Children spend much of their day sitting in classrooms, often in prolonged static postures. Sedentary behavior is associated with health risks. This study investigates whether stools designed to afford more dynamic sitting, promote greater postural variety and more frequent posture transitions compared to regular school chairs. We observed the sitting behaviors of 34 children aged 6 to 8 years at the beginning and end of a two-week classroom intervention. Results showed that the stools significantly increased posture diversity and the frequency of posture transitions. The initial effects sustained over time, underlining that the stools facilitated more than a novelty effect as children continued to engage with the affordances provided. Additionally, we observed that the stools encouraged sitting in unconventional postures rarely seen with regular chairs, further supporting their role in promoting posture diversity. These findings highlight the potential of affordance-based designs in classroom environments to foster healthier sitting behaviors.
Note-taking is considered a very common and promising learning strategy to benefit from university lectures. However, there are open research questions as to whether note-taking also supports learning from prerecorded video lectures in an authentic and ecologically valid distance learning environment. Unlike in previous research, we thus applied authentic field conditions combining five aspects typical for online university lectures: (a) asynchronous distance learning, (b) a 45-min unsegmented psychology video lecture, (c) no instructional support such as prompts, (d) no submission of notes, and (e) a delayed posttest after five weeks. We conducted an online field experiment involving 61 psychology and teacher students at a German university (44 female; Mage = 22.63 years) who learned from an authentic prerecorded psychology video lecture on the topic Cognitive Apprenticeship. According to the experimental condition, participants did or did not receive a note-taking request before the video lecture. We asked participants whether they actually took notes. Note-takers (n = 33) reported stronger learning engagement than the non-note-takers (n = 28). In a subsequent posttest about the lecture’s content, note-taking showed benefits on declarative but not conceptual knowledge. After five weeks, however, the note-takers outperformed the non-note-takers on conceptual knowledge. This effect was predicted by note-keeping behavior and interim engagement between the lecture and delayed posttest. Overall, our findings provide ecologically valid empirical support of how beneficial it is for students to take notes during asynchronous video lectures. Finally, for a lasting effect on conceptual knowledge, it is advisable to keep those notes and engage with the content.
The PISA 2022 datasets offer valuable insights into factors influencing student performance in mathematics. This exploratory study examines supplementary instructional methods, including one-on-one tutoring, video resources, and group study, and their associations with Slovenian students’ PISA 2022 performance. Chi-square tests assessed gender differences and cross-national variation in instructional method use, while multilevel regression models evaluated associations with mathematics performance using Rubin’s rules to pool estimates. Findings show most students did not receive extra instruction. Among those who did, Slovenian students preferred video instruction, whereas one-on-one tutoring was more common internationally. In Slovenia, boys more frequently reported one-on-one tutoring, ICT use, and video instruction, whereas girls more often reported large-group instruction and no additional support. Multilevel results indicated that student’s grade, socioeconomic status, and gender were the strongest positive predictors of mathematics performance. Among instructional methods, video-based instruction was positively associated with performance, whereas one-on-one tutoring, ICT use, small-group instruction, and large-group instruction were negatively associated. Students reporting no additional instruction also showed higher performance than those in several supplementary formats. However, effect sizes were generally modest, suggesting limited practical impact of instructional-method differences. Gender interactions indicated that the association between instructional methods and performance differed across genders. These findings highlight varied instructional preferences, their association with achievement and how these patterns can be interpreted through scaffolding, multimedia learning, and social constructivist perspectives. The findings may inform discussion of mathematics instruction and future research on the conditions under which supplementary instructional methods are beneficial.
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly altered the academic environment, particularly in developing countries. The university students faced disruptions in both online and offline study patterns. This study investigates self-reported differences in study methods and factors associated with university students’ academic engagement during the pandemic using a cross-sectional survey with retrospective self-report. Using survey data from 400 students across 24 public universities of Bangladesh, the study examines differences in study periods between lockdown and non-lockdown phases and their associations with socio-economic, academic, daily activity, and mobility patterns. These variables were considered as independent variables to understand this shift. The findings indicate a considerable reduction in both online and offline study periods, which was associated with higher reported engagement in online recreation, household work, and family time. Gender differences were also observed, with male students more likely to maintain or increase online study, whereas female students showed higher interest toward offline study. The study highlights the challenges posed by technological limitations, financial constraints, and shifts in lifestyle, which were associated with students’ reported adaptation to remote learning. Based on retrospective self-reports, the results underscore the need for improved digital infrastructure, institutional support, and policies that can reduce educational inequalities during future disruptions.
This paper aims to identify which factors—emotional, existential and contextual—related to teacher’s experience, have the most significant influence on their perceptions of the school climate. To this end, both a correlation and a linear regression analysis were carried out in a sample consisting of 304 pre-school, primary and secondary school teachers from six different schools in Spain. The results suggest that the factors which best explain teacher’s perception of the school climate in the schools analysed are those which are closely related to interpersonal relationships, which gives less relevance to the purely organisational conditions than to the emotional factors related to teacher’s relationships with the management team, partners and students. The high levels of significance of these factors suggest that teacher’s perception of the school climate would improve by fostering a supportive environment on the part of the management team and building a strong network of personal relationships which involves the teaching staff and the students working on shared goals and objectives.
