Effect of Performance Feedback on Perceived Knowledge and Likelihood to Pursue Continuing Education

The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of performance feedback on Athletic Trainers’ (ATs) perceived knowledge (PK) and likelihood to pursue continuing education (CE). The investigation was grounded in the theories of “the definition of the situation” (Thomas & Thomas, 1928) and the “illusion of knowing,” (Glenberg, Wilkinson, & Epstein, 1982) suggesting that PK drives behavior. This investigation measured the degree to which knowledge gap predicted CE seeking behavior by providing performance feedback designed to change PK. A pre-test post-test control-group design was used to measure PK and likelihood to pursue CE before and after assessing actual knowledge. ATs (n=103) were randomly sampled and assigned to two groups, with and without performance feedback. Two independent samples t-tests were used to compare groups on the difference scores of the dependent variables. Likelihood to pursue CE was predicted by three variables using multiple linear regression: perceived knowledge, pre-test likelihood to pursue CE, and knowledge gap. There was a 68.4% significant difference (t101= 2.72, p=0.01, ES=0.45) between groups in the change scores for likelihood to pursue CE because of the performance feedback (Experimental group=13.7% increase; Control group= 4.3% increase). The strongest relationship among the dependent variables was between pre-test and post-test measures of likelihood to pursue CE (F2,102=56.80, p<0.01, r=0.73, R2=0.53). The pre- and post-test predictive relationship was enhanced when group was included in the model. In this model [YCEpost=0.76XCEpre-0.34 Xgroup+2.24+E], group accounted for a significant amount of unique variance in predicting CE while the pre-test likelihood to pursue CE variable was held constant (F3,102=40.28, p<0.01,: r=0.74, R2=0.55). Pre-test knowledge gap, regardless of group allocation, was a linear predictor of the likelihood to pursue CE (F1,102=10.90, p=.01, r=.31, R2=.10). In this investigation, performance feedback significantly increased participants’ likelihood to pursue CE. Pre-test knowledge gap was a significant predictor of likelihood to pursue CE, regardless if performance feedback was provided. ATs may have self-assessed and engaged in internal feedback as a result of their test-taking experience. These findings indicate that feedback, both internal and external, may be necessary to trigger CE seeking behavior.

WAKING (TO) THINKING BEING: A STUDY OF EDUCATION, METAPHYSICS, MIND, AND LANGUAGE

This dissertation articulates the basic aims and achievements of education. It recognizes language as central to thinking, and philosophy and education as belonging profoundly to one another. The first step is to show that although philosophy can no longer claim to dictate the foundations of knowledge or of disciplines of inquiry, it still offers an exceptionally general level of self-understanding. Education is equally general and faces a similar crisis of self-identity, of coming to terms with reality. Language is the medium of thought and the repository of historical mind; so a child’s acquisition of language is her acquisition of rational freedom. This marks a metaphysical change: no longer merely an animal, she comes to exercise her powers of rationality, transcending her environment by seeking and expressing reasons for thinking and doing. She can think about herself in relation to the universe, hence philosophize and educate others in turn. The discussion then turns to the historical nature of language. The thinking already embedded in language always anticipates further questioning. Etymology serves as a model for philosophical understanding, and demonstrates how philosophy can continue to yield insights that are fundamental, but not foundational, to human life. The etymologies of some basic educational concepts disclose education as a leading out and into the midst of Being. The philosophical approach developed in previous chapters applies to the very idea of an educational aim. Discussion concerning the substantiality of educational ideals results in an impasse: one side recommends an open-­ended understanding of education’s aims; the other insists on a definitive account. However, educational ideals exhibit a conceptual duality: the fundamental achievements of education, such as rational freedom, are real; but how we should understand them remains an open question. The penultimate chapter investigates philosophical thinking as the fulfillment of rational freedom, whose creative insights can profoundly transform our everyday activities. That this transformative self-understanding is without end suggests the basic aims of education are unheimlich. The dissertation concludes with speculative reflection on the shape and nature of language, and with the suggestion that through education reality awakens to itself.

From Where Do We Teach? Potential Positions in Public Education

This thesis is a conceptual examination of the positions from which we teach in public education. As it is philosophical in nature, it takes no qualitative or quantitative data. It offers a review of selected relevant literature and an analysis of personal and professional experience, with the intent to pose critical questions about teaching and learning. The framework of this thesis represents the following contentions: First, from its inception, public schooling served capital by preparing skilled labour for emerging industrial markets. This history is the hegemonic shadow that hangs over public education today. Second, movements toward the standardization of funding, curriculum, and evaluation support the further commodification of public schooling. The “accountability” that standardization offers, the “back to basics” that it aims for, is counter to the potential that public education might critically inform citizens and seek social justice. Third, movements toward the privatization of public schooling under the guise of “choice” and “mobility”, brought on by manufactured crisis, serve only to widen socio-economic inequities as capitalist neoliberal interests seek profit in both the product of public schools and in schooling itself. If we recognize and understand the power of public education to inform vast numbers of citizens who will, in turn, either maintain or reform society, we must ask: What do we want public education to be? What are the effects of continuing down historically conventional and increasingly standardized paths? What do progressive pedagogies offer? How might teachers destandardize their pedagogy and pursue equitable opportunities for marginalized students? How might students name themselves and their world, that they might play a part in its reimagining? For whom do we teach, and under what conditions? From where do we teach, and why? For educators to ask these questions, and to employ what they discover, will necessitate taking substantial risks. It will necessitate taking a stand and cannot be done alone. Teachers must seek out the collaboration of their students. They must offer students the time and the space to find their own voices, to create their own selves, and to envision previously uncharted paths on which we might walk together.

Education and Self-Cultivation: Foundational Changes for Existential Flourishing

The strained relationship between pedagogy and self-cultivation is often overlooked in favour of more pressing and profitable concerns within educational institutions. However, the end of education is not a well-paying job. It is often thought that education will produce a certain type of learned individual. Students are entered into educational institutions from a very young age and spend most of their youth within them, subsequently forming a part of themselves, their self-identify and agency, through these institutions. A significant amount of trust is placed in the hands of educators not only to impart information about various subject matters but to teach students how to think. This, however, is a difficult task which cannot be completely accomplished; thinking is a skill which an educator can promote but only the individual can cultivate. If self-cultivation is not the end of pedagogical practice and education, there is something deeply contradictory between the theoretical and practical values and aims of educational institutions.This thesis will address the problems caused by the neglect of self-cultivation within the pedagogical practices of contemporary educational institutions. I argue that self-cultivation, existential learning and flourishing should be the focus of these institutions. Educational institutions can make alternative efforts not only to improve the learning environment for these students but to prepare them to cope with existential questions. By acknowledging and focusing on the significance of self-cultivation, educational institutions can and should make efforts not only to teach useful, marketable skills and information but to also nurture the agency and mental well-being of the student him- or herself. My hope is that this thesis will be the first step towards answering a larger concern: How can educational institutions alleviate the struggles of students, particularly the seemingly growing number who are suffering from depression, by appealing to notions of self-cultivation?

Training proposal in the degree of Master of Early Childhood Education for working the method of historical research in the classroom

Future teachers must be competent in creating educational settings, which provide tools to their students future they can develop a conscious mind, able to interpret their experiences, to make decisions and imagine innovative solutions to help you participate autonomously and responsible in society. This requires an educational system that allows them to integrate the subjective into a broader spatial and temporal context. La patrimonializatión of “Cultural artefacts” and oral history, the basis of which, are found in the active mind and links both the personal and the group experience, don’t only serve as a catalyst to achieving this goal, but rather, they facilitate the implementation of established practice in infant education. To gain this experience we offer the opportunity for students of their degree in Infant Education in the Public University of Navarre, training within the framework of social didactics, allowing students to learn about established practice from iconic, materials and oral sources in the Archive of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Navarra. The vidences points to their effectiveness and presented in a work in progress.

Viewbrics: Formative Assessment of Complex Skills with Video-Enhanced Rubrics (VER) in Dutch Secondary Education

To learn complex skills, like collaboration, learners need to acquire a concrete and consistent mental model of what it means to master this skill. If learners know their current mastery level and know their targeted mastery level, they can better determine their subsequent learning activities. Rubrics support learners in judging their skill performance as they provide textual descriptions of skills’ mastery levels with performance indicators for all constituent subskills. However, text-based rubrics have a limited capacity to support the formation of mental models with contextualized, time-related and observable behavioral aspects of a complex skill. This paper outlines the design of a study that intends to investigate the effect of rubrics with video modelling examples compared to text-based rubrics on skills acquisition and feedback provisioning. The hypothesis is that video-enhanced rubrics, compared to text based rubrics, will improve mental model formation of a complex skill and improve the feedback quality a learner receives (from e.g. teachers, peers) while practicing a skill, hence positively effecting final mastery of a skill.

Shared Education in contested spaces: How collaborative networks improve communities and schools

Societies which suffer from ethnic and political divisions are often characterised by patterns of social and institutional separation, and sometimes these divisions remain even after political conflict has ended. This has occurred in Northern Ireland where there is, and remains, a long-standing pattern of parallel institutions and services for the different communities. A socially significant example lies in the education system where a parallel system of Catholic and Protestant schools has been in place since the establishment of a national school system in the 1830s. During the years of political violence in Northern Ireland a variety of educational interventions were implemented to promote reconciliation, but most of them failed to create any systemic change. This paper describes a post-conflict educational initiative known as Shared Education which aims to promote social cohesion and school improvement by encouraging sustained and regular shared learning between students and broader collaboration between teachers and school leaders from different schools. The paper examines the background to work on Shared Education, describes a ‘sharing continuum’ which emerged as an evaluation and policy tool from this work and considers evidence from a case study of a Shared Education school partnership in a divided city in Northern Ireland. The paper will conclude by highlighting some of the significant social and policy impact of the Shared Education work.

Monday Morning Eye Opener, June 13, 2016

Weekly Newsletter from the Northwest District Office for libraries containing programs, activities, classes for the upcoming week.

'Always Connected’: Transforming Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

The argument of this chapter is that the idea that young people and students being ‘always connected’ should not be seen as being polarized into good or bad, but instead there is a need to see being connected as ‘learning at the interstices’. It also suggests that there is a need to be aware of the impact of digital governance on teaching and learning space. This chapter therefore introduce questions about the value and impact of always being connected and the impact and possible transformation it could have on teaching and learning in higher education.

Uses of history in history education

This compilation thesis contains an introductory chapter and four original articles. The studies comprising this thesis all concern aspects of how historical culture is constituted in historical media and history teachers’ narratives and teaching. It is argued that the teaching of history is a complex matter due to an internal tension resulting from the fact that history is both a product and a process at the same time. While historical facts, and knowledge thereof, are an important aspect of history, history is also a product of careful interpretation and reconstruction. This study analyses and discusses how history is constituted in history textbooks and popular history magazines, i.e. two common historical media, and in teachers’ narratives and teaching of history. The study finds that the historical media studied generally tend to present history as void of perspective, interpretation and representation, suggesting this to be the culturally warranted form of historical exposition. Moreover, the teachers studied also tend to approach history as if it were not contingent on interpretation and reconstruction. These results indicate that the history disseminated in historical media and history classrooms presents history in a factual way and disregards the procedural aspects of history. Applying the history didactical concepts of historical consciousness, historical culture and uses of history, this thesis argues that an essential aspect of historical understanding is an appreciation of the contextual contingency that characterises history. All history is conceived within a particular context that is pertinent to why and how a certain version of history is constructed. Furthermore, all history is also received within a particular context by people with particular preconceptions of history that are contextually contingent, in the sense that they are situated in a certain historical culture. Readers of historical media are members of societies and are thus affected by how history is perceived and discussed in these contexts. This thesis argues that an awareness of these aspects of history is an important factor for furthering a complex understanding of history that encompasses the tension highlighted above.

2000 Seat Belt Usage Survey, September 13, 2001

The good news is that safety belt usage on municipal road systems (city streets) increased 1.07 percent. This is encouraging since more than 45 percent of all motor vehicle crashes occur on city streets, and usage on the municipal road system has consistently been the lowest of the road systems studied. In communities where usage is good, enforcement and public education must be maintained in order to improve usage further; in communities where usage is still low, enforcement and public education must both be increased. Usage on the primary system (U.S. or state highways) rose 1.01 percent from the previous year. This is also welcome news because almost half of all fatalities (49 percent) occur on the primary road system. There was a decline in interstate belt use (-1.45 percent). Despite this decrease interstate usage is still traditionally the highest of all roadway categories presumably because the longer trips, higher travel speeds and large number of vehicles cause drivers to assume there is greater risk.

Developing Innovative TEL Practice in Teacher Education

This interactive symposium will focus on the use of different technologies in developing innovative practice in teacher education at one university in England. Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) is a field of educational policy and practice that has the power to ignite diametrically opposing views and reactions amongst teachers and teacher educators, ranging across a spectrum from immense enthusiasm to untold terror. In a field where the skills and experience of individuals vary from those of digital natives (Prensky 2001) to lags and lurkers in digital spaces, the challenges of harnessing the potential of TEL are complex. The challenges include developing the IT skills of trainees and educators and the creative application of these skills to pedagogy in all areas of the curriculum. The symposium draws on examples from primary, secondary and post-compulsory teacher education to discuss issues and approaches to developing research capacity and innovative practice using different etools, many of which are freely available. The first paper offers theoretical and policy perspectives on finding spaces in busy professional lives to engage in research and develop research-informed practice. It draws on notions of teachers as researchers, practitioner research and evidenc-ebased practice to argue that engagement in research is integral to teacher education and an empowering source of creative professional learning for teachers and teacher educators. Whilst acknowledging the challenges of this stance, examples from our own research practice illustrate how e-tools can assist us in building the capacity and confidence of staff and students in researching and enhancing teaching, learning and assessment practice. The second paper discusses IT skills development through the TEL pathway for trainee teachers in secondary education across different curriculum subjects. The lead tutor for the TEL pathway will use examples of activities developed with trainee teachers and university subject tutors to enhance their skills in using e-tools, such as QR codes, Kahoot, Padlet, Pinterest and cloud based learning. The paper will also focus on how these skills and tools can be used for action Discussant - the wider use of technologies in a university centre for teacher education; course management, recruitment and mentor training. research, evaluation and feedback and for marking and administrative tasks. The discussion will finish with thoughts on widening trainee teachers’ horizons into the future direction of educational technology. The third paper considers institutional policies and strategies for promoting and embedding TEL, including an initiative called ‘The Learning Conversation’, which aims ‘to share, highlight, celebrate, discuss, problematise, find things out...’ about TEL through an online space. The lead for ‘The Learning Conversation’ will offer reflections on this and other initiatives across the institution involving trainee teachers, university subject tutors, librarians and staff in student support services who are using TEL to engage, enthuse and support students on campus and during placements in schools. The fourth paper reflects on the use of TEL to engage with trainee teachers in post-compulsory education. This sector of education and training is more fragmented than primary and secondary schools sectors and so the challenges of building a community of practice that can support the development of innovative practice are greater.

Peru: intercultural bilingual education program for better performance in schools the case of the indigenous children of the Amazon

Este estudio describe el diseño y la evaluación ex-ante de un Programa de Educación Intercultural Bilingüe en la región amazónica de Perú. Los beneficiarios son los niños que no hablan español de tres comunidades étnicas amazónicas: awarunas, ashaninkas y shipibos-conibos, quienes son una pequeña minoría; los peruanos más pobres y con menor nivel de rendimiento en comprensión de lectura y matemáticas básicas, y el nivel más bajo de la matrícula, la escuela y las tasas de transición.

Entrepreneurial skills of students of polytechnic higher education in Portugal: Business influences

Introduction: Most of entrepreneurial ideas does not appear ready or over. Any business opportunity needs to be developed and improved throughout the enterprise process. Educational institutions may facilitate the ability of the students had undertaken, identifying and building business opportunities, enhancing their knowledge and formative experiences along the learning process. Objectives: Evaluate the business influences the entrepreneurial ability of students of the Polytechnic. Methodology: Correlational quantitative study, conducted with 1604 students from 18 institutions of the Polytechnic of Portugal. Data collection took place between July and November/2015, with a questionnaire to assess the entrepreneurial profile, Carland Entrepreneurship Index (CEI) and sociodemographic variables of students. Results: We found four business factors that influence entrepreneurship, "availability of funds" (4:13, SD = .67); "Have stable customers and incentives" (3.99, SD = .58); "Social and economic instability" (3:08, SD = 1.17) and "opportunities in the sector and area of residence" (3:36, SD = 1.05). On a scale range between (1-5), we obtained an overall score of 3.86 (SD = .55), for the corporate influences on entrepreneurship. Conclusion: For students entrepreneurial influences are important, with a greater sense of fear with regard to economic instability, reinforcing the need for further training and academic investment in the business.