Purdue University

About: Purdue University is a education organization based out in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 73219 authors who have published 163563 publications receiving 5775236 citations. The organization is also known as: Purdue & Purdue-West Lafayette.

Teacher beliefs and technology integration practices: A critical relationship

Abstract: Early studies indicated that teachers' enacted beliefs, particularly in terms of classroom technology practices, often did not align with their espoused beliefs. Researchers concluded this was due, at least in part, to a variety of external barriers that prevented teachers from using technology in ways that aligned more closely with their beliefs. However, many of these barriers (access, support, etc.) have since been eliminated in the majority of schools. This multiple case-study research was designed to revisit the question, ''How do the pedagogical beliefs and classroom technology practices of teachers, recognized for their technology uses, align?'' Twelve K-12 classroom teachers were purposefully selected based on their award-winning technology practices, supported by evidence from personal and/or classroom websites. Follow-up interviews were conducted to examine the correspondence between teachers' classroom practices and their pedagogical beliefs. Results suggest close alignment; that is student-centered beliefs undergirded student-centered practices (authenticity, student choice, collaboration). Moreover, teachers with student-centered beliefs tended to enact student-centered curricula despite technological, administrative, or assessment barriers. Teachers' own beliefs and attitudes about the relevance of technology to students' learning were perceived as having the biggest impact on their success. Additionally, most teachers indicated that internal factors (e.g., passion for technology, having a problem-solving mentality) and support from others (administrators and personal learning networks) played key roles in shaping their practices. Teachers noted that the strongest barriers preventing other teachers from using technology were their existing attitudes and beliefs toward technology, as well as their current levels of knowledge and skills. Recommendations are made for refocusing our professional development efforts on strategies for facilitating changes in teachers' attitudes and beliefs.

Dimensions of achievement motivation in schoolwork and sport.

Abstract: Both sport and academic work play large roles in school life, yet there is little comparativeevidence on the nature or generality of achievement motivation across these domains. In thisstudy, beliefs about the causes of success in school and sport of 207 high school students werefound to be related in a logical fashion to their personal goals. The ego-involved goal of superioritywas associated with the belief that success requires high ability, whereas task orientation (the goalof gaining knowledge) was associated with beliefs that success requires interest, effort, andcollaboration with peers. These goal-belief dimensions, or theories about success, cut across sportand schoolwork. However, little cross-domain generality was found for perceptions of ability andintrinsic satisfaction. Intrinsic satisfaction in sport primarily related to perceived ability in thatsetting. Task orientation, not perceived ability, was the major predictor of satisfaction inschoolwork.

The Critical Importance of Retrieval for Learning

Abstract: Learning is often considered complete when a student can produce the correct answer to a question. In our research, students in one condition learned foreign language vocabulary words in the standard paradigm of repeated study-test trials. In three other conditions, once a student had correctly produced the vocabulary item, it was repeatedly studied but dropped from further testing, repeatedly tested but dropped from further study, or dropped from both study and test. Repeated studying after learning had no effect on delayed recall, but repeated testing produced a large positive effect. In addition, students' predictions of their performance were uncorrelated with actual performance. The results demonstrate the critical role of retrieval practice in consolidating learning and show that even university students seem unaware of this fact.

Chemical and biological evolution of nucleotide-binding protein.

Abstract: Three-dimensional alignment of the common nucleotide binding structure in dehydrogenases, kinases and flavodoxins permits the recognition of homologous amino acids when sequence comparisons alone would fail. Minimum base changes per codon can then be used to measure evolutionary distances which suggest that this structure was present during precellular evolution.