Great effort is invested in identifying ways to change people's minds on an issue. A first priority should perhaps be enriching their thinking about the issue. With a goal of enriching their thinking, we studied the views of community adults on the DACA issue—young adults who entered the United States illegally as children. A dialogic method was employed, offering dual benefits in providing participants the opportunity to further develop their own ideas and to consider differing ideas. Yet, participants engaged in (...) dialog only vicariously by observing the talk of a pair of actors who held opposing positions on DACA. The effect on participants’ thinking was greatest in the condition in which they viewed a dialog between the two actors, rather than a comparison condition in which the actors individually expressed their positions. In control conditions, no presentation was observed. Probing questions included in all conditions encouraged a participant to examine and clarify for themselves their own position, potentially enriching it. This condition proved unsuccessful in enriching thinking; participants’ justifications for their own positions in fact became simpler and less qualified. In contrast, observing a video of a like-minded and opposing other did enrich observers’ thinking, yet to a greater degree in the dialogic than nondialogic condition. The findings thus suggest observed dialog as a promising practical approach in promoting deeper thinking. (shrink)

When learners self-explain, they try to make sense of new information. Although research has shown that bodily actions and written notes are an important part of learning, previous analyses of self-explanations rarely take into account written and non-verbal data produced spontaneously. In this paper, the extent to which interpretations of self-explanations are influenced by the systematic consideration of such data is investigated. The video recordings of 33 undergraduate students, who learned with worked-out examples dealing with complex numbers, were categorized successively (...) including three different data bases: verbal data, verbal and written data, and verbal, written and non-verbal data. Results reveal that including written data and non-verbal data leads to a more accurate analysis of self-explanations than an analysis solely based on verbal data. This influence is even stronger for the categorization of self-explanations as adequate or inadequate. (shrink)

The enhancement of social inclusion is a key to maintaining cohesion in society and to foster the benefits of cultural diversity. Using insights from the Dual Identity Model with a special focus on active categorization, we develop an intervention to increase social inclusion. Our intervention encourages the participants to categorize on a superordinate level while being exposed to their own culture. Across a set of experiments, we test the efficacy of our intervention against control conditions on the effect of social (...) inclusion, measured by perceived social distance. Results show an increase in cultural closeness and provide preliminary support for the use of a DIM-based intervention to increase intercultural inclusion. (shrink)

Why do some groups succeed where others fail? We hypothesise that collaborative success is achieved when the relationship between the dyad's prior expertise and the complexity of the task creates a situation that affords constructive and interactive processes between group members. We call this state the zone of proximal facilitation in which the dyad's prior knowledge and experience enables them to benefit from both knowledge-based problem-solving processes (e.g., elaboration, explanation, and error correction) andcollaborative skills (e.g., creating common ground, maintaining joint (...) attention to the task). To test this hypothesis we conducted an experiment in which participants with different levels of aviation expertise, experts (flight instructors), novices (student pilots), and non-pilots, read flight problem scenarios of varying complexity and had to identify the problem and generate a solution with either another participant of the same level of expertise or alone. The non-pilots showed collaborative inhibition on problem identification in which dyads performed worse than their predicted potential for both simple and complex scenarios, whereas the novices and experts did not. On solution generation the non-pilot and novice dyads performed at their predicted potential with no collaborative inhibition on either simple or complex scenarios. In contrast, expert dyads showed collaborative gains, withdyads performing above their predicted potential, but only for the complex scenarios. On simple scenarios the expert dyads showed collaborative inhibition and performed worse than their predicted potential. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of collaborative problem solving. (shrink)

At the beginning of 2020, to stop the spread of the coronavirus disease to the campus, the Ministry of Education of China launched a policy “Suspension of classes without suspending schooling” for the spring semester of 2020. However, the drawbacks of online teaching forced us to modify teaching strategies during this special period, especially developing courses that are suitable for student learning at home and improving their key competencies. In order to solve these problems, this study introduces some theoretical exploration (...) and practical work of curriculum design under the guidance of thinking-based instruction theory during the pandemic. We firstly introduce TBIT, and elaborate on the curriculum design under the TBIT theoretical frame. Then we describe a series of TBIT-based micro-courses with the pandemic as background. A descriptive study is reported to illustrate the effects of three micro-courses. Results showed that, compared to national curricula, the TBIT-based micro-courses not only improved the course quality but also enhanced students’ motivation and facilitated their online learning behavior for the online courses. The current study has important implications for how to design effective and interesting online courses suitable under pandemic and capable of improving students’ thinking abilities and key competencies. (shrink)

Self-generation of knowledge can activate deeper cognitive processing and improve long-term retention compared to the passive reception of information. It plays a distinctive role within the concept of inquiry-based learning, which is an activity-oriented, student-centered collaborative learning approach in which students become actively involved in knowledge construction. This approach allows students to not only acquire content knowledge, but also an understanding of investigative procedures/inquiry skills – in particular the control-of-variables strategy (CVS). From the perspective of cognitive load theory, generating answers (...) and solutions during inquiry-based learning is inefficient as it imposes an intrinsic and extraneous load on learners. Previous research on self-generation of content knowledge in inquiry-based learning has demonstrated that (1) a high cognitive load impairs retention of the generated information, (2) feedback is a fundamental requirement for self-generation of complex content knowledge, (3) self-generation success is key to long-term retention and (4) generating and rereading place different demands on learners. However, there is still no research on the self-generation of scientific reasoning skills and the interaction between the retention of these skills with prior knowledge, feedback and self-generation success. That is why this experiment was conducted. The focus of this research is to analyze the distinctive role of self-generation of scientific reasoning skills within the concept of inquiry-based learning and to identify the influence of prior knowledge and self-generation success on short-term and long-term retention. For this purpose, an experiment involving 133 6th and 7th graders was conducted. An inquiry activity that included the self-generation of scientific reasoning skills was compared to an inquiry task that had students simply read information about the experimental design. We used both an immediate and a delayed test to examine which treatment better developed a deeper understanding of CVS and an ability to apply this knowledge to novel problems (transfer). Direct instruction was clearly superior to self-generation in facilitating students’ acquisition of CVS immediately after the inquiry task. However, after a period of one week had elapsed, both treatment conditions turned out to be equally effective. A generation effect was only found among students with high self-generation success after a 1-week delay. (shrink)

Peer interaction has been found to be conducive to learning in many settings. Knowledge co-construction has been proposed as one explanatory mechanism. However, KCC is a theoretical construct that is too abstract to guide the development of instructional software that can support peer interaction. In this study, we present an extensive analysis of a corpus of peer dialogs that we collected in the domain of introductory Computer Science. We show that the notion of task initiative shifts correlates with both KCC (...) and learning. Speakers take task initiative when they contribute new content that advances problem solving and that is not invited by their partner; if initiative shifts between the partners, it indicates they both contribute to problem solving. We found that task initiative shifts occur more frequently within KCC episodes than outside. In addition, task initiative shifts within KCC episodes correlate with learning for low pre-testers, and total task initiative shifts correlate with learning for high pre-testers. As recognizing task initiative shifts does not require as much deep knowledge as recognizing KCC, task initiative shifts as an indicator of productive collaboration are potentially easier to model in instructional software that simulates a peer. (shrink)

Many urgent problems that societies currently face—from climate change to a global pandemic—require citizens to engage with scientific information as members of democratic societies as well as to solve problems in their personal lives. Most often, to solve their epistemic aims (aims directed at achieving knowledge and understanding) regarding such socio-scientific issues, individuals search for information online, where there exists a multitude of possibly relevant and highly interconnected sources of different perspectives, sometimes providing conflicting information. The paper provides a review (...) of the literature aimed at identifying (a) constraints and affordances that scientific knowledge and the online information environment entail and (b) individuals' cognitive and motivational processes that have been found to hinder, or conversely, support practices of engagement (such as critical information evaluation or two-sided dialogue). Doing this, a conceptual framework for understanding and fostering what we callonline engagement with scientific informationis introduced, which is conceived as consisting of individual engagement (engaging on one's own in the search, selection, evaluation, and integration of information) and dialogic engagement (engaging in discourse with others to interpret, articulate and critically examine scientific information). In turn, this paper identifies individual and contextual conditions for individuals' goal-directed and effortful online engagement with scientific information. (shrink)

The aim of the study is to document a new predictor of knowledge hiding from the perspective of Art design trainers and Art design trainees in virtual training’s and this study tends to add new theoretical insights into the body of literature. For this purpose, this study approached a sample of 500 respondents under a cross-sectional research design and respondents who have participated in virtual trainings or their trainings were at the final stage were recruited through the snowball sampling technique. (...) The useable responses remained at 406 and these have been analyzed through SPSS for demographic analysis and Smart-PLS has been used to test the structural model, while a process macro has been used to test the moderation. Results indicate that cognitive loading has the potency to reduce the knowledge hiding behavior of the trainees. Similarly, it has been observed that cognitive loading increases the cognitive engagement of the trainees, and it moreover reduces the knowledge hiding tendency of trainees. In case of mediation, a partial mediation has been documented through the variance accounted for approach while testing moderation. The role of supervisor support has not been found to be statistically significant. (shrink)

Recent findings suggest that medical students’ moral competence decreases throughout medical school. This pilot study gives preliminary insights into the effects of two educational interventions in ethics classes on moral competence among medical students in Munich, Germany. Between 2012 and 2013, medical students were tested using Lind’s Moral Competence Test prior to and after completing different ethics classes. The experimental group participated in principle-based structured case discussions and was compared with a control group with theory-based case discussions. The pre/post C-scores (...) were compared using a Wilcoxon Test, ANOVA and effect-size calculation. The C-score improved by around 3.2 C-points in the EG, and by 0.2 C-points in the CG. The mean C-score difference was not statistically significant for the EG or between the two groups. There was no statistical significance for the teachers’ influence on C-score. In both groups, students with below-average C-scores improved and students with above-average C-scores regressed. The increase of the C-Index was greater in the EG than in the CG. The absolute effect-size of the EG compared with the CG was 3.0 C-points, indicating a relevant effect. Teaching ethics with PBSCDs did not provide a statistically significant influence on students’ moral competence, compared with TBCDs. Yet, the effect size suggests that PBSCDs may improve moral competence among medical students more effectively. Further research with larger and completely randomized samples is needed to gain definite explanations for the results. (shrink)

ICAP is a theory of active learning that differentiates students’ engagement based on their behaviors. ICAP postulates that Interactive engagement, demonstrated by co‐generative collaborative behaviors, is superior for learning to Constructive engagement, indicated by generative behaviors. Both kinds of engagement exceed the benefits of Active or Passive engagement, marked by manipulative and attentive behaviors, respectively. This paper discusses a 5‐year project that attempted to translate ICAP into a theory of instruction using five successive measures: (a) teachers’ understanding of ICAP after (...) completing an online module, (b) their success at designing lesson plans using different ICAP modes, (c) fidelity of teachers’ classroom implementation, (d) modes of students’ enacted behaviors, and (e) students’ learning outcomes. Although teachers had minimal success in designing Constructive and Interactive activities, students nevertheless learned significantly more in the context of Constructive than Active activities. We discuss reasons for teachers’ overall difficulty in designing and eliciting Interactive engagement. (shrink)

Closing the research‐practice gap cannot be achieved by one of the most promising methods, which is to distill and synthesize decades of research to see how the robust findings can work in practice. An alternative approach is proposed, which is to translate a theory of active learning for practitioners.

The goal of the study is to analyse the relation between students' digital learning and transversal skills, as well as between students' digital learning and virtues. In the correlative study, 73 teachers of Class 12 of general education institutions participated, filling out a questionnaire in the Google Docs environment. As a result of the theoretical analysis, the criteria for digital learning have been identified -access to digital technologies, cooperation, teachers’ digital competence and availability of activities in compliance with cognitive engagement (...) levels. The findings of the correlation analysis show that the availability of activities in compliance with cognitive engagement levels is the most important in the development of transversal skills,while in the inculcation of virtues -cooperation. The access to digital technologies has a statistically significant correlation with both transversal skills and virtues. The teachers’ digital competence promotes digital literacy and such virtues as responsibility and wisdom. The recommendations developed as part of the study include compilation and promotion of the positive experiences of digital learning at the state and local government level; continuous monitoring and feedback analysis of purposeful digital learning and educational quality at school and classroom level; the application of digital learning resources based on the offer of activities in compliance with the students' cognitive engagement levels at the personal level. Keywords:Digital technologies, cooperation, digital competence, cognitive engagement. (shrink)

Future professionals should be prepared for scientific reasoning, i.e., to construct and apply scientific knowledge, in order to analyze and solve problems in their professional practice. Yet, future practitioners’ scientific reasoning skills often seem to be deficient when solving practical problems. This dissertation explores to what extent collaboration may foster the engagement of future practitioners in scientific reasoning: i.e., in epistemic processes and in referring to scientific content knowledge. Therefore, two studies were conducted to compare collaborative and individual problem solving (...) of pre-service teachers regarding their scientific reasoning. Study 1 investigates the effect of group heterogeneity with respect to problem solving scripts on scientific reasoning. Study 2 explores to what extent Epistemic Network Analysis can serve as a methodological approach for measuring scientific reasoning. As part of Study 1, pre-service teachers solved an educational problem either as individuals or as pairs. Collaboration showed a mixed effect on scientific reasoning processes: pairs engaged more in explaining and reasoning about the problem and drew more conclusions, while individuals engaged more in generating solutions. Additional analyses showed that the more heterogeneous pairs were regarding their members’ problem solving scripts the more they engaged in hypothesizing and evaluating evidence and the less they engaged in generating solutions. Finally, pairs less often referred to scientific content than individuals did during problem solving. Study 2 further analyzed the data by applying Epistemic Network Analysis. This method has the advantage of analyzing patterns of connections between epistemic processes, i.e., epistemic networks of scientific reasoning. The central epistemic process for pairs was evidence evaluation, which they frequently used in combination with hypothesizing and communicating and scrutinizing. On the other hand, the most characteristic process in individuals’ scientific reasoning was solution generation, which very often co-occurred with hypothesizing and evidence evaluation. The overall results indicate that if the aim is to develop a more reflective understanding of the problem, future practitioners should collaborate with each other, especially in heterogeneous settings. However, they should be supported to share knowledge regarding scientific theories and evidence as well as to reach a mutual understanding on the problem after a certain time so as to be able to have the capacity of generating solutions. Moreover, the different effects of collaboration on the process and content aspects of scientific reasoning imply that scientific reasoning might not be a unidimensional construct, and its process and content levels should be differentiated in future research. A further important methodological implication is that the process aspect of scientific reasoning can be analyzed as a network of interconnected skills and such analysis might bring more explanatory value than the mere reliance on frequencies of occurrences of isolated activities. (shrink)

The ability to analyze arguments is critical for higher-level reasoning, yet previous research suggests that standard university education provides at best modest improvements in students’ analytical reasoning abilities. What techniques are most effective for cultivating these skills? Here we investigate the effectiveness of a 12-week undergraduate seminar in which students practice a software-based technique for visualizing the logical structures implicit in argumen- tative texts. Seminar students met weekly to analyze excerpts from contemporary analytic philosophy papers, completed argument visualization problem sets, (...) and received individualized feedback on a weekly basis. We found that Seminar students improved substantially more on LSAT Logical Reasoning test forms than Control students (d = .71, p < .001), suggesting that learning how to visualize arguments in the seminar led to large generalized improvements in students’ analytical reasoning skills. Moreover, blind scoring of final essays from Seminar students and Control students, drawn from a parallel lecture course, revealed large differences in favor of seminar students (d = 0.87, p = .005). Seminar students understood the arguments better, and their essays were more accurate and effectively structured. Taken together, these findings deepen our understanding of how visualizations support logical reasoning, and provide a model for improving analytical reasoning pedagogy. (shrink)