Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

About: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Curriculum & Higher education. The organization has 1798 authors who have published 3807 publications receiving 193985 citations. The organization is also known as: Ontario College of Education & OISE.

Values Underpinning STEM Education in the USA: An Analysis of the Next Generation Science Standards

Abstract: The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were designed to address poor science and math performance in United States schools by inculcating globally competitive science, technology, engineering, and mathematics literacies relevant to participation in future society. Considering the complex network of influences involved in the development of the NGSS, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate how educational values are embedded in the discourse of the standards. Using critical discourse analysis and content analysis, we evaluated how themes related to (i) performance, (ii) accessibility, and (iii) innovation and creativity are discursively constituted in the NGSS. Our analysis indicates the NGSS prioritizes: measurable and reproducible performances; the standards appear to be based on a conception of accessibility closely aligned with equality, and self-investment, and; innovation and creativity are discursively constituted as attributes that can be developed through specific, prescribed practices. We discuss these findings in relation to the goals of the NGSS and potential teaching and learning outcomes resulting from education based on the standards.

Chinese children's understanding of false beliefs: the role of language.

Abstract: The present study investigated the universality of the early development of young children’s understanding and representation of false beliefs, and specifically, the eect of language on Chinese-speaking children’s performance in false belief tasks under three between-subjects conditions. The three conditions diered only in the belief verb that was used in probe questions regarding one’s own or another person’s beliefs, namely the Chinese verbs, xiang, yiwei, and dang. While the three words are all appropriate to false beliefs, they have dierent connotations regarding the likelihood of a belief being false, with xiang being more neutral than either yiwei or dang. Experiment 1 involved thirty-five Chinese-speaking adults who responded to false belief tasks to be used in Experiment 2 in order both to establish an adult comparison and to obtain empirical evidence regarding how Chinese-speaking adults use the three belief verbs to describe dierent false belief situations. In Experiment 2, 188 three-, four-, and five-year-old Chinese-speaking children participated in three false belief tasks. They were asked to report about an individual’s false belief when either xiang, yiwei ,o rdang was used in the probe question. Results revealed a rapid developmental pattern in Chinese-speaking children’s understanding of false belief, which is similar to that found with Western children. In addition, children performed significantly better when yiwei and dang, which [*] We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the Chinese children and adults who participated in the study and the children’s parents and teachers for their kind cooperation. We also thank Fen Xu and Genyao Fu for their assistance in conducting the study, and Wendy Craig, Michelle Eskritt, Annette Karmilo-Smith and Marie Anderson Keen for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. This research was supported by grants to Kang Lee from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and David R. Olson from the Spencer Foundation. Address for correspondence: Dr Kang Lee, Department of Psychology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6. e-mail: kang!pavlov.psyc.queensu.ca

The Role of 2D and 3D Mental Rotation in Mathematics for Young Children: What Is It? Why Does It Matter? And What Can We Do about It?.

Abstract: The ability to mentally rotate objects in space has been singled out by cognitive scientists as a central metric of spatial reasoning (see Jansen, Schmelter, Quaiser-Pohl, Neuburger, & Heil, 2013; Shepard & Metzler, 1971 for example). However, this is a particularly undeveloped area of current mathematics curricula, especially in North America. In this article we discuss what we mean by mental rotation, why it is important, and how it can be developed with young children in classrooms. We feature results from one team of teacher-researchers in Canada engaged in Lesson Study to develop enhanced theoretical understandings as well as practical applications in a geometry program that incorporates 2D and 3D mental rotations. Children in the Lesson Study classrooms (ages 4–8 years) demonstrated large gains in their mental rotation skills during 4 months of Lesson Study intervention in the Math for Young Children research program. The results of this study suggest that young children from a wide range of ability levels can engage in, and benefit from, classroom-based mental rotation activities. The study contributes to bridging a gap between cognitive science and mathematics education literature.

Self‐scaffolding mediated by languaging: microgenetic analysis of high and low performers

Abstract: The growing literature about the positive effect of languaging or self-explaining has so far failed to determine why some learners benefit from languaging more than others. We attempt to address this gap through a microgenetic analysis of the languaging behaviour of two university students learning French as a second language, whom we identify as a high and a low languager. We trace the development of their understanding of the grammatical concept of voice in French. Our findings suggest that languaging is a self-scaffolding tool that our high languager used efficiently to solve cognitive conflicts, mediate mental processes, and construct meaning in general. On the basis of our results, we call for a change in educational practices that would allow for more learner agency through self-scaffolding mediated by languaging.