Teachers' knowledge has been an important research focus for many decades. Although many empirical studies have been carried out regarding content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, less ...attention has been paid to general pedagogical knowledge (GPK). The focus of this study is the exploration of different definitions and dimensions of GPK and how it has been assessed. A systematic literature review was conducted on the EBSCOhost Web following the PRISMA guidelines. The search and evaluation of eligibility criteria resulted in 23 articles. The results show that the definitions of GPK cover three broad areas: student-related, teaching-related and contextual characteristics. However, the scope of GPK in the empirical studies is more narrow, focusing mainly on student-related and teaching-related dimensions. The results also showed that GPK has been assessed through teachers' own perceptions and, recently, by measuring it with tests. These findings are further discussed and a framework for analysing, developing and assessing teachers' GPK in further studies is proposed.
School leaders have an important role in supporting implementation of inclusive education practices in schools. Therefore, it is necessary to understand how school leaders' attitudes towards ...inclusive education are formed. We used the Attitudes Toward Inclusive Education Scale that was developed to measure different facets of attitudes towards inclusive education for all students. The instrument was completed by 301 school leaders in Estonia. Three factors describing attitudes in facets of inclusive education practices, vision, and supports were distinguished. Structural Equation Modelling revealed that school leaders' practices towards implementing inclusive education approaches are driven more strongly by their vision than the support available to them, although both aspects have a significant effect on their attitudes towards these practices. However, participation in in-service courses focusing on inclusive education and working as a school leader in a special school had negative association with school leaders' attitudes towards inclusive education practices.
The main aim of the present study is to assess whether the open learner model (OLM) is capable of promoting students' active thinking by enhancing their self‐regulation in online higher education ...learning environments. To this aim, we systematically reviewed the literature of the last three decades and found 67 articles, of which only a sample of 15 were considered. Based on the findings, we performed a narrative analysis of the studies concerning technological features of OLMs that cater to the three main aspects concerning self‐regulated learning, namely, cognition, metacognition and motivation. Our analysis of the literature confirmed that these three aspects are all subject to some measure of influence. In mutually interacting, these three components support learners to reach a better understanding of their learning process. Specifically, it seems that mostly all three type of OLMs, inspectable, negotiable, and co‐operative, with simple and complex graphical presentation of their learner models and capacity to colour‐code and compare—alike appear optimal for augmenting cognition, metacognition, and motivation. They seemingly do so through offering a wealth of techniques pertaining to knowledge, difficulties, and misconception visualization. The results presented suggest that OLMs have a positive impact on learners' active thinking regarding their learning process.
Practitioner Notes
What is already known about this topic
Several educational environments have been enhanced with open learner models (OLMs) with the aim of supporting learners.
OLM seems to be a potential avenue for improving higher education by supporting learners' active thinking about their learning process by enhancing self‐regulated learning.
Despite growing interest in OLMs, there has yet to be any effort to systematically review current research studies investigating their potential to promote self‐regulated learning.
What this paper adds
All type of OLMs, with their varied visualization features, to some extent are useful for promoting cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational components of self‐regulated learning.
In mutually interacting, the three components of self‐regulated learning support learners to reach a better understanding of their learning process, and thereby promoting active thinking.
Implications for practice and/or policy
We suggest that practitioners must first grasp the possibilities for the cultivation of self‐regulated learning contained in the particular features of each OLM, and then add this insight to their own expertise in order to best integrate them for supporting students' active thinking.
While a number of specific features of OLMs seem pertinent to cultivating one particular element of self‐regulated learning, there remains the chance that, through the interaction of cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational tactics, these features could in fact make a more holistic and general contribution. This supports learners to move from active‐in‐behaviour to active‐in‐thinking activities in digital learning environments.
A significant amount of educational data mining (EDM) research consider students’ past performance or non-academic factors to build predictive models, paying less attention to students’ activity ...data. While procrastination has been found as a crucial indicator which negatively affects performance of students, no research has investigated this underlying factor in predicting achievement of students in online courses. In this study, we aim to predict students’ course achievement in Moodle through their procrastination behaviour using their homework submission data. We first build feature vectors of students’ procrastination tendencies by considering their active, inactive, and spare time for homework, along with homework grades. Accordingly, we then use clustering and classification methods to optimally sort and put students into various categories of course achievement. We use a Moodle course from the University of Tartu in Estonia which includes 242 students to assess the efficacy of our proposed approach. Our findings show that our approach successfully predicts course achievement for students through their procrastination behaviour with precision and accuracy of 87% and 84% with L-SVM outperforming other classification methods. Furthermore, we found that students who procrastinate more are less successful and are potentially going to do poorly in a course, leading to lower achievement in courses. Finally, our results show that it is viable to use a less complex approach that is easy to implement, interpret, and use by practitioners to predict students’ course achievement with a high accuracy, and possibly take remedial actions in the semester.
The usage of social media in education is increasing as a result of perceived pedagogical benefits. The literature emphasizes the importance of teachers continuing to build their social media ...capabilities, experiences, and values. Critical thinking, problem-solving, and the ability to contextualize social media require intellectual, social, and ethical talents regardless of operational proficiency. We performed a semi-structured interview with 13 high school teachers who expressed their thoughts and experiences using social media in the classroom. The interviews’ recorded videos were transcribed into text and coded inductively and deductively for analysis. The study’s findings agreed with a proposed conceptual framework that claims that regular interactions with social media enable teachers to better understand and teach with it. The paper presents a framework to assist education facilitators, educational technologists, teachers, and other affiliated agencies in refocusing their efforts on technology-assisted context training. It also emphasizes the significance of engaging with technology regularly.
Estonia has since the liberation from the Soviet Union in 1991 successfully branded itself as a digital society and an education nation. This transformation builds on a sociotechnical imaginary where ...the progression of learning and the advancement of future citizens is postulated by a restructuring of the classroom through digital solutions. In this case study, we look at a prototype of a future classroom that was set up at the Estonian pavilion at the world fair EXPO 2020 in Dubai, as part of a nation branding process, promoting the nation's educational system and prosperous ed-tech sector. The future classroom was promoted using slogans and futuristic visuals that targeted foreign investors and policy makers, in a way that suggested that the anticipated digital future already exists in Estonia, and therefore, is available for foreign investment, while at the same time connecting to a national and historical narrative of Estonia as part of the European cultural sphere.
School-home communication is a growing research field in social sciences, particularly in education sciences and communication studies. While previous studies have paid much attention to the ...importance of school-home interaction in supporting primary academic socialisation and progress of elementary school pupils, the role of teacher-parent communication and collaboration in influencing the development of children's and adolescents' digital skills remains an under-researched area. This paper employed thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with education experts in six European countries, providing an insight into their opinions and views on the problems in communication between homes and schools. The analysis identified main problems in and obstacles to school-home collaboration on children's digital skills development, and the changes the COVID-19 pandemic brought along in this field of education. The paper provides five policy recommendations for enhancing school-home collaboration on digital skills development.
Studies show that technology can have a positive influence on student achievement and motivation; however, the use of technology for educational purposes is rather modest. Research has shown ...teachers' attitudes to be a key aspect of technology use. However, there is no agreement on which attitudes we should focus on. The aim of the present study was to determine which attitudes may be differentiated empirically in a sample of STEM teachers in the context of mobile devices in teaching and to what extent these factors help to predict willingness to use mobile devices. The study was conducted among 377 STEM-subject teachers. The results showed that performance expectancy, effort expectancy and technology attitude are highly correlated for teachers. It would appear that social aspects (social influence and facilitating conditions) may serve as facilitators for teachers' attitudes in the model, predicting 52.5% of teachers' behavioural intention to use mobile devices for teaching.
Test-taking motivation (TTM) has been associated with test performance in low-stakes testing contexts. However, there have been few studies about TTM in high-stakes testing contexts, and these have ...contradictory results. Our aim was to explore the relationship between test-taking effort and test performance in a real-life high-stakes testing context (n = 1,515). We collected time-based and self-reported data about test-taking effort and used a structural equation model (SEM) to predict test performance. We found that the motivational indicators added about 15% of predictive power to the SEM model, where gender and previous performance had been controlled for. Altogether, the SEM model predicted 69% of the variance in test results. We compared the findings to previous studies and concluded that the possible effect of TTM should be considered in various testing contexts, whether low-stakes or high-stakes.
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