The knowledge-learning-instruction framework: bridging the science-practice chasm to enhance robust student learning

Despite the accumulation of substantial cognitive science research relevant to education, there remains confusion and controversy in the application of research to educational practice. In support of a more systematic approach, we describe the Knowledge-Learning-Instruction (KLI) framework. KLI promotes the emergence of instructional principles of high potential for generality, while explicitly identifying constraints of and opportunities for detailed analysis of the knowledge students may acquire in courses. Drawing on research across domains of science, math, and language learning, we illustrate the analyses of knowledge, learning, and instructional events that the KLI framework affords. We present a set of three coordinated taxonomies of knowledge, learning, and instruction. For example, we identify three broad classes of learning events (LEs): (a) memory and fluency processes, (b) induction and refinement processes, and (c) understanding and sense-making processes, and we show how these can lead to different knowledge changes and constraints on optimal instructional choices.     

How perpetrators and targets construe knowledge hiding in organizations

Research has begun to document the negative organizational consequences of knowledge hiding, or the intentional attempt to conceal knowledge, among employees. However, different knowledge hiding behaviours exist, and we explore whether some types of knowledge hiding are more harmful than others. Although theory would suggest that knowledge hiders rationalize their behaviours and fail to anticipate the negative consequences of their behaviours, we found that they did anticipate harmed relationships and retaliation. In addition, targets of knowledge hiding did not always construe the behaviour as harmful or as necessitating retaliation. Overall, our research suggests that not all knowledge hiding is equally harmful. Some types of knowledge hiding may actually enhance the relationships between colleagues and might break the cycle of knowledge hiding in organizations.     

Age-Related Differences in Strategy Knowledge Updating: Blocked Testing Produces Greater Improvements in Metacognitive Accuracy for Younger than Older Adults

ABSTRACT

Age-related differences in updating knowledge about strategy effectiveness after task experience have not been consistently found, perhaps because the magnitude of observed knowledge updating has been rather meager for both age groups. We examined whether creating homogeneous blocks of recall tests based on two strategies used at encoding (imagery and repetition) would enhance people's learning about strategy effects on recall. Younger and older adults demonstrated greater knowledge updating (as measured by questionnaire ratings of strategy effectiveness and by global judgments of performance) with blocked (versus random) testing. The benefit of blocked testing for absolute accuracy of global predictions was smaller for older than younger adults. However, individual differences in correlations of strategy effectiveness ratings and postdictions showed similar upgrades for both age groups. Older adults learn about imagery's superior effectiveness but do not accurately estimate the magnitude of its benefit, even after blocked testing.     

Nationwide survey of contraceptive and sexually transmitted infection knowledge,attitudes and skills of university students in Portugal

Sexually transmitted infections and (STIs) unintended pregnancies are contemporary public health concerns. Understanding factors (e.g. knowledge, attitudes and skills) influencing sexual behaviours of university students are critical to develop targeted and tailored risk-reduction interventions for this vulnerable population. Thus, the goals of this study were to describe sexual behaviours and analyze differences between genders for sexual behaviours; to identify whether differences exist between genders and age groups regarding knowledge, attitudes and skills concerning contraceptive methods and STIs, and to evaluate the association of knowledge with attitudes and skills with sexual behaviour among university students in Portugal. The sample included 3278 students. Results show that the majority were sexually active and use condoms and oral contraceptives. In general, university students have high knowledge, positive attitudes and skills about contraception and STIs. Gender analyses indicated that women had greater knowledge, and more favourable attitudes, and higher skills toward contraceptive and STI preventive behaviour College students, in particular, face new challenges in sexual health and would benefit from more comprehensive education aimed at promoting healthy decision-making about family planning and STI prevention.     

What remains on your mind after you are done?: Flexible regulation of knowledge accessibility

The accessibility of stored knowledge has been found to decline over time after activation without further stimulation. A special case is goal pursuit; goal-related knowledge remains accessible until goal completion, and then its accessibility declines rapidly. We hypothesized that after goal completion the decline in accessibility of goal-related knowledge would be especially rapid for strong promotion-focused individuals because their motivation to eagerly advance beyond the status quo would make accessibility of this knowledge an irrelevant detriment. We hypothesized an opposite effect for strongly prevention-predominant individuals because their motivation to vigilantly maintain a satisfactory state would make accessibility of this knowledge continually relevant. The results of two studies supported both these predicted moderators of accessibility change. Indeed, we found that for strongly prevention-predominant participants, knowledge accessibility actually increased over time after goal completion. We discuss how even basic cognitive mechanisms, like changes in accessibility, can be affected by general motivational concerns.     

Knowledge Attributions and Behavioral Predictions

Recent work has shown that knowledge attributions affect how people think others should behave, more so than belief attributions do. This paper reports two experiments providing evidence that (a) knowledge attributions also affect behavioral predictions more strongly than belief attributions do, and (b) knowledge attributions facilitate faster behavioral predictions than belief attributions do. Thus, knowledge attributions play multiple critical roles in social cognition, guiding judgments about how people should and will behave.     

The life instinct

In psychoanalytic writing an oversimplified interpretation of Freud's concept of the life and death instincts sometimes colours the presentation. Roughly, there is an implication that the life instinct is 'good' and the death instinct 'bad'. Freud however is clear that: "Neither of these instincts is any less essential than the other; the phenomena of life arise from the concurrent or mutually opposing action of both"(1933b, p. 209). In this paper I look in detail at the characteristics of the life instinct as conceptualized by Freud, and draw on Bion's work 'on linking' to elaborate Freud's view that binding is the life instinct's key characteristic. I suggest that there are pathological forms of both the life and death instinct if defused (separated off) from the other, and I explore a pathological variation of the life instinct in which binding is without the negation, rest, limit or end provided by the 'opposing action' of the death instinct. I consider an instance of the kind that any analyst might meet clinically, in which an inhibited patient experiences severe anxiety that life-giving connections threaten to proliferate indiscriminately and to an overwhelming intensity and size.     

Lyotard’s performance

Starting with Lyotard’s characterisation of postmodernity as incredulity, this is related to another of his key concepts—that of ‘performativity’. Lyotard appears to deploy performativity to characterise those technologies that bring about the optimisation of efficient performance. However, there is another sense of performativity where it is linked to performance. Performance conditions the possibility of any and all performatives, or to put it another way, as performance is itself enabled by performativity, so too performativity is realised through its performance. Both senses of performativity and the linkage between them are clearly manifested in the space of knowledge production that is the contemporary university. This linkage is itself a feature of the semiotic process within which contemporary knowledge and knowledge production is located and which Lyotard himself recognised, albeit implicitly. The implication of this therefore is that Lyotard himself performs his text and in so doing both manifests and contributes to realising both senses of performativity.     

学前儿童英语语音意识、字母知识及口语词汇之间关系的研究

本研究以北京市两所普通幼儿园3~6岁共122名儿童为被试,运用测验法对英语语音意识、字母知识、口语词汇之间的关系进行了考察。结果发现,汉语学前儿童的英语语音意识和字母知识、语音意识和口语词汇、以及字母知识和口语词汇之间都具有显著的相关关系;英语口语词汇对语音意识和字母知识具有显著的预测作用,字母知识和英语语音意识对于英语口语词汇具有显著的预测作用。     

Affective small stories – Witnessing an ‘ideal’ instance of knowledge mobilization

In this short reflective intervention, I utilize an innovative narrative format to document my account of being an invited academic witness for the Canadian House of Commons as a graduate student. Drawing upon layered forms of critical witnessing, I utilize five small stories to consider this seemingly ideal instance of sexual health knowledge mobilization that spanned academic, government, media, and social-profit sectors. I braid complex, messy threads to capture my affective wayfinding through the complicated institutional processes involved in the generation, representation, critique and control of sexual knowledge. Highlighting how this work can be more broadly applicable to graduate students and emerging scholars in related disciplines, I note how my critical witnessing is intertwined with social, economic and political conditions present in Canada and elsewhere. This work additionally illustrates experimental self-inquiry that disrupts distinctions between researcher/subject/seer and participant/object/seen.