Students of today are more afraid of growing up than in previous generations

In Western democracies, young adults are living with their parents for longer, spending more time in education and delaying having children. So much so that some commentators have suggested that we need a new term, such as "emerging adulthood", to describe the phase of life between late adolescence and true adulthood. Adding to this picture, a new cross-generational study in International Journal of Behavioural Development of hundreds of undergrads at two US universities finds that students today are more anxious about growing up and maturing than students from previous generations.

April Smith and her colleagues took advantage of data collected from male and female students at a northeastern private university in 1982, 1992, 2002 and 2012 when they were aged around 20, that included their answers to four statements about "fears of maturity". Specifically, the students rated their agreement with items like "I wish that I could return to the security of childhood" and disagreement with items like "I feel happy that I am not a child anymore" (the questions were part of a larger investigation into eating disorders). The researchers also had access to similar data from female students at a large public university in southeastern USA collected in 2001, 2003, 2009 and 2012.

The results from both universities revealed a clear trend – students today have more fears about maturing than students of the same age in previous generations. The researchers said this was a worrying result because fear of maturity is associated with negative outcomes including poorer psychological wellbeing.

Quite why today's students have an increased reluctance to leave their childhoods behind remains open to speculation because as the researchers put it: "empirical studies on adolescents' and young adults' fears related to the natural ageing process are almost entirely absent from the literature." Smith and her team suggest that these fears might in some ways be a realistic response to changing circumstances, including the recent global economic recession. Also contemporary students' reluctance to grow up might be related to changes to parenting styles – for instance, research from the UK shows that parents today are less willing to take risks, as revealed by the drastic reduction in the number of children permitted to walk to school on their own.

It's not clear how far we can generalise these results beyond US undergrads to non-students or young adults in other cultures. It's also worth noting that it's possible that all age groups today (not just young adults) are more anxious about ageing than were people of a similar age in previous eras. Still, as Smith and her colleagues put it, the new findings certainly suggest that "today's emerging adults seem reluctant to take on life's next chapter" and that we perhaps need to do more to remind them that "maturity's wisdom, knowledge and experience are precious, hard-won and nothing to fear."

SOURCE:

http://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/07/students-of-today-are-more-afraid-of.html(accessed 15.7.16)

Most students struggle to take effective lecture notes. Here are two ways to help them

Sit in a university lecture and you'll see most students scribbling away taking notes (or tapping away on laptops). Unfortunately, while note-taking ought to be beneficial in principle – by encouraging reflection on, and systematic organisation of, the material – countless studies have found it to have little to no benefit. It's likely this is in part because of the way students take notes. Many simply record verbatim what the lecturer is saying.

Now the US psychologists Dung Bui and Mark McDaniel have tested two ways to help students take better notes. The first is to provide note paper containing a lecture outline, with headings and subheadings of the material. The idea is that this eases the mental demands of taking notes.

The second method is to provide students with illustrative diagrams – these go further than an outline and show the key components of a system, with labels explaining how the different parts interact.

Bui and McDaniel asked 144 undergrads to take notes while they listened to a 12-minute lecture about car brakes and pumps. At the start, some of them were given a skeletal outline of the lecture, others were given an annotated diagram of the parts and steps involved in a car's brakes. There was also a control group who were simply given a blank piece of note paper.

Afterwards, all the note papers and materials were removed and the students were distracted for half an hour with a word learning test. After this, the students were tested on their understanding of the first part of the lecture by free recall (that is, they were asked to type out as much as they could remember). Then they answered a series of questions on the same topic. Finally, they completed a test of their "structure building" ability – essentially how good they are at forming a coherent mental structure out of information. For this, they read four passages of text and then answered questions on them.

Regardless of their own ability level, the students who received a lecture outline performed better at free recall of the lecture than the control participants. They also took more comprehensive notes. When it came to the specific questions on the lecture material, however, the lecture outlines helped high ability students but not those with low structure building ability. By contrast, both high and low-ability students who received annotated diagrams performed better at free recall than the controls and at answering the questions, despite actually taking fewer notes. The researchers said this is probably because diagrams help students see the major components of a system and how they work together.

"These two features in conjunction essentially provide a representation that can be directly appropriated for constructing a more complete mental model" they said. Further analysis showed that the students given an annotated diagram, not only took fewer notes than the other students, but their notes contained a higher proportion of references to the cause-and-effect dynamics described in the lecture. This suggests the diagram helped the students to focus on extracting the most important information for understanding the topic at hand.

The researchers said their findings have practical relevance for lecturers who want to use learning aids to "help all students across the entire range of ability". Of course, this study was about the teaching of a scientific topic, so it's not clear how the findings would generalise to other subjects. However, the researchers said that for topics for which illustrative diagrams are not practical, "perhaps other aids that help scaffold construction of a coherent mental model might be developed."

_________________________________ 

SOURCE:

http://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/05/most-students-struggle-to-take.html?utm_source=BPS_Lyris_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=%5Brd%5D+The+Latest+Psychology+Research(accessed 15.5.15)

Bui, D., & McDaniel, M. (2015). Enhancing learning during lecture note-taking using outlines and illustrative diagrams Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 4 (2), 129-135 DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2015.03.002

Οι καλοί σχολικοί βαθμοί είναι... μεταδοτικοί

Οι καλές επιδόσεις στο σχολείο, κοντολογίς, οι καλοί βαθμοί, είναι μεταδοτικές. Αυτό προκύπτει από νέα έρευνα Αμερικανών επιστημόνων. Σύμφωνα με τους συντάκτες της έρευνας, μαθητές που κάνουν παρέα με φίλους που έχουν καλύτερους βαθμούς από τους ίδιους, βλέπουν και τους δικούς τους βαθμούς να ανεβαίνουν την επόμενη σχολική χρονιά. Μετά λοιπόν από προηγούμενες έρευνες που κατέγραψαν ότι η παχυσαρκία είναι κοινωνικά κολλητική, φαίνεται ότι και τα κοινωνικά δίκτυα μεταδίδουν τα «μικρόβια» των καλών βαθμών. Αυτό υποστηρίζουν ερευνητές του πολιτειακού πανεπιστημίου της Νέας Υόρκης (SUNY).

Οι σχολικές επιδόσεις των μαθητών μπορούν να επηρεαστούν από τις επιδόσεις συμμαθητών που είναι φίλοι τους. «Οσο πιο έξυπνοι είναι οι φίλοι σου σήμερα, τόσο μεγαλύτερη είναι η πιθανότητα να γίνεις κι εσύ πιο έξυπνος αύριο», δήλωσε ο Χιρόκο Σαγιάμα, επικεφαλής των επιστημόνων της έρευνας.

Οι ερευνητές ασχολήθηκαν με τους μαθητές γυμνασίου, τους οποίους κατέταξαν ανάλογα με τη βαθμολογία τους. Παράλληλα, έκαναν τον συσχετισμό με τον μέσο όρο της βαθμολογίας που είχαν οι φίλοι κάθε μαθητή. Οπως έδειξε η στατιστική ανάλυση, οι μαθητές που είχαν φίλους με υψηλότερη μέση βαθμολογία έτειναν να παίρνουν υψηλότερους βαθμούς την επόμενη χρονιά. Σύμφωνα με τους ερευνητές, στη διαμόρφωση αυτού του φαινομένου παίζει ρόλο η υποσυνείδητη επιθυμία των μαθητών να μη χάσουν επαφή με τους φίλους τους. «Αν οι φίλοι σου αριστεύσουν στο διαγώνισμα, μπορεί να σκεφτείς ότι πρέπει και εσύ την επόμενη φορά να διαβάσεις περισσότερο, προκειμένου να μη μείνεις πίσω σε σχέση με την υπόλοιπη παρέα», τόνισε ο Σαγιάμα. Επίσης, όσοι μαθητές ελπίζουν να τα πάνε καλύτερα στην τάξη, έχουν την τάση να επιλέγουν καλύτερους μαθητές ως φίλους, επειδή τους θαυμάζουν. Τέλος, οι καλύτεροι μαθητές της τάξης δεν βλέπουν τους βαθμούς τους να χειροτερεύουν παρότι εκ των πραγμάτων κάνουν παρέα με φίλους που έχουν χειρότερους βαθμούς. Οι άριστοι δηλαδή εμφανίζουν κάποιου είδους «ανοσία» στο «μικρόβιο» των κακών σχολικών επιδόσεων.

ΠΗΓΗ:

Η ΚΑΘΗΜΕΡΙΝΗ 15/2/13

http://news.kathimerini.gr/4dcgi/_w_articles_world_2_15/02/2013_511355