Many studies indicate that classroom discussions on citizenship topics play a significant role in citizenship education. These discussions not only influence individual citizenship outcomes and the classroom atmosphere, but also have implications for the democratic fabric of society in a wider societal context. However, training teachers in effectively guiding classroom discussions remains a challenging task, given the considerable variation in approaches to teaching citizenship education. To address this challenge, Coopmans and Kan recently conducted an exploratory study to investigate pre-vocational teaching strategies to facilitate classroom discussions on citizenship. The authors compared teaching strategies employed by four pre-vocational teachers across three Dutch secondary schools during 26 lessons using the discussion tool “Terre Nova Mini Society” in the 2018/2019 school year. The three schools were selected due to their varying levels of familiarity with citizenship education and citizenship-related classroom discussions. Before teaching the lessons, the four teachers participated in a workshop to...

The flipped classroom approach, where students learn new content via video lectures outside class and use class time for interactive applications, is gaining popularity in higher education.  A meta-analysis by Ni and colleagues, published in the International Journal of Educational Research, explored the impact of the flipped classroom approach on college students' English learning outcomes. The meta-analysis included 24 studies conducted from 2000 to 2020, yielding 31 effect sizes. These studies focused on the use of the flipped classroom approach in English language learning, wherein instructional videos and other technological tools were employed prior to class sessions to enhance high school students' performance. All studies followed a pre-test, post-test control group design, comparing students who experienced the flipped classroom with those taught using traditional methods. The analysis revealed that flipped classrooms had a positive, moderate overall effect on learning outcomes (ES = +0.68). Examining different types of flipped classroom designs,...

Asking good questions is essential for knowledge construction and scientific learning. Wong and colleagues conducted two experiments to investigate the impact of learning-by-teaching on generating research questions, comparing it with two other generating learning techniques: retrieval practice and concept-mapping. Research questions correspond to the "create" level of Bloom's taxonomy (remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, create), representing the highest level of generating new knowledge through novel research inquiries. A total of 152 undergraduate students from the National University of Singapore participated in two experiments. They were instructed on generating create-level research questions and then were given a scientific text and randomly assigned to one of three learning methods: (a) constructing a concept map, (b) retrieval practice with study and retrieval intervals, or (c) teaching the text through note preparation, video lecture, and answering preset questions. In Experiment 1, the participants were tested on their ability to generate questions at the create-level...

Symbolic approximate arithmetic, crucial for children’s mathematical proficiency, involves providing an approximate answer instead of an exact one. For instance, a previous study found that preschoolers did not know the exact answer to “21+30” but did know that “21+30” is larger than “34”. Both number comparison training and number line estimation training have been found separately to enhance children’s symbolic approximate arithmetic. Wei and colleagues conducted an experiment to compare the effect of these two trainings on symbolic approximate arithmetic since they may rely on distinct cognitive processes. A sample of 109 children, aged 5.11 to 6.27 years, were recruited from three middle-class preschools in Hangzhou, China. They were randomly assigned to one of three training groups: (1) number line estimation (n = 32), (2) number comparison (n = 34), and (3) control group (n = 30). In the number line estimation group, the game played by children aimed to...

Learning-by-teaching is a generative learning activity in which learners explain the material in a lesson to others after studying it.  Wang and colleagues conducted an experiment with 96 college students from a university in central China to compare three versions of learning-by-teaching, all without audience interaction but with varied levels of social presence, thereby leading to different levels of extraneous processing, which causes learners to engage in cognitive processing irrelevant to the instruction purpose (e.g., distraction). Participants studied a 2-minute video on chemical synaptic transmission for 9 minutes and prepared a brief lesson of less than 5 minutes under a randomly assigned one of three conditions: (1) teach-to-camera – teach to an imaginary audience by creating a video lecture; (2) teach-to-student – teach to an audience face-to-face; (3) teach-to-group – teach to seven people physically present in the room. Audiences in the latter two conditions provided no feedback. Data collecting...

With the usage of smartphones becoming increasingly pervasive, taking photos to record information in class allows students to store more information with less effort. Many studies have demonstrated that longhand note-taking facilitates the deeper encoding of information and reduces mind-wandering, but little research has investigated the learning outcomes of the photo-taking strategy, so a recent study was conducted to compare their effectiveness. The sample of this study included 100 college students between the ages of 18-32 who were divided into three subgroups to listen to two lectures in three different conditions: listening with longhand note-taking, with photo-taking, and without note-taking. After they completed both lectures, participants reviewed their hand-written notes, photos they took, and plain printouts, respectively, to prepare for a recall test. The results revealed that students who took longhand notes outperformed the other two groups. A repetitive experiment was also done to probe participants’ mind-wandering behavior by asking...

Think Bright is an early intervention program using mediated learning to enhance the cognitive functioning of children with developmental delay. Keung and colleagues conducted a randomized control trial to investigate the effect of the program on Hong Kong preschoolers with developmental delay. The intervention included training activities that focused on three aspects of thinking skills: analogical thinking, sequential thinking, and logical reasoning. In contrast to teacher-centred direct teaching, mediated learning is a recurring four-step process of “Explore-Try-Mediate-Conclude”. In the process, teachers used mediation skills to facilitate and guide the child to perform the learning task by encouraging the child to think aloud and verbalize his/her approaches and findings. Hence, the researchers hypothesized that mediated learning not only improves thinking skills but also language skills. A total of 68 preschoolers (48 boys, 20 girls, mean age = 58 months) with cognitive and/or language delay was recruited from 15 rehabilitation service centres...

A recent longitudinal randomized controlled trial (RCT) by Kim and colleagues evaluated the effect of the Model of Reading Engagement (MORE) intervention on the reading comprehension of early elementary students. The MORE intervention consisted of providing students in Grade 1 with 20 thematic content literacy lessons in science, providing related informational texts to read during the summer, and then building on the thematic content literacy with 45 additional lessons in Grade 2. The intervention was developed to expose students to increasingly complex information about a topic over time. Thus, students develop schemas, or ways of storing and retrieving knowledge, to comprehend new topics. The RCT was conducted over 12 months in 30 elementary schools with a sample of 1,176 students receiving the MORE intervention and 980 students assigned to business-as-usual literacy instruction. Teachers in the treatment condition received professional development and ongoing support from site-based literacy facilitators. Using audio recordings...

Petersen and colleagues conducted a large-scale randomized controlled trial, aiming to examine the effects of a multitiered system of language support (MTSLS) on kindergarten children’s oral and written language. Participants included 686 kindergarten students from 4 school districts in the Upper Midwest region. Researchers randomly assigned 28 full-day kindergarten classrooms to treatment (n=337 students) or control (n=349 students) conditions. The treatment group received 14 weeks of oral narrative language instruction using Story Champs, a contextualized language intervention and a discourse-based oral language curriculum. After 4 weeks of large group (Tier 1) Story Champs intervention, a random sample of students who did not make adequate progress in Tier 1 intervention (n=49 students) received supplemental small group (Tier 2) intervention. Results were showed below. Students in the treatment group had significantly higher scores on all outcome measures (i.e., narrative retell, personal story generation, expository retell, and narrative writing) compared to those in...