ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
The Washback of the TOEFL iBT in Vietnam
Author: Barnes, Melissa
Date: 2016-07-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Language Tests,Language Proficiency,English (Second Language),Second Language Instruction,Online Courses,Observation,Language Teachers,Instructional Materials,Internet,Technology Uses in Education,Educational Technology,Program Effectiveness,Curriculum,Teaching Methods,Second Language Learning,Case Studies

Washback, or the influence of testing on teaching and learning, has received considerable attention in language testing research over the past twenty years. It is widely argued that testing, particularly high-stakes testing, exerts a powerful influence, whether intended or unintended, positive or negative, on both teachers and learners. This article investigates the washback effects of a high-stakes English language proficiency test, the Test of English as a Foreign Language Internet-Based Test (TOEFL iBT), in Vietnam. Vietnam, a developing country whose educational philosophies differ from those underpinning the TOEFL iBT, provided a unique context to explore the test's washback. In the course of this study, four teachers were observed and teaching materials were collected from educational institutions in Vietnam. The study revealed that the TOEFL iBT influenced both what the teachers taught and how they taught but its effects were mediated by the use of test preparation materials.
The Impact of Correcting Cognitive Distortions in Reducing Depression and the Sense of Insecurity among a Sample of Female Refugee Adolescents
Author: Mhaidat, Fatin
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Females,Refugees,Experimental Groups,Control Groups,Security (Psychology),Depression (Psychology),Measures (Individuals),Adolescents,Cognitive Restructuring,Therapy,Statistical Analysis,Outcomes of Treatment,Correlation,Secondary School Students,Foreign Countries

This study aimed at identifying the level of depression and sense of insecurity among a sample of female refugee adolescents, and the impact of an indicative program for reducing cognitive distortions in reducing depression and their sense of insecurity. The study sample consisted of 220 female refugee adolescents, 7th to 1st secondary stage, at the governmental schools in the Zarqa educational directorate, who came to Jordan as a result of war conditions in their home land. The experimental sample contained 20 female refugees, the ones who got the highest scores regarding the depression and sense of insecurity scale, and they were set randomly into 2 groups, experimental and control, with 10 females each. The study used the depression scale, and the sense of insecurity scale. It also used an indicative program consisting of 12 sessions, each one lasts for 45 minutes, with a rate of 2 meetings a week. The results indicated that the female refugee adolescents suffer from a medium-level depression, with an average of (73.97%), and a sense of insecurity (69.46%). Findings showed that there was a statistically significant impact at the level (a = 0.05) between the control and experimental groups for depression and sense of insecurity among the female refugee adolescents, ascribed to the indicative program.
Deep Knowledge: A Strategy for University Budgetary Cuts
Author: Reynolds, Douglas B.
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Budgets,Retrenchment,Universities,Costs,Business,Models,Social Values,Liberal Arts,Educational Philosophy,Concept Formation,Second Language Programs,Biology,English Literature,Religion,Physics,Research Needs

During and after the Financial Crisis of 2008, many institutions of higher learning have had revenue and budgetary reductions, forcing them to make severe university budget cuts and university reductions in force. Often the university cuts are preceded by a process of evaluation of academic programs where institutions determine what they stand for and value. One option, when forced to downsize, is to use a business model, such as Sullivan (2004) explains, where high-value, low-cost programs are kept and low-value, high-cost programs are cut. However, a business model of education does not reflect the true social value of education or the importance of arts, sciences and humanities, where students learn how to struggle with, write about and understand the world. John Henry Cardinal Newman's (1852) treatise, The Idea of a University, suggests an alternative strategy of cost cutting that has to do with deep knowledge, i.e. keep the oldest programs in existence on a given university. Using the deep knowledge concept, a university will cut young (junior programs) first and retain old (senior) programs until the very last, rather than deciding cuts based on a business model. The deep knowledge concept emphasizes a Socratic ideal where professors and students wrestle over concepts, such as the meaning of &quot;beauty.&quot;
Supporting and Developing Self-Regulatory Behaviours in Early Childhood in Young Children with High Levels of Impulsive Behaviour
Author: Dan, Aviva
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Self Control,Early Childhood Education,Kindergarten,Mixed Methods Research,Child Behavior,Statistical Analysis,Intervention,Program Implementation,Check Lists,Preschool Teachers,Correlation,Teacher Characteristics,Behavior Problems,Outcomes of Treatment,Foreign Countries

Deficits in self-regulatory skills underlie or contribute to a range of adverse developmental problems and disorders, including ADHD (Barkley, 1997), eating disorders (Attie &amp; Brooks-Gunn, 1995) and risk -taking behaviour (Cantor &amp; Sanderson 1998; Eisenberg et al., 2005). Self-regulation has been recognised as an important factor in aiding academic achievements of school-age children. There is less knowledge of the subject in early childhood, yet the development of self-regulatory has been described as an important milestone in early childhood development (Shonkoff &amp; Phillips, 2000). This research describes the implementation of an intervention programme in kindergartens that aimed to help young children with highly impulsive behaviour, develop self-regulatory behaviors. The children were identified by the Achenbach Child behaviour check list (1.5-5) and by the kindergarten teachers. This Research was based on mixed methods. The quantitave data reveled a number of children with highly impulsive behaviour and difficulties in self-regulation. The qualitative data gave a deeper interpretation to these children's behaviour and the difficulties involved. After the implementation of the program, the kindergarten teachers reported on an increase in the children's self-regulatory skills. By understanding and supporting the processes involved in the development of self-regulation skills, it might be possible for significant adults in young children's lives to have a substantial effect in aiding young children, who are highly impulsive. This was the rationale for the present research.
Teaching the Practice of Compassion to Nursing Students within an Online Learning Environment: A Qualitative Study Protocol
Author: Hofmeyer, Anne
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Nursing Education,Online Courses,Qualitative Research,Online Surveys,Student Attitudes,Undergraduate Students,Caring,Curriculum Development,Teaching Methods,Resilience (Psychology),Metacognition,Social Isolation,Health Services

Background: There is an increasing global demand for higher education to incorporate flexible delivery. Nursing education has been at the forefront of developing flexible online education and offering programs &quot;anywhere and anytime&quot;. In response to calls to teach compassion in nursing education, there is an abundance of literature concerning classroom teaching, but few online studies. Design: This paper presents a qualitative study protocol to explore the effectiveness of a compassion module taught to undergraduate nursing students within a digital learning environment. The protocol consists of an online knowledge intervention (compassion module) and pre- and post-intervention qualitative questions to explore and describe undergraduate nursing students' understanding and learning about the practice of compassion toward patients, colleagues and self. Methods: Students will study the online compassion module over a two week period in a theory course in the final year of the Bachelor of Nursing. Students will participate in the study by responding to open-ended questions, administered through SurveyMonkey® before and after studying the online compassion module. Free text responses will be analysed thematically. The researchers will obtain institutional ethical approval. Discussion: This study protocol may generate new knowledge about how nursing students learn compassionate practice within an online learning environment. These findings could be used by nurse leaders and educators to develop empirically supported curricula and workplace cultures to foster the practice of compassion and resilience in the next generation of nurses.
Surveying Geology Concepts in Education Standards for a Rapidly Changing Global Context
Author: Guffey, Sarah K.
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Geology,Teaching Methods,Science Instruction,Standards,Scientific Concepts,Educational Policy,Educational Change,Comparative Analysis,Professional Associations,Elementary Secondary Education

Internationally much attention is being paid to which of a seemingly endless list of scientific concepts should be taught to schoolchildren to enable them to best participate in the global economy of the 21st Century. In regards to science education, the concepts framing the subject of geology holds exalted status as core scientific principles in the Earth and space sciences domain across the globe. Economic geology plays a critical role in the global economy, historical geology guides research into predictions related by global climate change, and environmental geology helps policy makers understand the impact of human enterprises on the land, among many other geological sciences-laden domains. Such a situation begs the question of which geology concepts are being advocated in schools. Within the U.S. where there is no nationally adopted curriculum, careful comparative analysis reveals surprisingly little consensus among policy makers and education reform advocates about which geology concepts, if any, should be included in the curriculum. This lack of consensus manifests itself in few traditional or modern geology concepts being taught to U.S. school children.
A Study of Differences in the Degree to Which Instructors Are Prepared to Manage the Development of the School They Teach At
Author: Afanasyeva, Tatyana P.
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: School Administration,Statistical Analysis,Teacher Education,Correlation,Teacher Qualifications,Teacher Motivation,Nonparametric Statistics,Cognitive Processes,Educational Innovation,Foreign Countries

This paper relies on the ideas that underpin the scholarly school of developing pedagogical systems to assess the degree to which instructors are prepared to manage the development of the school they teach at. The authors propose a structural/functional model for instructor preparedness to be the subject of innovation activity, provide a relevant methodology for it, and describe the content and findings of their empirical substantiation of it. The study identifies instructor groups with a high, medium, and low degree of preparedness to manage innovation activity in a school and establishes statistically significant differences between them in terms of the degree to which the motivational, cognitive, technological, and organizational components of preparedness have been formed. The authors come up with a proof that the instructor's preparedness to be the subject of innovation activity depends on the degree of his/her preparedness to fulfill particular duties in managing this activity. The paper identifies specific factors behind the differences between instructors in this characteristic and determines the degree of their impact. The authors establish a close link between the instructor's preparedness to be the subject of innovation activity and his/her actual participation in resolving objectives in managing the school's development. The use of the authors' methodology for assessing instructors' preparedness to manage innovation activity in a school could help determine specific factors affecting it and develop individual trajectories of increase in their innovation competence, as well as facilitate their productive involvement in the process of working out the school development program.
John Dewey's Pragmatism: Implications for Reflection in Service-Learning
Author: Maddux, Harry Clark
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Progressive Education,Pragmatics,Reflection,Service Learning,Beliefs,Inquiry,Philosophy

This essay examines the relationship of philosophical pragmatism to the practice of reflection in service-learning. Service-learning theory and practice often elides over or ignores entirely the principles of inquiry as developed by Dewey. The exercise of reflective thought requires that educators create a situation of discomfort for learners, and mandates that students examine the warrants of settled belief (i.e., assumptions). A brief historical overview of the major strains of American pragmatism is presented, followed by a summative review of important treatments of reflection in service-learning. The elements of inquiry in Dewey are then analyzed and their implications for service-learning considered.
Effects of Learners&apos; English Proficiency Level in Learning English Prepositions through the Schema-Based Instruction
Author: Fujii, Kazuma
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Semantics,Language Proficiency,Comparative Analysis,Schemata (Cognition),Vocabulary Development,Psycholinguistics,Efficiency,Instructional Effectiveness,Translation,Teaching Methods,Form Classes (Languages),Technical Education,Foreign Countries,Asians,Scores,Pretests Posttests,Language Tests,College Students

The purpose of this paper is to compare the efficiency of the core schema-based instruction (SBI) in learning English prepositions between two groups that were placed depending on learners' level of English proficiency. The SBI in the present study refers to a way of teaching in which the schematic core meaning of a given lexical item is provided. This is essentially different from the translation-based instruction (TBI) in that the SBI, which takes cognitive linguistics (CL) as its theoretical basis, provides learners with a single abstract core meaning in vocabulary learning, whereas the TBI provides a list of several meanings and learners memorize it without a chance of paying attention to the semantic connection among its meanings. The efficiency of the SBI in comparison with the TBI has been investigated in the previous studies with high expectation, but not all of them have shown its significant achievement over the TBI. For this reason, several researchers have pointed out that the effects of the SBI may be influenced by learners' English proficiency level (e.g., Cho, 2016; Imai, 2016). However, this issue has not been fully explored empirically. The participants of this study, 41 students at a technical college in Japan, learned the six English prepositions (&quot;at&quot;, &quot;in&quot;, &quot;on&quot;, &quot;to&quot;, &quot;for&quot;, &quot;with&quot;) in accordance with the SBI. Then the participants were divided into two groups depending on the results of their TOEIC Bridge scores that they took about one month before this study. In order to assess the difference in efficiency between the two groups, pre- and post-tests targeting the six prepositions were used. The results of the pre- and post-test scores and t-tests suggested that the SBI worked more effectively for the learners with higher English proficiency than the ones with lower English proficiency.
Effect of Alignment on Text Cohesion in the Continuation Task
Author: Jiang, Lin
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Connected Discourse,Second Language Learning,Second Language Instruction,Collaborative Writing,Pretests Posttests,College Students,Syntax,Semantics,Protocol Analysis,English (Second Language),Writing Skills,College English,Foreign Countries,Alignment (Education),Comparative Analysis,Writing Processes

A continuation task provides learners with a text with its ending removed and requires them to complete it through writing in a most coherent and logical way. The current study investigated (a) whether the continuation task had a positive effect on text cohesion and (b) whether texts produced by pairs exhibited higher cohesion than those produced by individual learners. A total of 80 college students were randomly assigned to one of three task conditions: 1) 40 students working in pairs in a continuation task; 2) 20 working individually in a continuation task; and 3) 20 working individually in a picture writing task. Text cohesion was analyzed by using three indices from Coh-metrix: Argument Overlap, Latent Semantic Analysis, and Causal Cohesion. Moreover, the collaborative dialogue and think-aloud protocols were collected and transcribed for identifying language-related episodes (LREs). The results showed that learners in Condition 1 produced the highest text cohesion while those in Conditions 3 the lowest. Furthermore, learners in Condition 1 produced more cohesion-related LREs, especially proportionally more correctly resolved LREs than those in Conditions 2 and 3. The implications of these findings from the perspective of alignment are discussed.
Exploring Instructors' Rationale and Perspectives in Using Blogs as a Tool for Teaching English as a Second Language
Author: Hussin, Supyan
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Student Journals,Electronic Journals,Second Language Instruction,English (Second Language),Higher Education,Web Based Instruction,Qualitative Research,Semi Structured Interviews,Check Lists,Teacher Attitudes,Statistical Analysis

Embedding web-based learning systems in education has drawn increasing popularity and growing interest among the contemporary language education community in recent time. In particular, blogs have become a profound phenomenon in the present landscape of online education. However, research addressing the instructor's perspective about the engagement of blog technology in second language education is still lagging behind. The current study seeks to explore and survey the perspectives of six Malaysian academicians on the use of blogs in teaching English as second language to Malaysian students at higher education institutions. A qualitative approach was adopted to collect responses from the participants via a semi-structured interview. In addition, a checklist of features of the blog was used to investigate the blogging activities in the courses conducted by the participants. The collected data from the interview were analyzed qualitatively, whereas the blog checklist data were analyzed quantitatively. The obtained results indicated that the surveyed instructors had a positive reflection on using blogs in the teaching and learning of the English as second language.
Exploring the Roles of Parents and Students in EFL Literacy Learning: A Colombian Case
Author: Hurtado Torres, Sergio Aldemar
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Parent Role,English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Foreign Countries,Parent Participation,Parent Child Relationship,Literacy,Family Environment,Parent Attitudes,Student Attitudes,Grade 9,High School Students,Video Technology,Qualitative Research,Interviews,Homework,Surveys,Feedback (Response)

There is little scholarly information about parent involvement in their children's English as a Foreign Language (EFL henceforth) literacy learning in the Colombian context. This exploratory-qualitative study looks into the possible roles of parents and children in EFL literacy learning at home, with special emphasis on parental roles and contributions. The study has a three-fold purpose: (1) to describe the behaviour of parents and students when doing EFL literacy tasks at home, (2) to explore feelings and thoughts (perceptions) of parents and students about working together on EFL literacy tasks at home, and (3) to identify ways in which parents contribute to a student's EFL learning. Sixteen ninth grade students at a state school, and their parents or caregivers, carried out a series of EFL literacy tasks in their respective homes. Video recordings, field notes, qualitative interviews, and surveys were used as data collection tools. The results demonstrate that even when parents do not have a command of the English language, they have the potential to help with EFL learning from a non-linguistic point of view (e.g. monitoring children's homework, providing learning conditions, shaping children's minds for EFL by giving advice, and feedback about EFL homework development).
Linguistic Turn and Gendering Language in the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary
Author: Arimbi, Diah A.
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Gender Differences,English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Second Language Instruction,Gender Bias,Feminism,Dictionaries,Language Teachers,Definitions,English,Instructional Materials,Content Analysis

Language constructs how humans perceive things. Since language is a human construction, it tends to be biased as it is mainly men's construction. Using gender perspectives, this paper attempts to discuss the imbalance in gender representations found in the examples given in an English learner's dictionary, that is, the &quot;Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 3rd Edition&quot;. A learner's dictionary is chosen because it is where one can find and learn the meaning of words. The results show that linguistically speaking, English is still a highly patriarchal and gendering language where men are portrayed better than women. Women tend to be subjugated under men's domination. Sexism and patriarchy still overshadow the meanings of words characterizing men and women. This means that men are still considered to be dominating women, despite the fact that the feminist movement has been going more than thirty years. Consequently, English language teachers should balance the gender bias by providing additional materials that are gender neutral.
The Impact of Service-Learning Course Characteristics on University Students' Learning Outcomes
Author: Moely, Barbara E.
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Service Learning,College Faculty,Course Content,Undergraduate Students,Outcomes of Education,Student Surveys,Predictor Variables,Community Services,Item Analysis,Social Change,Problem Solving,Leadership Qualities,Student Satisfaction,Correlation,Academic Achievement,Values,Reflection

Undergraduate students' reports of their service-learning course experiences and their gains from participation in those courses were investigated with a sample of 250 students at Tulane University. The students completed a survey in which they rated their service-learning courses in terms of three aspects: Value of Service, Focus on Service, and Opportunities for Reflection. These course attributes predicted students' reported outcomes from service-learning, including Learning about the Community, Academic Learning, Gains in Problem-solving and Leadership Skills, and Satisfaction with the University. A Social Change orientation in the service-learning course contributed independently to the prediction of outcomes. Replicating an earlier study, a &quot;match&quot; between student preferences for service orientations and the nature of service experienced was shown to predict service-learning course outcomes for students who expressed a positive orientation preference.