IT resources, with higher levels of IT curricular expectations, with an explicit policy on the use of IT in mathematics, whose teachers believed in student-centered teaching-learning, and whose teachers provided more problem-solving activities in class reported higher levels of IT integration. On the other hand, students who studied in schools with more positive teacher-related school learning climate, and with more academically demanding parents reported lower levels of IT integration. Student-related school learning climate, principal leadership behaviors, schools’ public posting of achievement data, tracking of school’s achievement data by administrative authorities, and pedagogical and curricular differentiation in mathematics lessons were not related to levels of IT integration. Put together, the predictors explained a total of 15.90% of the school-level variance in levels of IT integration. In particular, school IT resource availability, and mathematics teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and practices stood out as the most important determinants of IT integration in mathematics lessons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In higher education, student ratings are often used to evaluate and improve the quality of courses and professors’ instructional skills. Unfortunately, student-rating questionnaires rarely generate specific feedback for professors to improve their instructional skills. The impact of student ratings on professors’ instructional skills has proven to be low. This study concerns the psychometric properties of the Instructional Skills Questionnaire (ISQ), a new theory-based student-rating-of-teaching questionnaire with specific questions concerning lecturing skills. The ISQ is administered after a single lecture. This way, it serves as a formative feedback instrument for university professors during courses to assist them to improve and (re-) evaluate their skills if necessary. The ISQ contains seven dimensions of professors’ instructional skills and three student (self perceived) learning outcomes. In this study, Dutch students in 75 courses rated three 90-minute lectures (T1, T2 and T3) of their respective professors using the ISQ. In total, 14,298 ISQ-forms were used to rate 225 lectures. The teacher level reliabilities of the seven dimensions were found to be good at each measurement occasion. In addition, confirmatory multilevel factor analysis confirmed a seven dimensional factor structure at the teacher level at each measurement occasion. Furthermore, specific teacher level factors significantly predicted students’ (self-assessed) learning outcomes. These results partly supported the proposed theoretical framework on the relationship between the ISQ teaching dimensions and the student learning process, and provided evidence for the construct validity of the instrument. In sum, the ISQ is found to be a reliable and valid instrument, which can be used by professors and faculty development centers to assess and improve university teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although recent studies report on the benefits of blended learning in improving medical student education, there is still no empirical evidence on the relative effectiveness of blended over traditional learning approaches in medical statistics. We implemented blended along with on-site (i.e. face-to-face) learning to further assess the potential value of web-based learning in medical statistics. Methods: This was a prospective study conducted with third year medical undergraduate students attending the Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, who passed (440 of 545) the final exam of the obligatory introductory statistics course during 2013–14. Student statistics achievements were stratified based on the two methods of education delivery: blended learning and on-site learning. Blended learning included a combination of face-to-face and distance learning methodologies integrated into a single course. Results: Mean exam scores for the blended learning student group were higher than for the on-site student group for both final statistics score (89.36±6.60 vs. 86.06±8.48; p = 0.001) and knowledge test score (7.88±1.30 vs. 7.51±1.36; p = 0.023) with a medium effect size. There were no differences in sex or study duration between the groups. Current grade point average (GPA) was higher in the blended group. In a multivariable regression model, current GPA and knowledge test scores were associated with the final statistics score after adjusting for study duration and learning modality (p<0.001). Conclusion: This study provides empirical evidence to support educator decisions to implement different learning environments for teaching medical statistics to undergraduate medical students. Blended and on-site training formats led to similar knowledge acquisition; however, students with higher GPA preferred the technology assisted learning format. Implementation of blended learning approaches can be considered an attractive, cost-effective, and efficient alternative to traditional classroom training in medical statistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]