Author Archive for admin

2009 Learning Conference – Plenary Speaker Added

Anna Frangoudaki, University of Athens, Greece
www.LearningConference.com
Anna Frangoudaki is a professor at the University of Athens. Her fields of research include social inequalities in education, sociology of language, analysis of school textbooks, ethnocentrism in school, discrimination of minorities in education. She has collaborated with academics from Belgium, Israel, Italy, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey on joint projects trying to adapt school knowledge to democratic ideas and values, by challenging prejudiced knowledge transmitted by schools, through which racism, social discrimination, nationalism and sexism are reproduced. Since 1997, she co-headed the Ministry of Greek Education – European Union Project on the educational reform of the Muslim Minority population in north-eastern Greece.

2009 Learning Conference – Plenary Speaker Added

Thalia Dragonas, University of Athens, Greece
www.LearningConference.com
Thalia Dragonas is a Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Athens. She was for several terms Head of the Department of Early Childhood Education, she was a member of the board of the Greek Open University and the Center of Educational Research. Her research activity lies in the area of identities and the articulation of the social with the psychological. She has participated in and directed many Greek and international projects and has worked extensively for the educational reform of the Muslim Minority in Western Thrace. Specific areas of research interests are: psychosocial identity and intergroup relations, intercultural education and ethnocentrism in the educational system, prevention and promotion of early psychosocial health, transition to parenthood, construction of fatherhood and masculinity as well as research methodological issues such as the relationship of qualitative and quantitative techniques.Currently she is an MP with PASOK. She participates in Parliamentary Committees on Education, Culture, Equality and Human Rights.

Learning Conference – Program Added

The 2009 Learning Conference Draft Program is now online.
For parallel session and plenary session information, please visit the Conference website.

Announcing The 17th International Conference on Learning

6-9 July 2010
Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong
http://thelearner.com/conference-2010/

Learning Conference 2009 – Plenary Speakers Added

Kylie Radel, Lecturer in Marketing, Faculty of Business & Infomatics, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia

J. Félix Angulo Rasco, Director, Lab Analysis of Educational Change (LACE) Group, University of Cadiz, Cadiz, Spain

Cathryn Teasley, Adjunct Professor, Curriculum, Instruction and School Organization, University of A Coruña, Spain

Vicki Pascoe, Discipline Coordinator for marketing and Lecturer, Marketing and Tourism, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia

Learning Conference 2009 – Plenary Speakers

Kris Gutiérrez, Professor, Social Research Methodology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

David Istance, Senior Analyst, Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), OECD, OECD, Paris, France

Mary Kalantzis, Dean, College of Education and Professor of Education, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Illinois Urbana Campaign, USA

Denise Newfield, Teacher Educator, School of Literature and Language Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Sixteenth International Conference on Learning

1-4 July 2009
University of Barcelona, Spain
www.LearningConference.com

Learning Journal 2008 Award Announced

Announcing Vicki Adele Pascoe and Kylie Radel of Central Queensland University, Queensland, Australia as winners of the 2008 International Journal of Learning Award for Excellence, for their paper “What are Nice Guys Like them doing in a Place Like that?”: Education Journeys from Australian Indigenous Students in Custody.

Indigenous Australians have been the subject of long-term disadvantage and discrimination. They are “nearly 16 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous people” (Council of Social Service of New South Wales, 2006, p. 1). Just over one third of Indigenous prisoners have completed primary education as compared to just 16% of non-Indigenous prisoners (Rawnsley, 2003, p. 19). The majority of Indigenous people in custody have little opportunity to intervene in the offending cycle because they lack the education tools. Since 2000 our university has offered a Tertiary Entry Program (TEP) specifically designed for Australian Indigenous people who wish to gain the necessary skills for successful university study. More …

Kris Gutiérrez to Speak at 2009 Learning Conference

Kris Gutiérrez

Kris Gutiérrez

Kris Gutiérrez is a Professor of Social Research Methodology at the University of California Los Angeles, USA. Professor Gutierrez was the 2005 recipient of the AERA Division C Sylvia Scribner Award and is a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences 2006-07. She was also the Noted Scholar in Residence, Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, July 23-August 10, 2006. She has a Ph.D., in English/Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Colorado at Boulder. More …

Will That Be on the Test?

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Eric Jaffe writes in APS Observer

Toward the end of the 19th century, the German scientist Hermann Ebbinghaus concocted an experiment that countless children have unwittingly replicated ever since, over a morning bowl of Alpha-Bits. Ebbinghaus took consonants from the alphabet, slapped a random vowel between them, and, voila! some 2,300 nonsense syllables were born. For years, Ebbinghaus practiced these syllables at random, learning and re-learning until he had mastered the material. In 1885, he recorded his observations in Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology — a seminal work that countless psychologists have wittingly read ever since, over morning bowls of cereal or otherwise.

Near the end of his monograph, Ebbinghaus mentioned a “noteworthy” detail from his learning trials. He found that a particular 12-syllable series could be conquered in two ways: by cramming 68 repetitions into a single day before testing, or by spacing 38 repetitions across several days. The difference, he wrote, was significant. “It makes the assumption probable that with any considerable number of repetitions a suitable distribution of them over a space of time is decidedly more advantageous than the massing of them at a single time.”1

Ebbinghaus’s tests had a sample size of one: himself. But time and again, using far more rigorous empirical settings, psychologists confirmed the potency of this “spacing effect.” The method would seem to lend itself to immediate real-world application; what teacher or student would not want to enhance learning while limiting study-time?
More …