Exploring Socially Shared Regulation Processes in Peer Tutoring: Focusing on the Functions of Tutor Utterances

This study quantitatively and qualitatively examined socially shared regulation processes in peer tutoring. Participants were 22 teacher-candidate university students assigned to 11 peer-tutoring pairs. Peer tutoring included two sessions, in which one student was the tutor and another the tutee. Participants completed a socially shared regulation of learning (SSRL) scale before peer tutoring and an academic engagement measurement afterward. Moreover, peer tutoring sessions were videotaped. Students were divided into two groups, based on high and low SSRL scores, and verbal protocols were analyzed. Tutoring utterances were analyzed and categorized by the following social regulation functions, namely “orientation,” “monitoring,” and “evaluation,” while distinguishing between deep- or surface-level. Tutors in high-SSRL groups adopted deep-level orientation more than low-SSRL groups. Qualitative analysis indicated deep-level orientation played a key role in peer tutoring. Additionally, regarding motivational factors, high-SSRL groups showed stronger agentic and cognitive engagement than low-SSRL groups. The implications for teacher-candidate university education are discussed.

Improvising on Emotion Terms: Students’ Strategies, Emotional Communication, and Aesthetic Value

Studies in musical improvisation show that musicians and even children are able to communicate intended emotions to listeners at will. To understand emotional expressivity in music as an art form, communicative success needs to be related to improvisers’ thought processes and listeners’ aesthetic judgments. In the present study, we used retrospective verbal protocols to address college music students’ strategies in improvisations based on emotion terms. We also subjected their improvisations to expert ratings in terms of heard emotional content and aesthetic value. A qualitative analysis showed that improvisers used both generative strategies (expressible in intramusical terms) and imaginative, extramusical strategies when approaching the improvisation tasks. The clarity of emotional communication was found to be high overall, and linear mixed-effects models showed that it was supported by generative approaches. However, perceived aesthetic value was unrelated to such emotional clarity. Instead, aesthetic value was associated with emotional complexity, here defined as the heard presence of “nonintended” emotions. The results point toward a view according to which the expressive content of improvisation gets specified and personalized during the very act of improvisation itself. Arguably, musical expressivity in improvisation should not be equated with the error-free communication of previously intended emotional categories.

A comparative Scripture-reading analysis of Latter-day Saint experts and novices

This study employs an expert--novice research design to examine how five Latter-day Saint scholars and five Latter-day Saint youths read Scripture. Qualitative analyses of semi-structured interviews and verbal protocols point to six practices participants used: theorizing scriptural possibilities, connecting to Scripture, applying Scripture, managing Scripture-reading uncertainties, using self-contained scriptural resources, and situating Scripture in historical contexts. Use of these practices demonstrates the different ways experts and novices read Scripture and where and how their differences are manifest. Findings build a fuller explanation of the nature of Scripture-reading practice and raise questions for religious education research and practice across Christian traditions.

A Grounded Theory on the Comprehension Processing of Teachers as ESL Readers of Multimodal Still Visuals

Contemporary society demands from individuals new and relevant literacies that go beyond the basics of reading and writing. Furthermore, texts now appear less confined to a single semiotic resource. The proliferation of different forms of communication like visuals, among others, encourages people to use literacy in multiple modalities. Nevertheless, not all individuals are capable of understanding and producing information in modalities other than the usual linguistic texts, and teachers are not exempt in this phenomenon. Ironically, school curricula burden teachers with the demand to develop visually literate learners even though most teachers themselves were not formally trained for visual literacy and visual grammar. Consequently, this study sought to identify and describe the processing strategies and the sources of information that teachers, as ESL readers, deliberately use when they make sense from multimodal still visuals. The think-aloud method, as an introspective procedure, was used to collect, analyze, and code 42 sets of verbal protocols from 14 teacher-respondents who read three different multimodal still visuals in three sectional rounds. Results reveal four integrated categories or themes of comprehension processes that teachers used when making sense of the visual stimuli. These are (a) anticipation or preparation; (b) sampling; (c) deepening; and (d) regulation. As regards to the sources of information they use in building meaning, a dismal number of verbal protocols manifest that the majority of the teachers do not use all the elements of the visual grammar and they lack the ability to integrate reader-based, text-based, and context-based sources of information in order to establish a closer match between their meaning and the intended meaning of the multimodal still visuals. Ultimately, the paper provides a theoretical model which can serve as basis for teacher development with regard to visual literacy in an ESL context and offers future directions in multimodal language learning and teaching.

Is Visual Creativity Embodied? Thinking Aloud While Performing the Creative Mental Synthesis Task

Over time, the view that creativity is embodied has emerged. In order to explore if visual creativity is supported by embodied mechanisms, the simulation approach was used as a framework of reference. The idea that visual creativity relies on mental representations that implement motor processes was faced. Participants were instructed to think aloud while carrying out the Creative Mental Synthesis Task, which allows to form pre-inventive structures and interpret them according to a specific category. Two independent judges scored verbal protocols in terms of the number of motor, spatial, and visual thoughts reported during the pre-inventive and inventive phases, and also evaluated the final objects according to originality and appropriateness. Originality was predicted positively by inventive motor thoughts and by pre-inventive spatial thoughts, but negatively by inventive spatial thoughts; appropriateness was only predicted by inventive visual thoughts. These results suggest that actions for future object utilization were simulated while interpreting pre-inventive structures, increasing originality of objects. In addition, spatial transformations are useful to construct the pre-inventive structures, but not to interpret them. Yet, thinking of the pictorial details of the object is also essential to classify it in a given category. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.

Reading Comprehension of Subject-specific Texts in a Foreign Language

This study investigates the patterns used by economics and business students in reading comprehension (RC) of subject-specific texts in a foreign language (FL), particularly in relation to their use of background knowledge (BK). The think-aloud (TA) method was used and the data were derived from readers’ verbal protocols. The coding of protocols yielded seventeen coding categories. The results were analysed and compared between two groups: one with high and one with low knowledge as determined by a prior BK assessment. The coding data were linked to the reading comprehension test results and typical patterns were established. Readers with high BK used more correct paraphrasing, inferencing, elaboration, and evaluation. In contrast, readers with low BK took more of a local approach to reading by focusing more on individual words. They frequently used English in their Slovene think-alouds, produced wrong and approximate paraphrases, and signalled lack of understanding. The article closes by examining implications for FL reading instruction and developing disciplinary literacy.

Speaking of your own repertoire: an investigation of music performance during practice

The purpose of this study was to explore musicians’ approaches to performance during practice and identify the factors that underpinned their approaches. We hypothesised that musicians would be able to recall their focus, knowledge and thoughts of their own repertoire during music performance and that such data would reveal musicians’ cognitive behaviours during the performance. By analysing musicians’ retrospective verbal protocols, we found that musicians used four main reasoning processes – study, static analysis, intuition and performer’s analysis – in their approach to music performance. The findings show that musicians utilise multiple cognitive behaviours for music performance. The implications for instrumental music teaching are discussed.