Petros Roussos

The Greek computer attitudes scale: construction and assessment of psychometric properties

Abstract The purpose of this paper was to develop and test the psychometric properties of a computer attitudes scale for the Greek population. Through both adapting items from other scales and writing new items, this study developed a Greek Computer Attitudes Scale of 30 items, with three subscales: confidence, affection, and cognitive. This study also explored sex differences on the GCAS, and the relationship between age, computer experience, and confidence with computers and participants’ responses on the scale. Questionnaire data from four Greek samples, which included participants from the general population (185 and 354 individuals, respectively), 222 teachers and 99 undergraduate students, were analyzed. Results indicated that: (1) both the reliability (internal consistency and test–retest) and validity (concurrent) of the GCAS were adequate; (2) the relationship between age and GCAS was not significant, whereas sex did not have a significant effect on GCAS scores; and (3) perceived computer experience and confidence with computers were strongly related to favorable attitudes toward computers.

Synthesizing Technological and Pedagogical Knowledge in Learning Design: A Case Study in Teacher Training on Technology Enhanced Learning

Based on a design rational for constructivist pre-service teacher training on Technology Enhanced Learning TEL, in this paper the authors consider teachers as designers of innovative digital educational content. Under this lens, the selection of appropriate technologies is considered as a threefold process that concerns the availability of technological tools for implementing a virtual classroom that facilitates communication, collaboration, and administration, the enabling technologies for serving specific learning purposes, and the technologies or tools that support trainees to design effective TEL-based courses. A number of questions emerge as the authors are looking for the most appropriate technologies for cultivating certain competences related to class operation, learning design and student engagement in a constructive manner. As a first step, in this paper, they investigate how trainees combine particular technologies with pedagogical tools to cultivate specific competences i.e. certain types of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Lastly, factors that trainees perceive as influential when adopting TEL tools in practice are revealed by their study.

Siblings in Greek families: raising a child with disabilities

Abstract The study focuses on siblings of children with disabilities (CD) in order to investigate: (a) basic components of the sibling personality (self-concept, self-esteem, feelings of loneliness, main needs, nature of anxiety, and attitudes), (b) the representation of family functioning and parental figures, and of social environment, and (c) sibling relationship. The sample consisted of 20 families raising a CD and 20 families raising children without disabilities (CWD). The total number of participants was 151 individuals (80 parents and 71 children). The measures used were the following: (a) self-report measures: (1) Self-concept Scale for Children Lipsitt [SC], (2) Childrens Loneliness Questionnaire [CLQ], (3) Hare Self-esteem Scale [HSS] and (4) Family Adaptability Cohesion Evaluation Scale (FACES-III); (b) projective tests: (1) Thematic Apperception Test [TAT], (2) Childrens Apperception Test [CAT] and (3) Le dessin de famille; and (c) semi-structured but focused interviews with the parents. Th...

Measuring Technological and Content Knowledge of Undergraduate Primary Teachers in Mathematics

Twenty-five final-year undergraduate students of primary education who were attending a course on mathematics education participated in a research project during the 2009 spring semester. A repeated measures experimental design was used. Quantitative data on students’ computer attitudes, self-efficacy in ICT, attitudes toward educational software, and self-efficacy in maths were collected. Data analysis showed a statistically non-significant improvement on participants’ computer attitudes and self-efficacy in ICT and ES, but a significant improvement of self-efficacy in mathematics.

Detecting strengths and weaknesses in learning mathematics through a model classifying mathematical skills

Abstract Through a review of the literature on mathematical learning disabilities (MLD) and low achievement in mathematics (LA) we have proposed a model classifying mathematical skills involved in learning mathematics into four domains (Core number, Memory, Reasoning, and Visual-spatial). In this paper we present a new experimental computer-based battery of mathematical tasks designed to elicit abilities from each domain, that was administered to a sample of 165 typical population 5th and 6th grade students (MLD = 9 and LA = 17). Explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted on the data obtained, together with K-means cluster analysis. Results indicated strong evidence for supporting the solidity of the model, and clustered the population into six distinguishable performance groups with the MLD and LA students distributed within five of the clusters. These findings support the hypothesis that difficulties in learning mathematics can have multiple origins and provide a means for sketching students’ mathematical learning profiles.

Silent pauses in aphasia

ABSTRACT Pauses may be studied as an aspect of the temporal organization of speech, as well as an index of internal cognitive processes, such as word access, selection and retrieval, monitoring, articulatory planning, and memory. Several studies have demonstrated specific distributional patterns of pauses in typical speech. However, evidence from patients with language impairment is sparse and restricted to small‐scale studies. The aim of the present study is to investigate empty pause distribution and associations between pause variables and linguistic elements in aphasia. Eighteen patients with chronic aphasia following a left hemisphere stroke were recruited. The control group consisted of 19 healthy adults matched for age, gender, and years of formal schooling. Speech samples from both groups were transcribed, and silent pauses were annotated using ELAN. Our results indicate that in both groups, pause duration distribution follows a log‐normal bimodal model with significantly different thresholds between the two populations, yet specific enough for each distribution to justify classification into two distinct groups of pauses for each population: short and long. Moreover, we found differences between the patient and control group, prominently with regard to long pause duration and rate. Long pause indices were also associated with fundamental linguistics elements, such as mean length of utterance. Overall, we argue that post‐stroke aphasia may induce quantitative but not qualitative alterations of pause patterns during speech, and further suggest that long pauses may serve as an index of internal cognitive processes supporting sentence planning. Our findings are discussed within the context of pause pattern quantification strategies as potential markers of cognitive changes in aphasia, further stressing the importance of such measures as an integral part of language assessment in clinical populations. HIGHLIGHTSPauses in connected speech were examined in IWAs and healthy controls.Both groups fit into a bimodal distribution illustrating short and long pauses.Distribution thresholds between the two populations differed significantly.Pause patterns may reflect cognitive changes in aphasia.

Aerospace Neuropsychology: Exploring the Construct of Psychological and Cognitive Interaction in the 100 Most Fatal Civil Aviation Accidents Through Multidimensional Scaling

The human factor in aviation is a complex and multidimensional construct, incorporating different levels of analysis. At the core of this complexity, cognitive and psychological variables occur in dynamic interaction. A model of aerospace neuropsychology is proposed in order to investigate the interaction between psychological variables and neurocognitive errors in the 100 most fatal civil aviation accidents. Recurring psychological and cognitive themes described in the accidents were subjected to multidimensional scaling. Five conceptual clusters pertaining to individual pilot characteristics, sociotechnical cockpit performance, organizational/operational effect, training-level of involvement and decision making-overestimation, were identified. Psychological and cognitive interaction is apparent throughout the accidents’ human factor space, while individual characteristics are located within a dense area visually separated from sociotechnical and human-machine interaction features. Results are discussed in light of the need to review current aeromedical examination procedures under a scientific accurate and ad hoc methodology.

Changes in visual/spatial and analytic strategy use in organic chemistry with the development of expertise

We present two studies that investigated the adoption of visual/spatial and analytic strategies by individuals at different levels of expertise in the area of organic chemistry, using the Visual Analytic Chemistry Task (VACT). The VACT allows the direct detection of analytic strategy use without drawing inferences about underlying mental processes. The first study examined the psychometric properties of the VACT and revealed a structure consistent with the hypothesis that it consists of two sub-scales: visual/spatial and analytic. The second study investigated the performance of 285 participants with various levels of expertise in organic chemistry on the VACT. The results showed that the adoption of analytic strategies in organic chemistry, and specifically in molecular structure, was difficult and was systematically used only by the more expert participants. The implications of this research for the teaching of chemistry are discussed.

Involving Learners in Content Analysis to Empower A Community of Inquiry

This paper investigates how learners can be involved in the content analysis during asynchronous discussion and the benefits of this process for building a community of inquiry (CoI). Specifically, nine learners and two instructors of an MSc course on distance learning participated in an asynchronous discussion in order to collaboratively solve a design problem. Through the discussion, learners were asked to classify their own, their peers’ and instructors’ messages based on particular coding schemes that reflect the cognitive and teaching presences of the CoI framework. In this way, learners’ classification data were captured and analyzed in order to evaluate the way they classify messages compared to experts’ coding. Specific patterns were revealed providing evidence about the ability of learners in accurately acknowledging the majority of the messages but also cases in which learners agree in an alternative coding than the experts’ one, opening up a new perspective on coding, the learners’ perspective. The development of metacognitive skills was also evaluated based on questionnaires that students completed reflecting on this experience.