Poster Session
University of Valencia
Content Analysis of Foods in Children’s Picture Books Available in Mexico View Digital Media
Poster Session Lara Descartes, Josette Rosenzweig Espinal
This poster paper summarizes work in progress regarding food-related messaging in a sample of picture books available to children in Mexico. Picture books’ messaging about foods may help to shape young children’s perceptions about what foods should be eaten, in what quantities, and how often. This is an important topic as child obesity rates in Mexico are the highest in North America, which presents a danger to children’s current and future health. It thus is important to research the diverse elements of Mexican children’s food environment, including socialization about foods. Part of this socialization is provided by media, including the books children read and are read. Comparisons will be made between food messages in Spanish-language books written by Mexican and Latin American authors and books that are translations into Spanish from other languages.
How Could Universities Better Train Efficient Communicators?: Benefits of Metacognition and Metadiscourse View Digital Media
Poster Session Celia Baró
Could the implementation of a teaching and learning approach based on metacognitive strategies positively contribute to first-year undergraduates’ production of written and oral texts? The design and the pedagogical implementation of a B2 English level course based on learning strategies and greater self-efficacy will help us answer the question. As a matter of fact, there is a growing demand on higher education to train learners to become more efficient communicators who will be able to select and critically send and receive messages. Learning how to think is thus key in order to comprehend and convey the right and relevant information. Indeed, the National Organizational Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2009) explicitly names communication as a core skill that needs to be taught to prepare students for the future. Hence, this study focuses on the communicative competence at large and the discourse competence in particular with language teaching and learning for undergraduates in mind. This action research thus investigates whether metacognitive strategies applied to expository and argumentative written and oral texts foster better leaners’ performance in terms of coherence, cohesion, and turn-taking. Ultimately, and consistent with prior research, we want to know if students who have received targeted metacognitive instruction perform better and feel more self-efficient and better prepared for their next domain-specific courses in English.
Thinking Student Needs a Thinking Teacher: Philosophizing with Children and Young People in Kindergarten, School, and University View Digital Media
Poster Session Egle Säre
Cognitive skills are important as a 21st century skills (Peterson, & Bentley, 2015) and questions are a powerful tool to develop student cognitive skills including students reasoning skills (Säre, Tulviste, & Luik, 2017). Philosophical discussion with children according to the programme Philosophy for Children leads to growth in the learners’ argumentation and reasoning skills. Reasoning skills enable children to give explanations of opinion, behaviour, and make decisions. The aim was to find out the emergence of 5-to-6-years-old Estonian pre-schoolers’ reasoning via their responses to questions asked by the adult. The results indicate that pre-schoolers who participated in philosophical group discussions over 8 months performed higher in their thinking skills and were more talkative than the control group. The results also reveal which questions asked by the adult discussion leader have more potential to support the development of reasoning skills. The aim was to investigate where teacher’s skills to compose questions come from; also which questions teachers compose based on a text in order to develop students reasoning skills during group-discussion. In sum 216 teachers' questions were analysed. Results show that teachers composed 71% questions which mainly guided to describe the situations in text, describe own opinion, to narrate or control the memory if the teachers were pleased to compose questions to encourage learners´ reasoning skills. Only 29% of questions had the potential to activate higher cognitive skills assuming to support reasoning skills. Also 69% of teachers confirmed the fact that they had never studied how to compose questions.
