Formal Educational Contexts Research Articles

Scope and Implications of Social Media in the Context of Higher Education: Review of Researches

Social media are extremely popular online destinations that offer users easy ways to build and maintain relationships with each other, and to disseminate information in an activity referred to as “social networking”. Students, teachers, parents and organisations, in increasing numbers use tools available on social networking sites, to communicate with each other in a fast and cost effective manner. The use of social networking sites to support educational initiatives has also received much attention. Popular social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, WhatsApp, Flickr, ResearchGate, YouTube, LinkedIn etc. demonstrates an emerging opportunity for students and educators within formal higher education contexts to share ideas, celebrate creativity and participate in an environment which offers immediate feedback from other members of the specific network. The present paper offers an introduction to social networking and emergence and growth of popular social networking sites. This is followed by an extensive review of researches on social media in the context of higher education. The scope and implications of social networking in educational context have also been discussed at length. Finally, major problems and issues involved in the use of social networking have been brought out. The inherent challenges and promises to optimize the use of social media in the context of higher education still require concerted efforts of educational technologies and academicians as conclusive evidence on the effective use of social media for attaining objectives of higher education is lacking at present.

Systematic Review of Self-Assessment in Physical Education

Self-assessment is among the most impactful processes in student learning. Since no review of this process was found in the field of physical education (PE), the objective of this work was to perform a systematic review of the literature published over the last five years on the self-assessment of PE students in formal education contexts. The review was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) standards. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were established to select the articles. A total of three researchers independently applied the above criteria and obtained a total of thirteen studies. After synthesising the results by category, we found that: a majority of the studies were conducted in Europe; all 13 studies covered the educational stages of either secondary or higher education; an even number of qualitative and quantitative approaches were distributed among the studies; some studies focused on specific sports or contents, while others were applicable to any subject; and, finally, depending on the research design adopted, the results described self-assessment strategy processes, improvements in learning, drew descriptive portraits of students regarding health, or reflected students’ positive perceptions of self-assessment. It is necessary to conduct further studies on PE students’ self-assessment, especially in primary education.

Designing a connected learning toolkit for public library staff serving youth through the design-based implementation research method

Design-based Implementation Research (DBIR) is an iterative approach to developing practical theory and tools to solve problems of practice and to support innovation in improving teaching and learning, which is rarely used in informal settings such as libraries. This study presents findings from a multi-year researcher-practitioner collaboration in which the authors employed DBIR to iteratively design and implement a professional development resource, the ConnectedLib Toolkit, for use in public libraries across the United States (U.S.). In this study, the authors explain what established DBIR challenges and benefits in K-12 formal educational contexts manifest in the development and implementation of a professional development resource for youth-serving library staff working in diverse public libraries across the U.S. This study also disentangles how these challenges and benefits manifest in this setting. These insights will be useful to researchers and library practitioners who are considering partnerships to address problems of practice in library systems.

Political choices during the European Parliament elections as a model for civic responsibility of young people in Poland – the context of formal education

The main axis of the narration in this article is the analysis of the electoral activity of young Poles from the perspective of the formal program of Citizenship Education in the area of shaping the attitudes of young people as active voters. The first part of the article presents the context of Polish civil society and the electoral activity of young Poles. The Author connects the analyses of youth electoral patterns to with the assessment of effectiveness of formal education, including textbook messages, in shaping and developing civic engagement in youth. The article presents the analysis of textbooks for civic education, as well as indicates some non-textual contexts for implementing civic education in Poland. The analysis of citizenship education textbooks becomes an opportunity to approximate multi-faceted challenge of shaping civil attitudes among young people in Poland.

Why linguistic entrepreneurship?

AbstractThis introduction builds on De Costa et al.’s (2016], [2019) notion of linguistic entrepreneurship, which is defined as “the act of aligning with the moral imperative to strategically exploit language-related resources for enhancing one’s worth in the world” (2016: 696). The four empirical studies and two critical commentaries that constitute this special issue explain the relevance of this construct and explore how it is instantiated in a range of formal and informal educational contexts across the world. Specifically, we explain how linguistic entrepreneurship serves as a unique and innovative contribution to the existing body of sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and language policy research on neoliberalism.

Exploring participant engagement during an astrophysics virtual reality experience at a science festival

ABSTRACT Virtual reality applications turn abstract concepts into experienceable phenomena and present exciting opportunities to transform science education and public outreach practices. While research has started to look into the affordances of virtual reality (VR) in the formal science education context, the potential of these technologies to enhance public engagement with science is largely unexplored. To improve the way that VR may be used in informal learning and public outreach contexts, the purpose of our study was to undertake evidence-based investigations that shed light onto the relationship between VR and public engagement. Aiming to identify and develop the benefits of VR technologies, we propose a conceptual framework for engagement with VR at a science festival that comprises four aspects of participant activity: immersion, facilitation, collaboration, and visualisation. This framework guided the research design of our exploratory case study of one VR tour at a science festival. Data included visitor surveys, video recordings, VR screen captures, and focus group interviews with outreach and science professionals. Our findings reveal important ways that VR supports visitor engagement at a science festival. More generally, these findings and our framework contribute to the ongoing efforts of engaging the public with science in more diverse informal learning contexts.

Teaching Cultural Heritage through a Narrative-based Game

Games are used in various learning situations and domains, among which is cultural heritage. Storytelling is used in games regarding cultural places, but it often takes a simple form. Thus, the authors’ aim is to investigate the possibility to communicate cultural content through a narrative-based game that can function with multiple narratives. Another core element of our design is the less exploited in serious games combination of endogenous cooperation and competition. The social dimension of our design was expressed through features of Classroom Multiplayer Presential Games (CMPGs), in respect of using a one-to-many game environment projected on a single screen, while enhancing collaborative work in small teams. After providing an overview of the game, we briefly explain how t his was implemented with the use of Twine, a free authoring tool for the creation of interactive stories and text-based games. Subsequently, we present the two interventions we conducted, one with teenage students ( n = 19) and one with post-graduate students ( n = 14), to test how our game design functions with real users. A mixed research methodology was followed in the two trials and data were collected through observation, focus group discussions, short questionnaires, and game reports. Findings indicated that the suggested design is playable but provided helpful insights into its future improvements. The game managed to engage both teenagers and adults with the cultural content and create motivation towards it. Learning gains were registered for both groups, but these were more appreciated by the adult participants, who additionally found the game to be more entertaining. The limited character of our results imposes the need for future extensive evaluation of the game design in both formal and non-formal educational contexts.

Participation?! Educational Challenges for Young Refugees in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic

This article focuses the educational settings in the everyday life of young refugees in the context of distance education under the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. It explores dimensions and intensifications of education-related digital inequality during this period in formal and non-formal educational settings. Based on ethnographic interviews with teachers, young refugees and social workers, different dimensions of inequality as well as interrelations between informal (leisure), non-formal (child and youth welfare) and formal (school) educational contexts for empowering the educational participation of young refugees, especially regarding online learning, are discussed. The empirical data show that during the period of distance education the specific needs of young refugees are only taken into account to a limited extent and thus increasing risks of exclusion from education emerge. Lack of technical access, media expertise, language skills and personal support turn out to be major challenges in enabling educational participation of vulnerable groups such as young refugees. Therefore, educational policy at federal and national level in Germany needs to outline a scheme on how to meet these challenges by further developing non-formal as well as formal educational support structures.

Samba and Choro in the Classroom

This article examines how the performance of samba and choro becomes a process of student enculturation within a Brazilian formal educational context. Musical enculturation is defined as the process of gaining music skills and knowledge through immersion in the music making and music of one’s social environment. While the processes of enculturation involve both formal and informal education, this study primarily focuses upon the formal instruction at Colégio Pedro II (São Cristóvão), a federally funded public school in Rio de Janeiro. This research shows that samba and choro were selected by Colégio Pedro II music instructors as culturally important musical forms representative of Rio de Janeiro, historically excluded from formal, public education. The recent inclusion of samba and choro in formal education was made possible by progressive, post-1988, Brazilian educational legislation. I argue that the teaching of samba and choro in the school environment provides students with the necessary participatory skills to engage with the rich musical traditions of samba and choro that are pervasive in Rio de Janeiro as cultivated through the enculturative processes demonstrated at Colégio Pedro II (São Cristóvão) grupo de samba and grupo de choro.

RESEARCHING THE ROLE OF DIGITAL MEDIA IN ENABLING EDUCATIONAL PARTICIPATION OF YOUNG REFUGEES

This paper presents an ongoing joint ethnographic research project by the University of Cologne and the Leuphana University Lüneburg, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), focusing the role of digital media in facilitating young refugees‘ educational participation (“Bildungsteilhabe Geflüchteter im Kontext digitalisierter Bildungsarrangements”, 2019-2022), The project aims at reconstructing factors that enable educational participation of young refugees in digitally-mediated educational environments. In three extended phases of ethnographic field work (participant observations) and artefact analyses of digital media in non-formal educational contexts such as youth welfare institutions (e.g. residental groups, pedagogical family assistance and youth-cafés) formal educational contexts (e.g. schools, vocational training etc.) and informal spaces (e.g. family, peer activities etc.) implicit and unplanned as well as explicit and pedagogically planned uses of digital media are focused. The central research question in this paper is what importance (if any) does digital media (such as social media sites, apps, smartphones, learning software etc.) have in the everyday life of young refugees when it comes to educational practices and coping in the everyday life. In this context, practices and their relation to aspects of unequal basic conditions (e.g. level of education) and digital inequalities (e.g. reproduction of disadvantages in media usage, differences in media experiences etc.) are analyzed. This paper presents the empirical work in progress focusing methodological and ethical challenges in research at the intersection of sensitive areas such as forced migration, youth welfare, private life and schooling.

Children’s digital multimodal composing: implications for learning and teaching

ABSTRACT This paper explores the implications of children’s out-of-school digital multimodal composing practices on learning and teaching in the formal educational context. It adopts a case study approach where publicly accessible YouTube video productions of three children around the world are examined. Applying a multimodal discourse analysis approach, we analyse the children’s videos and discuss what they suggest about the children’s literacies and skills. We argue that children’s digital multimodal composing practices demonstrate their creativity, critical thinking, and a semiotic awareness. Following the case studies, we discuss how the educators can respond to students’ out-of-school literacy activities by creating the ‘third space’ for learning in schools.

Reset in Stone: Memory and Reuse in Ancient Athens by Sarah A. Rous

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 363 a result, the state remained strong, and compromise played a much larger role in the eastern political economy. In the end, however, this is not a book in search of answers to big questions. It is a narrative of what happened in the political sphere, with just enough analysis to make it cohere. That is not a criticism, for there is value in such an exercise, but one wonders in this case about the target audience. It is evidently meant to be a general readership, and Kulikowski is both a reliable guide and an entertaining writer, but many will undoubtedly wilt in the face of the rapid pacing and the litany of names. Students will benefit from much here, including the series of highly legible maps (xii–xxx) and a good general index (355–382), but the book’s utility in a formal educational context is diminished by the lack of references to both primary and secondary materials as well as an editorial decision to limit the bibliography to book-length studies. The annotated suggestions for further reading (319–328), organized by century, are not an adequate substitute. Specialists will enjoy hearing Kulikowski’s perspective on the broad sweep of events, noting the scholarly controversies that bubble beneath the surface of his narrative and inevitably disagreeing with his stance from time to time, but this is still essentially cast as a popular book. It is possible that all audiences will find occasional cause for disappointment: the book may be too challenging for many readers who have little prior knowledge of the period, but also lacks the generic features that would invite engagement from students and scholars. However, anyone who is prepared for both its challenges and its limitations is likely to find it a profitable and engaging read. University of Toronto Kevin W. Wilkinson Reset in Stone: Memory and Reuse in Ancient Athens. By Sarah A. Rous. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. 2019. Pp. xviii, 366. Scholars of ancient history and archaeology have long been familiar with and captivated by the presence of reuse in the material record, particularly in ancient Athens. The processes by which an object is transformed into another object have been described as spoliation, reuse, and recycling. In this book, Sarah Rous proposes a new label: upcycling. In Rous’s formulation, upcycling can be defined as “intentionally meaningful reuse,” or reuse wherein the “visibility of the trace”—a phrase Rous adapts from Pierre Nora’s “the materiality of the trace”—can be ascertained and analyzed (6). This focus on intentionality allows Rous to examine specific instances of reuse in ancient Athens with an eye towards social memory. The book consists of an introduction, four chapters, and an epilogue, followed by endnotes and a bibliography. The introduction lays out Rous’s argument, covers some general historiography of spolia studies and memory studies, and provides a series of six vignettes designed to illustrate the concept of upcycling. Although brief, these case studies are interesting and well chosen to highlight the flexibility of the term “upcycling” and its broad applicability across time and space. The first chapter, which focuses on instances of upcycling that involve accentuation of the reuse, is engaging and successful in demonstrating the usefulness of Rous’s concept. Rous begins with a familiar example of reuse that is not upcycling: the Themistoklean city wall built after the Persian destruction of Athens in 480/79 b.c.e. In Rous’s reading of the wall, the reuse was not intended to be visible or meaningful and there was no clear 364 PHOENIX motivation for it beyond rapidity and economics; in other words, the reuse of material in the Themistoklean wall did not foster a particular communal memory for the Athenians and therefore is not an example of upcycling. Rous then compares this with the North Akropolis wall, also rebuilt following the Persian destruction. In this instance, the careful selection and reconstruction of parts of the Old Parthenon and Old Athena Temple so that they would be visible and recognizable does show the intentionality behind the reuse, conveys meaning, and would have affected communal memory. Rous then juxtaposes this counterexample and...

The Effect of Japanese Animation Series on Informal Third Language Acquisition among Arabic Native Speakers

Recent studies on language acquisition and motivation have targeted Japanese language learners in a formal educational context, with less attention paid to learners who study Japanese informally. The current study aims to investigate the impact of Japanese animations in the context of informal third language acquisition. It targets the native speakers of Arabic who are interested in learning Japanese as a third language (L3), and investigates the motivations of Arab teenagers and young adults to learn Japanese. Further, the paper also focuses on examining aspects of Japanese language proficiency among teenagers and young adults, including vocabulary enhancement and grammar competence. The methodology used in the current study is twofold: an online survey questionnaire adopted from Armour and Iida (2016), followed by an engaging experiment in which participants were divided into two groups (reality anime group vs. action anime group) in order to examine the effectiveness of anime selection in boosting proficiency level. The findings of the online survey indicate that Arabic native speakers are highly motivated to learn Japanese, while the experiment results confirm that the type of anime and consistency of exposure do support the acquisition process. Further, the study concluded that consumption of anime series contributes to the learning process and facilitates learners' proficiency in general and vocabulary learning in particular. However, it remains unknown whether or not Arabic native speakers' motivations lead to their enrollment into formal Japanese foreign language education. Avenues for future research and implications are also presented toward the end of the paper.

Digital technologies in support of students learning in Higher Education: literature review

Digital technologies are an integral part of Higher Education teaching, revealing a set of technologies chosen to integrate formal learning contexts, and therefore being used by students in support of learning. This paper presents a literature review mapping the digital technologies set for higher education students to use in formal education contexts, over the last five years between 2012 and 2017. Results show a pattern of technologies reflecting teacher’s choice for methods combining face-to-face and at distance learning, frequently in relation to the adoption of flipped classroom methods. Mapping the digital technologies used by students, showed a pattern of three most used in a total of nine types identified. Institutional Learning Management Systems mainly support a wider access to information and learning materials, followed by technologies that promote publishing and sharing content related to class activities, and a broad range of technologies categorized under ICTs. The overall impact of use of technologies in students learning process and outcomes revealed to be positive, used with the intention to promote students’ active engagement and participation in the learning process inside and outside the classroom walls. The data also revealed digital technologies to support more transmissive ways of teaching, facilitating students individually to Access, share and publish information, and significantly lesser used to promote collaborative and cooperative learning.

Examining K–12 teacher learning in a makerspace through the activity–identity–community framework

Despite growing interest in the educational benefits of integrating making into formal educational contexts, few studies have examined professional development (PD) models for assisting K–12 teachers in doing so. Through the design and implementation of a unique PD experience, this qualitative case study examined the perspectives of eight teachers from an independent girls’ high school who participated in an eight-week maker-centered learning experience situated in a commercial makerspace. Data were collected through semi-structured individual interviews at the conclusion of the PD experience. Findings suggest participants engaged in making activities both inside and outside of the makerspace, shifted in identity formation between teachers/learners and makers/non-makers, and recognized community development within their peer group as well as with members and staff of the makerspace. Participants also noted elements of maker-centered learning activities that may be incorporated into their teaching practice.

Navigating four billion videos: teacher search strategies and the YouTube algorithm

ABSTRACT YouTube hosts a vast catalogue of instructional videos that are increasingly used in formal education contexts. Teachers regularly use YouTube to select videos for students, but the processes they use to select these resources have been understudied. This study explores how teachers search for videos, and the role of YouTube’s complex algorithm in that process. It reports on a case study of nine Australian teachers working across two schools, at various stages of their careers, from a variety of subject domains. When searching for content on YouTube, most teachers use what can be described as a search and scroll method, meaning they enter a relatively simple search term then scroll through the resulting list. This strategy relies on the teacher to select appropriate videos displayed by YouTube’s algorithm, representing an entanglement of human and software labour. The considerations of teachers around specificity to learning goals, length, engagement, and affect when choosing videos are discussed as important factors in final selection. While some teachers navigated through the search returns using well-developed content knowledge, others used rushed, or uncritical methods, increasing the influence of the algorithm in their practice.

Processi autoregolativi e feedback nell’apprendimento online

The e-learning training, both within most traditional formal education contexts and in the latest version of MOOCs, is growing. However, the limits are also highlighted: high risk of drop-out, high variability in the quality of education and learning outcomes. The commitment to further qualify e-learning training implies a redefinition of educational and evaluation models and tools that consider aspects of cognitive, metacognitive and motivational nature. Specifically it seems interesting to study the self-regulation processes which many have highlighted as one of the main success factors in the study and which we must consider as particularly critical when the regulation of learning processes is completely or almost at the expense of the subject, as typically happens in e-learning contexts. It is therefore interesting to develop tools and strategies that help students to reflect and become aware of those dimensions that are basis of self-regulating behaviour. In this way also Social Learning Analytics perspective, through the implementation of feedback tools, offers interesting solutions to improve levels of awareness and trust of students in e-learning environments.

Topics and motivations of children and adolescents when creating comics and cartoons

El humor gráfico es un medio que niños, niñas y adolescentes encuentran atractivo para dar cuenta de vivencias personales y presentar su perspectiva ante un tema que los convoca. Son escasos los estudios que han abordado de forma articulada aspectos pragmáticos motivacionales y temáticos en el humor gráfico de adolescentes. Con este propósito, realizamos un análisis multidimensional de 151 textos multimodales realizados por niños, niñas y adolescentes de 10 a 19 años en nueve talleres implementados en contextos de educación formal e informal en Argentina. A partir de análisis multivariados identificamos diferencias etarias y de formato (viñeta única o tira) según la motivación y los temas de los textos.

Learning Design: European Approaches

Research on instructional and learning design is ‘booming’ in Europe, although there has been a move from a focus on content and the way to present it in a formal educational context (i.e., instruction), to a focus on complex learning, learning environments including the workplace, and access to learner data available in these environments. We even see the term ‘learning experience design’ (Neelen and Kirschner 2020) to describe the field. Furthermore, there is an effort to empower teachers (and even students) as designers of learning (including environments and new pedagogies), and to support their reflection on their own practice as part of their professional development (Hansen and Wasson 2016; Luckin et al. 2016; Wasson et al. 2016). While instructional design is an often heard term in the United States and refers to “translating principles of learning and instruction into plans for instructional materials, activities, information resources, and evaluation” (Smith and Ragan 1999), Europe tends to lean more towards learning design as the key for providing efficient, effective, and enjoyable learning experiences. This is not a switch from an instructivist to a constructivist view nor from a teacher-centred to a student-centred paradigm. It is, rather, a different mind-set where the emphasis is on the goal (i.e., learning) rather than the approach (i.e., instruction). Designing learning opportunities in a technology enhanced world builds on theories of human learning and cognition, opportunities provided by technology, and principles of instructional design. New technology both expands and challenges some instructional design principles by opening up new opportunities for distance collaboration, intelligent tutoring and support, seamless and ubiquitous learning and assessment technologies, and tools for thinking and thought. In this article, the authors give an account of their own and other research related to instructional and learning design, highlight related European research, and point to future research directions.

Phonological Sensitivity of Bilingual and Multilingual (Primary) School Students

Summary This literature overview presents findings stemming from eleven contemporary studies dealing with various aspects of phonological sensitivity in bilingual and multilingual individuals within the context of formal education. The selected studies were published in English, during the past decade, but they include several languages in various combinations. The main objective of this review is to inquire about the nature of phonological sensitivity in bilingual and multilingual individuals while they are developing their early literacy or expanding their literacy to new languages. To achieve that, findings from the selected studies were categorized according to the targeted aspects of phonological sensitivity, i.e. phonological units. The most common research designs, instruments and self-reported limitations were listed to provide a better understanding of the circumstances in which research was conducted. Phonological sensitivity of young bilinguals and multilinguals who are developing their literacy skills appears to be complex, but no distinctive advantages or disadvantages were reported in comparison to monolinguals. However, multiple varying characteristics of research participants frequently interfere with the research design, mainly because of group heterogeneity and small sample size unsuitable for generalization. For a better understanding of the topic, further research is needed, especially in the area of multilingualism.