THE USE OF A DIGITAL MICROSCOPE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOLCHILDREN'S IDEAS ABOUT PLANTS, ANIMALS AND FUNGI

At present the use of technical teaching aids based on digital technologies in the educational process in primary schools is gaining special relevance, and the digital microscope is indicated in a number of syllabi for the course "Nature study" in primary schools in the section “Material and technical support”. The teacher is free to decide on what topics, in the study of what objects or natural phenomena, with the use of what methods to use this teaching tool. The aim of the study is to identify the influence of the use of the digital microscope on the development of children’s ideas about plants, animals and fungi in primary school. The pedagogical experiment was carried out for 2 years on the basis of two secondary schools in the city of Kirov, Russian Federation. 140 third grade students (72 students in the experimental group and 68 students in the control group) took part in the experiment. For the development of ideas about plants, animals and fungi in primary school children at Nature study lessons two methods were implemented: with the use of the digital microscope (in the experimental group) and without its use (in the control group). The results of testing third-graders before and after the teaching experiment showed that the use of the digital microscope in the classroom contributed to students’ better assimilation of knowledge about the diversity of plants, their respiration, nutrition, reproduction and development, the diversity of animals, their reproduction and development, and the diversity of fungi than in the lessons which did not use the microscope. This is proved by statistically significant differences in the test results of the experimental and control groups after the experiment. The findings of the study can provide a starting point for subject curriculum developers and teachers interested in using the digital microscope in primary school education.

Influence of Healthy Physical Fitness on the Teaching of Aerobics Course Based on Big Data Mining Technology

Healthy physical fitness is one of the hot topics discussed by scholars at home and abroad in recent years, and it is a key indicator for evaluating students’ physical function and body shape. Aerobics, also known as bodybuilding, means that the body and health of students should have a better promotion effect, but in reality, many students found that after elective aerobics, body shape and health level basically did not improve, which is related to the setting of aerobics courses, especially the lack of physical training. Aerobics and other sports have common requirements in physical training, such as strength quality, speed quality, endurance quality, agility quality, and flexibility quality. This article is aimed at studying the impact of healthy physical fitness based on big data mining technology on the teaching of aerobics. On the basis of analyzing the process of data mining, the composition of healthy physical fitness, and the role of aerobics, it is used to test students in a certain university through experimental methods and statistical methods. Carry out aerobics teaching experiment, and compare and analyze the data measured by the experimental samples. The experimental results show that the use of healthy physical fitness in aerobics teaching can effectively promote the learning and improvement of aerobics skills.

Applying PERMA to Develop College Students’ English Listening and Speaking Proficiency in China

Positive Psychology is applied to broaden the learning of a second language, whose application in schools is referred to as Positive Education. The PERMA model (Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment) proposed by Seligman provides a way for positive education to flourish and open up a new perspective for Chinese scholars in different fields. Hence, the main focus of this study was to explore the effect of PERMA on students’ English listening and speaking competency in the Chinese context. This study used a quasi-experimental and a mixed method research design, which included developing a curriculum of PERMA in English speaking and listening, teaching intervention, and a speaking and listening competence test. A total of 240 students studying the same course from six classes, specializing in arts and science, participated in the teaching experiment with the same study level. A total of 110 students in the control group (CG) were taught using traditional teaching methods and the remaining 130 in the experimental group (EG) were subjected to a PERMA intervention for 14 weeks. The results of a one-way ANCOVA indicated a significant improvement in English listening and speaking proficiency of those in the experimental group due to the intervention of PERMA. The outcome of qualitative study conducted by semi-structured interview revealed that students had made progress in English pronunciation, oral expression in their speaking competency. They could also keep up with the speed of audio script and they understood key sentences and details in the listening process. The study pedagogically implicated that whole school approach, including the changes of curriculum, teaching skills, teacher education, and community involvement, should be explored for a new framework of Positive Language Education.

Applying cognitive linguistics to second language idiom learning

<p>Idioms are known to cause great difficulty for second language (L2) learners, who may understand the literal meanings of the constituent words of idioms like (be) waiting in the wings, but often fail to interpret the idiomatic, figurative meaning of the expression. Proponents of Cognitive Linguistics (CL) claim that CL provides a pathway to more systematic and insightful learning of figurative expressions like idioms. They advocate that learners should be informed of the literal underpinning of idiomatic expressions and their relationship to the figurative meaning. This is supported by the results of several experimental studies employing ‘etymological elaboration’. However, little is known about how learners actually experience the CL-style explanations, or about how the learning is affected by other factors such as learners’ perceived transparency of the connection between the literal underpinnings and the idiomatic meanings, and their L1. The research reported in this thesis therefore (1) investigates the effectiveness of etymological elaboration in facilitating idiom comprehension and retention; (2) examines the problems that L2 learners, i.e., native-Chinese EFL learners in this study, experience when they encounter English figurative idioms, and identifies the factors influencing success in learning the meanings of idioms. To achieve these objectives, a mixed methods design was employed. Etymological elaboration was implemented in a teaching experiment involving one-on-one interviews, in which 25 Chinese learners of English were presented with idioms whose meaning they were asked to guess first without and then with the aid of information about their literal underpinnings. After the correct figurative meaning was established, participants rated the transparency of the connection between the literal underpinning and the figurative meaning. One week later, the learners were presented with the same idioms and asked to recall their meaning. Follow-up interviews were also conducted to survey the learners’ experience with and awareness of idioms, and their general attitudes and strategies towards idiom learning. Participants’ responses and their recall of idiomatic meanings were scored by three raters. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses of the interview data investigated the learning process and the outcomes of the teaching experiment. The major findings are: (1) Etymological elaboration can facilitate the interpretation and meaning retention of L2 idioms to a substantial degree; and the L2 idiom learning involves the interplay of multiple factors, including the transparency of the idioms, L1 transfer and cross-cultural differences, learners’ prior L2 lexical knowledge, and their proficiency levels. (2) The degree of transparency of the literal-figurative connection influences meaning retention, especially for the low proficiency learners. However, the mnemonic effect is not confined to idioms that learners find most transparent, but also affects those that are “far-fetched”. (3) The accuracy of meaning inference during the learning phase has a significant impact on memory for the idioms; many errors can be traced back to wrong guesses made in the prior learning phase, and some relate to false equivalents and partial equivalents in the L1. This suggests that trial-and-error learning potentially induces wrong memory traces and that teaching practices should therefore promote more accurate comprehension from the start, in order to facilitate better long-term memory for idioms. (4) More exposure to and better awareness of idioms help EFL learners foster positive attitudes towards idiom learning, which may facilitate the integration and automatization of figurative multiword expressions like idioms in their bilingual mental lexicon, and in turn lead to higher L2 proficiency. The findings of this study have implications for second language teaching and learning. The innovative research design and advanced statistical analyses contribute to the development of language teaching research methodology.</p>

Applying cognitive linguistics to second language idiom learning

<p>Idioms are known to cause great difficulty for second language (L2) learners, who may understand the literal meanings of the constituent words of idioms like (be) waiting in the wings, but often fail to interpret the idiomatic, figurative meaning of the expression. Proponents of Cognitive Linguistics (CL) claim that CL provides a pathway to more systematic and insightful learning of figurative expressions like idioms. They advocate that learners should be informed of the literal underpinning of idiomatic expressions and their relationship to the figurative meaning. This is supported by the results of several experimental studies employing ‘etymological elaboration’. However, little is known about how learners actually experience the CL-style explanations, or about how the learning is affected by other factors such as learners’ perceived transparency of the connection between the literal underpinnings and the idiomatic meanings, and their L1. The research reported in this thesis therefore (1) investigates the effectiveness of etymological elaboration in facilitating idiom comprehension and retention; (2) examines the problems that L2 learners, i.e., native-Chinese EFL learners in this study, experience when they encounter English figurative idioms, and identifies the factors influencing success in learning the meanings of idioms. To achieve these objectives, a mixed methods design was employed. Etymological elaboration was implemented in a teaching experiment involving one-on-one interviews, in which 25 Chinese learners of English were presented with idioms whose meaning they were asked to guess first without and then with the aid of information about their literal underpinnings. After the correct figurative meaning was established, participants rated the transparency of the connection between the literal underpinning and the figurative meaning. One week later, the learners were presented with the same idioms and asked to recall their meaning. Follow-up interviews were also conducted to survey the learners’ experience with and awareness of idioms, and their general attitudes and strategies towards idiom learning. Participants’ responses and their recall of idiomatic meanings were scored by three raters. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses of the interview data investigated the learning process and the outcomes of the teaching experiment. The major findings are: (1) Etymological elaboration can facilitate the interpretation and meaning retention of L2 idioms to a substantial degree; and the L2 idiom learning involves the interplay of multiple factors, including the transparency of the idioms, L1 transfer and cross-cultural differences, learners’ prior L2 lexical knowledge, and their proficiency levels. (2) The degree of transparency of the literal-figurative connection influences meaning retention, especially for the low proficiency learners. However, the mnemonic effect is not confined to idioms that learners find most transparent, but also affects those that are “far-fetched”. (3) The accuracy of meaning inference during the learning phase has a significant impact on memory for the idioms; many errors can be traced back to wrong guesses made in the prior learning phase, and some relate to false equivalents and partial equivalents in the L1. This suggests that trial-and-error learning potentially induces wrong memory traces and that teaching practices should therefore promote more accurate comprehension from the start, in order to facilitate better long-term memory for idioms. (4) More exposure to and better awareness of idioms help EFL learners foster positive attitudes towards idiom learning, which may facilitate the integration and automatization of figurative multiword expressions like idioms in their bilingual mental lexicon, and in turn lead to higher L2 proficiency. The findings of this study have implications for second language teaching and learning. The innovative research design and advanced statistical analyses contribute to the development of language teaching research methodology.</p>

Different Types of Subitizing Activity: A Teaching Experiment with Preconservers

Introduction: Subitizing, a quick apprehension of the numerosity of a small set of items, is consistently utilized to support early number understanding. Perceptual subitizing is the innate ability to recognize less than five items without consciously using other mental or mathematical processes. Conceptual subitizing, which requires higher-level abilities, means perceiving the quantities as groups and performing a mental process on them. Research on conceptual and perceptual subitizing indicates some limitations about the activities regarding the children’s early number development. So, MacDonald and Wilkins (2016) developed a framework that explained the types of activities that young children used while subitizing. In this framework, five sets of perceptual subitizing activity were described to explain how young children’s perceptual subitizing activity changed. Besides, two types of conceptual subitizing activities were defined to explain how children’s limited or flexible number understanding related to their subitizing activity. These seven different types of activities characterize the changes in children’s subitizing actions. The study aims to investigate the relationship between children’s number understanding and subitizing activity. Methods: A teaching experiment was conducted with two preschool-aged children to analyze what perceptual and conceptual processes children relied upon when subitizing. The teaching experiment consisted of twenty-six sessions. The interviews were conducted to determine whether children are able to conserve numbers or not, and whether they rely on a variety of different types of subitizing activity or not. After the interviews, 26 teaching sessions were carried out with two preconserver children. Results: In the experimental process, it was observed that the children rely on the color of items, the gap between items, and symmetrical aspects of items when perceptually subitizing. However, they could not manage to transition their subitizing activity from perceptual to conceptual subitizing. The study indicates that children’s subitizing skills were closely related to their number conservation development. Discussion: Based on the findings from this study, for Eren and Beren, subitizing activities were found to be perceptually limited. Specifically, it was found that four types of perceptual subitizing emerged to explain how symmetry, the gap between items, color of items, and canonical patterns promoted strategies that children relied on when constructing number understanding. During the teaching experiment, although these children carried out the activities that required the separating and combining numbers and seeing the relationship between the subgroups and the composite groups, they used perceptual units in this process. The relationship between the number conservation activity and the conceptual subitizing activity requires the coordination of thinking structures related to both ordering and classification. However, it was found that the children could not move from perceptual to the conceptual subitizing. Limitations: As all studies have some limitations, this study has, too. One of the limitations of the study is the sample size/number of participants. But teaching experiments aim to get a deep understanding, studying with a small sample is an obligation. Secondly, this study focused on some compounds of subitizing such as perceptual and conceptual ones. Conclusion: In order to make the transition from perceptual subitizing to conceptual subitizing children should have more experiences with subitizing activities.When designing mathematical games and assessments for young children, being aware of different types of subitizing categories may provide better support children’s number understanding and subitizing.

A Study of Piano Timbre Teaching in the Context of Artificial Intelligence Interaction

This paper provides an in-depth analysis and research on piano timbre teaching in the context of artificial intelligence interaction, a bold vision of piano teaching, proposes a feasible solution in terms of teaching modules in intelligent piano teaching for senior teachers, and proposes an implementation path for the integration of intelligent piano and piano teaching from the four main blocks of piano teaching. Based on the multiplicative harmonic model of monophonic signal, combined with the variability of timbre characteristics, an audio synthesis model with editable timbre is proposed, and the experimental results show that editing the timbre parameters in the model can realize timbre modification, and the synthesized timbre conforms to the piano timbre characteristics. Based on the timbre analysis and the timbre synthesis model, a piano timbre library generation system is designed. The detailed design of the software modules such as audio file reading and writing, audio information analysis, timbre parameter acquisition, timbre synthesis, and simulated performance is given. The system can generate piano timbre libraries of different qualities flexibly and meet the requirements of timbre realism. The teaching experiment designed for teaching practice from solo teaching, and the practice target is first-year undergraduate students in the university, and the practice period is six weeks, and finally, the feasibility of intelligent piano teaching application is analysed by combining the experimental results. Through the teaching objectives, teaching content, and teaching methods, teaching environment reflects intelligent piano teaching to make up for the limitations of traditional piano teaching. Analyse the development trend of intelligent piano teaching in the context of artificial intelligence interaction, and explore the value of intelligent piano teaching.

Embodied Reflection of Images as an Arts-Based Research Method: Teaching Experiment in Higher Education

This paper discusses a teaching experiment in which 20 university students in Finland participated in the course Critical and Novel Approaches to Management and Organisational Studies, which familiarized them with the method of embodied reflection of images. First, the paper presents the method and the teaching experiment. Then, it presents and discusses the students’ experiences while experimenting with the method. The students’ written reflections form the data of the study, which were analyzed qualitatively using content analysis. The findings of this small-scale study show that the method of embodied reflection of images provided students with a novel perspective into management and organization, fostered collaboration, and promoted critical thinking. In addition, rational knowledge was furnished with experiential and affective modes of knowledge. Based on students’ positive feedback, the experiment succeeded in elucidating the method and its applicability in research on management and organization. This study promotes teaching arts-based research methods in higher education.

Learning complex functions with GeoGebra

In this paper we describe a teaching experiment targeting with students of Complex Analysis attending an undergraduate course of a portuguese university. Our main goal is the understanding of the GeoGebra role with respected to visualization and as technological mediator, according to Vygotsky theory, in the teaching and learning process of complex functions. The first step of our study was the conception of a sequence of didactical tasks and the development of GeoGebra tools related to the target didactical objectives. Here we will describe the procedure related to the tasks implementation in a classroom environment and the achieved results based on the collected data composed by written assignements produced by students, video recording the student performance during the experiment and the student constructions with GeoGebra. All the collected data was analysed from a qualitative and interpretative paradigm.