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The aim of this study is to gain more insight in the assessment of noise in open-plan study environments and to reveal correlations between noise disturbance experienced by students and the noise sources they perceive, the tasks they perform and the acoustic parameters of the open-plan study environment they work in. Data were collected in five open-plan study environments at universities in the Netherlands. A questionnaire was used to investigate student tasks, perceived sound sources and their perceived disturbance, and sound measurements were performed to determine the room acoustic parameters. This study shows that 38% of the surveyed students are disturbed by background noise in an open-plan study environment. Students are mostly disturbed by speech when performing complex cognitive tasks like studying for an exam, reading and writing. Significant but weak correlations were found between the room acoustic parameters and noise disturbance of students. Practitioner Summary: A field study was conducted to gain more insight in the assessment of noise in open-plan study environments at universities in the Netherlands. More than one third of the students was disturbed by noise. An interaction effect was found for task type, source type and room acoustic parameters.

The Covid-19 pandemic that hit the world, Indonesia is no exception, has had a huge impact on various sectors, one of which is the education sector. Many activities that must be done online cause students to experience fatigue commonly called zoom fatigue and affect the task commitment level of students. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between Zoom fatigue and level tasks commitment on the students-level I Faculty of Nursing, University of Padjadjaran. This type of research is quantitative with a descriptive correlation design. The data collection technique used in this study is a questionnaire using google forms. The instrument used in this study is the Zoom fatigue & Fatigue Scale to measure zoom fatigue and the Task Commitment level Scale to measure task commitment levels. Data analysis conducted in this study is to use Rank spearman to test the hypothesis test. The results of data analysis conducted using the Spearman correlation technique obtained a sig value of 0.119 > 0.05 then it was concluded that there is no significant relationship between Zoom fatigue and task commitment level in Level I Students of the Faculty of Nursing, University of Padjadjaran. Researchers are further advised to identify also related to other variables that affect the level of task commitment such as punishment, reward, and praise, as well as environmental conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Roca: Revista Científico-Educacional de la Provincia de Granma is the property of Universidad de Granma, Departamento Editorial and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It is evident that there are many factors that influence degrees of willingness to present among second language (L2) learners. Within the current context, less proficient students have shown clear signs of reluctance to deliver presentations in English language classrooms. Based on the researchers' assumption and previous existing literature, there are two variables (i.e., topics for presentation and preparation time for presentation) central to the phenomenon situated. This article describes a pilot study which investigated to what extent a speaking task designed on the basis of two key factors (i.e., speaking topics relevant to students' background knowledge and extended preparation time) produces a positive impact on Thai students' degrees of willingness to present in English. Under study, 15 undergraduates in a Thai university were encouraged to deliver a presentation about a secret tourist attraction in their city. Flipped learning was also adapted and utilized as an approach that offered students more preparation time to deliver their presentations. Findings gained from students' written reflections and a willingness to present scale demonstrated that students' degrees of willingness to present were positively influenced by the task design. Pedagogical implications are also provided in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many studies have investigated the effect of task complexity on L2 writing, little has been reported on the effects of intended task complexity manipulations on task-generated cognitive demands in L2 writing. This study, therefore, was designed to examine the relative effects of task complexity and cognitive demands on students' L2 writing. Two argumentative writing tasks were manipulated with varying numbers of elements and reasoning demands to be distinguished either as a simple or complex writing task. Self-ratings and dual-task methodology were adopted to validate the manipulations of task complexity. Thirty-one L2 learners, in the single-task group, were asked to complete two writing tasks and a post-task questionnaire. Participants in the dual-task conditions (30 in Experimental 1 and 31 in Experimental 2) were required to simultaneously complete the primary writing tasks and the secondary tasks. Results from self-ratings and dual-task experiments supported the efficacy of the task complexity manipulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Dilemas Contemporáneos: Educación, Política y Valores is the property of Dilemas Contemporaneos: Educacion, Politica y Valores and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Currently, the cognitive load imposed by tasks with different complexity during collaborative learning or pair learning has not been well studied. This study examined the effect of three types of tasks with different complexity on students' cognitive load during pair learning. We randomly selected a total of 76 pupils to participate in a one-semester robotics course for the experiment. The results showed that the difference in students' cognitive load imposed by pair learning and robotics tasks with different complexity was not significant. However, it is complicated to explain the results. From one side of the coin, pair learning may be a key factor. The more complex the task is, the more possible that an individuals would collaborate with partners to promote the equal allocation of intrinsic cognitive load. In contrast, the simple tasks would cause free-riding and thus impede the equal allocation of cognitive load. From another side, the essence of germane cognitive load might play an important role too, since students' schemas were not sufficiently automated when they encountered the easy tasks at the early learning stage, but automated to some extent when they complete complex tasks during the later learning period. Implications for practitioners are also discussed in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Paradigma is the property of Universidad Pedagogica Experimental Libertador and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study describes an in-depth investigation of students' integration or connection formation across multiple texts. Students were asked to complete two multiple text tasks, differing in the number of texts that they asked students to connect and the variety of cross-textual connections able to be formed. For each task, students were asked to indicate (e.g., highlight) and explain each connection formed. Students' connection formation was analyzed in a variety of ways (e.g., number of texts connected, types of connections identified). Across two tasks, students were found (a) to form more evidentiary (i.e., linking specific information supporting main ideas) than thematic (i.e., linking main ideas across texts) connections, (b) to identify more similarities than differences, and (c) to form comparatively low-level, rather than high-level connections, with levels of connection formation distinguished according to the degree of specificity, abstraction, and elaboration that these reflected. Implications for further research and instruction are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zarqa Journal for Research & Studies in Humanities is the property of Zarqa Journal for Research & Studies in Humanities and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Pedagogische Studien is the property of Vereniging Onderwijsresearch and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this study, students worked in pairs to problem solve through 3D construction. The aim was to assess whether collaboration might benefit students when solving spatial reasoning tasks. They found the benefits were more pronounced with students in Grade 2 than in Grade 1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we inquire into possible differences between children with exceptionally high intellectual abilities and their average peers as regards metacognitive monitoring and related metacognitive strategies. The question whether gifted children surpass their typically developing peers not only in the intellectual abilities, but also in their level of metacognitive skills, has not been convincingly answered so far. We sought to examine the indicators of metacognitive behavior by means of eye-tracking technology and to compare these findings with the participants' subjective confidence ratings. Eye-movement data of gifted and average students attending final grades of primary school (4th and 5th grades) were recorded while they dealt with a deductive reasoning task, and four metrics supposed to bear on metacognitive skills, namely the overall trial duration, mean fixation duration, number of regressions and normalized gaze transition entropy, were analyzed. No significant differences between gifted and average children were found in the normalized gaze transition entropy, in mean fixation duration, nor - after controlling for the trial duration - in number of regressions. Both groups of children differed in the time devoted to solving the task. Both groups significantly differed in the association between time devoted to the task and the participants' subjective confidence rating, where only the gifted children tended to devote more time when they felt less confident. Several implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper denotes the findings from an action research project, which applied problem-based learning (PBL) in linguistics courses in an MA TESOL program in Vietnam. The project aimed to study the extent to which the use of problem-based tasks in semantic courses could promote students' employment of higher-order thinking skills in their learning. It was found that the PBL approach was specifically appropriate in promoting higher-order thinking skills for students with passive learning habits in such Confucian heritage cultures as Vietnam. With well-designed problem-based tasks and adequate tutoring, students learned how to use higher-order thinking skills to facilitate their learning; how to stay more focused on the completion process of problem-based tasks; and how to be motivated to engage in learning activities. In addition, some students were encouraged to follow the same PBL approach in their own teaching practice. Problem-based tasks which took place at a fixed time during class seemed to cause students to lose interest. In addition, a lack of adequate job experience might also have limited the effectiveness and overall success of the problem-based tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online learning gives teachers the opportunity to encourage and stimulate students' online research, setting them the task of working on a project. This engages students and improves learning efficiency. The object of the article is to study the impact of online learning on students' design and research activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Avances en PsicologÍa Latinoamericana is the property of Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Senora del Rosario and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In order for students to develop a better understanding and the skills to question future work, a session was introduced into a teaching workshop which sets students up to make common mistakes. These mistakes are often made by blindly following procedural methods. The students' views on these mistakes and how they found the error-eliciting task were gained through focus groups on the day of the activity. Factors such as knowing whether they had the right answer and the amount of staff involvement were discussed. In a follow-on focus group two weeks after the session, there were indications that the session had an impact on how they worked generally as there was more discussion within class and a shift in views about making mistakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication over the last decade has undergone unexpected changes, but has also led to the development of an impressive number of new complex ways of expression. The tasks of the manager, whether he is the director of a school or the one who runs a company with many employees or runs a political or sales campaign, have become so complex that not many are able to understand in advance the following tendencies, or to prove that they have enough means to be able to continuously adapt to new scenarios. This paper brings to your attention the fact that the development of new communication skills, efficiency, must become major concerns for all managers. From this study, we found that the first three of the seven situations presented in the questionnaire, in which verbal communication suffers distortions, are classified as follows: the first is represented by - exaggerated pride and pride that prevents the manager to listen and accept situations in which he sometimes erred - by 37%, the second reason for inefficient communication - reduced and impaired listening ability 32%, followed by - establishing a time and / or a location for discussion less related to the needs or expectations of the interlocutor 16%. Methods. The present study was conducted on a sample of 34 subjects, students and master students of the university in the final years of study, who were previously informed on the subject around which the questions of the questionnaire were formulated. The group was divided into three homogeneous samples, and subsequently the results were integrated. Conclusion. At the end of the period in which the questionnaires were applied, discussions were held and the results presented, which has an obvious contribution in the development of the next stages of the experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that examples can do more than serve the purpose of illustrating the truth of an existential statement or disconfirming the truth of a universal statement. Our argument is relevant to the use of technology in classroom assessment. A central challenge of computer-assisted assessment is to develop ways of collecting rich and complex data that can nevertheless be analyzed automatically. We report here on a study concerning a dedicated design pattern of a special kind of task for assessing student's reasoning when establishing the validity of geometry statements that go beyond a single case, concerning the similarity of triangles. In each task students are given three relations that exist either in every triangle or in special types. Their task is to verify, by creating an example, claims that argue for logically compounded claims built out of the given relations. 50 students, aged 15–16, were asked to verify or disprove claims. Their submissions were automatically characterized along categories based on the correctness of the claims they chose and the examples they used to support the claims. We focus on characterizing the properties of the conjunction/disjunction design for automatically assessing conceptions related to examples generated by the learner with interactive diagrams. Our analysis shows that our automated scoring environment, which supports interactive example-eliciting-tasks, and the design principles of conjunction and disjunction of geometric relations, enable one to assess students' exploration of the logic of universal claims, characterize successful and partial answers, and differentiate between students according to their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on problem solving and problem posing in mathematics education with 6-year-olds. After working on a problem-solving activity, the young students were asked to pose a similar task to a friend. This article explores how the students interpret the notion of similar. To be able to pose a problem-solving task themselves the students had to change perspective, from searching for information to providing information, and from searching for a solution to searching for a question. Also, to create a similar task the students had to reflect on the original problem-solving task. Thus, their posed tasks shed light on their interpretation of what the original problem-solving task was really about. The results show that the large majority of the students included some three-dimensional aspects from the original problem-solving task in their posed tasks. However, the questions they posed varied in terms of whether or not they included mathematical elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to identify and analyse the perceptions of first year students, majoring in Pedagogy, on online educational communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although students are considered “digital natives”, we were surprised to discover their preference for face-to-face teaching-learning activities as opposed to online teaching-learning in the future. Other significant results cover students’ suggestions regarding online teaching-learning: increasing the number of interactions and detailed explanations of topics / work tasks using Zoom, Google Meet; ensuring the attractiveness of work tasks and courses with the help of games, tests, movies; reducing the number of seminar topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigated how students organized their knowledge about organic chemistry reactions in a transformed curriculum, including their choices, abilities, and changes over time. This transformed curriculum focuses on interpreting the underlying mechanistic patterns of chemical reactions and emphasizes the principles of reactivity in organic chemistry. Data from this study were collected at beginning and end of an Organic Chemistry II course using an open and closed online categorization task with a set of organic chemistry reactions. In the open task, participants organized the set of reactions as they chose, giving us insight into how the participants preferred to organize their knowledge. In the closed task, participants were asked to organize the set of reactions in a specific way—by each reaction's governing mechanism—which would provide a measure of the students' ability to categorize the reactions in that way. We investigated the similarities and differences of the open and closed categorizations at each time of administration and analyzed the changes over time. Findings from this study emphasized the efficacy of the transformed curriculum for: (a) promoting a focus on process‐oriented features of reactions over static features of a reaction and (b) increasing the students' abilities to categorize a set of reactions according to the mechanism governing the reaction. Findings revealed implications for the transformed curriculum, which addresses key areas for improvements, potential implications for research, and also limitations of the current study. We further describe possible extensions of this study to how the open and closed categorization tasks may be used for research and instruction in other science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, James presents the Extended Hundreds Chart, a task he used with Year 6 students to explore their thinking about and representations of negative numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impact of a dynamic geometry environment, GeoGebra, in enabling grade 9 students to explore a geometrical task related to the Euler's line. The research subjects were grade 9 students in India and Sweden who had no prior experience of using dynamic geometry. Their approach to geometrical reasoning, argumentation and conjecture making has been analysed using Marton's theory of variation, Pea's theory of technology as amplifier and reorganizer and with Marrades and Gutiérrez categorization of proofs. Results indicate that when students of both countries worked on geometrical tasks in GeoGebra, they arrived at similar conclusions. For both groups of students, GeoGebra played the role of amplifier and reorganiser in enabling their explorations. Further, in some of the construction and dragging episodes it was observed that the four functions of variation, namely, contrast, generalisation, separation and fusion played a significant role in developing students' geometrical thinking. Results further indicate that the dynamic geometry environment (DGE) facilitated the making of conjectures and developing empirical proof. However, when it came to developing a deductive proof, students required adequate scaffolding. In general, it concluded that students perform adequately when given investigatory problems in such an environment. They learn new mathematics and learn to handle the DGE at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The four studied schools exhibited a very similar average duration of fixation. Taking into account the results of students with the longest fixation times, one can conclude that the range of this indicator varies widely. The obtained results of averaged values for groups of students and for individual tasks only show us trends, but do not answer the question of why this is so. To find this answer, each student’s case should be analysed separately. Every student solves a given problem task in a unique way. For this reason, studying an individual student will be of greater importance to the teaching process, while analysing the average results of a given group may only serve to indicate trends in students’ behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Karbala Heritage: Quarterly Authorized Journal Specialized In Karbala Heritage is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Educational & Psychological Sciences is the property of Arab Journal of Sciences & Research Publishing (AJSRP) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In large scale low stakes assessments, students usually choose their own speed at which to work on tasks. At the same time, previous research has shown that in hard tasks, the time students invest is a positive predictor of task performance. From this perspective, a relevant question is whether student dispositions other than the targeted skill might affect students' time on task behavior, thus potentially affecting their task performance and in turn their estimated skill in the target domain. Using PISA 2009 computer based assessment data, the present research investigated for the domain of reading digital text whether three variables that can be assumed to predict performance in digital reading tasks, comprehension skill, enjoyment of reading, and knowledge of reading strategies would also predict how much time students would devote to digital reading tasks, and in particular, whether they would adapt time on task to task difficulty. To address this question, two linear mixed models were estimated that predicted the time students spent on a task, and the average time students spent on relevant pages within each task, by the interaction of task difficulty with comprehension skill, enjoyment of reading, and knowledge of reading strategies. To account for time on task being nested in students and tasks, random effects for persons and tasks were included. The interaction of task difficulty with gender and Socio-Economic Status (SES) was included for control purposes. Models were estimated individually for 19 countries, and results integrated meta-analytically. In line with predictions, for both time on task indicators, significant positive interactions were found with comprehension skill, enjoyment of reading, and knowledge of reading strategies. These interactions indicated that in students with high comprehension skill, enjoyment of reading, and knowledge of reading strategies there was a stronger association of task difficulty with time on task than in students low in either of these variables. Thus, skilled comprehenders, students enjoying reading, and students in command of reading strategies behaved more adaptively than lower skilled, motivated, or knowledgeable students. Implications of these findings for the validity of self-paced computer-based assessments are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present qualitative study aims to explore teachers' and students' perceptions of some teaching motivational strategies impact on university students' effectiveness based on Dörnyei & Csizér (1998) landmark study. The research has involved individual in-depth semi-structured interviews with six English Foreign Language (EFL) teachers and six students to further explore key issues from their viewpoints. The main findings have unveiled that both teachers and students recognise the motivating potential of all the examined scales. Many similarities and some dissimilarities related to specific motivational themes have emerged. In terms of dissimilarity, students accorded importance to group work scale, however teachers minimised its role by justifying that it needed certain conditions. Another area of mismatch can be noticed in the way students and teachers regarded tasks in motivating students. Teachers stressed on providing clear instruction and explanation while students pointed to the content of tasks. Furthermore, another instance of difference in participants' views towards the same scale in terms of the motivational strategies to be used was in teacher behaviour scale. Both participants agreed to place value on it, but students appeared to emphasise on the social aspects as feeling relaxed and enjoying the class in order to participate fully, while teachers stressed on academic achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In teaching writing to foreign or second language learners, one of the issues concerning teachers is the amount and types of errors students make in their writings. This paper aims to obtain a clear understanding of types of errors in the writings of Turkish EFL learners by comparing freshman and sophomore students' writing performance. To this encl research questions were formulated to see whether there is any significant difference between the participants' grade and their error types in writing. Data were collected through a picture story task consisting of six pictures. The statistical analyses revealed that a) there was not a statistically significant difference between grade groups on the number of t-units and proportion of words per t-unit they wrote in their picture stories, butb) there was a statistically significant difference between grade groups on the number of words they wrote and errors they made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of SituArte is the property of Universidad del Zulia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: specify and theoretical basis for the content of educational tasks methodical practice, as a means of diagnosing the level of formation and pedagogical skills of students. Material and Methods: the analysis of more than 20 references, 12 work programs in the discipline "Physical Education" HEI III–IV accreditation levels. Results: disclosed system of pedagogical skills, providing social and personal competence in the sphere of physical culture, which forms during the methodical practice through completing quests. Conclusions: this study allows a qualitatively new level to solve the issues of forming and diagnostics level pedagogical skills of students in physical education.

Copyright of Iskanja is the property of Community of Boarding Schools of Slovenia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Examples that learners generate, and questions they ask while generating examples, are both sources for inferring about learners’ thinking. We investigated how inferences derived from each of these sources relate, and how these inferences can inform task design aimed at advancing students’ knowledge of scale factor enlargement (i.e. scaling). The study involved students in two secondary schools in England who were individually tasked to generate examples of scale factor enlargements in relation to specifically designed prompts. Students were encouraged to raise questions while generating their examples. We drew inferences about students’ thinking from their examples and, where available, from their questions. These inferences informed our design and implementation of a set of follow-up tasks for all students, and an additional personalised task for each student who raised any questions. Students showed increased knowledge of, and confidence with, scale factor enlargement independently of whether they asked questions during the exemplification task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Needs analysis ( NA) plays a significant role in developing tasks that create opportunities for natural language use in classrooms. Preemptive NA, however, does not necessarily predict the contingently emerging interpersonal and social variables which influence learners and teachers' behaviours. These unpredictable variables often lead to a gap between what has been planned for a task to achieve and what learners actually get from a task in classrooms. To narrow this gap, this study proposes an analysis of needs at the task implementation stage adopting activity systems analysis (Engeström, ). The study investigates needs in group writing conferences for PhD students, where a task, giving and receiving oral feedback on one another's writing, is implemented. The participants were seven PhD students in two groups of writing conferences led by different facilitators in a thesis writing support program at an Australian university. Data were collected through observation and audiorecordings of writing conference sessions, interviews with the students and the facilitators, and students' written drafts. The collected data were analysed for the relationships between students' motives, participation patterns, and rules/division of labour in the groups. The identified aspects of this activity that require pedagogical innovation concern discursive practice during the sessions, students' motives and interests in engaging the task, the rules of writing manifested through discussion, and ascribed and self-ascribed roles of the students. The study highlights the potential of activity systems analysis for NA in classroom task implementation and proposes a new path to investigating tasks in classroom realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tasks are viewed as a principled foundation for classroom teaching, social interaction, and language development. This special issue sheds new light on how task-based classroom practices are supported by a diverse range of principles. This introduction describes current trends in classroom practice and pedagogic research in relation to task-based language teaching (TBLT), offering a rationale for revisiting the TESOL profession's understandings of the uses of tasks in language classrooms. It then summarizes the contributions appearing in this issue, which address topics including: interaction in task planning and completion, the use of tasks to support writing development, learner perceptions and interpretations of tasks, and the relationship between autonomy and TBLT. Collectively, these contributions advance complementary theoretical perspectives on classroom learning and teaching in diverse EFL and ESL settings. Overall, they reflect the broadening scope of second language acquisition theory while maintaining a tight focus on classroom realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young learners (defined as children ages 5-12) of English as a foreign language are growing in number worldwide. At the policy level, foreign language ( FL) programs for young learners are increasingly emphasizing the use of task-based language teaching ( TBLT). In practice, however, designing and implementing tasks for young learners poses numerous challenges, especially considering that young learners are in the midst of developing cognitively, socially, linguistically, and affectively. In this article, the author focuses on the role of affect (emotion and mood) in TBLT, a research topic that has largely been ignored. Drawing on existing theories in psychology that explain relationships between affect and cognition or learning, as well as on research on children's development, play, and game research, she advocates for the need both to pay more serious attention to affect and to incorporate research findings on the role of affect in task designs and implementation into theory building and practice in TBLT. Instead of treating affect as an individual and stable trait (i.e., as an interindividual variable) and searching for a linear cause-and-effect relationship between learners' affect and their performance in tasks, she argues that we need to pay more attention to intraindividual variability in children's task performance (i.e., variability in performance within individuals) and to examine the role of affect in such intraindividual variability in a dynamic fashion. Though her argument is primarily based on TBLT for young learners, she believes that the importance of affect in TBLT applies to wider contexts as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Contemporary Educational Studies / Sodobna Pedagogika is the property of Association of Slovenian Educationalists and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This qualitative study offers an examination of the learning experiences of six individuals, each of whom initially learned for self-interested purposes, but later experienced a shift in their desire and pursued learning to benefit others. We conducted interviews that described this phenomenon and provided insight into the following question: What is the experience of a learner who transitions from learning out of self-interest to learning for the sake of another? Findings of this study include narrative case summaries for each participant and a cross-case analysis that includes six major themes regarding participants’ transition to altruistic forms of learning: humility as a prerequisite, communal learning, emphasis on the success of others, becoming more self-confident, becoming a more effective learner, and becoming more other centered. Overall, participants in this study found the most meaning by helping recipients achieve their own growth and development rather than by merely accomplishing tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introducing challenging tasks in such a way that makes them accessible, rather than daunting, to students is a challenge for teachers. Solving challenging tasks involves students having to grapple with the problem. The role of the teacher is to motivate and clarify the problem rather than showing students how to solve the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks into some interactive, proposed ways in helping an EFL learner to develop an identity as an EFL learner in learning English to achieve language learning goals. First, vision theory is discussed, reflecting on the increased importance of envisioning oneself to create a self-image for the EFL learner in order to enable, acknowledge and enjoy his/her EFL identity. The second part presents the use of how conscious role-plays can make a difference in terms of shaping one identity. The next part supports the interlinking of image as a confident EFL learner and an effective individual in the future through personal narratives. The final section addresses how projects and reading tasks can be used as activities which can support the building of identity in EFL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]