Classroom Learning Environments: Assessing and Investigating the Learning Environment

Educators, students, and parents often speak about the environment or climate of classrooms and schools because they consider it important in its own right and influential for achieving various educational goals. However, it is rare for educators to include the learning environment in their evaluation procedures, whereas they focus almost exclusively on narrow achievement criteria. Although the learning environment is a subtle concept, the literature cited in this article charts remarkable progress since the 1960s in conceptualizing, assessing, researching, and changing it. Progress and internationalization in the field of learning environment over the past several decades has been facilitated considerably by Learning Environments Research: An International Journal, which began in 1998 and remains the only journal devoted exclusively to this topic. Following a section covering important reviews/overviews of the field, this article is divided into four significant topics that dominate the literature on learning environments. First, the field is rich in terms of economical, valid, and widely used instruments for assessing learning environments. Second, learning-environment assessments frequently have been used as criteria of effectiveness in the evaluation of educational programs and instructional methods, with indicators of classroom climate often differentiating revealingly between educational alternatives even when a variety of outcome measures do not. Third, the most common line of past learning-environment research has been relationships between the learning environment and student outcomes, which consistently suggests that creating positive classroom/school climates improves student outcomes. Fourth, educators have found it useful to use feedback based on their students’ perceptions of actual and preferred climate in action research aimed at improving learning environments.

Towards Consensus on the School Library Learning Environment: A Systematic Search and Review

The school library as a learning environment has been described by some as a dynamic domain where dedicated professionals and students engage collaboratively in an active and evolving educational climate. Although the field of classroom learning environment research can be charted internationally over the past several decades, journal article literature fails to consistently and coherently identify specific aspects of the school library learning environment and methods to evaluate outcomes. A systematic search and review of the literature using the learning environment as the primary search term revealed a set of 10 elements associated with this concept but few evaluation methods. Clearly defining school library learning environments could aid in the development and evaluation of school libraries as places where librarians and teachers transform and influence student lives and learning.

A THE FUNCTIONALITY OF THE MIDDLE VALUE OF THE INDONESIAN VERSION OF EMOTIONAL LEARNING INSTRUMENT

This article discusses the psychometric validity of the Indonesian version of emotional learning instruments with a scale of five and four response categories. The purpose of this study is to produce an Indonesian version of emotional learning instrument with an effective response category scale used by Indonesians. The instrument is a modification of the scale of the Learning Environment Research Questionnaire on Emotional Climate Classroom. This study is a survey of 1494 responses of 7th and 8th grade junior high school students. Samples were selected by random sampling and based on considerations of schools implementing the 2013 Curriculum. Modification instruments consisting of 43 items were tested in obtaining validity based on item difficulty estimations and psychometric criteria with Rasch modeling. The results of this study indicate that the Andrich threshold validity testing meets the monotonic characteristics and the Standardized Residual Correlation is higher, so the scale of the five response categories is more effective to measure the Indonesian version of emotional learning instruments than the scale of the four response categories. Keywords: Functionality of middle value, ELVI, Rasch Modeling

A THE FUNCTIONALITY OF THE MIDDLE VALUE OF THE INDONESIAN VERSION OF EMOTIONAL LEARNING INSTRUMENT

This article discusses the psychometric validity of the Indonesian version of emotional learning instruments with a scale of five and four response categories. The purpose of this study is to produce an Indonesian version of emotional learning instrument with an effective response category scale used by Indonesians. The instrument is a modification of the scale of the Learning Environment Research Questionnaire on Emotional Climate Classroom. This study is a survey of 1494 responses of 7th and 8th grade junior high school students. Samples were selected by random sampling and based on considerations of schools implementing the 2013 Curriculum. Modification instruments consisting of 43 items were tested in obtaining validity based on item difficulty estimations and psychometric criteria with Rasch modeling. The results of this study indicate that the Andrich threshold validity testing meets the monotonic characteristics and the Standardized Residual Correlation is higher, so the scale of the five response categories is more effective to measure the Indonesian version of emotional learning instruments than the scale of the four response categories. Keywords: Functionality of middle value, ELVI, Rasch Modeling

Teachers’ Emotional Social Intelligence and its Relationship with Students’ Cohesiveness in Classroom Learning Environment

The purpose of the study is to investigate teachers’ emotional social intelligence and its relationship with students’ cohesiveness in classroom. The main objectives of the study were to; find students’ perception of emotional social intelligence level of university teachers, find students’ cohesiveness in classroom, and measure the relationship of teachers’ emotional social intelligence with the students’ cohesiveness in classroom learning environment. Research questions were formulated. Population of the study was teachers and students (8775) of all universities (29) of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The sample of the study was taken from nine (9) universities’ teachers and students (900) through simple random and purposive sampling techniques. Questionnaires and interview were used as research instruments to collect data from the concerned participants and informants. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed for the analysis of the data. It was found that there is a significant correlation between social emotional intelligence of teachers and students’ cohesiveness in classroom learning environment. It is recommended that research studies should be conducted at different level with different variables relating to emotional social intelligence.

Student Attitude and Online Learning

After defining “attitude” and reporting on the impact attitudes have in general, this chapter presents different instruments which have been used to measure students' attitude toward online education, and reports on studies which have used these instruments to assess attitudes toward online education. In addition, design factors affecting attitudes toward distance education were studied. The chapter presents research associated with different models which were used to study the impact of impact of design factors upon attitude, focusing upon learning environment research. More broadly, research associated with process and causal models was presented. These models examine a multitude of factors associated with student attitudes. The chapter concludes by discussing the importance of factoring in attitude when designing distance education courses.

Learning in Organizations

The authors find that learning in organizations that employ innovation and technology in their operations is fostered and incorporated in work environment for enhancing innovation while maintaining peak competiveness. It is divided across several segments, which include but are not limited to experimentation, risk tolerance, interaction with the external environment, dialogue, and decision-making. Conversely, this paper also examines several instances in which organizations failed to adopt a learning environment. Research illustrates that companies that fail continuously to improve fail because they can no longer competitively operate in today's global marketplace by holding onto the way work was once accomplished. Today's work environment is more demanding and less structured than in the past and, therefore, companies must adopt or they will become irrelevant. This paper also illustrates how learning actually occurs. Furthermore, the authors attempt to show the nascent relationship between learning and brain/mind principles at a cursory level. The paper also shows how the same basic principles utilized in educational learning can be applied to enhance corporate learning among adult learners.

Ecological Design in Network Learning Resources

In the rapid development of information technology, education, change of social background, the word "ecology" is more and more get the favor of education researchers. Ecological network learning environment to the learner and learning environment as a whole, focus on the interaction between learners and learning environment, attention generated in the learning process, focus on formation and maintenance of network learning ecology, is considered to be adapt to the future development trend of network learning environment. Ecology "based on" ecological learning "and" learning "learning ecosystem" supplies "as keywords to retrieve relevant literature, through to classify the literature, comparative analysis, think: the ecological network learning environment research comes from WebX.0, mix (a surgeon - up), the development of cloud computing and other technical and support; ecological psychology, Theory of complexity theory, uniform for ecological design of the network learning environment provide direct theoretical support.