Announcements

Introduction to Vol. 12 No.2 (2024)

2024-08-30

Dear reader,

I am happy to announce that a new issue of Frontline Learning Research has now been published. It comprises five articles that introduce novel methods for designing for and investigating students’ learning, as well as the findings on learning, instruction and teacher-student interaction resulting from the use of these novel methods.

The article by Kusters and colleagues is a methodological contribution to measuring teacher agency from an ecological perspective. The authors have developed a real-life instrument consisting of 23 representative scenarios that capture the complex nature of teacher agency. These scenarios have been developed through a set of four studies, which include initial interviews with university lecturers, refinement in expert panels and a piloting of the data collection procedures. The authors envisage use of the scenarios in professional academic development programs as well as more informal professional development.

Hyyppä and colleagues investigate a future education course aimed at fostering students’ systems thinking about the future. The wider goal of the course was to aid students’ sensemaking and agency beliefs to counter future anxiety due to contemporary environmental crises. The course was provided in upper secondary education in Finland and centered on student visions for “my city of the future”. The authors analyzed students’ written future visions during four consecutive rounds of writing and revisions, focusing on the thematic spheres of society, nature, and technology. Results show that students developed deeper and more nuanced understandings of the interrelation of these thematic spheres and of the actions needed to achieve the envisioned futures.

Horlenko and colleagues have utilized a combination of student self-reports, teacher ratings, and mobile eye-tracking to investigate how teachers’ professional vision relates to students’ self-regulated learning behavior, specifically whether and how teachers’ distribution of attention correlates with students’ self-regulated learning behavior, as reported both by the students and by the teacher themselves. The results show only a slight correlation, where teachers mostly notice student help-seeking behavior and not their other cognitive and metacognitive regulatory behaviors. As these behaviors are more covert, they are difficult to observe. Further, teacher ratings of students’ self-regulated learning differed from student self-reports.

Like the previous article, the study by Ukkonen-Mikkola and colleagues also makes use of mobile eye-tracking, here as input for subsequent retrospective thinking aloud sessions and semi-structured interviews. The focus of the study was early childhood education and care (ECEC) teachers’ distribution of visual gaze during play and teacher-guided activities, and their subsequent reflections on and explanations of their gaze. The authors identify five categories present in teachers’ explanations of their gaze and the related pedagogical actions: protection; physical and emotional availability; teaching and learning; facilitation; and initiatives.

The final article in this issue is by Fortes and colleagues who introduce a novel approach to fostering productive argumentation in classrooms, with the aim of supporting conceptual learning, thinking and communicative skills. The approach centers on scaffolding virtuous-like behavior as an enabling condition for productive argumentation. The authors offer a framework of intellectual virtues to advance our understanding of how to design classrooms for productive argumentation. Further, they revisit three highly cited studies of classroom interventions to show how intellectual virtues were in fact a precondition for the productive argumentation established in these classroom interventions.

The full issue is found here.

Warm regards,

Prof. Dr. Nina Bonderup Dohn
Editor-in-Chief, Frontline Learning Research

Introduction to Vol. 12 No.1 (2024)

2024-04-08

Dear reader,

It gives me great pleasure to announce the publication of a new issue of Frontline Learning Research, comprising five articles. These five articles span much of the focus of learning research, in that they between them address such different questions as teachers’ technology integration, learning in virtual simulation environments, progression of opportunities to learn through teacher training, higher education’s impact on students’ civic engagement, and dimensions of teaching quality.

Lachner and colleagues develop an analytical model of teachers’ technology integration, which unites previously unrelated strands of research into teacher competence and professional vision. The model further adds the dimension of effect of teachers’ technology integration on students’ learning processes and their achievement. The result is the TPTI-model: teachers’ professional competence for technology integration, with four main focus areas: teachers’ antecedents (professional competence); process of technology integration; processes of learning (for students); and students’ antecedents (pre-requisites). The authors point out that important next steps in research consist in empirically testing the relationships posited in the model.

Sellberg and colleagues investigate the potential for developing visual expertise in virtual simulation environments, specifically in a case study of maritime pilots. In contrast to previous studies that focus on so-called negative skills transfer due to deficiencies in the simulation, the authors explore how the trainees themselves notice, handle and learn from adapting to the shortcomings in the simulator environment. Based on their study, the authors argue that the challenges encountered in the simulation may in fact add to the expertise of the trainees. Specifically, the trainees’ awareness of specific discrepancies between navigation in the simulator and on board a boat can lead to enriched conceptual, methodological and technical knowledge of navigation.

The article by Nielsen reports from a study of how student teachers’ perceptions of their opportunities to learn in field practice develop with the progression of their teacher education programme. Focus is on opportunities to learn through observation, own practice and feedback on practice. Participants were 560 Danish student teachers; one third at each of three levels of field practice. Participants answered an online survey and Nielsen utilises chain graph models to analyse the data. She documents that teacher students’ perception of opportunities to learn through observation of fellow students and teachers declined as the programme progressed, whereas their perception of opportunities to learn through own practice increased as the programme progressed.

The study by van den Wijngaard and colleagues centres on the impact of higher education on students’ civic engagement. Based on a literature review, the authors argue for shifting focus from civic engagement itself to two constituents: political interest and agency. These two constituents are the dependent variables of the empirical part of their study. Here, the authors investigate if and how the constituents develop over time for students at a small international liberal arts college in the Netherlands. They document four distinctly different patterns in the development of both constituents. In consequence, analyses at the level of individual student profiles appear necessary, as this allows a more nuanced picture of how civic engagement evolves than analysis of at group level.

The article by Alp Christ, Capon-Sieber and colleagues takes a renewed look at an established model of teaching quality, namely The Three Basic Dimensions model which focuses on the three dimensions of cognitive activation, classroom management and student support. The authors point out that despite its prevalence, the model, and in particular the mediating paths it proposes, has only been submitted to very limited empirical investigation. The present article remedies this problem by reporting a study of the mediating role of depth-of-processing, time-on-task and need satisfaction. The model is initially supplemented with further potential mediating paths, allowing a more nuanced investigation. The empirical investigation only confirmed some of the hypothesised relationships and highlighted that conceptual and methodological choices can have a significant influence on the results.

The full issue is found here.

Warm regards,

Professor, Dr. Nina Bonderup Dohn

Editor-in-Chief, Frontline Learning Research

 

Introduction to Vol. 11 No. 2 (2023)

2024-01-11

Dear reader,

I am happy to announce that a new issue of Frontline Learning Research was published just before the turn of the year. It contains four articles, centering on educational research innovation with eye-tracking and the investigation of learner agency and of learning analytics dashboards’ support of self-regulated learning.

Boels and colleagues investigate the overall research question: In what way do secondary school students’ histogram interpretations change after solving dotplot items? This question is motivated by literature within statistics education which documents student challenges in interpreting histograms, and previous research indicating the scaffolding effect of dotplot tasks. Novel in the authors’ study is the use of eye-tracking data as input for training a machine learning algorithm, which can then distinguish between students’ gaze data belonging to items before the dotplot tasks and after. Differences in gaze patterns indicate changes in students’ learning strategies.

The position paper by John and Mitra develops a new pedagogical use of eye-tracking data, focusing on learner interpretation of the eye movements made by a previous problem solver (the model). The authors extend previous research on guiding learners’ attention through gaze data, as they concentrate on affordances for supporting learners’ interpretation of the model problem solver’s reasoning process. An illustrative example from chemistry, concerning a spectral graph problem, is provided. Possibilities and constraints of the approach within various fields that require visual representations for problem solving are discussed.

Soini and colleagues explore how students grade 1-9 perceive their learning agency, and how this perception relates to teacher and peer support. Learning agency is investigated as embodied in meaning making, seeking scaffolding and problem solving. The authors develop and test a structural equation model, focusing on these elements, as well as gender and socio-economic status. Their findings show differences in learner agency in terms of grade level, gender and socio-economic status, and complex interrelations between social support and the elements of learning agency.

Silvola and colleagues report from a study concerning student evaluations of how learning analytics dashboards can support their self-regulated learning, specifically their study planning and monitoring. The authors investigate how students’ self-efficacy beliefs and resource management strategies are associated with their experiences of support versus challenges posed by the learning analytics dashboards. Findings indicate that different dashboard designs support different aspects of study planning and monitoring, and that the benefit provided by a specific design is influenced by students’ self-efficacy beliefs and help-seeking skills.
 
The full issue is found here.
 
With the warmest wishes for the new year,

Professor, Dr. Nina Bonderup Dohn
Editor-in-Chief, Frontline Learning Research

Introduction to Vol. 11 No. 1 (2023)

2023-09-12

Dear reader,

I am pleased to announce that a new issue of Frontline Learning Research has recently been published. It contains four articles that investigate different aspects of school learning and assessment, from teachers’, student teachers’ and students’ perspectives.

Anyichie and colleagues have developed a novel framework, the Culturally Responsive Self-Regulated Learning Framework (CR-SRL framework), which supports teachers in designing tasks for culturally diverse students in multicultural classrooms. The authors have investigated two elementary school teachers’ use of the framework and their students’ engagement with the tasks in a mixed methods study, utilizing video observations, records of classroom practices, students’ work samples, student self-report and teacher interviews. Findings include a positive evaluation of the CR-SRL framework’s potential for guiding teachers and corresponding benefits to students’ engagement.

Schmidt and colleagues present a novel methodological approach to assessing students’ development of quantitative reasoning within the domain of business and economics. In this approach, items that tap domain-specific quantitative reasoning are extracted empirically from existing instruments for assessing business and economics knowledge. The authors demonstrate that these items constitute an empirically separable factor which can be validly and reliably measured. Thus, their approach offers a practical alternative to broad test batteries in assessing students’ learning outcomes.

Prast and colleagues investigate student perceptions of differentiation and within-class achievement grouping in primary mathematics education. This constitutes a novel perspective, as previous research has focused on potential didactical and socioemotional advantages and disadvantages without drawing in the views of the students themselves. The study was performed with a questionnaire answered by 428 students. Results include that students of all achievement groups primarily held positive attitudes to achievement grouping, but that there were some differences between achievement groups, with less favourable results for students in low achievement groups.

The study by Do and Hascher focuses on student teachers’ perception of challenges incurred in paired field placements where the student teachers team teach with peers. The authors have conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 30 pre-primary and primary student teachers. Findings show different forms of conflict at different phases of peer cooperation, with instruction being the most challenging phase, and lack of compatibility with the peer the most frequent reason for problems. The authors further document a frequent use of reactive strategies, especially the strategy of avoiding problems.

The full issue is found here.

As a final remark, I would like to thank EARLI conference delegates who participated in the sessions hosted by Frontline Learning Research (in collaboration with other publishing outlets) for their interesting questions and lively discussion.

Professor, Dr. Nina Bonderup Dohn

Editor-in-Chief, Frontline Learning Research

Introduction to Vol. 10 No. 2 (2022)

2023-03-24

Dear reader,

I am happy to announce that a new issue of Frontline Learning Research has recently been published. The issue comprises four articles that introduce innovative methodological instruments and provide thought-provoking integration of hitherto unrelated focus areas within learning.

Rogat and colleagues developed a novel instrument for investigating collaborative group work, focusing on engagement in classroom activity. Building on a situative perspective, they conceptualized engagement as a shared and multidimensional phenomenon. Their instrument consists of an observational rubric which evaluates group disciplinary engagement along five dimensions. The authors report on their exploratory testing of the instrument in educational practice. They show how the instrument allows analyses of larger samples than prior approaches with the same level of rich detail.

Turkkila and colleagues explored network analysis as a methodological approach within the theoretical framework of new materialism. They report on the development of a method to construct network data from video. The method was tested and further improved with a video segment from an upper secondary school physics lesson. The test illustrated the viability of the method as regards studying the material-dialogic relationships emerging in students’ investigations in school.

The research by Hirt and colleagues investigated teacher motivation as a core element of teachers’ professional competence in promoting students’ self-regulated learning. Drawing on expectancy-value theory, they identified three motivational profiles for the teachers in their study sample. Their analysis highlighted significant differences between these profiles as regards experience in promoting student self-regulated learning, implicit theory of self-regulated learning, and the promotion of self-regulated learning. The authors stress the importance of this for future professional development programs.

Murtonen and colleagues combined several methods (eye tracking, think aloud experiments, and participants’ numerical evaluation) to research the relationship between university teachers’ professional vision, their conceptions of teaching, and their pedagogical training as regards their focus on students’ learning. Two custom-made videos with trigger events were used to investigate the teachers’ noticing of students. The study showed that teachers who visually noticed important incidents could also formulate a more accurate interpretation. It further pointed to pedagogical education as a stronger predictor of professional vision than teaching experience.

You can find the full issue here.

Enjoy!

Professor, Dr. Nina Bonderup Dohn

Editor-in-Chief, Frontline Learning Research

Introduction to Vol. 10 No. 1 (2022)

2022-09-09

Dear reader,


The current issue of Frontline Learning Research presents pioneering research in terms of both methodological innovation and novel focus areas of research, with two articles investigating development of individual understandings and two articles exploring aspects of collaboration.

Maag Merki and colleagues introduced a new method to investigate teachers’ collaboration, namely time-sampling with an online practice log. This allowed data to be collected that showed that teachers’ collaborative activities varied significantly between weekdays, showing a linear decrease from Monday to Friday, regardless of the content of collaboration. Furthermore, collaborative activities that focused on school subject-specific tasks varied with teachers’ leadership role and gender.

Nyberg and colleagues researched the significance of self-efficacy for the learning of scientific reasoning in primary (Grade 4) and lower secondary (Grade 8) school. At both grade levels, they found correlations for task-specific self-efficacy. However, correlational patterns differed between the grade levels: The largest cluster in Grade 4 comprised children who significantly overestimated their performance in scientific reasoning. In contrast, the largest cluster in Grade 8 comprised students with a realistic estimate of their performance.

The research of Jones and colleagues focused on interpersonal affect in groupwork. In a comparative case-study of two groups of first-year university students, they document the pervasive nature of interpersonal affect as enacted through everyday behavior. They trace the evolution over time of the group dynamics of both groups, one negative and dysfunctional, the other positive and collaborative.

Wolgast and Barnes-Holmes performed two studies of flexible spatial and temporal social perspective taking, one with undergraduate students and one with teacher education students. Focus was on how contextual cues affect such social perspective taking. With an outset in behavioral psychology, they employed the relational frame theory to a within-subject design and analyzed data by Rasch-tree and general linear modeling.

As a final remark, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Thomas Martens for his great work as the previous Editor-in-Chief of Frontline Learning Research and to both him and the rest of the FLR team for the smooth process of handing over the role to me. I am thrilled to be the new Editor-in-Chief and look forward to the collaboration with all editors and authors.

 

Best wishes,
Prof. Dr. Nina B. Dohn
Editor-In-Chief Frontline Learning Research

Introduction to Vol. 9 No. 4 (2021)

2022-02-01

Dear reader,

The current issue of Frontline Learning Research presents various ways of exploring the views of students and teachers. Qualitative methods as well as gaze tracking and emotion tracking will provide new and interesting insights. 
 
Gastra and Brabander investigated the motivation for professional development in Dutch primary teachers with a qualitative approach. The relevance of professional development is mainly judged by applicability to the classroom. Older teachers select by experience and younger teachers try it out in the classroom before adaption. 
 
Koutsianou and Emvalotis explored qualitatively, through scenario-based semi-structured interviews, the complex connection between primary school teachers’ epistemic belief patterns and their conceptions of inquiry-based learning. Overall, the more availing the teachers’ epistemic beliefs, the more thoroughly they conceive inquiry-based learning.
 
Li and colleagues examined with the help of facial expressions the frequency and variability of emotions in self-regulated learning predicting diagnostic performance of medical students. Emotion variability negatively predicted performance regardless of which SRL phases it was tied to. This finding highlights the importance of keeping a stable emotional state to guarantee high performance. 
 
Matta and colleagues analysed mathematics teachers’ eye-tracking data, their verbal data, and classroom video recordings to investigate their gaze behaviour during task instruction-giving. They suggest two previously not detected gaze types: contextualizing gaze for task readiness and collaborative gaze for task focus to contribute to the present discussion on teacher gaze.
 
Knoop-van Campen and colleagues explored with open questions how teachers interpret displays of students’ gaze in reading comprehension assignments and provide. With rapid technological developments ahead like eye tracking through webcams this seems to be an increasingly feasible scenario.
 
You can find the complete issue of Frontline Learning Research here. This will be the last issue which I will present as Editor-in-Chief of Frontline Learning Research. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the whole FLR team, all reviewers, and all authors who pushed learning research forward, especially in the face of an ongoing worldwide pandemic. Nina Bonderup Dohn will take over as Editor-in-Chief in the coming year. 



Stay healthy!

Introduction to Special issue Vol. 9 No. 2 (2021)

2021-03-16

Transition to higher education is a widely examined topic. However, higher education is currently a field in continuous change, due to global health, economic and social developments. This special issue provides empirical research on transition to higher education in the context shaped by these developments, where especially diversity of the student population is a salient feature. The special issue contributes to a better understanding of factors that can influence successful or less stressful transitions into higher education for a diverse student body. To achieve this aim, the special issue goes beyond considering individual factors, such as student characteristics, to examine also the impact of the institutional environments and of national educational policies. The methodological contribution complements the substantive one, through employing research designs that can allow a widened empirical examination combining the various individual, institutional and policy levels. The studies focus on different methodologies and approaches to studying the role of diversity in the transition process. 

The study of Van der Zanden, Denessen, Cillessen, and Meijer longitudinally investigates the relationships between teacher practices in secondary education and first-year student academic achievement and social and emotional adjustment at university. Results show that teachers in secondary education have a long-term impact on first-year students’ social and emotional adjustment. 

Willems, van Daal, Van Petegem, Coertjens and Donche investigate how students’ psychosocial variables at the end of secondary education impact academic adjustment in two HE contexts: professional and academic. The findings highlight that the role of individual characteristics for academic success differs from one context to another. 

The study by Jenert and Brahm identifies three profiles of first-year students that demonstrate the individual diversity of the student body, with different reactions to the characteristics and events of the first-year environment among students, emphasising the need for more customised support structures during the first year of higher education.

Bohndick, Bosse, Jänsch, and Barnat endorsed a person-centred approach combined with structural equation modelling on the perception of institutional requirements, suggesting the value of differences in the perception of requirements as a guideline for the design of support activities.

The study of De Clercq, Hospel, Galand and Frenay highlights the diversity of the student body in 21 study programs, with students’ differences in perception as the characteristics of the context explaining success variation. 

Balloo and Winstone provide a methodological demonstration on how institutions can carry out nuanced analyses of their institutional data by combining different levels of analysis of diversity. The findings inform understanding of potential reasons for differential study success during transition to HE and the design of context-specific interventions focused on reducing achievement gaps. 

In their study, Dalhberg, Vigmo and Surian, compare institutional policies of two higher education institutions in Sweden and Italy and ethnographically  investigate generated student narratives regarding their individual transition to Higher Education from a migrant perspective. Results show how policy ideas about widening participation and transition shape students’ experiences of participation, normalisation, and marginalisation in their own HEI. 

The commentary article by Van der Meer connects the articles from this special issue to research in the New Zealand HE context and poses the question of diversity in relation to the concept of “the whole student”. The discussion engages with issues raised by the contributions in the field of transitioning to HE as well as further developing the theoretical model of addressing diversity in HE.

Introduction to Vol. 9 No. 1 (2021)

2021-02-26

Learning and Instruction is mostly a complex process. This assumption is more and more reflected by measures and methods. The first two studies in this issue demonstrate that with elegant methods the process over time can disentangle individual learning processes. The third study shows a simple method to avoid assessment errors in judging learning outcomes.

Schick et al. used the Q-methodology for sorting questions in a longitudinal study. They measured the attitude towards patient communication of senior medical students across one year. The resulting attitude profiles reflect different developmental patterns over time. 

Davis & Hadwin introduced a diary tool for self-regulated learning for university students. They differentiated the individual regulation processes over time and show that the students who always attained their goals end up with higher personal well-being. The results from the process mining were visualized with two videos: video 1 and video 2. 

Jansen et al. explored the influence of spelling errors on the overall assessment of second-language student essays. They identified a halo effect that spelling errors negatively bias processing of the content. Prompting this fact in a second study could reduce these halo effects.

Introduction to Vol.8 No.6 (2020)

2020-12-02

Dear reader,

The quest for scientific knowledge is always a long and winding pathway. This issue of FLR reflects this pathway and possible crossroads. All articles in this issue try to find different data sources to improve empirical data quality. The message is clear: don’t trust only one data source and use multiple data sources creatively. 

Klaus Beck analysed the role of expert for ensuring content validity of psychological and educational test. For this purpose, he reviewed 72 published reports within two research programs in Germany for academic and vocational education. His conclusion was that methodological procedures of qualitative and quantitative input from experts should be improved. 

Heemskerk & Malmberg triangulated self-reports and observations in the classroom for 5 days to identify the engagement of pupils in the classroom. Engagement varied more greatly within lessons than between lessons and whole-group instruction was associated with the lowest level of engagement. 

Zhao et al. introduced an interesting new online measure: the distance to the screen. Closer head-to-screen distance can indicate a challenging task. Larger fluctuation can indicate high cognitive load and predict upcoming response accuracy. 

Jorion et al. used log files generated by an interactive tangible tabletop. Different museumgoers collaborated in a complex situation to catch fish. With clustering techniques and heatmaps, patterns for unstructured activities were identified. These patterns appear to be a meaningful addition to observation data. 

Mouw et al. combined person-oriented, process-oriented, and effect-oriented analytical approaches for analysing the perspective-taking ability of primary-school children. The effect of perspective-taking ability on cooperative behaviours and learning outcomes depends on its conceptualization and measureme

You can find the complete issue of Frontline Learning Research here.

Stay healthy!

Prof. Dr. Thomas Martens

Editor-In-Chief Frontline Learning Research

Introduction to Vol. 8 No. 4 (2020)

2020-08-18

Dear reader,

As you might already know, our dear colleague and friend Dr. Stuart Karabenick passed away on August 1st. Just a few weeks ago, he finished a very thoughtful review for this issue of FLR. We are all very sad and will miss him and his valuable expertise. I am sure that his research ideas will continue to inspire a lot of researchers in the future.

This issue of Frontline Learning Research covers an interesting variety of learning research: person-centered approaches, interactions between teachers and students and interactions between peers. 

Li et al. show that interest-driven socio-digital participation between friends in grade 7 becomes more similar over time. This could be used for bridging the gap between students’ informal interests and educational practices.

Draijer et al. explore the structure of interest. With the help of latent profile analysis, they show that homogeneous and heterogeneous structures co-exist. Measures of interest should account for this multidimensionality.

Knoop-van Campen and Molenaar show ­that dashboards have the potential to enhance teachers’ feedback practices and to complement human-prompted feedback, especially when dashboards are integrated into teachers’ professional routines.

Broda et. al. examine the relations between student reports of their own writing-related self-regulation and teacher reports of student writing-related self-regulation. Preliminary evidence points to the durable nature of student-teacher discrepancy as a predictor of more subjective academic outcomes.

Hirt et. al. differentiate types of help-seeking strategies with a person-centered approach. Avoiding help-seeking can be separated from working independently and individual help-seeking strategies can be switched over time.

Stay healthy!

Prof. Dr. Thomas Martens

Editor-In-Chief Frontline Learning Research