Learning in the Face of Digital Distractions

Digital distractions are an important and prevalent aspect of college students' lives. Using a self-regulated learning perspective, this chapter provides an in-depth understanding of students' digital distractions in academic settings and highlights how college instructors can empower their students to manage digital distractions and self-regulate their own learning. In particular, the chapter discusses both the causes and consequences of engaging in digital distractions with a focus on the impact of multitasking. In addition, the chapter argues that students' engagement in digital distractions is closely connected to their motivation and emotions. This chapter highlights how college students can regulate their digital distractions throughout the learning process during each phase of self-regulated learning. Finally, the chapter reviews the ways college instructors can support students' management of distractions through their instructional approaches.

Preparing Teacher Candidates to Teach in Secondary Schools Through Socratic Case-Based Approaches

Socratic instructional approaches for teacher preparation have been endorsed by teacher education programs across the globe for several decades. This chapter describes Socratic case-based teacher preparation in an undergraduate educational psychology course in the United States. Collaborative dialogues, inductive questions, and reasoning are key Socratic strategies used as instructional approaches for promoting teacher candidates' critical thinking and reflective teaching through case-based analysis. Two forms of case-based learning, face-to-face (synchronous) textual case analysis, and computer-mediated (asynchronous) video cases analysis is illustrated and supported with evidence-based theoretical frameworks and research findings. Effectiveness of Socratic case-based teacher preparation is determined via quantitative and qualitative evaluation of teacher candidates' collaborative oral case analysis reports and individual written case analysis reports. Recommendations for strengthening Socratic case-based teacher preparation and future research initiatives are discussed.

Innovation in Civic Education

Educators, advocacy groups, and policymakers are mobilizing to strengthen civic education across the nation. These renewed commitments must be designed and implemented in ways that ensure today's graduates are ready to effectively engage in modern civic life. Since civic education is key to effective participation in our democracy, ensuring a quality civic education is also an equity issue. Students must have foundational knowledge about our nation's values and government, effectively evaluate the validity of claims in digital media, take and defend positions across multiple platforms, and leverage technology to inform and mobilize their community around ideas they care about. This chapter explores proven practices in civic education and technology-enhanced instructional approaches that schools can leverage to modernize their civic education programs.

Human–nature relationships in early childhood education for sustainability: Metaphysical analysis and reshaping

Popular instructional approaches in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability (ECEfS) are co-construction learning, transformative learning and ecological learning. These rely on constructivism that could challenge human–nature relationships of ECEfS. In this study, we aim to discover and reshape human–nature relationships embedded in the approaches. To do so, we deconstruct the approaches through a metaphysical analysis with ontology, epistemology and axiology. As a result, we confirm that they are likely to view humans and nature as two separate entities. For sustainability, we distinguish an ontological view (‘N’ature) and an epistemological view (‘n’ature) and justify the distinction based on posthumanists’ concepts of non-humans and more-than-humans. We present a metaphysically reshaped human–nature relationship and argue that this new model enables teachers to critically review ‘human-made/observed natures’ and participate in the reconciliation between ‘N’ature and humanity. We also apply the model into a waste-recycle activity to clarify its potential practicality.

Instructor-learner body coupling reflects instruction and learning

It is widely accepted that nonverbal communication is crucial for learning, but the exact functions of interpersonal coordination between instructors and learners remain unclear. Specifically, it is unknown what role instructional approaches play in the coupling of physical motion between instructors and learners, and crucially, how such instruction-mediated Body-to-Body Coupling (BtBC) might affect learning. We used a video-based, computer-vision Motion Energy Analysis (MEA) to quantify BtBC between learners and instructors who used two different instructional approaches to teach psychological concepts. BtBC was significantly greater when the instructor employed a scaffolding approach than when an explanation approach was used. The importance of instructional approach was further underscored by the fact that an increase in motion in the instructor was associated with boosted BtBC, but only during scaffolding; no such relationship between the instructor movements and BtBC was found during explanation interactions. Finally, leveraging machine learning approaches (i.e., support vector and logistic regression models), we demonstrated that both learning outcome and instructional approaches could be decoded based on BtBC. Collectively, these results show that the real-time interaction of teaching and learning bodies is important for learning and that instructional approach matters, with possible implications for both in-person and online learning.

L2 pronunciation research and teaching

Research on L2 pronunciation needs to occur in a much wider range of languages in order to ensure that findings are not just applicable to dominant languages. This paper argues that research on a wider variety of languages will be valuable for understanding different contexts of learning/instruction, different types and combinations of phonological features, and different instructional approaches. The field especially needs two parallel and interrelated threads of research and teaching-oriented publications. The first is descriptions of and materials for teaching pronunciation in particular languages. The second is research that is built around questions of practical interest and theoretically-motivated models of L2 speech perception and production.

Cooperative Learning to Reduce Inequalities: Instructional Approaches and Dimensions

This manuscript deals with how cooperative learning in pre-school and primary education can be dimensionalized in terms of reducing gender differences and inequalities. In this study, formulated through instructional approaches delivered in four medium- to very high-complexity schools (the number of students with an immigrant background ranging from 30% to 100%), 376 pre-service teachers and 43 qualified teachers were asked to analyze the instruction that they gave to 1658 pre-school and primary students over two consecutive years. Instruction was defined in terms of contextualized physical education challenges that included cooperative psychomotor physical challenges, guided discovery activities and psychomotor problem-solving. The analysis was based on reflective narratives on both gender differences and inequalities, which evinced 792 comments regarding gender (618 by the pre-service teachers and 174 by the schoolteachers) and 627 comments for inequalities (363 by the pre-service teachers and 264 by the schoolteachers). The analysis produced categories based on critical reflection—on both individual and classroom scales—from the pre-service teachers and the schoolteachers. Each of the cooperative learning dimensions, i.e., positive interdependence, individual accountability, promotive interaction, social skills, and group processing, were investigated to produce a set of principles and competencies that best promoted education for sustainable development. The research produced 42 principles that operated under the tenet of leave-no-one-behind, with positive interdependence and promotive interaction providing the higher number of principles that are best suited to tackle, through cooperation processes, equity and inclusivity issues in pre-school and primary education classrooms.