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Learning leaders have important roles in facilitating and supporting the effective and innovative integration of technology in schools. Many leaders who are charged with the task of technology integration have not received professional development to support a leadership role. Many teachers who assume the role of technology leaders develop into this role organically over time based on their recognized performance. School administrators may not have the skills to make decisions for technology integration for learning. Effective ICT learning leaders exhibit the ability to create a shared vision, remain pedagogically focused, and seek and contribute to on-going professional development. Recognizing characteristics of learning leaders who are innovators in technology integration is an important step in the overall improvement of education systems. This paper focuses on the role learning leaders have in the effective use of technology in the learning environment and the types of professional development that best support learning for these leaders. The paper also addresses the important role of assessment, in order to continue the quest to determine what technology-enhanced interventions and innovations work for whom, in what contexts, and under what conditions.

All methodologies for detecting plagiarism to date have focused on the final digital "outcome", such as a document or source code. Our novel approach takes the creation process into account using logged events collected by special software or by the macro recorders found in most office applications. We look at an author's interaction logs with the software used to create the work. Detection relies on comparing the histograms of multiple logs' command use. A work is classified as plagiarism if its log deviates too much from logs of "honestly created" works or if its log is too similar to another log. The technique supports the detection of plagiarism for digital outcomes that stem from \emph{unique} tasks, such as theses and \emph{equal} tasks such as assignments for which the same problem sets are solved by multiple students. Focusing on the latter case, we evaluate this approach using logs collected by an interactive development environment (IDE) from more than sixty students who completed three programming assignments.

In diesem Artikel werden Ergebnisse einer Studie dargestellt, die den mathematischen Fachwortschatz der Grundschule (Fachworter fur Grundoperationen, Formen und Korper) von Funftklasslerinnen und Funftklasslern in der Schweiz (n = 201) und in Nordrhein-Westfalen (n = 248) untersucht. Es wurde ein Instrument entwickelt, mit dem arithmetische Fachworter passiv und geometrische Fachworter aktiv erfasst wurden. Die Ergebnisse weisen darauf hin, dass die Schulerinnen und Schuler insbesondere diejenigen Fachworter nicht kennen, die sowohl in der Alltags- als auch in der Fachsprache vorkommen (Rechteck, Quadrat) bzw. in der Alltags- und Fachsprache eine unterschiedliche Bedeutung haben (Summe, Differenz). Mit der Schweizer Stichprobe wurde eine Langsschnittstudie (Kontrollgruppendesign) zur Forderung des mathematischen Fachwortschatzes mit Wortspeichern durchgefuhrt. Die Interventionsgruppe machte signifikant grosere Leistungsfortschritte als die Kontrollgruppe.

In this paper, we argue that classroom management, student support, and cognitive activation are generic aspects of classroom teaching, forming Three Basic Dimensions of teaching quality. The conceptual framework was developed in research on mathematics instruction but it is supposed to generalize across subjects. It is based on general theories of schooling and teaching as well as established theories and research traditions from educational psychology. Although used frequently in German-speaking countries, no comprehensive overview of the theoretical foundation as well as the existing evidence regarding the framework, including its strengths and weaknesses, exists so far. The present paper therefore presents first an overview of the theoretical rationale of the framework. Second, it gives an overview of differences and commonalities in the operationalizations of the Three Basic Dimensions in different studies, including a comprehensive set of sub-dimensions. Third, evidence on the reliability and validity of the dimensions is reviewed, with good results for reliability and mixed results for predictive validity. Fourth, an analysis of three mathematics lessons using observer ratings illustrates how the framework of the Three Basic Dimensions can be used for investigating instructional quality. Finally, strengths and limitations of the framework for capturing instructional quality are discussed and we elaborate on the framework’s potential for further development.

Subjective age (SA) indicates how old a person feels. SA has been found to be a marker of an individual’s physical and psychological functioning and openness for new aging experiences. Thus, it can be generally considered as beneficial in promoting healthy aging. We hypothesized that the younger a person feels, the more likely he or she will use the Internet. We evaluated two secondary analyses based on two cross-sectional and representative telephone surveys of 1790 participants (n = 1299, age ≥ 70 years; n = 491, age ≥ 65 years) in Switzerland. Univariate and multivariate analyses, controlled for a number of relevant confounders, confirmed the relationship between lowered SA and heightened Internet use. Given that we were able to analyze two relatively large and representative data sets, we regard our findings, although based on cross-sectional studies, as rather robust. Longitudinal research is required to examine the causal direction of this relationship.

This longitudinal study explores how high and low achievers differ in self-regulated learning (SRL) in the context of a high-stakes academic long-term task outside of class (writing a Matura paper). Based on N = 1215 high school students' grades on the paper (57% girls; M age = 17.5, SD = 0.80), high and low achievers (with and without considering prior achievement) were compared regarding multiple SRL components of a whole SRL cycle using the Mann–Whitney U test: High achievers, irrespective of their prior achievement, showed lower work avoidance, boredom, and hopelessness, and higher strategy use and self-reported quality of strategy use. Whereas low achievers on the paper with higher prior achievement especially showed less joy, higher fear, and lower scores on emotional regulation competencies than the high achievers, low achievers on the paper with lower prior achievement notably displayed a lower level of intrinsic motivation than the high achievers. The results highlight learners' different needs depending on their prior achievement and underline the importance of personalized learning support.

Given the need to develop common frameworks for conceptualizing teaching quality and common instruments for measuring it, the current paper brings together a small group of interested scholars who have used generic, content-specific, and hybrid frameworks and classroom observation instruments to reflect on how collaboration can be enhanced in research on teaching quality. Five categories of challenges that inhere in such collaborative work are identified and discussed: establishing common goals and agendas; resolving differences in terminology and structure; addressing issues of operationalization and measurement; dealing with insufficient transparency and the need for sharing information; and attending to issues of limited funding. We also offer some possible solutions for dealing with these challenges. These solutions are envisioned to contribute toward moving the field forward by supporting more scholarly collaborations in the future.

Research Findings: This study examines whether the development of social skills during childhood serves as a mechanism through which temperamental anger and positive reactivity in toddlerhood influence children’s academic competence during preadolescence (N = 406). Temperamental anger at age 2 was negatively associated with children’s social skills at age 7; in turn, children’s social skills at age 7 were positively associated with teacher reports of academic performance and negatively associated with child and teacher reports of school problems at age 10. All 3 indirect effects were significant, which suggests that children’s social skills at age 7 is one mechanism through which temperamental anger at age 2 is associated with age 10 child- and teacher-reported school problems. Temperamental positive reactivity was not associated with children’s social skills or academic competence. Practice or Policy: Results provide support for early entry points to teach toddlers, especially those high in anger reactivity, the skills to engage in socially appropriate interactions with classmates and teachers, which may lessen subsequent academic challenges.

After the Sputnik shock of 1957, the United States initiated education reform, based in part on the hope that technology could facilitate efficient school learning. This development was largely driven by the confrontation between the eastern and western Blocs: on both sides of the Iron Curtain, reformists promoted educational technology for the purpose of better instruction so as to improve the performance capacity of their own societies. The first section of the article focuses on this circulation of knowledge, after which the second section, drawing on the example of Germany, argues that, due to the constellation of interests in the 1960s, substantial organisational and financial resources could be mobilised to promote educational technology. However, when support from political and pedagogical circles dwindled in the 1970s, it became detached from its previous objectives, but was pragmatically advanced in the private sector.

Various methods to detect differential item functioning (DIF) in item response models are available. However, most of these methods assume that the responses are binary, and so for ordered response categories available methods are scarce. In the present article, DIF in the widely used partial credit model is investigated. An item-focused tree is proposed that allows the detection of DIF items, which might affect the performance of the partial credit model. The method uses tree methodology, yielding a tree for each item that is detected as DIF item. The visualization as trees makes the results easily accessible, as the obtained trees show which variables induce DIF and in which way. In the present paper, the new method is compared with alternative approaches and simulations demonstrate the performance of the method.

Cognitive diagnosis models (CDMs) are an increasingly popular method to assess mastery or nonmastery of a set of fine-grained abilities in educational or psychological assessments. Several inference techniques are available to quantify the uncertainty of model parameter estimates, to compare different versions of CDMs, or to check model assumptions. However, they require a precise estimation of the standard errors (or the entire covariance matrix) of the model parameter estimates. In this article, it is shown analytically that the currently widely used form of calculation leads to underestimated standard errors because it only includes the item parameters but omits the parameters for the ability distribution. In a simulation study, we demonstrate that including those parameters in the computation of the covariance matrix consistently improves the quality of the standard errors. The practical importance of this finding is discussed and illustrated using a real data example.

Children's participation rights are recognised across the world. However, we still have relatively little empirical evidence on children's views of these rights and on the necessary conditions to effectively realise them. This study set out to explore how children assess their participation rights in school, and whether these assessments vary as a function of social and psychological resources, which constitute the preconditions for practicing participation rights. The sample included 1006 children (48.8% female, mean age = 11.71 years) who were enrolled in the penultimate or final year of public primary school in Geneva, Switzerland. A majority of these children reported that they could exercise their participation rights in school. Furthermore, results indicate that children's assessments of their participation rights did not differ systematically across classes, schools, or city districts. However, these assessments were significantly related to social and psychological resources, including children's subjective well-being and feelings of safety, a perceived climate of social non-discrimination, and the presence of a person of trust in the school environment. In conclusion, this study goes beyond previous research by examining both children's views of their participation rights and to what extent they depend on social and psychological resources. The study also provides original empirical evidence on the extent to which children's participation rights are implemented in practice.

Little is known about the mathematical development of students with intellectual disabilities (ID) in inclusive classrooms. It is important to have a research-based understanding of the subject since inclusive education is becoming the norm in many countries, and an increasing number of students with an ID now attend mainstream schools. We investigated the learning gains of 38 students with ID from 31 grades 2 and 3 inclusive classrooms. Data on mathematics achievement were collected at the beginning and at the end of one school year. A cluster analysis revealed four homogeneous groups that differed significantly in their mathematical progress. Students in the same cluster improved in the same subskills. Prior knowledge is a significant predictor for progress and explains more variance than IQ. In addition, the acquisition of the quantity-number concept, especially the linkage of quantities and numbers, seems to be an important factor for mathematical development. These results show that mathematics instruction needs to be tailored to the specific knowledge profiles of students.

It is commonly assumed that many, if not most, adult children have moral duties to visit their parents when they can do so at reasonable cost. However, whether such duties persist when the parents lose the ability to recognise their children, usually due to dementia, is more controversial. Over 40% of respondents in a public survey from the British Alzheimer’s Society said that it was “pointless” to keep up contact at this stage. Insofar as one cannot be morally required to do pointless things, this would suggest that children are relieved of any duties to visit their parents. In what appears to be the only scholarly treatment of this issue, Claudia Mills has defended this view, arguing that our duties to visit our parents require a type of relationship that is lost when parents no longer remember who their children are. This article challenges Mills’ argument. Not only can children be duty-bound to visit parents who have lost the ability to recognise them, I argue that many children do in fact have such duties. As I show, these duties are grounded in any special interests that their parents have in their company; the fact that visiting their parents might allow them to comply with generic duties of sociability; and/or the fact that such visits allow them to express any gratitude that they owe their parents.

Despite considerable evidence of the importance of self-esteem and self-efficacy for agentic, goal-oriented behavior, little attention has been directed to these psychological dimensions in the status attainment literature. The present research uses data from the longitudinal, three-generation Youth Development Study (N = 422 three-generation triads) to examine the extent to which adolescent self-esteem and economic self-efficacy affect adult educational and income attainment, and whether these psychological resources are transmitted from one generation to the next, accumulating advantage across generations. We present evidence indicating that both self-esteem and economic self-efficacy are implicated in the attainment process. Adolescent economic self-efficacy had a direct positive effect on adult educational attainment and an indirect effect through educational plans. The influence of self-esteem on adult educational attainment was entirely indirect, through school achievement. We also find evidence that economic self-efficacy was transmitted from parents to children. We conclude that future research should more broadly consider psychological resources in attainment processes from a longitudinal multigenerational perspective.

Background: Problem-based learning (PBL) is an essential element of the curriculum of the Medical University of Vienna (MUV) and is performed in an eight steps model with: clarifying, defining, analysing, shifting & sorting, identifying learning objectives, going to learn and coming back to talk and feedback. With an annual intake of up to 740 students the MUV has to recruit PBL tutors from various academic backgrounds including undergraduate near-peer students. Therefore, we were interested to see whether a tutor's academic background had an influence on the resulting PBL sessions as reflected by the percentage of learning objectives (LOs) which were actually achieved in relation to the intended LOs. Methods: For each PBL session “intended learning objectives” (ILOs) were defined. ILOs were communicated to all tutors by means of PBL session guides in order to provide homogenous learning opportunities to all students. However, it was not mandatory to reach all ILOs. The PBL coordination regarded a range of two thirds to three quarters of ILOs as a desirable goal. For analysis we retrieved data concerning ILOs, characteristics of tutors and PBL groups from the institution's PBL quality assurance system. Results: From 2012-2014, 216 PBL groups were facilitated by 106 tutors with different academic backgrounds. On average, 70.8% (95% CI: 69.2-72.5%) of the ILOs were achieved; MUV clinicians reached 74.3% (70.8-77.8%), MUV non-clinicians 74.2% (71.7-76.6%), external faculty (clinicians and non-clinicians) 68.6% (64.4-72.8%), and near-peer students 64.7% (61.8-67.7%). Statistically significant differences were found between near-peer students and MUV clinicians (p, Zielsetzung: Problemorientiertes Lernen (POL) ist ein wesentlicher Bestandteil des Lehrplans an der Medizinischen Universität Wien (MUW) und wird in einem achtstufigen Prozess durchgeführt: Klärung unbekannter Begriffe, Definition des Problems, Sammlung von Hypothesen und Ideen, Ordnung und Bewertung von Hypothesen, Lernzielformulierung, Lernzeit, Synthesen und Feedback. Die MUW nimmt jährlich bis zu 740 Studierende auf und muss daher POL-Lehrende mit verschiedenen akademischen Hintergründen, darunter auch Studierende aus höheren Semestern, beschäftigen. Daher waren wir interessiert zu sehen, ob der akademische Hintergrund von POL-Lehrenden einen Einfluss auf die resultierenden POL-Veranstaltungen hat, und sich im Prozentsatz der tatsächlich erreichten Lernziele im Verhältnis zu den gewünschten Lernzielen wiederspiegelt. Methoden: Für jede POL-Veranstaltung wurden „gewünschte Lernziele“ bestimmt. Diese wurden allen Lehrenden in einer POL-Schulung mitgeteilt um allen Studierenden einheitliche Lernangebote bereitzustellen. Allerdings war es nicht verpflichtend alle gewünschten Lernziele zu erreichen. Die POL-Koordination erachtete eine Bandbreite von zwei Drittel bis drei Viertel von gewünschten Lernzielen als erstrebenswertes Ziel. Für die Analyse haben wir Daten zu den erwünschten Lernzielen, den Merkmalen der Lehrenden und POL-Gruppen aus dem POL-Qualitätssicherungssystem der Institution abgefragt. Ergebnisse: Von 2012 bis 2014 wurden 216 POL Gruppen von 106 Lehrenden mit unterschiedlichen akademischen Hintergründen betreut. Im Durchschnitt wurden 70.8% (95% KI: 69.2-72.5%) der gewünschten Lernziele erreicht. MUW Kliniker erzielten 74.3% (KI: 70.8-77.8%), MUW Nicht-Kliniker 74.2% (KI: 71.7-76.6%), externe Lehrende (Kliniker und Nicht-Kliniker) 68.6% (KI: 64.4-72.8%), und Studierende 64.7% (KI: 61.8-67.7%). Es wurden statistisch signifikante Unterschiede zwischen Studierenden und MUW-Klinikern (p, GMS Journal for Medical Education; 37(1):Doc8

Purpose Despite increasing efforts to incorporate sustainability in curricula and practices of institutions of higher education, effective implementation remains challenging. The purpose of this study is to present an approach to incorporate sustainability into a practice-oriented research skills course, which was implemented at a small island state university in the Caribbean. Design/methodology/approach First-year university students followed a four-week course module, starting with the introduction of the sustainable development goals, and culminating in a symposium in which the students present the findings of their research projects to the campus community. Pre-course module and post-course module surveys measured the students’ knowledge and perceptions regarding sustainability. These survey results were also compared with the result of a similar survey held for the university’s employees. Findings The survey results suggested that following the course module increased students’ knowledge about sustainable development, as well as their support for the university campus and its community putting more emphasis on teaching, practicing and encouraging sustainability. Interestingly, university employees scored significantly higher on the latter component than students, suggesting that in this case a lack of interest of the staff is not a barrier toward a sustainable campus. Originality/value The presented course module offers a novel and low-cost approach to introducing sustainability into a broad range of academic curricula, specifically tailored to the needs of institutes of higher education in small island states. The survey results suggest that this type of education may not only ensure reaching academic goals but also increase students’ interest in sustainable development within their local environment.

Across the life span, friendship is an important component of people?s support networks. This article explores the developmental roots of adult friendship intimacy and satisfaction, taking into consideration the early interplay between sociomoral sensitivity in friendship, insecurity in peer contexts, and peer rejection. Data (N = 176) came from the longitudinal study ?Individual Development and Social Structure.? Respondents were surveyed repeatedly from age 7 to 37 years. Autoregressive cross-lagged panel models show that sociomoral sensitivity in friendship protects adolescents from peer rejection and is reciprocally associated with insecurity. Childhood and adolescent sociomoral sensitivity antecede early adult friendship intimacy, which, in turn, antecedes friendship satisfaction in mid-adulthood. The findings indicate a sequence of pathways from sociomoral sensitivity developed early in life to friendship quality in adulthood.

We assessed the Swiss-German version of GraphoLearn, a computer game designed to support reading by training grapheme-phoneme correspondences. A group of 34 children at risk for dyslexia trained three times a week during 14 weeks, on top of their standard school instruction. The sample was divided into two groups of 18 and 16 children, who started training at either the middle or the end of first grade. We found beneficial training effects in pseudoword reading in both training groups and for rapid automatized naming skills in the group that trained earlier. Our results suggest that both the efficiency in phonological decoding and rapid access to verbal representations are susceptible to facilitation by GraphoLearn. These findings confirm the utility of the training software as a tool to support school instruction and reading-related abilities in beginning readers. We discuss ideas to improve the content and outcomes of future versions of the training software.

Nachfolgend werden die Beiträge des Beihefts aus einer psychologisch-didaktischen Perspektive kommentiert. Nach einleitenden Bemerkungen zur Stellung des Themas der Unterrichtsqualität in der bildungswissenschaftlichen Diskussion folgen zuerst allgemeine Bemerkungen zu den bearbeiteten fünf Theoriesträngen und deren Verbindung zueinander. Anschließend folgen selektive Kommentare insbesondere zu den Themen Basisdimensionen (als Beispiele für die Tiefenqualität) des Unterrichts, zum Angebots-Nutzungsmodell und zur Perspektivenabhängigkeit der Wahrnehmung von Unterrichtsqualität. Der Beitrag schließt mit Bemerkungen zu Desideraten der empirisch-quantitativen Unterrichtsforschung, insbesondere vor dem Hintergrund eines beobachtbaren didaktischen Gestaltwandels der Schule. (DIPF/Orig.) In this commentary, the contributions in this supplement are discussed from a cognitive psychological and teaching perspective. Introductory remarks on the status of teaching quality in the broader educational discussion are followed by remarks focused on the five theoretical strands presented in this volume, and their connection to each other. This is followed by more specific comments, in particular in relation to the following topics: the three basic dimensions of teaching quality (as examples of the in-depth quality of teaching), the so-called opportunity-use model, and the perspective-dependency of perceptions of teaching quality. The commentary closes with remarks on desiderata for empirical-quantitative research on learning and teaching, especially against the background of an observable, significant change in the grammar of schooling (Tyack & Tobin, 1994). (DIPF/Orig.)

Research in Mathematics Education, 20(2), 168-187, Research on teacher knowledge has been criticised for taking too narrow a view on expertise. Therefore, teacher competence frameworks have been developed that are closely related to professional demands. Their practice-oriented conceptualisations have led to innovative measures with situative demands. However, there is still a lack of knowledge on whether these frameworks are actually suited to map teacher growth. This study investigated whether two components of teacher competence, Action-related (AC) and Reflective Competence (RC), can be differentially fostered through specific interventions in early childhood mathematics education. We designed two professional development programmes with a focus on AC and RC and implemented them in a randomised controlled experiment with 170 teachers. Overall, we found that AC, RC, and professional knowledge were sensitive to interventions with different change profiles. Although our hypotheses were only partially supported, the results can be seen as evidence regarding the distinctness of competence and knowledge components. (Verlag)

We present an electrophysiological dataset recorded from nine subjects during a verbal working memory task. Subjects were epilepsy patients undergoing intracranial monitoring for the localization of epileptic seizures. Subjects performed a modified Sternberg task in which the encoding of memory items, maintenance, and recall were temporally separated. The dataset includes simultaneously recorded scalp EEG with the 10–20 system, intracranial EEG (iEEG) recorded with depth electrodes, waveforms and spike times of neurons recorded in the medial temporal lobe, and localization information on the depth electrodes. Subject characteristics and information on each trial (set size, match/mismatch, correct/incorrect, response, and response time) are given. For technical validation of data, we provide spike sorting quality metrics and the spectra of iEEG and scalp EEG signals. This dataset enables the investigation of working memory by providing simultaneous scalp EEG and iEEG recordings, which can be used for connectivity analysis, along with hard-to-obtain neuronal recordings from humans., Scientific Data, 7 (1), ISSN:2052-4463

How do various levels of subsidies shape parental preferences for different childcare arrangements? Using data collected in a choice experiment that was conducted with 540 parents in the city of Bern, Switzerland, this study demonstrates how parental preferences for adequate childcare arrangements for their preschool-aged children are crucially mediated by the offered subsidies. Focusing on center-based care, we further investigate whether these preferences differ across individual social status, earnings, migration background, and gender. The results show that subsidizing high-quality childcare centers seems to fulfill the underlying policy goal of shifting parents’ preferences toward formal, center-based care arrangements. We also observe that this effect is more pronounced for individuals who are less likely to resort to this type of childcare in the first place, namely, families with fewer monetary resources, individuals with a migration background, and men.

Teacher feedback behavior is a key determinant of the social referencing processes that influence the social acceptance of pupils. The present longitudinal study explores how teacher feedback on academic performance and social behavior is related to social acceptance during classroom activities and recess in the natural setting of inclusive classrooms. Data come from a study with 32 teachers and their 546 first to third grade pupils in Switzerland. Teacher feedback behavior was videotaped and peer nominations and ratings were used to assess social acceptance. Multilevel regression analyses showed that feedback on incorrect social behavior was negatively correlated with feedback on correct academic performance. Teacher feedback on incorrect social behavior and on correct and incorrect academic performance predicted how pupils were accepted by their peers during classroom activities. However, teacher feedback did not affect social acceptance during recess. The effect of teacher feedback behavior on social acceptance appears to depend on context. Social acceptance during classroom activities is influenced by teacher feedback whereas social acceptance at recess is not.

The three basic dimensions framework for assessing quality teaching distinguishes the dimensions of cognitive activation, student support, and classroom management. Research from various disciplines suggests, however, that cognitive support is not sufficiently represented in the framework as yet. In the present study, two-level factor analyses based on student ratings of teaching quality in science education (2,659 students, grades 4 and 6) suggest four dimensions of teaching quality, with cognitive support being a separate dimension. Moreover, cognitive support predicted student achievement. The results suggest that including cognitive support as a separate dimension contributes to a more comprehensive, yet parsimonious framework of teaching quality. (DIPF/Orig.) Das Modell der drei Basisdimensionen von Unterrichtsqualität unterscheidet die Dimensionen kognitive Aktivierung, konstruktive Unterstützung und Klassenführung. Forschung aus unterschiedlichen Disziplinen legt nahe, dass kognitive Unterstützung in dem Modell nicht hinreichend berücksichtigt ist. Faktorenanalysen auf der Basis von Schülereinschätzungen zum naturwissenschaftlichen Unterricht (2,659 Schüler*innen, Klasse 4 und 6) weisen in der vorliegenden Studie auf ein vierdimensionales Modell mit kognitiver Unterstützung als separater Dimension hin. Kognitive Unterstützung sagte zudem den Lernerfolg der Schüler*innen voraus. Die Ergebnisse unterstreichen, dass die Ergänzung um diese Dimension zu einem vollständigeren, aber dennoch sparsamen Modell von Unterrichtsqualität beiträgt. (DIPF/Orig.)

Despite recent advances in prosthetics, many upper limb amputees still use prostheses with some reluctance. They often do not feel able to incorporate the artificial hand into their bodily self. Furthermore, prosthesis fitting is not usually tailored to accommodate the characteristics of an individual’s phantom limb sensations. These are experienced by almost all persons with an acquired amputation and comprise the motor and postural properties of the lost limb. This article presents and validates a multimodal dataset including an extensive qualitative and quantitative assessment of phantom limb sensations in 15 transradial amputees, surface electromyography and accelerometry data of the forearm, and measurements of gaze behavior during exercises requiring pointing or repositioning of the forearm and the phantom hand. The data also include acquisitions from 29 able-bodied participants, matched for gender and age. Special emphasis was given to tracking the visuo-motor coupling between eye-hand/eye-phantom during these exercises., Scientific Data, 7 (1), ISSN:2052-4463

First published online: 17 September 2020 We consider the role of values as determinants of voting in the UK's 2016 EU referendum. First, we consider and clarify ‘values’ conceptually, before proceeding to utilise Schwartz's basic human values as the most appropriate. Second, we theorise how these basic human values determine both voting in the referendum as well as three of the most consistently demonstrated determinants of voting in that referendum: attitudes to immigration, identifying as European and trust in politicians. Finally, we demonstrate that this psychological theoretical framework effectively predicts voting behaviour in the referendum using multigroup structural equation modelling. Overall, we show that voting dynamics in the referendum are likely to reflect deeper, more personal psychological predispositions than those captured by existing explanations. In doing so, we make an original contribution to the literature on political psychology related to Brexit, Euroscepticism, political attitudes and electoral behaviour.

In the commercial sector, which is of crucial importance to the Swiss economy among other countries, a large number of apprentices are trained on a vocational education and training programme every year. Besides other subjects, the subject Economics and Society forms an integral part of the vocational education and training curriculum and serves to prepare apprentices for professional, economic and civic participation. Although content knowledge is widely considered necessary to both teaching quality and student achievement, little is known about the subject-specific content knowledge of Swiss Economics and Society teachers. As previous research has shown a gender gap in the content knowledge of (pre-service) teachers in economics, we focus on the question as to whether Swiss Economics and Society teachers’ economics content knowledge differs, including in relation to gender. As additional influencing factors, our study included teaching experience and teaching load. We measured the economics content knowledge of 153 Economics and Society teachers with a shortened German version of the Test of Understanding College Economics in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Multivariate analyses indicated a gender effect that manifested itself in higher test scores among male Economics and Society teachers. These findings are relevant to the training of vocational education and training teachers.

Studies indicate that male students outperform female students in economic literacy and that a specific item format (selected-response, constructed-response) favours either males or females. This study analyses the relationship between item format and gender in economic-civic competence using the WBK-T2 test (“revidierter Test zur wirtschaftsbürgerlichen Kompetenz”). The WBK-T2 encompasses 32 items, of which 53% have a selected-response format and 47% a constructed-response format. To answer the research questions, we used a sample of 375 Swiss high school students and ran T-tests and multiple regression analyses. Male students significantly outperformed female students in the overall test score, in the selected-response test score and in the constructed-response test score, but effect sizes are rather small. Interest in socio-economic issues predicted but did not moderate the test scores; however, prior knowledge in economics did. Our results indicate that the balanced test form of the WBK-T2 regarding selected-response and constructed-response items does overcome the gender gap in overall test scores and format-related test scores for students with prior economic knowledge. However, this does not apply for students without prior knowledge in economics. Thus, there must be other test-external variables, such as prior knowledge in economics that cause the gender gap in economic-civic competence.

Background: As the communication competencies of physicians are crucial for providing optimal patient care, their assessment in the context of the high-stakes Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is of paramount importance. Despite abundant literature on the topic, evidence-based recommendations for the assessment of communication competencies in high stakes OSCEs are scarce. As part of a national project to improve communication-competencies assessments in the Swiss licensing exam, we held a symposium with national and international experts to derive corresponding guidelines. Methods: Experts were invited on account of their recognized expertise either in teaching or assessing communication competencies, or in conducting national high-stakes OSCEs. They were asked to propose concrete solutions related to four potential areas for improvement: the station design, the rating tool, the raters’ training, and the role of standardized patients. Data gene.rated in the symposium was available for analysis and consisted of video recordings of plenary sessions, of the written summaries of group work, and the cards with participants’ personal take-home messages. Data were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach. Results: Nine major suggestions for improving communication-competencies assessments emerged from the analysis and were classified into four categories, namely, the roles of the OSCE scenarios, rating tool, raters’ training, and simulated patients. Conclusion: In the absence of established evidence-based guidelines, an experts’ symposium facilitated the identification of nine practical suggestions for improving the assessment of communication competencies in the context of high-stakes OSCEs. Further research is needed to test effectiveness of the suggestions and how they contribute to improvements in the quality of high-stakes communication-competencies assessment. © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Many universities around the world rely on student instructors—current bachelor’s and master’s degree students—for tutorial teaching, yet we know nothing about their effectiveness. In a setting with random assignment of instructors to students, we show that student instructors are almost as effective as senior instructors at improving their students’ short- and longer-run academic achievement and labor market outcomes. We find little heterogeneity across different course types, student characteristics, or instructors’ personal academic quality. Our results suggest that the use of student instructors can serve as an effective tool for universities to reduce their costs with negligible negative effects on students.

Mobile technologies open up new ways of fostering reflection in teacher education. With the intention of tying reflection closer to the actions in the classroom, facilitating multimedia recordings, providing prompts for reflection and fostering discussions between pre-service teachers, experienced teachers and university mentors, we developed the “Metapholio” app and tested it in the context of teaching internships. This app supports pre-service teachers in collecting noteworthy moments in the classroom by providing functionalities for individual and collaborative note taking. Notes can be created in the form of written text, photography, audio recordings and video recordings. Each note can be commented on and discussed with invited peers, experienced teachers and university mentors, who can also record moments themselves. Furthermore, the app makes it possible to select notes and attach them to more general written or spoken reflections on teaching and learning. Theoretical frameworks and writing prompts that are part of the app serve as scaffolds for such reflections. Peers, teachers and mentors can be invited to join the conversation on reflections. With the help of this app, pre-service teachers can, moreover, create their own multimedia mobile portfolio, which acts as a hybrid space for professional development in teacher education.

Swiss dialects of German are, unlike many dialects of other standardised languages, widely used in everyday communication. Despite this fact, automatic processing of Swiss German is still a considerable challenge due to the fact that it is mostly a spoken variety and that it is subject to considerable regional variation. This paper presents the ArchiMob corpus, a freely available general-purpose corpus of spoken Swiss German based on oral history interviews. The corpus is a result of a long design process, intensive manual work and specially adapted computational processing. We first present the modalities of access of the corpus for linguistic, historic and computational research. We then describe how the documents were transcribed, segmented and aligned with the sound source. This work involved a series of experiments that have led to automatically annotated normalisation and part-of-speech tagging layers. Finally, we present several case studies to motivate the use of the corpus for digital humanities in general and for dialectology in particular.

Prior research has demonstrated the importance of low self-control and corporal punishment exposure as risk factors for the development of aggressive behaviors. However, much less is known about the interplay between these two factors, that is, the extent to which they each contribute uniquely to aggression and/or interact synergistically to create a profile of particularly severe risk. Similarly, high self-control may be a moderating protective factor that helps explain why only a subset of individuals exposed to corporal punishment develop high levels of aggression. Data from the longitudinal Zurich Project on the Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood (z-proso) were used to address this question. Students completed self-report surveys at three time points; ages 11 (n = 1144; 51% males, 49% females), age 13 (n = 1366; 51% males, 49% females) and age 15 (n = 1447, 52% males and 48% females). An autoregressive cross-lagged panel model was used to examine self-control as a protective factor with both a direct effect and as a moderator of the links between corporal punishment and adolescent aggression across time. The results indicated that self-control was a protective factor against concurrent aggression. However, when considering the longitudinal effects, the protective capabilities of self-control differed depending on the stage of adolescence, gender and levels of exposure to risk. There was no consistent moderating effect of self-control. However, findings suggest that interventions that address low self-control are likely to be beneficial due to their direct effects on aggression, rather than by weakening the effects of exposure to harsh punishment.

In this paper, we analyse the struggle for a unified style of writing in primary schools in the German-speaking part of Switzerland between the 1860s and the first decades of the twentieth century ...

This qualitative study examined transcripts and video-data from 32 pre-lesson conferences of 14 cooperating teacher-student teacher dyads during the teaching practicum. It used a linguistic approach to capture student teacher uncertainty, while also considering their teaching experience and pedagogical content knowledge. Cooperating teachers' responses to uncertainty were explored in relation to student teachers’ instructional quality (as perceived by the student teachers and their pupils). This study illustrates the potential of using uncertainty as a learning opportunity and suggests new possibilities for how cooperating teachers could constructively respond to uncertainty in mentoring conversations.

Landmarks play a vital role in human wayfinding by providing the structure for mental spatial representations and indicating locations with which to orient. Less research effort has been allocated towards automated landmark identification in indoor environments despite a growing interest in indoor navigation in the scientific community. In this paper, we propose a computational framework to identify indoor landmarks that is based on a hierarchical multi-criteria decision model and grounded in theories of spatial cognition and human information processing. Our model of landmark salience is represented as a hierarchical integration process of low-level features derived from a three-part, higher-level, salience vector (i.e., cognitive, spatial, and subjective salience). We use a fuzzy hierarchical composite-weighted (objective and subjective) Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to derive the rankings for identified objects at decision points (i.e., intersections). The top N objects are then selected and compared to a list of landmarks derived from an eye-tracking based virtual reality (VR) experiment. A substantial overlap of 79% was observed between these two lists. The proposed framework is capable of reliably and accurately detecting indoor landmarks, which can be employed in the development of landmark-based robot/autonomous agent motion and indoor guidance systems.

The regular formative assessment of students' abilities across multiple school grades requires a reliable and valid vertical scale. A vertical scale is a precondition not only for comparing assessment results and measuring progress over time, but also for identifying the most informative items for each individual student within a large item bank independent of the student's grade to increase measurement efficiency. However, the practical implementation of a vertical scale is psychometrically challenging. Several extant studies point to the complex interactions between the practical context in which the scale is used and the scaling decisions that researchers need to make during the development of a vertical scale. As a consequence, clear general recommendations are missing for most scaling decisions. In this study, we described the development of a vertical scale for the formative assessment of third- through ninth-grade students' mathematics abilities based on item response theory methods. We evaluated the content-related validity of this new vertical scale by contrasting the calibration procedure's empirical outcomes (i.e., the item difficulty estimates) with the theoretical, content-related item difficulties reflected by the underlying competence levels of the curriculum, which served as a content framework for developing the scale. Besides analyzing the general match between empirical and content-related item difficulty, we also explored, by means of correlation and multiple regression analyses, whether the match differed for items related to different curriculum cycles (i.e., primary vs. secondary school), domains, or competencies within mathematics. The results showed strong correlations between the empirical and content-related item difficulties, which emphasized the scale's content-related validity. Further analysis showed a higher correlation between empirical and content-related item difficulty at the primary compared with the secondary school level. Across the different curriculum domains and most of the curriculum competencies, we found comparable correlations, implying that the scale is a good indicator of the math ability stated in the curriculum.

This study used a stratified random sample of classes in Zurich, Switzerland, comprising approximately 2,000 students whose academic performances in math and language were assessed across primary and lower secondary education. Based on this longitudinal data, the study investigated the association of social inequalities with the baseline of, and gains in, academic performance. The study focused on growing social disparities in academic performance during compulsory education, taking into account disparities in the social backgrounds of students as well as in social deprivation of school attendance areas. The results of a multilevel growth curve analysis implemented to model academic performance development at student and school district levels suggest cumulative disadvantages for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. These students (a) start school with lower initial knowledge and (b) experience lower improvements in academic performance. The findings also suggest that more advantaged school attendance areas achieved higher average performance levels in the early stages of primary education despite controlling for student socioeconomic backgrounds. On average, however, this gap in academic performance between more advantaged and more deprived attendance areas did not appear to widen over the subsequent years of compulsory schooling. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

Given recent evidence of rising levels of social segregation in European countries, this study uses standardized data from the Program for International Student Assessment (n = 171,159; 50.5% male) to examine the extent to which education systems in Europe are socially segregated and whether social segregation in the school system affects achievement gaps between students of different social origin. Results suggest that the degree of social segregation within education systems varied substantially across countries. Furthermore, multilevel regression models indicate that the effect of socioeconomic status on student achievement was moderately but significantly stronger in more segregated education systems, even after controlling for alternative system-level determinants of social inequality in student achievement. These findings provide original evidence that social segregation in education systems may contribute to the intergenerational transmission of educational (dis)advantage and thus serve to exacerbate wider problems of socioeconomic inequality in Europe.

This mixed-methods study examined the social networks of students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) to understand how the degree of a socially responsive classroom may have an impact on the inclusion and participation of these students and their peers. A critical case study design grounded in social capital theory drove the study. Data were collected from two Grade 4 classrooms, where 41 students participated in the social network questionnaire and 31 students took part in semi-structured interviews. One of the two classrooms appeared to be more socially responsive and its results have indicated that SEND students were well connected to their classmates, were as popular and had as many friends as their non-SEND peers.

The aim of this paper is to clarify the relationship between the pedagogical ethos of vocational in-company trainers as perceived by apprentices and the apprentices’ identification with their vocation and their company from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view. It is argued that the trainers’ pedagogical ethos is a relational construct that can be characterized by caring behavior, fairness, and the presupposition that the apprentices are capable of dealing with their assignments in a successful way. In order to investigate the importance of this specific kind of ethos in the Swiss context on an empirical basis, a cross-sectional study with 233 cook apprentices and 302 automotive apprentices was conducted. The analyses showed that the trainers’ pedagogical ethos as perceived by the apprentices significantly predicted the apprentices’ vocational and organizational identification. As regards occupation-specific differences in the effects of perceived ethos on identification, the analysis yielded no statistically significant results. Cook apprentices on average tended to feel less fairly treated by their trainers but to experience more trust in their ability than automotive apprentices, however. Moreover, their average ratings of vocational and organizational identification tended to be lower than to the ratings of automotive apprentices. The final section of the paper discusses these results with regard to identity formation processes and to their practical and moral implications.