Search results for "STUDENTS"

On the motivations to enroll in doctoral studies in Computer Science — A comparison of PhD program models

2013

While student motivation has been intensively researched, only a few studies cover motivation at doctoral level and even less focus on doctoral education in Computer Science. In this paper we investigate the motivation of graduate students to pursue doctoral studies specifically in Computer Science. We interviewed 63 doctoral students, from two different doctoral models (traditional and structured) in Finland and Austria, on their initial reasons and experiences that led them to enroll in doctoral studies. We identified five disjoint main motivational drivers that relate with different aspects of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Together with a measure of the strength of their initial mo…

First Year Computing Students' Perceptions of Authenticity in Assessment

2017

The problem of how best to assess student learning is a fundamental one in education. Changes to computer science curricula seek to emphasise teaching practices that promote deep learning through direct, contextual examination of student performance on tasks that resemble those of practitioners, rather than more traditional methods. This kind of "authentic assessment" is becoming more popular as it appears to incorporate employability skills associated with professional practice into the curriculum in a natural way. In this paper, we report on an investigation into how computing students themselves understand the terminology of authentic assessment. We give a brief summary of some of the sa…

Habituating Students to IPR Questions During Creative Project Work

2017

“Enymärä”: Thoughts on the use of Finnish as the majority language in locally published EFL activity books

2017

It has been a long tradition in Finland to use locally published textbooks in primary foreign language education. The books have been designed for linguistically homogenous groups of students, which explains why Finnish, as the learners’ L1, is the instructive metalanguage chosen for the EFL activity books. However, the growing number of immigrant children in the Finnish educational system raises the question to what extent these activity books can serve the needs of linguistically more diverse groups of learners. The connection between the two languages is so strong that Finnish seems to serve as a precondition for the acquisition of English. The high proportion of tasks requiring fluency …

Partnership of schools and civil society organisations to support education of students of varied linguistic backgrounds—The situation in the Czech R…

2022

This article reports on research examining the intensity and forms of partnership between civil society organisations (particularly non-profit non-governmental organisations with a focus on students with a different mother tongue) and schools in three European geographical areas, answering three research questions: (1) What services do non-profits offer for teachers? (2) How do non-profits see the current cooperation? (3) Do teachers know about the existence of non-profits in this area and are they interested in such cooperation? A mixed methods research approach was used. A questionnaire was used for eliciting responses from 34 non-profit organisations (nine in Czech Republic, nineteen in …

Creating learning paths, influencing, participating: A pilot study on teacher students’ experiences of agency in their first-year small group studies

2014

The purpose of this pilot study was to examine teacher students’ agency. In this study agency was defined as the students’ possibilities and resources to influence their studies, pursue goals, make choices, and act autonomously and responsibly. The main aims were to find out what kind of agency teacher students experience in their studies and what kind of factors they perceive as supporting and constraining their agency. The pilot also aimed to ascertain suitable methodology for investigating student agency. The data were collected with teacher education students’ interviews (n = 2) and written self-reflections (n = 3). The analysis indicated that teacher students’ agency was manifested as …

Finnish teacher-students’ views on home-school cooperation

2019

This study focused on the views on home-school cooperation of teacher-students who are in the process of becoming professionals. The data were gathered from five focus-group interviews of 19 Finnish teacher-students. The data were analysed thematically. Better learning results were not the general aim of cooperation; instead, the aim was the child’s well-being. All parties benefited when cooperation functioned well. Yet, factors related to parents and teachers’ lack of time hinder cooperation. The views of home-school cooperation were a combination of the participants’ childhood memories, stories they had heard from their friends and colleagues and, less saliently, ideas originating from te…

Attitudes, Sentiments, and Concerns About Inclusive Education of Teachers and Teaching Students in Spain.

2020

The Sentiments, Attitudes, and Concerns About Inclusive Education Revised scale was developed to close the existing gap in measuring perceptions of inclusive education in the educative context. It has been widely used in other cultures but not in Spain. Our objective has been to analyze the psychometric properties in the Spanish sample by studying their relationship with empathy and social dominance variables, finally taking into account sociodemographic variables to observe if there are differences. The scale was applied to a total of 647 subjects: 323 university-students (18–45 years) and 324 in-service teachers (35–58 years). The scale showed psychometric properties suitable for the gene…

Exploring agency and entrainment in joint music-making through the reported experiences of students and teachers

2022

This qualitative interview-based study draws on the reported experiences of students and teachers to explore how agency and entrainment resource and constrain each other in joint music-making. The participants were 23 students of Grades 6 and 11 music teachers from different primary schools. The qualitative content analysis of the 11 student pair interviews and 11 one-to-one teacher interviews indicated that experiences of music-related interpersonal entrainment intertwine with different dimensions of agency. In the analysis, four themes were identified as follows: presence, belonging, safety, and continuity. These findings provide insights into the relationship between agency and entrainme…

A study of transitions in an undergraduate mathematics program

2018

International audience; In this paper, we introduce an in-progress study of the transitions students face as they advance in their mathematics courses. Previous work has discussed the changes that occur in the transition from high school to university. With regards to the knowledge students are expected to learn, however, significant similarities have been noted: to do well in introductory university courses, students can learn to solve a particular subset of tasks through routinized techniques, with limited awareness of the supporting mathematical theory. In contrast, students in advanced courses are required to work with and on that theory. The first stage of our project aims to better un…