Akmansoy, Vesile & Kartal, Sadik (2014). Chaos Theory and its Application to Education: Mehmet Akif Ersoy University Case. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 14[2], 510–518.
This study surveyed thirty professors from different faculties at a university in Turkey on their opinions about wether certain aspects of chaos theory could be applied to education. It was a qualitative study, using a standardized set of open-ended questions posed in the same way and same order the the participants. In analyzing the data, two researchers independently coded the themes, and then compared results. Their percentage of agreement was sufficient for statistical validity. The researchers found that the participants did believe that many aspects of chaos theory were applicable to education. For instance, they related the butterfly effect to the effect failure can have on a student. Often times, they argued, an early failure will snowball, and result in many more failures down the road.
One of the responses I found very interesting was the participants’ answer to the question “If students with aggressive, shy, or self-confident communication styles can be identified before they come to class would that prevent communication hindrance from occurring?” 90% of the respondents said yes. Only a small minority were of the view that since students act differently in different situations, it may not necessarily make a difference. I would count myself in the latter group.
While this article was very interesting to read, I’m not certain that it has contributed greatly to the profession of education. The sample size was very small; they surveyed only 30 professors from three different faculties. Some of the questions asked were fascinating to ponder, but many of them appeared to be leading, posed in a way that encouraged the answers the researchers seemed to be looking for. None of the results contradicted what was found in the review of research. This article may contribute to educational philosophy, but alone, it is of little value to the average educator.
Bell, Edward E. (2014). Graduating Black Males: A Generic Qualitative Study. The Qualitative Report, 19[13], 1–10.
In this study the researcher surveyed fifteen Black American male high-school dropouts. His questions focused on the nonacademic reasons that the participants chose to leave school. The exact questions he asked were not present in the article. The results followed three main themes: students perceived prejudice against them, felt their teachers and school “did not care about them,” and they also expressed that they “wanted to excel.”
I am surprised this study was published. There were several problems with the experiment, many of which the author acknowledged. For example, the sample size was not large enough, and all subjects were recruited at the same event. I also find that the author didn’t list a specific set of questions, asked in the same order and in the same way, a significant limitation. The writing is also very poor quality, and even bizarre in some ways, such as including the mention of “your mamma” jokes. I do not feel that this article was worthy of publishing, although I do feel that the subject matter is important and should be explored in more rigorous studies.
Eren, Altay and Yesilbursa, Amanda (2013) "Does Involuntary Mental Time Travel Make Sense in Prospective Teachers’ Feelings and Behaviors During Lessons?," Australian Journal of Teacher Education: Vol. 38: Iss. 2, Article 5.
In this article the authors looked into what they called “mental time travel” in educational settings. This “time travel” occurred when a prospective teacher would mentally relive past experiences, or imagine future scenarios during a class period. While past research has focused on both voluntary and involuntary mental time travel, this study focused only on involuntary mental time travel.
The researchers used 100 prospective teachers as subjects, and had both objective and subjective questions for them to answer about their experiences during a 50 minute class on education. The subjective questions consisted of open-ended questions about the event, and the closed-ended questions asked the participants to rate their experience numerically. Both the quantitative and qualitative results were consistent with past studies, suggesting that these mental episodes are important to the subjects’ learning, and that their valence was a determining factor for wether the experience was deemed positive, negative, or neutral.
This thorough and well-written study was interesting because it examined a phenomena we all experience regularly, but rarely stop to consider. The researchers came to the conclusion that if mental time travel could be steered toward future, positive events, the effect on the students would likely be positive. This was because when the subjects experienced mental time travel into the past, it was usually deemed a negative experience, and negatively impacted their future behavior. I think it would be very interesting to see more studies of this nature, especially if they were conducted in public school classrooms. If the results were consistent in different environments, encouraging future, positive mental time travel could potentially be a novel way of trying to boost student learning. I do question how impactful that tactic would be as opposed to other types of classroom strategies, however.
Tong, Andrew Ming Hei; Zhan, Kaili Chen (2012) “Supporting Social Competence Among Secondary Students in Hong Kong: Teachers’ Beliefs About School-wide Interventions,” International Journal of Special Education: Vol 27 [3], 148-157.
This study examined the way teachers in Hong Kong viewed the effectiveness of interventions in their schools. The study included 60 participants from four different schools. They were all asked to give a numerical value to the veracity of statements on the survey. The researchers chose to do this study in an Asian country because most previous research on this issue had come from western countries.
The results showed that, unsurprisingly, teachers favored interventions to “promote inclusive education and develop students’ social competence.” They also believed in school-wide interventions, but found them difficult to implement. Among the reasons they cited for this difficulty was lack of training and resources.
This was a very well written article, with clear data tables, and with all of their study questions included. The presentation made the data easy to understand and the writing was clear and easy to follow, and never employed educational jargon needlessly. I agree with the authors that one major limitation of the study was the small sample size. It’s difficult to extrapolate to the whole city of Hong Kong from just 60 participants. Another limitation, also acknowledged by the authors, was the fact that did not include students in the study. It would’ve been interesting not only to see how the students felt on the subject, but also to study if their responses correlated with those of the teachers.
In General, I found this to be an interesting, and well-written, if somewhat predictable, article.
An, Song, Carpenter, Mary Margaret, Tillman, Daniel A. (2013) “Elementary Teachers Integrate Music Activities into Regular Mathematics Lessons: Effects on Students’ Mathematical Abilities,” Journal for Learning Through the Arts: 9[1]
In this study the researchers investigated wether including music in mathematics lessons improved student learning. They chose one third grade and one first grade classroom to study. The teachers of these classes had attended training in applying music to the study of math. They took a series of pretests, implemented the lesson plans, and then took a series of post-tests. They measured how the students performed on a variety of different mathematical concepts, and found a statistically-significant increase in student performance.
What is most striking in this article is the graph, and how sharp and uniform the increase in student achievement was after the music/math lessons. The students’ scores on their post tests were only a little less than twice as high as their pretests. That’s a significant jump from just a few weeks of music/math lessons. One problem with the study, however, was that there was no control group. It would’ve been interesting to see how the music compared to a non-music group at the end of a given period of time. If the music group’s scores wound up significantly higher than a non-music groups’ it would’ve lent more credence to the idea that integrating arts into core curriculum is more effective than teaching without it.
It would also be interesting to see the results if the same study was conducted, but with another core subject area. Can music improve language scores? Another interesting variation would be if music was replaced with visual art. There is a lot of potential for this kind of information to be able to positively inform teaching strategies. Approaching subject matter from different interdisciplinary angles may help to engage a wider variety of students, and help all students relate the learning to the real world.
Lee, Chwee Beng, Teo, Tmothy & Bergin, David (2009) “Children’s Use of Metacognition in Solving Everyday Problems: An Initial Study from an Asian Context,” The Australian Educational Researcher; 36[3], 89-102
This study looked at how children employed metacognition in making everyday decisions. The researchers used asian schools, and had primarily Chinese students as subjects. Their sample size, 254 5th grade students, was sizable. The researchers gave students a variety of multiple-choice questions centered around every-day problems that students might experience. One example given was that of purchasing a bicycle. Students were asked how they would go about choosing a bicycle to purchase, and given four options, each of which displayed a different level of metacognition. By analyzing the students’ answers, the researchers were able to obtain statistics on the use of metacognition.
The results showed that students did engage in metacognition, and at a variety of different levels. The researchers suggest that this study, along with those conducted by other researchers, suggests that metacognition may be a useful tool for lower-level learners. They also suggest that such students may benefit from instruction in the use of metacognition as a problem-solving tool.
This article was interesting, especially when considered in conjunction with the research by others to which it refers. I question how one would go about educating young students in metacognition, however. Would such instruction be included as a part of another discipline, or would there be an entire curriculum just for metacognition? It would be interesting to see the long-term effect of teaching these types of skills to students.
Bayat, Nihat (2014) “The Effect of the Process Writing Approach on Writing Success and Anxiety,” Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice: 14(3), 1133-1141
This research was conducted to evaluate if a group of students instructed in the Process Writing Approach would be more successful and less anxious than a control group when given writing tasks. The researchers chose 74 first-year university students, and put them into either the control group, or the experiment group. Both groups were given both pre- and post-tests. Between the tests, the control group was given standard writing instruction, and the experimental group was taught the Process Writing Approach.
This approach breaks the writing process into several stages, and allows writers to focus on just a couple aspects at a time. Students are encouraged to see their writing as a continuum, and not an all-or-nothing endeavor. The researchers hypothesized that because of this, the experimental group would experience more success and less anxiety than the control. The results supported this hypothesis.
I’d like to learn more about the Process Writing Approach. The description given at the beginning of this article was brief, and sufficient for their purposes, however it would be good to learn a bit more detail about it. This does seem like something that could be immediately applicable in the classroom, especially with the focus that standardized tests put on writing and other core subjects. In general, the article was well written and engaging. It would be interesting to see the results if the experiment were repeated with students of a younger age.
Seo, Hae-ae, Lee, Eun Ah & Kim, Kyung Hee (2005) “Korean Science Teachers’ Understanding of Creativity in Education,” The Journal of Secondary Gifted Education: 16(2,3), 98-105
This study on teachers’ perceptions of creativity employed 66 Korean science teachers as subjects. The researchers sought to find out if these teachers viewed creativity in terms of all three of its components, or whether they had a more limited view of it. To evaluate the participants’ understanding, they were given several open-ended questions, and their responses were coded by the researchers. Their responses fell into one of three categories, biased, transitional, or balanced. Their placement depended on how many of the three aspects of creativity they mentioned in their answers. The three categories were cognition (divergent thinking/knowledge/skills), personality (“openness and tolerance for ambiguity”), and environmental condition (social context).
Unsurprisingly, the majority of respondents hit upon the cognitive category, but few mentioned aspects of the personality category. Only one subject mentioned environmental condition or social context. The researches also came to the conclusion that because other ideas such as problem-solving and thinking ability were mentioned, the subjects must have felt that intelligence was a factor in creativity. They mention in their literature review that there is some debate about the correlation between intelligence and creativity. One theory, the Threshold Theory, posits that there is only a correlation up to about an IQ of 120, and after that the correlation disappears. The results from this study seem to suggest that the participants believed that there was a greater correlation than that.
While this article in general was not particularly stimulating or motivating, I did find myself agreeing with parts of the their discussion of their findings. For instance, I agreed with the idea that teachers should be more aware of the different ways that creativity manifests so that they can encourage those traits in their students and remove hinderances that might prevent the expression of that creativity. Since the study only polled science teachers, there is no way to tell if creativity is perceived differently in different disciplines. It would be interesting to see how arts teachers would reply to the same survey.
Tan, Ai-Girl, Ho, Valerie & Yong, Lim-Chyi (2007) “Singapore High School Students’ Creativity Efficacy,” New Horizons in Education: 55(3), 96-106
This study looked at the effectiveness of Singapore students’ ability to creatively solve problems. The participants were 510 high school students. The students were given a questionnaire to fill out in which they rated themselves on a scale of 1 to 5 for each question. The questions, which are not listed, were meant to measure how effectively they solved problems, using the types of creativity mentioned in the Korean Science Teachers article.
The results showed that the students’ creativity efficacy was “moderately high.” The researchers interpreted this to mean that the theme of creativity, which their schools had recently begun to implement, was in fact being accepted.
I’m sure this article would be very useful if you were a teacher in Singapore, but for others it may not have such significant implications. It was interesting to learn about the cultural differences, and that the schools were implementing a theme of creativity across all their schools. What may be even more interesting would be to see the results if this study was repeated in several years. Would students show greater efficacy after the theme had become more entrenched in the schools?
Trnova, Eva (2014) “IBSE and Creativity Development,” Science Education International: 25(1), 8-18
This study sought to determine if science teachers enrolled in a development program became more creative as a result. The researchers determined this by examining a portfolio of the participants’ work throughout a year and a half, and also through interviews. Their results showed that the teachers did improve creatively.
I am surprised this study was published. The process hardly seemed rigorous. They did not have a control group to compare their results to, for one thing. They didn’t even have any type of pre- or post- test. The entire evaluation was based on portfolios of work and interviews. While that may be a useful portion of a study, it hardly seems worthy to be a study in itself. The paper doesn’t even describe how the material was coded.
One aspect of the article I did agree with was the assertion that in order to train students to be creative, they need to have a creative teacher. However, there must be more rigorous ways to measure progress toward that goal.
