Drawing on role theory and socio?constructivist ideas about learning, this study explores how peer?tutoring can support tutors? learning. The sample comprised ten 16?17?year?old biology tutors, working with twenty?one 14?15?year?old students from a science class over eight weeks. Data were collected through an online wiki, tutor interviews, paired tutor discussions and video recordings. Tutors? perceptions of their role motivated them to learn the material, and their learning was supported by discussion and explanation, revisiting fundamentals, making links between conceptual (...) areas, testing and clarifying their understanding, and reorganising and building ideas, rehearsing them, and working through them repeatedly, to secure their understanding. When tutors employed long answer questions, there was evidence of reflection on their learning and links made between conceptual areas. When preparing to tutor, tutors could focus on key points and engage with basic ideas from alternative perspectives. Mental rehearsal of peer?tutoring episodes helped them appreciate weaknesses in their own subject knowledge. (shrink)

Reading difficulties that are not addressed at the primary level continue to exist at the secondary level with serious consequences. Thus, it is important to provide struggling students with specific reading support. In particular, many students with learning disabilities and emotional behavioral disorders demonstrate reading obstacles and are at risk for motivation loss. A multiple baseline design was used to evaluate the effects of a motivational reading racetrack as peer-tutoring on the word reading skills of secondary students with LD (...) with and without EBD. The intervention was conducted through 4–5 baseline and 16–18 reading units three times a week for 15 min over 8 weeks. The results showed positive effects indicating a highly effective treatment. In addition, follow-up results were also promising. Our findings indicate that this multicomponent intervention has a positive effect on the word fluidity of low-achieving students in secondary education with LD and/or EBD. (shrink)

Students often face difficulties and experience negative emotions toward second language learning. The affective tutoring system is a next-generation learning approach that can detect the affective status of learning to increase performance. Therefore, for the purposes of this study, an innovative affective mobile language tutoring system was designed to support Japanese language learning. The effects of AMLTS, along with asynchronous discussion, that were intended to improve performance, were examined using a triangulation method. To investigate the effect on emotion, the proposed (...) AMLTS provides a virtual emotion agent that can interact with users and record emotional events, learning assessments, and the results of the interaction into a database. Learning effectiveness evaluations were conducted via two experiments: prototype evaluation and final evaluation. Sixty-three students, all beginners, were invited to use the AMLTS to learn Japanese. The research results show that the proposed AMLTS affective interaction design significantly improves learner engagement and performance. In the emotion feedback analysis and learning process, AMLTS helped students deepen their understanding of the content, enabled them to clearly understand the content, and to engage in peer interaction and experience positive emotions. In the evaluation of system usability, AMLTS reveals good usability for foreign language acquisition. (shrink)

The goals of this study are to evaluate a relatively novel learning environment, as well as to seek greater understanding of why human tutoring is so effective. This alternative learning environment consists of pairs of students collaboratively observing a videotape of another student being tutored. Comparing this collaboratively observing environment to four other instructional methods—one‐on‐one human tutoring, observing tutoring individually, collaborating without observing, and studying alone—the results showed that students learned to solve physics problems just as effectively from observing tutoring (...) collaboratively as the tutees who were being tutored individually. We explain the effectiveness of this learning environment by postulating that such a situation encourages learners to become active and constructive observers through interactions with a peer. In essence, collaboratively observing combines the benefit of tutoring with the benefit of collaborating. The learning outcomes of the tutees and the collaborative observers, along with the tutoring dialogues, were used to further evaluate three hypotheses explaining why human tutoring is an effective learning method. Detailed analyses of the protocols at several grain sizes suggest that tutoring is effective when tutees are independently or jointly constructing knowledge: with the tutor, but not when the tutor independently conveys knowledge. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to present an educative experience carried out in a university context, in order to discuss of the ways that peer tutoring could contribute to the development of the pedagogical skills of future and novice teachers of French as a Foreign Language. The aforementioned case study lasted throughout an academic semester and involved undergraduate and graduate students.

This is a case study of my reflections on teaching a first-year undergraduate tutorial on Ancient Greek Philosophy in the UK. This study draws upon the notion of reflective practice as an essential feature of teaching, in this case applied to Higher Education. My aim is to show how a critical engagement with my teaching practices and the overall learning experience modified, developed, or strengthened my practices, attitudes, and teaching philosophy during the course of one term. Methods for data collection (...) included a weekly logbook, student questionnaires, teaching observations, reflective exercises, and peer discussions. The findings shed light on the complexities of teaching Greek philosophy to small groups and the challenges of the practitioner's reflective process in this teaching. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to compare the learning effectiveness of peer tutored problem-based learning and conventional teaching of nursing ethics in Taiwan. The study adopted an experimental design. The peer tutored problem-based learning method was applied to an experimental group and the conventional teaching method to a control group. The study sample consisted of 142 senior nursing students who were randomly assigned to the two groups. All the students were tested for their nursing ethical discrimination ability (...) both before and after the educational intervention. A learning satisfaction survey was also administered to both groups at the end of each course. After the intervention, both groups showed a significant increase in ethical discrimination ability. There was a statistically significant difference between the ethical discrimination scores of the two groups (P < 0.05), with the experimental group on average scoring higher than the control group. There were significant differences in satisfaction with self-motivated learning and critical thinking between the groups. Peer tutored problem-based learning and lecture-type conventional teaching were both effective for nursing ethics education, but problem-based learning was shown to be more effective. Peer tutored problem-based learning has the potential to enhance the efficacy of teaching nursing ethics in situations in which there are personnel and resource constraints. (shrink)

The son of a shopkeeper, Joseph Lancaster received little formal education himself. In 1798 he set up a school in Southwark, waiving fees for poor children. Originally published in 1803, this work sets out in detail the philosophy and practice of Lancaster's system of education, which relied on peer tutoring. He was always concerned with the education of the underprivileged in industrial cities, lamenting that 'poor children be deprived of even an initiatory share of education, and of almost any (...) attention to their morals'. The early decades of the nineteenth century saw the peak of the popularity of Lancaster's system as his ideas spread and inspired the establishment of schools around the world. His book is still significant in the history of educational methods. This reissue of the revised third edition of 1805 incorporates a brief 1840 biography of Lancaster. (shrink)

Para hacer frente a los riesgos de rezago y deserción escolar durante Covid-19, las universidades implementaron programas de apoyo y de atención tutorial virtuales. Los esquemas de acompañamiento profesor-estudiante se han documentado mayoritariamente, pero poco se ha dicho sobre otras modalidades como el acompañamiento entre pares. Bajo este panorama se planteó un diseño exploratorio para identificar los tipos de ayuda educativa desplegados durante la pandemia en el marco de un programa de tutorías entre iguales en una universidad mexicana. Los resultados (...) evidencian que las ayudas más requeridas giran en torno al factor socioemocional del aprendizaje. (shrink)

The aim of such contribution is to present in a reflexive approach a project of teaching of qualitative and quantitative methods in master 1 of social sciences. It is based on congruent interests of the both methods for the multidisciplinary research investigations. The processes observed during the peer-tutelage actions are analyzed according to the approach of analysis of activity. The discussion investigates the interest of such teaching framework built in an active approach of learning as a bridge between theory (...) of methodology and practices of analyst. (shrink)

Like previous educational technologies, artificial intelligence in education threatens to disrupt the status quo, with proponents highlighting the potential for efficiency and democratization, and skeptics warning of industrialization and alienation. However, unlike frequently discussed applications of AI in autonomous vehicles, military and cybersecurity concerns, and healthcare, AI’s impacts on education policy and practice have not yet captured the public’s attention. This paper, therefore, evaluates the status of AIEd, with special attention to intelligent tutoring systems and anthropomorphized artificial educational agents. I (...) discuss AIEd’s purported capacities, including the abilities to simulate teachers, provide robust student differentiation, and even foster socio-emotional engagement. Next, to situate developmental pathways for AIEd going forward, I contrast sociotechnical possibilities and risks through two idealized futures. Finally, I consider a recent proposal to use peer review as a gatekeeping strategy to prevent harmful research. This proposal serves as a jumping off point for recommendations to AIEd stakeholders towards improving their engagement with socially responsible research and implementation of AI in educational systems. (shrink)

This article examines task-setting sequences in university tutorial sessions. Classes from three higher education institutions were audio- and video-recorded. The resulting data, which included both tutor-led and peer group discussions, were transcribed and analysed using conversation analysis. A number of themes emerged from our analysis. First, we found that the tutor's opening turns routinely followed a three-part sequence, the interpersonal and metadiscursive functions of which, we argue, are crucial components in the educative process. Second, we found that (...) students displayed discursively their reluctance to engage in discussion activities and a resistance towards academic or intellectual identities. In contrast to findings from previous studies of tutor—student interaction, we found that interactional power was negotiated in complex and contradictory ways. This, in turn, may embody a range of complex social functions including attention to the `face' concerns of the group, category membership and orientation to broader cultural trends. (shrink)

As important as it is to realize the potential of computer technology to improve education, it is just as important to understand how the social organization of schools and classrooms influences the use of computers, and in turn is effected by that technology in unanticipated ways. In Computers and Classroom Culture, first published in 1996, Janet Schofield observes the fascinating dynamics of the computer-age classroom. Among her many discoveries, Schofield describes how the use of an artificially-intelligent tutor in a (...) geometry class unexpectedly changes aspects like the level of peer competition and the teachers' grading practices. She also discusses why many teachers fail to make significant instructional use of computers and how gender appears to have a crucial impact on students' reactions to computer use. All educators, sociologists, and psychologists concerned with educational computing and the changing shape of the classroom will find themselves compellingly engaged. (shrink)

The importance of cultivating creativity in language education has been widely acknowledged in the academic literature. In this respect, digital technologies can play a key role in achieving this endeavour. The socio-cultural conceptualization of creativity stresses the role of communication, collaboration and dialogical interaction of creative expression in language education. The objective of this paper is to study the literature focusing on cases of collaborative creativity and technology embedded in language education. To this end, we carry out a systematic revision (...) of state-of-the-art literature consisting of 26 blind peer-reviewed empirical studies selected from several databases that address our main research question, namely, which specific roles and forms of digital technology can be identified in the existing literature that support collaborative creativity in language education. Results show that the features of digital technology unfold a range of learning opportunities in language education and can play three different roles in promoting collaborative creativity: as a tutoring device that guides the implementation of key co-creation skills; as a tool that enables and shapes the development of co-creative thinking skills; and as a medium that creates rich and resourceful environments to stimulate the emergence of collective creative processes. The paper also reveals that these three roles can be performed using a wide range of interactive technologies that encourage students to participate in a rich, co-creative language learning experience and equip learners with key competences to approach complex problems in a globalised and hyper-connected world. Finally, this paper may contribute to developing future language technology-enhanced learning projects capable of promoting key collaborative and creative processes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response To June Boyce-Tillman, “Towards an Ecology of Music Education”Elizabeth BauerJune Boyce-Tillman explores the values implicit in the Western musical traditions that also dominate music education. She examines the five interlocking areas of materials, expression, construction, values, and spirituality and how these areas create a more holistic way of conceptualizing the musical experience within music education. By describing the divide between the values of system A and system B, (...) Boyce-Tillman reminds us that these issues are persistent and demand our constant attention as music educators. She supports the conviction that music [End Page 186] curricula should not be dictated by a national curriculum. Instead, education should be a powerful way of supporting the dominant value system of a culture. As an educator focusing on the population of students with special needs, I find myself agreeing with her advocacy of holistic education and suggest that she look at the model of special education to implement this ecology of music education. Boyce-Tillman's proposal evokes a number of responses, of which I will mention two.My first response is to her belief in the individual within the community. This is often problematic in current educational circles. States and countries are being held to standardized curricula. While in and of themselves standards are not bad because they set educational expectations, dictated curricula do not allow for individuality and creativity. Special education addresses this problem by the use of an individualized education plan (IEP). This plan is devised to meet the abilities and capabilities of each individual student. An IEP states the educational goals for the student with special needs for one academic year. Although the IEP contains year-long educational goals, it also contains the methods for how a student will meet those goals. No two students with special needs will have the same educational curriculum. This idea is supported by humanistic ideas in that the individual child is more important than a fixed curriculum. Furthermore, the IEP is developed by all teachers working with the child. For example, a child with Down syndrome normally works with a speech therapist, physical therapist, occupational therapist, general education teacher, and several other subject specific teachers (music, art, physical education, and so on). During the creation of the IEP, all therapists and teachers work together to devise the best educational plan for the student. This helps to ensure continuity between therapies and teaching methods.Currently, many music teachers are excluded from the process of devising the IEP. This also supports Boyce-Tillman's ideas on how national curricula often support the dominant value systems and reinforce the notion of subjugating other value systems. However, I propose that the inclusion of the music teacher in the IEP process because music class is one of the easiest ways to make the student with special needs feel part of a community. The music classroom supports the idea of working together to accomplish a common goal.My second response relates to the valuing of process. While Western culture has typically placed value on product, the converse is true in special education. Throughout the devising of the IEP, the process of learning is valued. Although special education teachers have an ultimate goal for what the student is to accomplish, it is more important to examine the process of how the student achieves that goal. Furthermore, students with special needs are not given rigid time-lines in which they have to accomplish a goal. Instead, a student is allowed to move at his or her own pace. [End Page 187]Moreover, while the students with special needs are moving at their own pace, they are also nurtured by the teacher. In the United States it is common for students with special needs to be educated in the classroom with their nondisabled peers. This is referred to as inclusion. For certain parts of the day, the students with special needs may leave the regular classroom and receive tutoring in certain subject areas by the special education teacher. Many teachers who do not have experience in teaching students with special needs have noticed how the students with special needs achieve more when they are with their special education... (shrink)

The atomic hypothesis according to Ludwig Boltzmann. The scientific and philosophical importance of a controversial position at the close of the 19th century. This paper examines Boltzmann’s standpoint in the controversy over the existence of atoms between himself on the one hand and Mach, Ostwald, Helm and to some extent Duhem on the other hand. The latter wanted to develop a physics only constructed with perceptible phenomena. Because of the lack of empirical evidence of the atoms at that time they (...) did not accept them for the construction of physics. In contrast, Boltzmann found the acceptance of atoms to be a fruitful assumption, since for him the construction of physics required going beyond perceptible phenomena. Two different conceptions of nature and of the ways to know nature clashed in this disagreement between Boltzmann and his opponents. Op-posing one-sided positions, Boltzmann supported the hypothetical character of science, in which more than one basic hypothesis can be advanced: he was open to the possibility of fundamental revolutions in science. (shrink)

The paper first examines the difference between Wolff’s demonstration of my present existence and Descartes’ intuitive connection of my thinking with my existence. The results of this investigation enable us to analyse two controversial answers to the question of the knowledge of existence in Wolff’s works. The first answer is from Jürgen Stolzenberg, who discusses Wolff’s proof of the statement: I am. The second is written by Luigi Cataldi Madonna, who investigates the concept of contingent existence in Wolff’s works. The (...) problems of the interpretations they propose are different. The first uses in his analysis meanings of central terms that were foreign to Wolff. The second does not pay attention to Wolff’s framework and aims. These difficulties in their interpretations distort what Wolff does and plans in his treatment of the knowledge of existence. Wolff builds a demonstration to prove how we know that we are, because for Wolff there is only science if we prove all that we claim. According to him, philosophy is a science. With this paper I plan to clarify the context of Wolff’s demonstration of my present existence as well as the demonstration itself, to which the analysis of the above two interpretations can contribute. (shrink)

Es wird versucht, die Camapsche Definitions- und Begriffslehre darzustellen, die er bei der Entwicklung seiner Konstitutionstheorie aufstellte. Camap unterscheidet zwei Hauptteile der Definitions- und Begriffslehre: den Abschnitt, der zum Konstitutionssystem gehört, und den Abschnitt, der nicht dazu gehört. Die Definitionslehre besteht wiederum aus zwei zentralen Definitionsarten: der Strukturbeschreibung, mit der das Konstitutionssystem aufgebaut wird, und der impliziten Definition, die außerhalb des Konstitutionssystems steht. Auch die Begriffslehre läßt sich in zwei Hauptgruppen unterteilen: in die eigentlichen Begriffe, die die Begriffe des Konstitutionssystems (...) bilden, und in die uneigentlichen, die nicht zum Konstitutionssystem gehören. (shrink)

Es wird versucht, die Camapsche Definitions- und Begriffslehre darzustellen, die er bei der Entwicklung seiner Konstitutionstheorie aufstellte. Camap unterscheidet zwei Hauptteile der Definitions- und Begriffslehre: den Abschnitt, der zum Konstitutionssystem gehört, und den Abschnitt, der nicht dazu gehört. Die Definitionslehre besteht wiederum aus zwei zentralen Definitionsarten: der Strukturbeschreibung, mit der das Konstitutionssystem aufgebaut wird, und der impliziten Definition, die außerhalb des Konstitutionssystems steht. Auch die Begriffslehre läßt sich in zwei Hauptgruppen unterteilen: in die eigentlichen Begriffe, die die Begriffe des Konstitutionssystems (...) bilden, und in die uneigentlichen, die nicht zum Konstitutionssystem gehören. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to provide a critical examination of Berlin’s treatment of positive freedom by offering a review of his standard arguments against this concept. Throughout his essays and particularly in “Two Concepts of Liberty” Berlin connects the idea of positive freedom with such notions as monism, rationalism, and determinism. Each of these connections will be discussed separately. I will argue that most of Berlin’s arguments against positive liberty are somehow flawed. Although Berlin valued positive freedom as (...) one of the ultimate ends of life, his critical view of the concept should be tempered and contextualized since it was mostly based not on logical or conceptual grounds but on historical and interpretative considerations. (shrink)

Much is said about Middle Eastern and North African publics opposing gender equality, often referring to patriarchal Islam. However, nuanced large-scale studies addressing which specific aspects of religiosity affect support for gender equality across the MENA are conspicuously absent. This study develops and tests a gendered agentic socialization framework that proposes that MENA citizens are not only passively socialized by religion but also have agency. This disaggregates the influence of religiosity, highlights its multifacetedness, and theorizes the moderating roles that gender (...) and sociocognitive empowerment play via gendered processes of agentic dissociations. Using 15 World Values Surveys and multilevel models, our analyses show that most dimensions of religiosity fuel opposition to gender equality. However, the salience of religion in daily life is found to increase women’s support for gender equality and cushion the negative impact of religious service attendance. Also, gender and education moderate the impacts of several religiosity dimensions; for instance, women’s support for gender equality more sharply declines with increased service attendance than men’s. Altogether, this study finds that religious socialization is multifaceted and gendered, and that certain men and women are inclined and equipped to deviate from dominant patriarchal religious interpretations. (shrink)

This article addresses the phenomenology of aesthetic experience. It first, critically, considers one of the most influential approaches to the psychophysics of aesthetic perception, viz. neuroaesthetics. Hereafter, it outlines constitutive tenets of aesthetic perception in terms of a particular intentional relation to the object. The argument comes in three steps. First, I show the inadequacies of the neuroaesthetics of beauty in general and Semir Zeki’s and V.J. Ramachandran’s versions of it in particular. The neuroaesthetics of beauty falls short, because it (...) develops hypotheses of aesthetic experience which have no consequences for the understanding of what art is, that is, how artists produce visual meaning effects in their works. This is so because they make the rewarding feeling of beauty the cornerstone of aesthetic experience. Next, I show why and how aesthetic experience should be defined relative to its object and the tools for meaning-making specific to that object, and not relative to the feeling (of beauty) it may elicit. Finally, I sketch the import this fact may have on a research program in empirical aesthetics. (shrink)

This paper provides a précis of Ernst Cassirer’s concept of art as a symbolic form. It does so, though, in a specific respect. It points to the fact that Cassirer’s concept of “symbolic form” is two-sided. On the one hand, the concept captures general cultural phenomena that are not only meaningful but also manifest the way man makes sense of the world; thus myth, religion, and art are considered general symbolic forms. On the other hand, it captures the formal structures (...) and semiotic tools thanks to which meaning is constructed within each general symbolic form ; thus, in art, perspective or the golden section are well-known examples of symbolic forms, now in a narrow sense, i.e. they are means to configure parts into an organized, meaningful whole. The paper will comment on art along both these two dimensions, but its main goal is to provide with concrete examples of aesthetic symbolic forms in the narrow sense in order to show how conceptual meaning can be inscribed in the space of aesthetic intuition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Literature, Imagination, and Human RightsWillie van Peer“the poet’s function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen”Aristotle: Poetics, 1451aAristotle’s dictum has been of vital importance to the development of literary theory, and its significance can still be felt today. It is the foundation of the distinction we make between journalism and literature, between history and fiction. Literature, Aristotle proposes, (...) is about things that could happen, not about things that have taken place in reality. Literature is thus inscribed in the realm of the imagination. However, imagination does not operate in an epistemological vacuum. A fictional text entertaining no relation with the world would have no meaning. Perhaps giants, dragons and witches do not really exist, and perhaps it is not really possible to cover seven miles with each step of those wonderful boots that Tom Thumb discovered. But we have no difficulty in imagining those things, precisely because they entertain an intimate relationship with forms and things, events and actions that happen in daily life. The details of the relationship between reality and fiction are less important for the present argument than the fact that fiction is embedded in our pragmatic attitudes. 1 Ernst Bloch has given this human tendency a name: The Hope Principle. Our desire for a better world expresses itself in hope, a distinctive feature of the species Homo Sapiens. The importance of the imagination in the project of humanity has received eloquent and systematic treatment in the philosophical work of Hans Vaihinger and Helmuth Plessner. 2 Imagination also gives impetus to history, because it drives us toward the realization of aims and plans that initially lived only in our hearts and minds: “Someone dreaming never remains in the same place.” 3 [End Page 276]Similar things have been asserted about literature, by Horace, Sidney, Matthew Arnold, and others. Reading is supposed to make us better humans, heightening our awareness, increasing our sensibility, and thus indirectly guiding our actions toward the establishment of a better world. Sometimes noble motives are associated with this function. Reading literature, it is then assumed, makes the reader more socially tolerant, more perceptive about other humans, and more politically conscious. This is the so-called Edification Hypothesis. Anthony Savile sums up this view when he submits the thesis that literature has a unique power to make us understand the thoughts and feelings of other human beings. This ethical perspective on literature has been expressed since Greek Antiquity. 4 It will be remembered that Plato condemned literature precisely for this reason: because it diverts our attention from the real world, itself already an imperfect reflection of Pure Ideas. Aristotle rejects this view and develops a theory squarely opposed to that of his teacher. According to him, literature contributes to the elevation of mankind, to paideia. By showing us that which is possible, and by involving us in the inescapable passage of tragic events, readers and spectators are drawn into emotions of fear and compassion, emotions that lead to katharsis, a process that purifies us of megalomania (hubris), safeguarding democratic government and protecting us from unrestrained tyranny. 5The Aristotelian view that literature has an edifying effect had been generally present in Western tradition till about 1800. Until then literature was viewed almost universally as an ethical category. Consider, for instance, the self-evident way in which Richardson prefaces Pamela: “If to divert and entertain, and at the same time to instruct and improve the minds of the YOUTH of both sexes: If to inculcate religion and morality in so easy and agreeable a manner, as shall render them equally delightful and profitable: If to set forth in the most exemplary lights, the parental, the filial, and the social duties....” 6The embarrassment a modern reader may feel when confronted with such overt claims to morality is largely a product of the nineteenth century, when literature came to be seen as a predominantly aesthetic category, eluding all attempts at moral categorization. This movement has resulted in a liberation of literature from moralism. At the same time, it has created nontrivial difficulties in thinking about ethical and political issues, so... (shrink)

This article discusses the benefits and limitations of collecting electronic data for large-scale thematic content analysis. We will discuss a number of methodological and technical issues. The first one is the construction of a list of relevant keywords that serves as the primary data collecting device. This is not only a technical necessity, but also secures a theoretically and empirically valid collection of data. The second concern is the quality of electronic archive information. Finally, source-specific data characteristics and coding difficulties (...) are dealt with. In conclusion, seven guidelines for electronic data collecting are proposed. (shrink)