Search Results for
"deep learning"

This qualitative case study was designed to provide an understanding of the work experience of Chinese college students in South Korea. A growing number of Chinese students are coming to South Korea for college education, and their aspirations for better work materialize into work experiences in South Korean businesses. In-depth interviews were conducted with five Chinese students to investigate their learning experience at local workplaces. The Chinese students' work experience not only led them to a deeper understanding of local culture and language, but also gave them integral learning within an experiential, situated learning environment. © 2009 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

We report on descriptive analyses of classroom observations of the instruction and classroom interactions that took place over four days of a high school pre-engineering class, Project Lead the Way, as participants engaged in project-based learning. Our objective was to study the enacted curriculum and determine how class time was apportioned, the extent to which time was distributed between developing technical skills and fostering conceptual understanding in engineering and mathematics, and the degree to which mathematics concepts were implicitly embedded within the engineering activities or made explicit for students, and therefore more supportive of transfer of learning. Our coding of the video data support the following three main descriptive results: (1) more of the instructor's time was spent on class management (non-instructional) tasks than on any other classroom activity, (2) a greater proportion of the total observed instruction time was devoted to skills rather than concepts, and (3) only a small fraction of instruction that linked math concepts to engineering coursework made those links explicit, while the large majority were implicitly embedded in the activities and the CAD software used in the class. Both positive and negative examples of explicit integration are provided to illustrate these events. We relate these results to prior research on the intended curriculum used to convey the idealized pre-engineering program, and discuss the implications these findings have for fostering deep learning of engineering concepts and supporting the transfer of knowledge to novel tasks and situations. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2009.

Vocational teacher education is explored and distinguished from other forms of teacher education. The many varieties of vocational education, ranging from state controlled to market oriented, are deeply intertwined with national traditions and culture. Different admission requirements and a complex steering system set it apart from conventional teacher education because of its origin in a work context, whereas subject-specialist teaching emerges from a scientific knowledge area. This factor, which affects learning material and place of training, requires vocational teacher education to be multidisciplinary, activity- and problem-oriented, while posing unique challenges in grading and quality control. A hidden work-cultural transfer also occurs. Two trends are indicated: an increasing academization and a resurgence of the apprenticeship model. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This study examined the efficacy of mandatory community service to prepare all high school students in a large urban school district for civic engagement. The principal hypothesis asserted that mandatory community service was insufficient in influencing students' civic engagement orientations (CEO) unless accompanied by opportunities for receiving social support. Survey data for this study were collected from all seniors in the district's 17 high schools (N = 1,741) and ordinary least squares was applied in a hierarchical regression in four stages. Findings supported the moderating effect of social support in mandatory service-learning especially having a mentor. Students' CEOs, however, were most affected by their perceptions of neighborhood vitality and civic discourse access. Recommendations center on improving the urban district's mandatory community service policy by implementing systems and community partnerships that enable equitable student access to socially supportive community adults and promote deeper integration of service-learning into the broader curriculum. © 2009 by the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies.

Education in Popular Culture explores what makes schools, colleges, teachers and students an enduring focus for a wide range of contemporary media. What is it about the school experience that makes us wish to relive it again and again? The book provides an overview of education as it is represented in popular culture, together with a framework through which educators can interpret these representations in relation to their own professional values and development. The analyses are contextualised within contemporary, historical and ideological frameworks, and make connections between popular representations and professional and political discourses about education. Through its examination of film, television, popular lyrics and fiction, this book tackles educational themes that recur in popular culture, and demonstrates how they intersect with debates concerning teacher performance, the curriculum and young people's behaviour and morality. Chapters explore how experiences of education are both reflected and constructed in ways that sometimes reinforce official and professional educational perspectives, and sometimes resist and oppose them. Education in Popular Culture will stimulate critical reflection on the popular myths and professional discourses that surround teachers and teaching. It will serve to deepen analyses of teaching and learning and their associated institutional and societal contexts in a creative and challenging way. © 2008 Roy Fisher, Ann Harris and Christine Jarvis. All rights reserved.

Policy debates on employability, lifelong learning and competence-based approaches suggest a convergence of VET approaches across European countries. Against the background of the creation of a European Qualifications Framework, this paper compares the VET systems of England, Germany and The Netherlands. The analysis reveals the distinct understandings and meanings of outwardly similar terms. These meanings are deeply rooted in the countries' institutional structures and labour processes and still inform national debates and policies today. The paper identifies a major distinction between a 'knowledge-based' VET model in Germany and The Netherlands and a 'skills-based' model in England. There is a need to develop trans-national categories that take into account the social construction of terms such as 'skills' and 'qualifications'.

Online learning has enjoyed increasing popularity in gerontology. This paper presents instructional strategies grounded in Fink's (2003) theory of significant learning designed for the completely asynchronous online gerontology classroom. It links these components with the development of mastery learning goals and provides specific guidelines for incorporating these principles into each aspect of the online classroom such as the syllabus and presentation areas (class announcements, lectures, conferences, study groups). Strategies for cultivating connection to promote learning and retention in the online classroom and directions for future research on these pedagogical strategies are proposed. Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Background: Although medical students' use of portfolios has been studied from many angles, little is known about their motivations. Aim: This article explores medical students' motives for voluntarily compiling a learning portfolio that widely exceeded the assignments. Methods: Content analysis was performed on 22 (8%; n = 22/269) extensive portfolios, followed by a semi-structured interview with 11 medical students. Building on the theoretical work of Simons et al. (2004), interpretative analysis was used to reconstruct and understand the medical students' motives for the effort they put into the portfolios. Results: Compiling an elaborate portfolio is mainly instigated by a personal instrumentality (internally regulated instrumental motivation). These medical students reflected on what they considered important and useful. The portfolio was a tool to achieve self-set goals, yet the specific goals turned out to be very different among the students, reflecting their particular needs and experiences during clerkship. Conclusion: Motivation theory shows that students whoare internally regulated use more deep-level learning strategies and perform better. Internally regulated motivation mainly occurs when students use the portfolio to achieve their self-set goals. The formal portfolio assignments, enforced by the medical school, were more related with externally regulated motivation.

This study investigates the influence of teacher perceived administration of self-regulated learning on students' motivation and information-processing over time. This was done in the context of the Interactive learning group System (ILS®): a large-scale innovation program in Dutch vocational schools. A total of 185 students were grouped post facto over contrasting groups, which differed in the adherence of teachers to vital, instructional principles based on self-regulated learning. Differences over time in student motivation and information-processing between these contrasting groups were explored. Mean differences as well as striking differences in relations between variables over time were found. Strong teacher adherence to the instructional principles of ILS was associated with a significant increase in deep-level processing and a positive relation between motivation and deep-level processing strategies over time. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Problem-based learning (PBL) has been the focus of many developments in teaching and learning facilitation in recent years. It has been claimed that PBL produces independent learners who are motivated, engaged in deep learning, work as a team, and develop effective strategies, skills and knowledge for life-long learning and professional work. Technology and Problem-Based learning is aimed at educators who may be considering introducing PBL and need to know what it involves, its benefits and the practical details of how to implement it. Technology and Problem-Based learning provides practical advice grounded in research and experience, to enable tutors to introduce PBL quickly and effectively. It also covers major issues including rationale for PBL, how to write effective problems, preparing students and tutors, being an effective facilitator, assessing students, dealing with problems, using IT. © 2006 by Idea Group Inc. All rights reserved.