Student Engagement and Supporting Students With Accommodations

Student engagement and embracing students with accommodations have long been at the forefront of developing future teachers. Assessing the effects of COVID-19 and the long-term implications shifted the overall perception of how the world is redefining teacher education programs and preparing teachers to move forward. One could presume the impact of COVID-19 will be discussed in history classes forever as the pandemic reconfigured learning styles, structures, and supports. Student engagement and supporting students with accommodations explore multiple modalities for best practices in the classroom and encourage students with disabilities and learning differences to be successful. The authors examine best practices for in-person, hybrid, and remote learning environments: Bloom's taxonomy, universal design for learning, and formative assessment. The chapter provides examples of each resource and delves into classroom engagement and accommodations.

Bridging the Gap in Learning Differences Among Biology Students Using 4 Mode Application Techniques

This study is on bridging the gap in learning differences among biology students using 4MAT Application Techniques. We carried out the study in Abakaliki, Nigeria. We adopted a quasi-experimental design for the study. We used 138 SS-II students from two schools. Two hypotheses were tested. We analyzed the data using descriptive statistics and Hierarchical Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The results showed that there was a significant main effect of instructional method on students' achievement in biology F (7, 121) = 12.654, p =.000, partial η2 =.39; there was no significant main effect of gender on students' achievement in biology F (1, 121) = 1.240, p =.268, partial η2 =.004. We highlighted the educational implications of the findings and the recommendations. We also made some limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies.

Mindset Theory and School Psychology

Mindset theory is an achievement motivation theory that centers on the concept of the malleability of abilities. According to mindset theory, students tend to have either a growth mindset or a fixed mindset about their intelligence; students with a growth mindset tend to believe that intelligence is malleable, whereas students with fixed mindsets tend to believe that intelligence is unchangeable. As described in many empirical and theoretical papers, the mindset a student holds can influence important psychological and behavioral factors, including reaction to failure, persistence and level of effort, and expectations of success, which ultimately impact academic achievement. Importantly, mindsets can be changed, and interventions have been developed to promote a more growth mindset. A growth mindset allows students to view challenges as an opportunity for improvement, is linked to enjoyment of learning, and increases motivation in school. School psychologists are often working with students with learning differences and/or mental health concerns who are particularly at-risk for poor academic achievement, and researchers have demonstrated the important impact a growth mindset can have for these vulnerable students. School psychologists are well-positioned to incorporate mindset theory into the school environment in order to best support the students they serve. In this paper we provide a theoretical overview of mindset theory and mindset interventions, and specifically review the literature on mindset theory for individuals with learning disabilities and mental health challenges. We discuss how school psychologists can incorporate mindset theory into their practice to support the shift from a fixed to a growth mindset for all students.

Study of Influence of Different Models of E-Learning Content Product Design on Students' Learning Motivation and Effectiveness

As teachers provide one-way teaching demonstration or reference materials in class, students lack of the opportunities for direct operation. The provision of interactive e-materials could reduce the need for instructors to prepare complicated teaching aids and could deal with issues of climate and location. Learners could learn any time, anywhere, and learning could be reinforced by repeating the instruction with no need to disrupt timetables. The participants in the experimental teaching study were 275 product design students who engaged in e-learning for 15 weeks (3 h per week for a total of 45 h). The research results are summarized as follows: (1) Interactive teaching materials can enhance students' active learning styles so that, in the product design area, this method could reduce learning differences in students. (2) E-materials deliver knowledge using simple and specific images, animation, audio, and video, making learning interesting and relaxed for the product design students. E-learning is easy and practical and reduces learners' cognitive load. (3) Students' cognitive development and prior knowledge should be considered in the development of e-materials. Simple images, animations, text, and language could improve the attention and learning motivation of product design students and allow students to learn based on prior knowledge. A suggestion, based on the findings, is the application of various communication teaching models using e-materials to course work for the product design students, enabling discussion, analysis, concept formation, and problem-solving.

Infographics, a better medium than plain text for increasing knowledge.

Infographics in social networks present more elaborate proposals than simple text. In this study we analyze the general patterns of Twitter infographic messages to determine its main characteristics. Subsequently, we conducted a test to compare learning differences when young people use infographics instead of text as a source of information. Our findings suggest that while infographics are more effective than text for digitally mediated learning in young people, an analysis of age and gender subgroups showed that this effectiveness was only statistically significant for older people.

Child-centred assessment

Stephen Kilgour, from the Foundation Stage Forum and Tapestry, discusses the problem with moving away from tick-list style assessments for children with learning differences.

Motivational learning biases are differentially modulated by genetic determinants of striatal and prefrontal dopamine function

Dopaminergic neurotransmission plays a pivotal role in appetitively motivated behavior in mammals, including humans. Notably, action and valence are not independent in motivated tasks, and it is particularly difficult for humans to learn the inhibition of an action to obtain a reward. We have previously observed that the carriers of the DRD2/ANKK1 TaqIA A1 allele, that has been associated with reduced striatal dopamine D2 receptor expression, showed a diminished learning performance when required to learn response inhibition to obtain rewards, a finding that was replicated in two independent cohorts. With our present study, we followed two aims: first, we aimed to replicate our finding on the DRD2/ANKK1 TaqIA polymorphism in a third independent cohort (N = 99) and to investigate the nature of the genetic effects more closely using trial-by-trial behavioral analysis and computational modeling in the combined dataset (N = 281). Second, we aimed to assess a potentially modulatory role of prefrontal dopamine availability, using the widely studied COMT Val108/158Met polymorphism as a proxy. We first report a replication of the above mentioned finding. Interestingly, after combining all three cohorts, exploratory analyses regarding the COMT Val108/158Met polymorphism suggest that homozygotes for the Met allele, which has been linked to higher prefrontal dopaminergic tone, show a lower learning bias. Our results corroborate the importance of genetic variability of the dopaminergic system in individual learning differences of action–valence interaction and, furthermore, suggest that motivational learning biases are differentially modulated by genetic determinants of striatal and prefrontal dopamine function.