Too much time or not enough? An observational study of teacher wait time after questions in case-based seminars.

BACKGROUND: We define teacher wait time (TWT) as a pause between a teacher question and the following response given by a student. TWT is valuable because it gives students time to activate prior knowledge and reflect on possible answers to teacher questions. We seek to gain initial insights into the phenomenon of TWT in medical education and give commensurate recommendations to clinical teachers. METHODS: We observed n = 719 teacher questions followed by wait time. These were video-recorded in 29 case-based seminars in undergraduate medical education in the areas of surgery and internal medicine. The seminars were taught by 19 different clinical teachers. The videos were coded with satisfactory reliability. Time-to-event data analysis was used to explore TWT overall and independently of question types. RESULTS: In our sample of case-based seminars, about 10% of all teacher questions were followed by TWT. While the median duration of TWT was 4.41 s, we observed large variation between different teachers (median between 2.88 and 10.96 s). Based on our results, we recommend that clinical teachers wait for at least five, but not longer than 10-12 s after initial questions. For follow-up and reproduction questions, we recommend shorter wait times of 5-8 s. CONCLUSIONS: The present study provides insights into the frequency and duration of TWT and its dependence on prior questions in case-based seminars. Our results provide clinical teachers with guidance on how to use TWT as an easily accessible tool that gives students time to reflect on and respond to teacher questions.

Where experience makes a difference: teachers' judgment accuracy and diagnostic reasoning regarding student learning characteristics.

The concept of teacher professional vision suggests that experienced teachers, compared to novice teachers, might be better at making accurate judgments of students' learning characteristics, which can be explained by their advanced reasoning in diagnostic situations. This study examines experienced and novice teachers' diagnoses of different student characteristic profiles: three inconsistent profiles (overestimating, uninterested, and underestimating) and two consistent profiles (strong and struggling). We examined both experienced (n = 19 in-service mathematics teachers) and novice teachers (n = 24 pre-service mathematics teachers) to determine the extent of differences in their judgment accuracy and their diagnostic reasoning about observable cues when diagnosing student profiles while watching a lesson video. ANOVA results indicate that experienced teachers generally achieved a higher judgment accuracy in diagnosing student profiles compared to novice teachers. Moreover, epistemic network analysis of observable cues in experienced and novice teachers' diagnostic reasoning showed that, compared to novice teachers, experienced teachers make more relations between a broader spectrum of both surface cues (e.g., a student's hand-raising behavior) and deep cues (e.g., a student being interested in the subject). Experienced teachers thereby construct more comprehensive and robust reasoning compared to novice teachers. The findings highlight how professional experience shapes teachers' professional skills, such as diagnosing, and suggest strategies for enhancing teacher training.

Towards Human-Centered Explainable AI: A Survey of User Studies for Model Explanations.

Explainable AI (XAI) is widely viewed as a sine qua non for ever-expanding AI research. A better understanding of the needs of XAI users, as well as human-centered evaluations of explainable models are both a necessity and a challenge. In this paper, we explore how human-computer interaction (HCI) and AI researchers conduct user studies in XAI applications based on a systematic literature review. After identifying and thoroughly analyzing 97 core papers with human-based XAI evaluations over the past five years, we categorize them along the measured characteristics of explanatory methods, namely trust, understanding, usability, and human-AI collaboration performance. Our research shows that XAI is spreading more rapidly in certain application domains, such as recommender systems than in others, but that user evaluations are still rather sparse and incorporate hardly any insights from cognitive or social sciences. Based on a comprehensive discussion of best practices, i.e., common models, design choices, and measures in user studies, we propose practical guidelines on designing and conducting user studies for XAI researchers and practitioners. Lastly, this survey also highlights several open research directions, particularly linking psychological science and human-centered XAI.

Is there an increase over time in the complexity of teacher questions and student responses in case-based clinical seminars? A cross-sectional video study.

BACKGROUND: Case-based group discussions (CBGD) are a specific, interaction-focused format dedicated to fostering medical students' skills in applying basic biomedical knowledge to patient cases. Existing conceptions of CBGD suggest that a gradient towards increased opportunities for students to make elaborative verbal contributions is an important element of such seminars. To verify this assumption, we investigate empirically if clinical teachers progress from more basic, knowledge-oriented questions towards more advanced, elaboration-oriented questions in such seminars. METHODS: We videotaped 21 different clinical teachers and 398 medical students in 32 CBGD-seminars on surgery and internal medicine. We coded closed-reproductive and open-elaborative teacher questions as well as reproductive and elaborative student responses to these questions. Inter-rater reliability was satisfactory. To determine trends regarding the teacher questions / student responses, we compared eight time-segments of equal duration per seminar. RESULTS: Overall, clinical teachers asked more closed-reproductive than open-elaborative questions. Students gave more reproductive than elaborative responses. Regarding the frequencies of these forms of teacher questions / student responses, we found no significant differences over time. CONCLUSIONS: Clinical teachers did not deliberately modify the types of questions over time to push students towards more elaborative responses. We conclude that the critical question to which degree promising teaching approaches are actually put into clinical teaching practice should be raised more purposefully in medical education research.

Video-based simulations in teacher education: the role of learner characteristics as capacities for positive learning experiences and high performance.

Assessing students on-the-fly is an important but challenging task for teachers. In initial teacher education, a call has been made to better prepare pre-service teachers for this complex task. Advances in technology allow this training to be done through authentic learning environments, such as video-based simulations. To understand the learning process in such simulations, it is necessary to determine how cognitive and motivational learner characteristics influence situative learning experiences, such as the perception of authenticity, cognitive load, and situational motivation, during the simulation and how they affect aspects of performance. In the present study, N = 150 pre-service teachers from German universities voluntarily participated in a validated online video-based simulation targeting on-the-fly student assessments. We identified three profiles of learner characteristics: one with above average knowledge, one with above average motivational-affective traits, and one with below average knowledge and motivational-affective traits. These profiles do not differ in the perception of the authenticity of the simulation. Furthermore, the results indicate that the profiled learners navigate differently through the simulation. The knowledgeable learners tended to outperform learners of the other two profiles by using more learning time for the assessment process, also resulting in higher judgment accuracy. The study highlights how learner characteristics and processes interact, which helps to better understand individual learning processes in simulations. Thus, the findings may be used as a basis for future simulation research with a focus on adaptive and individual support.

Determining an Evidence Base for Particular Fields of Educational Practice: A Systematic Review of Meta-Analyses on Effective Mathematics and Science Teaching.

The call for evidence-based practice in education emphasizes the need for research to provide evidence for particular fields of educational practice. With this systematic literature review we summarize and analyze aggregated effectiveness information from 41 meta-analyses published between 2004 and 2019 to inform evidence-based practice in a particular field. In line with target specifications in education that are provided for a certain school subject and educational level, we developed and adopted a selection heuristic for filtering aggregated effect sizes specific to both science and mathematics education and the secondary student population. The results include 78 context-specific aggregated effect sizes based on data from over one million students. The findings encompass a multitude of different teaching strategies, most of which offer a measurable advantage to alternatives. Findings demonstrate that context-specific effect size information may often differ from more general effect size information on teaching effectiveness and adherence to quality standards varies in sampled meta-analyses. Thus, although meta-analytic research has strongly developed over the last few years, providing context-specific and high-quality evidence still needs to be a focus in the field of secondary mathematics and science teaching and beyond.

Teacher questions and student responses in case-based learning: outcomes of a video study in medical education.

BACKGROUND: Case-based learning (CBL) is a highly interactive instructional format widely used in medical education. One goal of CBL is to integrate basic biomedical knowledge and its application to concrete patient cases and their clinical management. In this context, we focus the role of teacher questions as triggers for reproductive vs. elaborative student responses. Specifically, our research questions concern the kinds of questions posed by clinical teachers, the kinds of responses given by students, the prediction of student responses based upon teacher questions, and the differences between the two medical disciplines in focus of our study, internal medicine and surgery. METHODS: We analyse 19 videotaped seminars (nine internal medicine, ten surgery) taught by clinicians and attended by advanced medical students. Multiple raters performed a low-inference rating process using a theory-based categorical scheme with satisfactory interrater-reliability. RESULTS: We found that medical teachers mostly posed initial (instead of follow-up) questions and that their questions were more often closed (instead of open). Also, more reasoning (than reproductive) questions were posed. A high rate of student non-response was observed while elaborative and reproductive student responses had a similar prevalence. In the prediction context, follow-up reasoning questions were associated with low non-response and many elaborative answers. In contrast, the highest student non-response rate followed open reproduction questions and initial reasoning questions. Most reproductive statements by students were made following closed reproduction questions. CONCLUSIONS: These results deepen our understanding of interactive, questions-driven medical teaching and provide an empirical basis for clinical teachers to use questions in didactically fruitful ways.

Social or Economic Goals? The Professional Goal Orientation of Students Enrolled in STEM and Non-STEM Majors in University.

Various studies try to disentangle the gender-specific competencies or decisions that lead to a career in a STEM field and try to find a way to encourage more women to pursue this kind of career. The present study examines differences in the meaning of work (i.e., their professional goal orientation) of students who are enrolled in STEM or non-STEM programs in tertiary education. Based on the background that gender stereotypes associate women and men with communal or agentic roles respectively, we expected that women in STEM subjects differ in their professional goal orientation from women in non-STEM programs. More precisely, women who are enrolled in a STEM major are expected to be less oriented to social and communal goal orientations than women in non-STEM university programs. In a sample of 5,857 second-year university students of the German National Educational Panel Study, three profiles of professional goal orientation were confirmed in a latent profile analysis. As expected, women were more oriented toward social aspects of occupations, whereas men more likely belonged to a profile with high importance for economic aspects of occupations. Moreover, students enrolled in STEM programs more likely belonged to the profile of economic goal orientation. There was, however, no interaction of gender and STEM program: Women in STEM fields did not differ in their occupational goal orientation from women enrolled in non-STEM programs. Based on these findings and on a goal congruity perspective, future interventions aiming at overcoming the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields should consider the individual meaning of work and the goals that are associated with STEM occupations.

Comparing teacher and student perspectives on the interplay of cognitive and motivational-affective student characteristics.

For students, cognitive and motivational-affective characteristics are the most powerful prerequisites for successful learning. For teachers, judgments on their students' characteristics shape how they plan and implement instructional activities in order to offer individual learning support. On the student side, research is starting to find out more about the interplay of different characteristics within individual students. On the teacher side, studies still regard teacher judgment accuracy of only single characteristics. By taking a person-centered approach, regarding NS = 503 students and their NT = 41 mathematics and languages arts teachers, our manuscript joined teacher and student perspectives on student characteristics interplay and suggests methodology to compare them. We found that student assessments suggested ample diversity regarding this interplay-and teachers did not perceive this. In their views, "homogeneous" sets of average characteristics were dominant. Findings suggest addressing students' views and the diagnosis of their characteristics in teacher education to enable individual support.

MMP2 and MMP7 at the invasive front of gastric cancer are not associated with mTOR expression.

BACKGROUND: Regulation of MMP expression by activation of mTOR signalling has been demonstrated for several tumor types, but has thus far not been confirmed in gastric cancer. FINDINGS: The study compromised 128 patients who underwent gastric resection for cancer (66.4 % male; 86 intestinal, 42 diffuse type). Immunohistochemical staining of MMPs was performed to analyse the topographical pattern of MMP expression at the tumor center and the invasive front, respectively. MMP2 showed higher expression at the invasive front compared to the tumor center, whereas MMP7 staining scores were higher in the tumor center, and there was no difference for MMP9. The expression of p-mTOR was higher in the tumor center than at the invasive front, with a similar trend for mTOR. For intestinal type gastric cancer there was a weak correlation of MMP9 with expression of mTOR in the tumor center. Otherwise, there was no correlation of the MMPs with mTOR. By treatment of MKN45 gastric cancer cells with rapamycin, a reduction of p-mTOR in the Western blot was achieved; however, expression of MMPs remained unaffected. CONCLUSIONS: Expression of MMP2 and MMP7 in gastric cancer is not associated with mTOR, MMP9 expression might be related to mTOR signalling in a subset of tumors.

Declarative knowledge and professional vision in teacher education: effect of courses in teaching and learning.

BACKGROUND: Teachers' professional vision includes the ability to apply general pedagogical knowledge about components of effective teaching and learning to reason about significant features of classroom practice. It requires teachers to (a) describe, (b) explain, and (c) predict classroom situations. Although the acquisition of underling knowledge can be considered as a key element of university-based teacher education programmes, to date, there has been little empirical research on teacher candidates' development of professional vision. AIMS: This study aims to improve understanding of how different university-based courses in teaching and learning impact the development of professional vision. SAMPLE: Participants were teacher candidates (N= 53) attending the same teacher education programme at a German university. They were enrolled in one of three different compulsory courses in teaching and learning, lasting one semester. METHODS: In a pre-test-post-test design, participants' declarative knowledge about teaching and learning was measured with a test, professional vision with the online tool Observer. Analysis of covariance and multivariate analysis of variance were conducted. RESULTS: Teacher candidates in all three courses showed significant gains both in declarative knowledge and professional vision. Patterns of results differed depending on the course attended. A video-based course with a focus on effective teaching resulted in highest gains in prediction of the consequences of observed events for student learning processes, which is the highest level of knowledge transfer. CONCLUSION: The development of professional vision is a strongly knowledge-guided process. In line with their content and aims, university-based courses can enhance teaching-relevant knowledge for teacher candidates.