Imagining my ideal: a critical case study of digital storytelling as reflective practice

Teacher candidates (TCs) must navigate personal, experiential, and theoretical discourses of learning to teach to establish a teaching identity. This article describes a critical case example of digital storytelling to imagine a future classroom. The qualitative research design situates the TCs’ digital stories as a performance and analyzes the art form to consider how they might use these texts to imagine and make visible this negotiation. The critical case shows how the TCs used the digital story to make sense of personal experiences, their image of an ideal teacher, methods coursework, and the personal struggle inherent across these sometimes disparate voices of learning to teach. Findings indicate that digital storytelling expands TCs’ reflective practice in the supportive environment of a teacher education program.     

Reflective practice framework for TESOL teachers: one teacher’s reflective journey

Just as in the field of general education, scholars within the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) have also struggled to come to a consensus as to how reflective practice should be operationalized with many different approaches suggesting a retrospective approach to questioning about practice. As a result, many of these approaches have led to a type of routinization of reflection. Worried about such routinization of reflection, Farrell developed a more holistic approach to reflective practice that recognizes the spiritual, moral, and emotional aspects of reflection, as well as the usual retrospective questions about practice. This paper outlines a case study of the reflections of one experienced TESOL teacher teaching in South Korea using Farrell’s framework for reflecting on practice that included reflections on his philosophy, principles, theory, practice, and beyond practice. The results revealed three common themes of approachability, art-oriented conceptions, and curiosity that emerged in all aspects of his reflection as uniquely influential parts of a larger whole. Thus, Farrell’s holistic framework for teacher reflection employed in this study provided multiple filters through which these various parts could be viewed.     

Different practice effects for males and females by psychometric and chronometric mental-rotation tests

Gender differences in the psychometric mental-rotation test are usually larger than in the chronometric version. In both tests, practice effects appear for males and females. In this study, 104 participants (54 females, 50 males, age: 21.72 years) completed both tests in counterbalanced order. In the chronometric test, only males reacted and rotated significantly faster after the practice with the psychometric test. A strong practice effect independently of gender was found in the psychometric test and a gender difference in accuracy in favour of males. Males reported more confidence and females rated the perceived pressure of the time limit of the psychometric test higher than males. Consequently, differences in confidence after the practice could partly explain the gender differences in the improvements of reaction time and rotational speed. Practice from one mental-rotation test on the performance in another seems to be dependent of participants’ gender and the type of the test.     

Neighbors,relatives, and friends: Finding constructive approaches to religious others

The way we approach, describe and interpret the faiths of others impact significantly on the relationship between different religious traditions. This article develops resources from Christian theology to show how it provides important elements for the development of constructive relationships. It also offers some comments on the present proposals put forward by the ELCA. By emphasizing how religious traditions orient and transform believers, it points to how practices can appear as meaningful across traditional borders. To develop constructive relationships with religious others is, fundamentally, a way to practice belief in God as love.     

Normativity in the Philosophy of Science

This paper analyzes what it means for philosophy of science to be normative. It argues that normativity is a multifaceted phenomenon rather than a general feature that a philosophical theory either has or lacks. It analyzes the normativity of philosophy of science by articulating three ways in which a philosophical theory can be normative. Methodological normativity arises from normative assumptions that philosophers make when they select, interpret, evaluate, and mutually adjust relevant empirical information, on which they base their philosophical theories. Object normativity emerges from the fact that the object of philosophical theorizing can itself be normative, such as when philosophers discuss epistemic norms in science. Metanormativity arises from the kind of claims that a philosophical theory contains, such as normative claims about science as it should be. Distinguishing these three kinds of normativity gives rise to a nuanced and illuminating view of how philosophy of science can be normative.     

Manipulations to practice organization of golf putting skills through interleaved matched or mismatched practice with a partner

There is some evidence that alternating physical and observational practice with a partner for the same skill can benefit learning compared to practice alone. What has not been studied is whether a partner's interleaved practice impacts multi-skill learning, when the partner either matches or mismatches their partner’s skill. Here we manipulated partners’ practice schedules of two golf putting skills. Partners practiced the same (“matched”) or different skills in alternation (“mismatched”). Based on previous research where interleaved demonstrations have induced beneficial contextual interference effects, we hypothesized that mismatching a partner on consecutive trials should also promote a similar type of interference in practice, which ultimately aids learning. A third control group was tested, where only one partner practiced while the other observed. All groups practiced for two days, with individual retention tests at the start of day 2 and one week later. Taking turns practicing and observing a partner did not benefit learning compared to the control, pure physical practice group and the matched and mismatched groups did not differ in outcomes. There was, however, evidence that partners were adapting their actions (i.e., compensating for over or undershooting of the target) based on the shots of their partner, in a similar manner to how they were adapting to their own errors. Thus, although partners were influencing each other’s performance, it was not ultimately to the benefit (or cost) of overall learning. Partner-mismatching of skills through alternating practice was not sufficient to promote interference in practice and ultimately promote learning.     

In search of transfer following cued recall practice: The case of process‐based biology concepts

Previous work has demonstrated that cued recall of a term from a fact yields learning that does not transfer, relative to a restudy control, to recall of another term from the same fact. Here we report six experiments in which a series of manipulations during the initial study and training phases of learning, hypothesized to increase transfer for process‐based biology concepts, were investigated. In Experiments 1 and 2, fill‐in‐the‐blank questions combined with immediate or delayed and repeated correct answer feedback improved learning but not transfer. In Experiments 3 and 4, practice questions that involved recalling process steps, understanding ordinal relationships, or making inferences did not improve transfer. Positive transfer was produced, however, in Experiments 5 and 6 via retrieval–verification–scoring, a new method in which difficult fill‐in‐the‐blank questions were combined with extensive feedback processing. We discuss implications for transfer in both theoretical and applied contexts.     

Understanding the social emotional practices of therapists

Emotions are central to the therapy process and skilful use by therapists of client emotion is an essential catalyst to client change. However, the contribution of emotion to the therapy process and how therapists’ social emotional skills are incorporated into psychological practice is still unclear. Using a statistical method for mapping psychological constructs, therapists’ social emotional skills were transformed into a “map” with three spatial dimensions, which was supported by comparative reliability checks. The nature of social emotional skills was further investigated by administering a Q-Sort of emotional practice items to 47 therapists. Ten highly applicable clusters of social emotional skills across seven style patterns with therapists were identified. Tentative links were drawn between demographic data and both clusters and therapist styles. These findings suggest therapists’ social emotional skills can be organised into meaningful clusters and that therapists can be styled according to their responses across these clusters. Furthermore, gaps identified in the model suggest possible “blind spots” in the literature. The implications of these findings are significant for training and practice.     

形成性测量模型：结构方程模型的新视角

形成性测量模型(Formative Model, FM)是指标变异导致潜变量变异的模型, 反映性测量模型(Reflective Model, RM)是潜变量变异导致指标变异的模型。FM在模型界定、识别和估计、信效度评价以及模型应用等方面均与RM存在极大的不同。模型界定错误会使参数估计发生偏差, 影响统计结论的有效性, 应当审慎考虑指标和潜变量之间的关系, 选择恰当的测量模型。进一步揭示两者的区别和误用带来的偏差, 完善FM的识别和估计、信效度评价方法、对变量含义的解释以及高阶FM的理论解释和模型估计是未来的研究方向。     

心理治疗中的循证实践及其哲学思考

心理治疗中的循证实践是指治疗者根据个体已有的临床技能与经验,利用最佳的研究证据,在考虑病人人格、文化及偏好等因素的情况下进行的心理治疗实践。通过描述心理治疗中循证实践运动发展的两个阶段,考察其哲学基础及存在的问题,对其发展趋势及对整个心理学发展的意义进行了展望。