Fictitious Students Research Articles

Understanding teacher judgments of student motivation: The role of (un-)available cues

BackgroundAccurately judging student motivation enables individualized and student-centered instruction. However, teachers in school tend to judge student motivation inaccurately. Low availability of motivation-related cues, like mastery-approach goals and work-avoidance goals, may explain neglecting these cues in judging motivation. Instead, gender and academic achievement might be overly utilized because they are easily available. AimTo test teachers’ utilization of highly and equally available cues when judging student motivation. MethodsIn the first vignette experiment, pre-service and in-service teachers (N = 205) judged eight fictitious students’ motivation sequentially. Teachers received either achievement goal cues (EG1) or additionally gender and academic achievement cues (EG2), creating an information-adequate environment. In Experiment 2, newly recruited pre-service and in-service teachers (N = 213) evaluated the same vignettes in the same groups, but vignettes were presented simultaneously, and cues had to be memorized, resulting in an information-rich environment. Teachers then formed judgments based solely on their memory without further access to the vignettes. ResultsWhen teachers judged student motivation sequentially, they strongly used mastery-approach goals and work-avoidance goals—regardless of whether other cues were available. In memory-based judgments, teachers primarily used gender and academic achievement. ConclusionsResults demonstrate that in information-rich environments where cues have to be memorized, teachers tend to overlook motivation-relevant cues. Instead, they focus more on cues that do not inherently indicate motivation. These findings suggest that teachers could benefit from assessment environments, like formative assessment, that allow for the direct processing of available cues to better judge student motivation.

Understanding the Factors that Affect the Assessment of Student Performance in Pharmacy Practicums

ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to explore factors that may influence a practice educator’s assessment of an entry-to-practice pharmacy student during inpatient direct patient care practicums. MethodsThis was a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews of existing practice educators from a variety of hospital practice environments. Participants were asked to assess a fictional case of a student’s work, which provided a framework for a broader discussion of assessment practices. Interviews were transcribed and subjectively analyzed for themes and factors that each study participant considered for the case and in their past precepting experiences. ResultsA total of 13 participants consented and were interviewed. Identified themes included the quality of student work, key aspects of the student’s performance, professionalism, and the complexity of the patient assigned to the student. There was significant heterogeneity in both the assessment of the fictional student and the factors that influenced each participant’s assessment. It was clear that not all guidance provided by the academic institution is read or followed. Participants described challenges in applying the assessment rubric, including lack of time, training, resources, knowledge of the degree requirements/structure, and psychological factors inherent in high-stakes courses. ConclusionComplex, varied, and often contradictory factors are used by experiential practice educators in their assessment of pharmacy students on practicum. These findings lead to inconsistency and heterogeneity when assessing a mock case and actual students. Educators should consider mandatory training to ensure those who assess students have an understanding of practicum course expectations and assessments.

Attitudes towards students with disabilities achieving their educational and work-related goals: a factorial survey experiment among higher education institution employees in Norway

Despite the widespread promotion of inclusive environments within higher education, social barriers and a lack of understanding among university staff continue to hinder students with disabilities in their goals of graduating and finding employment. Using ableism as a theoretical framework, this study aimed to explore attitudes among higher education institution employees towards students with disabilities and their feasibility in different types of education and employment positions. “Employees” in this study included teaching staff, student support, and administration. We conducted a factorial survey experiment in which respondents were invited to evaluate vignettes describing fictional students with and without disabilities. Other factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, and motivation were also included in the vignettes. A total of 2157 higher education employees across Norway participated in the survey and answered four questions regarding the likelihood of the student described in the vignette graduating, finding employment, and being suitable for relevant work tasks. Additionally, respondents were asked to rate how likely it was that they could make arrangements for the student during their studies. Results from multilevel regression analyses suggest that higher education employees are generally positive towards making arrangements for students with disabilities. However, despite this, students with disabilities were considered less likely to graduate, find employment, and less suitable in performing relevant work tasks in comparison to students without disabilities. We argue that ableist expectations continue to dominate perceptions of students within academia, and until ableism is addressed at an institutional level, higher education will remain far from inclusive.

A question of feedback? Studying effects of academic performance and teacher feedback on primary school students' social acceptance in an experimental setting

IntroductionBeing socially accepted by peers is a fundamental psychological need, and the consequences of social rejection are manifold. Investigating the causes of social rejection, a large body of studies have already established the relationship between social acceptance and individual characteristics (e.g., academic performance). However, the overall contributions of those individual characteristics are rather small, and the cause-and-effect relationship is still unclear. In addition, following social referencing theory, studies suggest that the feedback teachers give to students might also influence their social acceptance.MethodsThis experimental study, therefore, examined the influence academic performance, as well as teacher feedback, have on social acceptance. Teacher feedback was operationalized along the following two dimensions: feedback valence (positive/negative) and feedback focus (personal/task). A total of 737 third and fourth-grade primary school students (51% girls) from North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) rated a fictional student's social acceptance on a scale of three sociometric items before and after watching an experimental video that showed a school day of the fictional student. Participants were randomly assigned to one level of academic performance (high/average/low) and one of four feedback conditions, with each being a combination of the two factors, feedback valence and feedback focus. Data were analyzed using linear mixed models.ResultsThe results indicated that both academic performance and the valence of teacher feedback influenced participants' social acceptance of the student in the video. For instance, a high academic performance had a positive effect and a low academic performance had a negative effect on social acceptance. Further, positive teacher feedback influenced social acceptance positively, while negative teacher feedback influenced social acceptance negatively. However, this effect was moderated by the focus of the teacher's feedback. Feedback with a focus on the person had a more substantial effect on social acceptance for both positive and negative feedback than feedback with a focus on the task.DiscussionThese findings illustrate the importance teachers and their feedbacks have on students' peer relationships. They further suggest that it not only matters if teachers give positive or negative feedback but also how they do it.

Differences in need-supportive teaching toward students from different socioeconomic backgrounds and the role of teachers’ attitudes

According to Self-Determination Theory, teachers can enhance their students’ motivation, engagement, and learning through need-supportive teaching, which involves providing autonomy support, structure, and involvement. However, within classes, there appears to be great variation in the degree to which teachers support students’ psychological needs. The current studies aimed to investigate to what extent this differentiation in need support was associated with students’ socioeconomic background. Additionally, we examined whether teachers differentiated their need support more strongly when they had more biased Explicitly or Implicitly measured attitudes toward students from a low socioeconomic background. We conducted two studies: Study 1 was a vignette study representing a fictional student from a high or low socioeconomic background, and Study 2 was a field study where teachers reported on the need support provided to real students from a high and low socioeconomic background from their own class. Findings of both studies indicated that teachers reported lower levels of involvement for students from a low compared to a high socioeconomic background. Moreover, in Study 2, teachers reported to provide students from a low socioeconomic background with less autonomy support and more structure compared to students from a high socioeconomic background. However, these differences in autonomy support and structure seemed to be related to other student characteristics, namely students’ gender, and teachers’ perceptions of students’ academic ability and classroom behavior. Furthermore, we revealed that teachers differentiated their need support more strongly when they had more biased attitudes toward low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Unpacking the logics of gendered educational choices: 10th graders’ evaluation of appropriate educational tracks

ABSTRACT This study aims to unpack one element of the logics of gendered educational choices, namely how cultural beliefs about gender can shape young people’s judgements about gendered educational tracks. Through a survey experiment conducted among secondary school students in Oslo, Norway, we assess respondents’ judgements about fictitious students’ “appropriate” educational choices presented through short vignettes. The study investigates how judgements vary according to the gender of the fictitious students, as well as respondents’ gender and their gender essentialist beliefs. The results indicate that devaluation of female-typed work play a role in young people’s judgements about educational tracks. Boys and girls alike seem to award male-typed vocational education and general college preparatory education higher status than female-typed vocational education. Nonetheless, vignette boys are more strongly advised against choosing female-typed vocational programmes than vignette girls with the same characteristics. This pattern is evident regardless of respondents’ essentialist beliefs. Thus, both devaluation and gender stereotypical expectations pull in the same direction for boys, against entering female-typed education in upper secondary school. Furthermore, the findings indicate that gender essentialism works asymmetrically. Respondents with gender essentialist beliefs are more likely to advise girls not to choose male-typed vocational programmes. However, we did not find evidence that respondents, including those who otherwise express gender essentialist beliefs, believe that female-typed vocational educational choices are appropriate for women simply because they are women.

The use of a scriptwriting task as a window into how prospective teachers envision teacher moves for supporting student reasoning

AbstractThe development of mathematical reasoning skills has increasingly been of focus for the teaching and learning of mathematics. This research utilizes a teaching simulation using the methodology of scriptwriting, in which prospective teachers are asked to complete a script of a dialogue from a classroom simulation involving fraction multiplication and division with justification, assisting fictional students to work through their difficulties and helping them to justify their reasoning. Such tasks allow for the examination of the prospective teacher moves to support student reasoning through their imagined action and choice of words. Scripts from forty-one prospective primary teachers were examined for the study, and five clusters based on the type of teacher move for supporting student reasoning were found. Overall, the prospective teachers emphasized the elicitation and facilitation of students’ ideas. The cluster analysis, however, provided a nuanced examination of the cohort’s teacher moves. While cluster one saw the highest incident of eliciting teacher moves, albeit only in the low potential category, clusters two and three mostly used facilitating teacher moves, but varied in their use of high and low potential moves. Cluster four concentrated moves on facilitating, eliciting, and responding to student reasoning. Cluster five employed teacher moves from all main categories, with some instances of high potential moves in all categories except extending student reasoning, which can better support reasoning. The prospective mathematics teachers’ scripts and the five clusters that were found during analysis are discussed with implications for future teacher education and the support of building mathematical reasoning.

Quality Physical Education: A Students’ Perspective

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of quality physical education from the lens of fictional high school students who are enrolled in physical education classes. Providing insights from one of our key stakeholders (even fiction students) may propel us to further examine how we might continually improve our instruction and student learning, provide quality experiences, and increase the value of our programs.

Modeling and Comparing Brain Processes in Message and Earned Source Credibility Evaluation

Understanding how humans evaluate credibility is an important scientific question in the era of fake news. Source credibility is among the most important aspects of credibility evaluations. One of the most direct ways to understand source credibility is to use measurements of brain activity of humans who make credibility evaluations. This article reports the results of an experiment during which we have measured brain activity during credibility evaluation using EEG. In the experiment, participants had to learn source credibility of fictitious students based on a preparatory stage, during which they evaluated message credibility with perfect knowledge. The experiment allowed for identification of brain areas that were active when a participant made positive or negative source credibility evaluations. Based on experimental data, we modeled and predicted human source credibility evaluations using EEG brain activity measurements with F1 score exceeding 0.7 (using 10-fold cross-validation). We are also able to model and predict message credibility evaluations with perfect knowledge, and to compare both models obtained from a single experiment.

Using heuristic worked examples to promote solving of reality-based tasks in mathematics in lower secondary school

This study examined whether learning with heuristic worked examples can improve students’ competency in solving reality-based tasks in mathematics (mathematical modeling competency). We randomly assigned 134 students in Grade 5 and 180 students in Grade 7 to one of three conditions: control condition (students worked on reality-based tasks), worked example condition (students studied worked examples representing a realistic process of problem-solving by fictitious students negotiating solutions to the tasks), and prompted worked example condition (students additionally received self-explanation prompts). In all three conditions, the students worked on the tasks individually and independently for 45 min. Dependent measures were mathematical modeling competency (number of adequate solution steps and strategies) and modeling-specific strategy knowledge. Results showed that although strategy knowledge could be improved through the intervention for fifth and seventh graders, modeling competency was improved only for seventh graders. The prompting of self-explanations had no additional effect for either fifth or seventh graders.

The Impact of Error-Consequence Severity on Cue Processing in Importance-Biased Prospective Memory.

Prospective memory (PM) enables people to remember to complete important tasks in the future. Failing to do so can result in consequences of varying severity. Here, we investigated how PM error-consequence severity impacts the neural processing of relevant cues for triggering PM and the ramification of that processing on the associated prospective task performance. Participants role-played a cafeteria worker serving lunches to fictitious students and had to remember to deliver an alternative lunch to students (as PM cues) who would otherwise experience a moderate or severe aversive reaction. Scalp-recorded, event-related potential (ERP) measures showed that the early-latency frontal positivity, reflecting the perception-based neural responses to previously learned stimuli, did not differ between the severe versus moderate PM cues. In contrast, the longer-latency parietal positivity, thought to reflect full PM cue recognition and post-retrieval processes, was elicited earlier by the severe than the moderate PM cues. This faster instantiation of the parietal positivity to the severe-consequence PM cues was then followed by faster and more accurate behavioral responses. These findings indicate how the relative importance of a PM can be neurally instantiated in the form of enhanced and faster PM-cue recognition and processing and culminate into better PM.

Assessment of preceptor understanding and use of levels of entrustment

IntroductionThis study determined the need to calibrate preceptors' use of levels of entrustment (LOE) in the evaluation of students performing entrustable professional activities (EPAs). MethodsTwo introductory and four advanced pharmacy practice experience-focused cases were developed which described a fictional student, a practice site, and timing of a rotation. The cases included EPA-based tasks assigned to the student. Participants were to assign a LOE to the student for each EPA-based task. ResultsSixty of 317 preceptors participated in the study. Statistically significant differences in mean assigned LOE were found between preceptors by age (P < .05); between preceptors with differences in residency training (P < .05); and between preceptors who spent differing amounts of time with experiential students daily (P < .05). ConclusionsDifferences in assigned LOE were found based upon preceptor age, completion of a residency, and daily hours spent with experiential students. However, these differences did not result in changes to whether the student would pass or fail the rotation. Findings suggest that preceptors are consistent in assigning LOE to EPA-based tasks performed by students. In addition, preceptor development programming appears to be effective in establishing a standardized understanding of LOE among preceptors.

Inconsistencies in English Learner Identification: An Inventory of How Home Language Surveys Across U.S. States Screen Multilingual Students

Home Language Surveys (HLS) are widely used by states as an initial screening tool to determine whether students should receive English as a Second Language (ESL) services. Parents/guardians are asked to complete the surveys when enrolling a student into a school. We collected surveys from the 50 states and the District of Columbia. We completed them as if we were the parent/guardian of six use-case students. Research questions were (1) How do HLS vary from state to state, if at all? What kinds of questions do they ask? (2) How do HLS across the 50 states and the District of Columbia identify, or not, six fictitious students for further ESL screening? We found that states and U.S. Department of Education–approved HLS questions identified students differently due to unclear questions, such as asking bilingual families to name one dominant language. We recommend additional validation measures be taken with survey questions.

Students’ understanding of the associative property and its applications: noticing, doubling and halving, and place value

Understanding the properties of multiplication is a critical precursor to students’ thinking algebraically. However, these properties have not been the focus of extensive rigorous research, particularly the associative property. In this study, we report on follow-up interviews with 25 year 5–6 students who had completed five items taken from an assessment of mental computational fluency. This assessment required students to reason from the perspective of a fictional student (Emma), who had applied the associative property in various ways to solve multiplication problems. In the interviews, students had to explain their understanding of Emma’s thinking. Coding of this interview data revealed distinct continuums of understanding of each of the three applications of the associative property (noticing, doubling and halving, and place value), which teachers could use to inform their planning. The findings reveal that students best understood the noticing application, closely followed by doubling and halving. By contrast, the place value application was not well understood, which we attribute to students relying on truncation procedures applied with little or no conceptual understanding.

Does calling it “Morgan's way” reduce student learning? Evaluating the effect of person‐presentation during comparison and discussion of worked examples in mathematics classrooms

SummaryMathematics textbooks sometimes present worked examples as being generated by particular fictitious students (i.e., person‐presentation). However, there are indicators that person‐presentation of worked examples may harm generalization of the presented strategies to new problems. In the context of comparing and discussing worked examples during extended classroom instruction, the current study compared the impact of person‐presentation to strategy labels on students' posttest accuracy and ratings of strategy generalizability. Five algebra teachers and their 168 students used worked examples either presented using fictitious students or with a strategy label during a multiweek unit on equation solving, with teachers randomly assigned to condition. All students compared and discussed the worked examples. In this context, we found no effect of condition on student accuracy at posttest, nor on their ratings of the generalizability of the presented strategies. We discuss why previously found negative effects of person‐presentation may not have extended to this context.

Not Yet…?

277 BOOKS IN REVIEW to bend and strain around war and waste as they entwine their way through history, repeatedly asking how the world might untether them” (286). No doubt I sound pedantic, but problems like the above examples are not isolated; they riddle the whole book, spoiling the experience of a reader (myself) who is in almost entire sympathy with Cole’s overall desire to give H.G. Wells more respect in academia. I can only conclude that her manuscript has not been copyedited rigorously—frankly, whole sections do not seem to have been copyedited at all. The unfortunate result is that her book is presented to the public in a way that does not do justice to its intention: to be that long-awaited comprehensive study of one of the greatest but most unfairly neglected writers of the earlier twentieth century.—Nicholas Ruddick, University of Regina Not Yet ... ? Caroline Edwards. Utopia and the Contemporary Novel. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY LITERATURE AND CULTURE, 2019. x+267 pp. $99.99 hc, $80 ebk. Postmodernism is dead, all hail … what? Late Capitalism, the socioeconomic context that Fredric Jameson tells us was the compost from which postmodernism grew, has died of old age. It was not up to the task of the new century, battered down by plagues (SARS, Swine Flu, Ebola, Coronavirus); by environmental collapse; by financial blows that saw the poorest in society having their resources squeezed by a decade or more of austerity while the richest saw their wealth increase exponentially. In consequence, trust in traditional forms of governance evaporated, allowing the rise of populists with no principles of their own other than an appeal to the most base instincts of their constituents, who could therefore somehow present themselves as being free from the swamp of modern democratic politics. Given that Late Capitalism has been thus exhausted over the last twenty years, its cultural efflorescence has been deprived of nourishment. But what is to provide our cultural response to this radically changed social, environmental, and political landscape? For Caroline Edwards, the answer is an old idea that in over 500 years has never quite gone away, though it has undergone some drastic transformations in that time: Utopia. By Utopia, we are not talking (or not primarily talking) about More’s or Bacon’s remote island state; or the political or religious wish-lists of various would-be teachers and theorists; or Wells’s dream of a future world state; still less are we talking about the dystopia that was the default reaction to the monolithic totalitarian states of the twentieth century. Utopia now, in this current cultural moment, is more a state of mind, a personal sense of place rather than a place being presented to us. And it is always a process, never complete and sometimes as nebulous as hope. This new Utopia is defined by the other key word in Edwards’s study: non-contemporaneity. Caroline Edwards is a Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature, but she is also someone very well aware of science fiction and its study (she has, among other things, co-edited a book on China Miéville). Consequently, the theoretical underpinning of this new work may come as less of a surprise 278 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 47 (2020) to students of science fiction than it might to those who concentrate on the more mainstream aspects of modern literature. Her work draws heavily, indeed exhaustively, on the theories of Ernst Bloch, although it has to be said that his idea of the Novum, which has played so crucial a part in the theorizing of science fiction, receives no more than a passing reference here. Edwards concentrates, instead, on Bloch’s ideas of utopia, his messianic leanings, and in particular his notion of the Noch Nicht, the “not yet,” which she expands into fictions of the not yet (always italicized, as though it is itself a title). Fictions of the not yet, which are here examined through ten representative works, form, Edwards argues, a characteristic movement in twenty-first century British fiction. The works that are central to this study—though with enough others mentioned in passing...

Do Fictional Forensic and Criminal Investigation Television Shows Influence Students’ Enrollment Decisions?

Research on ‘the CSI effect’ is accumulating and accounts for a substantive body of knowledge not just in the United States of America, but also elsewhere in the world. The paper investigates one aspect of the CSI effect whereby university faculties offering forensic or criminal investigative curricula are seeing an increase in the number of students enrolling. A research study was conducted on first-year students of the Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security (Slovenia) in which they were directly asked to state the extent to which TV series and films influenced their enrollment decision. The results indicate that some students were motivated by TV series and films, although more detailed statistical inquiries only provide partial and limited support for such claims. Therefore, a more in-depth research study is required to provide better insights into this dimension of the CSI effect.

Exploring secondary students’ conceptualization of functions in three curriculum contexts

An important goal in school mathematics is for students to develop a comprehensive and multi-faceted conceptualization of function. Yet studies have found that undergraduate students often hold limited concept images for function. This study investigated 240 middle and upper secondary (15- to 18-year-old) students’ conceptualizations of function at different year levels (Years 9 to 12) to consider their conceptualizations relative to certain prior learning, as theorized by an epistemological model for concept development in mathematics. In this article we draw on data from students and their teachers in three Western national curriculum contexts (Israeli, English, and Australian) to explore possible relationships among students’ exposure to the word ‘function’, familiarity with different examples of functions, and their conceptualizations of function. Eighty high-achieving students from each context, 20 per year level, were prompted to respond to several fictitious students’ views on what a function is, and then to provide their own definition. The students’ responses were analyzed for evidence of a dominant meaning and any contributing ideas, as well as the use of any specific examples or non-examples of function to illustrate or clarify their views. Twenty teachers also participated in the study. Analysis of curriculum content and the teachers’ perspectives on their students led to our search for possible reasons for similarities and differences found among the responses.

Act One to the End: Ask the Ayatollah, a Play (with Henry Corbin)

ABSTRACTThis play is based on the author’s ethnographic and archival research on the French philosopher Henry Corbin’s years in Tehran, Iran. Corbin taught in Tehran between 1947 and 1978 (the eve of the Iranian Revolution) at the Institute of Philosophy, which he founded. The play is a dialogue between a fictional university student, Ali, and his mentor, the French philosopher Henry Corbin, with interjections from the angel of history. Ali is trying to come to grips with his love of Islamic mystical philosophy and its dangerous appropriation by political actors of the time, as well as with a deeply personal mourning. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution.

Exceeding Expectations: Teachers’ Decision Making Regarding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Students

Although Indigenous and non-Indigenous teachers, administrators, and educational policy makers have made efforts to improve Indigenous educational outcomes, slow progress limits the opportunities available to Indigenous learners and perpetuates social and economic disadvantage. Prior Canadian studies demonstrate that some teachers attribute low ability and adverse life circumstances to Indigenous students, possibly influencing classroom placement. These findings were the catalyst for an Australian-based study assessing the influence students’ Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander status had upon teachers’ placement decisions. Teachers allocated fictional students to supplementary, regular, or advanced programs. Study findings revealed that teachers’ decisions were based upon assumptions regarding the perceived ability, family background, and/or life circumstances of Indigenous learners. The research tool designed for this study provides a way for teachers to identify the implications of biases on decision making, making it a valuable resource for teacher educators engaging in equity work with preservice teachers.