Frontline Learning Research (E-Journal - EARLI, European Association for Research on Learning)
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Discussion to the special issue: Supporting the transition of a diversity of students: Developing the “whole student” during and beyond their time at higher education.
Full text linkApart from the current Covid19 context, the higher education sectors across the world have been faced with major challenges over the last few decades (Auerbach et al., 2018; Haggis, 2004), including increased numbers and diversity. Considering the many challenges in higher education, especially the rise of students’ mental health issues, I am strongly convinced that education sectors, but in particular the higher education sector, have a societal responsibility to not just focus on students as learners of knowledge and/or professional skills, but to support them in being developed as “whole students”. All these challenges also raise a need for research into the broader context to identify how we can better support the diverse student population as they transition into higher education, but also how to prepare them for a positive experience during and beyond their time in higher education.
Overall, it can be said that the contributions to this special issue beneficially addressed some of the main foci to widening the perspectives on diversity related to the transition into higher education. The contribution came from different European countries, including Belgium, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
De Clercq et al. (in this special issue) indicated that environmental characteristics, such as distinctiveness of countries, is often overlooked in research. In this discussion article, therefore, some particular references will also be made to a specific country, New Zealand. This may be of interest and relevant for the particular questions raised in this special issue as focusing on student diversity in educational contexts has been considered important for some time in this country. Aoteraroa New Zealand is a country in the South Pacific colonised by Europeans in the 19th century. In the second part of the 20th century, the focus across the New Zealand education sectors, including higher education, started to develop beyond just a European perspective, and started to focus more on recognition of student diversity. Initially, the main focus was on the indigenous population, the Māori people. In the last few decades of the 20th century, the focus was extended to the Pacific Island people, many of whom migrated to New Zealand from a wide range of different islands in the South Pacific. In the 21st century, the focus on Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) groups was further extended, and over the last decade also because of the increase of refugees from the Middle East and Asia. Providing some insights from the other end of the world, in quite a different and de-colonised ex-European nation may help European (and other) countries to reflect on their own approaches
How teachers interpret displays of students’ gaze in reading comprehension assignments
Full text linkReading comprehension is a central skill in secondary education. To be able to provide adaptive instruction, teachers need to be able to accurately estimate students’ reading comprehension. However, they tend to experience difficulties doing so. Eye tracking can uncover these reading processes by visualizing what a student looked at, in what order, and for how long, in a gaze display. The question is, however, whether teachers could interpret such displays. We, therefore, examined how teachers interpret gaze displays and perceived their potential use in education to foster tailored support for reading comprehension. Sixty teachers in secondary education were presented with three static gaze displays of students performing a reading comprehension task. Teachers were asked to report how they interpreted these gaze displays and what they considered to be the promises and pitfalls of gaze displays for education. Teachers interpreted in particular reading strategies in the gaze displays quite well, and also interpreted the displays as reflecting other concepts, such as motivation and concentration. Results showed that teachers’ interpretations of the gaze displays were generally consistent across teachers and that teachers discriminated well between displays of different strategies. Teachers were generally positive about potential applications in educational practice. This study provides first insights into how teachers experience the utility of gaze displays as an innovative tool to support reading instruction, which is timely as rapid technological developments already enable eye tracking through webcams on regular laptops. Thus, using gaze displays in an educational setting seems to be an increasingly feasible scenario
Widening the Methodological Lens on the Investigation of Diversity in the Transition to Higher Education: A Discussion
Full text linkThis discussion addresses the methodological approaches used in the special issue on student transitions and diversity. We provide an overview of how the different papers contribute to methodological development in the field, in particular by their use of advanced multi-factor analyses and accounting for diversity in student transitions at several levels. The discussion touches upon challenges concerning (a) the distinction of analytical levels, (b) different conceptualisations and operationalisations of diversity and (c) the types of data collection methodologies. We conclude by discussing future steps to widen the methodological lens in transition research
Conceptualizing knowledge transfer as transformation and attunement
Full text linkThis article articulates a new theory on the ontology of knowledge transfer. This involves the work of 1) showing that the question “what happens to knowledge in transfer across divergent contexts?” can be made sense of within a situative approach, 2) providing a new conceptualization of situated knowledge, 3) articulating transfer in terms of knowledge transformation and attunement, and 4) putting the issue of learning to transfer knowledge across divergent contexts (back) on the research agenda. The article builds on a view of knowledge as a unity of know-that, know-how, and know-of; which unity forms a practical embodied perspective with which the agent meets the world in interaction. It is argued that knowledge is situatedly realized in attunement to the requirements, possibilities, and restrictions of the concrete situation, as they dynamically unfold. A framework of context levels for analyzing requirements, possibilities, and restrictions (termed “situational characteristics”) is presented. The levels reflect that an activity will always engage with a domain, in a life-setting, taking place within a societal structure, making use of encompassing cultural practices. It is shown how differences in unities of situational characteristics necessitate the transformation of the knowledge perspective in attunement to the situational characteristics of the new context. Towards the end, it is pointed out how this conceptualization of knowledge transfer opens for research into designing and teaching for learning to transfer. Three recent projects are referenced as an illustration of the approach
The interplay of personal and contextual diversity during the first year at Higher Education: Combining a quantitative and a qualitative approach
Full text linkResearch on student transition into Higher Education (HE) has taken different theoretical perspectives. First, studies investigated personal variables such as students´ self-efficacy, emotions and motivation regarding the transition from school to HE. A second strand of research focused on contextual variables, for instance college effectiveness research. With this paper, we combine both the personal and the contextual approach. We aim to investigate the interaction between personal and contextual diversity during the transition into HE, taking into account students’ diversity in particular with regard to gender and individual characteristics, such as self-efficacy. We explored the heterogeneity in students’ personal characteristics by conducting a latent profile analysis (LPA) based on students’ intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy and anxiety before entering Higher Education. LPA resulted in three distinct profiles, with significant differences in how students perceived the first year. This finding suggests that students’ personal characteristics when entering Higher Education influence how they experience the study environment. To investigate the interplay between individual and contextual differences in more detail, we conducted a qualitative longitudinal study with 14 first-year students in parallel with the panel survey. We found that individual students react very differently to specific characteristics and events of the first-year environment. Our study adds to the growing body of research that aims to grasp the complexity of interactions between individual and contextual differences. Specifically, we illustrate how combining quantitative and qualitative methods can provide new insights into person-context interactions
A primer on gathering and analysing multi-level quantitative evidence for differential student outcomes in higher education
Full text linkA significant challenge currently facing the higher education sector is how to address differential student outcomes in terms of attainment and continuation gaps at various stages of students’ transitions. Worryingly, there appears to be a ‘deficit’ discourse among some university staff in which differential outcomes are perceived to be due to student deficiencies. This may be exacerbated by institutional analyses placing an over-emphasis on the presence of the gaps rather than the causes. The purpose of this primer is to provide advice about how institutions can carry out far more nuanced analyses of their institutional data without requiring specialist software or expertise. Drawing on a multi-level framework for explaining differential outcomes, we begin with guidance for gathering quantitative data on explanatory factors for attainment and continuation gaps, largely by linking sources of internal data that have not previously been connected. Using illustrative examples, we then provide tutorials for how to model explanatory factors employing IBM SPSS Statistics (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA) to perform and interpret regression and meta-regression analyses of individual- and group-level (aggregated) student data, combined with data on micro- and meso-level factors. We propose that university staff with strategic responsibilities could use these approaches with their institutional data, and the findings could then inform the design of context-specific interventions that focus on changing practices associated with gaps. In doing so, institutions could enhance the evidence-base, raise awareness, and further ‘embed the agenda’ when it comes to understanding potential reasons for differential student outcomes during educational transitions
How Different Diversity Factors Affect the Perception of First-Year Requirements in Higher Education
Full text linkIn the light of growing university entry rates, higher education institutions not only serve larger numbers of students, but also seek to meet first-year students’ ever more diverse needs. Yet to inform universities how to support the transition to higher education, research only offers limited insights. Current studies tend to either focus on the individual factors that affect student success or they highlight students’ social background and their educational biography in order to examine the achievement of selected, non-traditional groups of students. Both lines of research appear to lack integration and often fail to take organisational diversity into account, such as different types of higher education institutions or degree programmes. For a more comprehensive understanding of student diversity, the present study includes individual, social and organisational factors. To gain insights into their role for the transition to higher education, we examine how the different factors affect the students’ perception of the formal and informal requirements of the first year as more or less difficult to cope with. As the perceived requirements result from both the characteristics of the students and the institutional context, they allow to investigate transition at the interface of the micro and the meso level of higher education. Latent profile analyses revealed that there are no profiles with complex patterns of perception of the first-year requirements, but the identified groups rather differ in the overall level of perceived challenges. Moreover, SEM indicates that the differences in the perception largely depend on the individual factors self-efficacy and volition
Staying at the front line of literature: How can topic modelling help researchers follow recent studies?
Full text linkStaying at the front line in learning research is challenging because many fields are rapidly developing. One such field is research on the temporal aspects of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). To obtain an overview of these fields, systematic literature reviews can capture patterns of existing research. However, conducting systematic literature reviews is time-consuming and do not reveal future developments in the field. This study proposes a machine learning method based on topic modelling that takes articles from a systematic literature review on the temporal aspects of CSCL (49 original articles published before 2019) as a starting point to describe the most recent development in this field (52 new articles published between 2019 and 2020). We aimed to explore how to identify new relevant articles in this field and relate the original articles to the new articles. First, we trained the topic model with the Results, Discussion, and Conclusion sections of the original articles, enabling us to correctly identify 74% (n = 17) of new and relevant articles. Second, clusterisation of the original and new articles indicated that the field has advanced in its new and relevant articles because the topics concerning the regulation of learning and collaborative knowledge construction related 26 original articles to 10 new articles. New irrelevant studies typically emerged in clusters that did not include any specific topic with a high topic occurrence. Our method may provide researchers with resources to follow the patterns in their fields instead of conducting repetitive systematic literature reviews
Dynamic Interplay between Modes of Regulation During Motivationally Challenging Episodes in Collaboration
Full text linkThe cognitive and social demands of collaboration can raise significant motivation challenges. Task progression relies on team members strategically taking control of the problems and adapting accordingly. Theory indicates that productive collaboration involves groups using three modes of regulation: self-regulation, co-regulation, and socially shared regulation. Despite research demonstrating the occurrence of all three modes in collaboration, it is unclear how these modes interact and how co-regulation supports the emergence of self- and shared-regulation of motivation. The study aimed to examine the role co-regulation played in dynamically stimulating the emergence of self- and shared-regulation of motivation. A cross-case comparison was conducted between two groups who experienced high levels of motivation challenges but achieved contrasting perceptions of the overall team learning productivity. During analysis, groups’ dynamic regulatory processes within the online environment were visually represented using a tool called the Chronologically-ordered Representation for Tool-Related Activity (CORDTRA). Findings demonstrate that co-regulation of motivation may afford and thwart the emergence of self- and shared-regulation, and these processes interacted with the group’s situational challenges and the regulatory skills group members possessed. Comparisons between the two groups indicated that groups' motivation regulation should (a) match the demands of the challenges at hand, (b) be positively supported by group members through co-regulation, and (b) involve a more varied strategic responses so that the group may continue to learn and co-construct knowledge effectively as a team
It is all in the surv-eye: can eye tracking data shed light on the internal consistency in self-report questionnaires on cognitive processing strategies?
Full text linkAlthough self-report questionnaires are widely used, researchers debate whether responses to these types of questionnaires are valid representations of the respondent’s actual thoughts and beliefs. In order to provide more insight into the quality of questionnaire data, we aimed to gain an understanding of the processes that impact the completion of self-report questionnaires. To this end, we explored the process of completing a questionnaire by monitoring the eye tracking data of 70 students in higher education. Specifically, we examined the relation between eye movement measurements and the level of internal consistency demonstrated in the responses to the questionnaire. The results indicated that respondents who look longer at an item do not necessarily have more consistent answering behaviour than respondents with shorter processing times. Our findings indicate that eye tracking serves as a promising tool to gain more insight into the process of completing self-report questionnaires