Le Symposium des cycles supérieurs en éducation / le 7 mai, 2009

...l'apprentissage qui transforme

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contact: symposium@education.concordia.ca

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Effets de l'enseignement explicite des stratégies de lecture sur le rendement en lecture d'élèves forts, moyens et faibles du troisième cycle du primaire

Cette communication présente un projet de recherche quasi-expérimentale ayant pour objectif d' évaluer l' efficacité de l&apos enseignement explicite des stratégies de lecture (EESL) sur le rendement en lecture des élèves du troisième cycle du primaire (n = 180).

Les enseignants des groupes expérimentaux (n = 4) recevront, de septembre à décembre 2009, des formations mensuelles sur l'EESL et ils devront intégrer cette méthode d'enseignement à raison d'une heure par semaine. Les enseignants du groupe contrôle (n = 4) continueront d'adopter leurs pratiques régulières. Afin d'évaluer le degré d'intégration de l'EESL chez les enseignants participants, des observations mensuelles auront lieu dans les huit classes et seront consignées à l'aide d'une grille d'observation inspirée de recherches précédentes (VanGrunderbeeck, Cartier, Chouinard et Théorêt, 2005; Turcotte, Giasson et Saint-Laurent, 2004) présentant différentes rubriques sur l'enseignement explicite. Aussi, afin d'évaluer les progrès des élèves, une évaluation standardisée en lecture sera administrée à tous les élèves avant et après l'intervention (Armand et Sabourin, 1995).

Suite à la cueillette des données, une comparaison entre les résultats des différents groupes sera faite et mise en relation avec les pratiques des enseignants. De plus, des analyses comparatives, de covariance et de régression seront effectuées. Le rapport final de cette recherche sera disponible en juin 2010.

Facilitator confidence and its effect on learning relationships

This poster presentation explores the link between a facilitator's levels of confidence and its effect on learning-relationships with workshop participants. This presentation is based on a self-study in which my nineteen MA classmates and I were responsible for the design, implementation and facilitation of a full-day workshop for a Montreal school board on the topic of emotional intelligence. Despite a solid design and interesting activities, many of us doubted our facilitation skills and the value of certain activities to promote participant learning. In some cases the lack in confidence resulted in the abrupt termination of activities and in other cases facilitators used self-disparaging language in their workshops. Observing that lower levels of confidence increased the facilitators' tendency to search for "better" external surrogates (experienced co-facilitators, better activities), I began to question the impact of such behaviour on the participant's ability to learn about emotional intelligence. This poster will present my data (written and illustrated reflections on the preparation and facilitation of the workshop) and will use Vygostky's (1987) Zone of Proximal Development and premise of learning-in-relationship to explain a possible link between low-levels of confidence and external surrogates on the process of learning.

L'implantation de tâches d'évaluation complexes dans l'éducation en ligne?

Beaucoup de matériel de cours est converti en format électronique, mais souvent, les efforts faits par les enseignants pour accompagner ces cours en ligne par une évaluation en ligne correspondante sont manquants. Ce projet de recherche vise à développer des tâches d ' évaluation complexes en contexte authentique pour accompagner les programmes d' enseignement à distance sur l ' Internet. Afin de réaliser ces objectifs, un moteur de présentation de tâches d ' évaluation complexes en contexte authentique a été réalisé. Des modèles éducationnels ont été développés pour permettre aux enseignants d ' utiliser l ' évaluation en ligne dans leur cours. Des modèles d ' interface usager ont été développés pour assurer l ' affichage de ces tâches d ' évaluation sur des sites Internet d ' apprentissage à distance et des modèles de données ont été développés pour convertir et entreposer des tâches d ' évaluation sur des serveurs Web.

Mots-clefs: évaluation, tâches d'évaluation, éducation en ligne?

Environmental Education: Time for Education to Rethink, Renew, Reuse, and Recycle

As we come to the end of another year in the new millennium, our planet's environment continues to suffer as a result of human activity. Changes in the climate and global warming continue to lead to the extinction or threatening of wildlife, plants, and the way we, as humans, will exist and inhabit the earth. In order to create a better understanding of the earth's ecosystem, the impact of our behaviour on this system, and ways in which we can change our habits to better cohabitate with the environment, I believe Environmental Education (EE) is vital. In this poster presentation, I will briefly discuss Environmental Education, the impact of such learning on behaviour, criticisms and recommendations to EE programs, issues and resistance to EE, in addition to reasons why I think EE should be incorporated into school and university curricula.

How do francophones acquire the English present perfect?

Until now, work on verb acquisition by learners of English as a second language has been largely limited to forms of the present and past. The present perfect (she has seen) and the perfect progressive (they have been going), however, probably represent a greater challenge for second language learners since semantically they rarely have equivalents in students' language of origin. In fact, even very advanced learners tend to underuse these forms, and often have trouble understanding its underlying meaning. It is thus surprising that so little empirical research has been carried out on the process through which second language learners go in acquiring it. Using three of Comrie's four categories of functional usage (experience, result, and persistent situation) in addition to the separate category of perfect progressive, this study seeks to investigate if there is an order in which francophone learners seem to get a handle on this problematic form. By first testing anglophone responses to verbal and pictorial prompts, and then measuring the responses of four competency levels of francophone learners against this data, the study hopes to see if some sort of acquisitional sequence can be detected.

Virtual artificial learner (VAL)

Virtual Artificial Learner (VAL), a research and educational tool, is an open-source software currently in the early stages of development. The intention of the software is to: (1) develop a virtual artificial learner in an environment where all learning or developmental variables are accountable for, and (2) whose behaviour can be easily documented to further facilitate the research and development process. VAL, the new paradigm of Artificial Inelegance (AI), is based on Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and draws inspiration from many other disciplines like: Neuroscience, Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Computational Developmental Psychology, and Evolutionary Psychology. The short term goal of VAL is the creation of an artificial learner to be use by cognitive scientist (to better understand learning), psychologist (to better understand behaviour), and educators (to better understand pedagogy). The ultimate goal of VAL is to export the intelligent element so that it can be used in other applications like: business (e.g. receiving customer service phone calls), gaming (e.g. game avatars), education (e.g. a virtual teacher), and personal use (e.g. as a companion or mentor). An important fundamental conceptual element of the VAL project believes, like human learning, VAL's learning should be an ongoing process

keywords: neuroscience, development, evolution

Cognitive processes of contextual and isolated word reading

Although there is vested interest in the effects of contextual reading on decoding and reading fluency, it remains unclear how the mind processes words encountered in stories. Jacoby (1983) showed that memory with intention (explicit) measures conceptual processing whereas memory without intention (implicit) measures perceptual encoding. Using this dichotomy, Martin-Chang, Levesque, & Kim (2008) had participants generate words from definitions, read words in stories, and read words in lists. When participants "rated the appropriateness" of passages, they remembered more 'story-items' during surprise-recall whereas a second group selected more 'list-items' to complete word-stems. This double dissociation suggested that words read in stories were processed more conceptually than words read in isolation. Would similar processing differences remain under more natural (less evaluative) reading conditions? Undergraduates (N = 31) were exposed to 25 target words under three conditions (generation, story, list). Conceptual and perceptual processes were measured using explicit and implicit tasks, respectively. Performance on the explicit task indicated that 'generated-items' were recalled more than 'context-items' whereas 'list-items' were recalled the least. The performance of the same participants, using the same words, showed the opposite pattern on the implicit task. That is, reading stories leads to greater conceptual processing than reading in isolation.

Keywords Reading, Cognitive processes, Conceptual & Perceptual processing

Communicator and message effects in prejudice reduction interventions with young children

School programs aiming to reduce children's prejudiced attitudes are generally evaluated as ineffective, because they fail to consider children's normative and cognitive restraints. Children expect adults to be prejudiced, and tend to be egocentric and unidimensional in their thinking. Subsequently, they will distort or dismiss attitudes that differ from their own. According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), adults tend to process messages from an ingroup member superficially as they are seen as reliable and trustworthy, and messages from an outgroup member more deeply. This has not been evaluated with children. We examined the effects of the race of an adult communicator and the strength of an antibias message on forty 4- to 6-year-old children's inference of the communicator's racial attitudes and their processing of a weak or strong antibias message. Results indicated that neither the communicator's race or message strength significantly affected children's inference of the communicator's attitudes. Consistent with the ELM, however, children processed a strong antibias message deeply when they were assigned to an outgroup communicator than to an ingroup communicator. Study limitations and implications for future research on prejudice reduction interventions for children are discussed.

Keywords: children, prejudice reduction, antibias messages

Across the board: Culturally-relevant education in the community

Inspired by staggering statistics that young people from traditionally marginalized communities drop out of school at much higher rates than the general student population, and research demonstrating that the process of marginalization begins in school and is contributed to by current curriculum content, this action research documents the process of integrating the needs, interests, goals and cultural backgrounds of students at an adult education program into the requirements for a secondary school diploma. This research contributes to a growing body of knowledge, which emphasizes that educational content can serve to either empower or disempower students and that the North American public school system legitimizes dominant societal culture, while ignoring, or discrediting, many of the cultures (as it is experienced through both ethnicity and social class) of the students. To do so, this three-step research process brings together adult students, tutors, teachers, and program coordinators to explore their requests regarding curriculum content. Subsequently, background research is conducted to determine ways that these requests can be enabled within the boundaries of the curriculum defined by the Ministry of Education. Lastly, a final session will be held during which the above results will be shared and future directions of the adult education program will be explored.

Keywords: culturally-relevant, community, education