• Write a literature review for your study. See below for an example of a literature review. Your literature review should provide both analysis and synthesis of previous studies as related to the research problem and question that you developed for your proposal. Your literature review should be 3-4 pages long and includes at least 5 different scholarly references with as many in-text citations as necessary in order to properly cite your work. Note: The main purpose of the review of the literature is to: show how your study is related to, and extends, other work in the area. A well-structured literature review begins with broad/general information, then narrows the focus to those studies most closely related to the research problem. A well-written literature review emphasizes critique and synthesis of the work of others that is related to your own research problem. Study: Should Middle School Students with Learning Problems Copy and Paste Notes from the Internet? Mixed-Methods Evidence of Study Barriers. Abstract In the experimental phase of this mixed-methods study, 49 middle school students receiving special education services took notes from the Internet under either a written notes or a copy-and-paste note's condition. Immediate, cued-recall measures of factual learning showed that students who wrote their notes were better able to recall what they had noted, although recall was low for all students. However, after a one-week delay (which included two classroom opportunities to study their notes), students who pasted their notes performed signi cantly better on two different measures of factual learning than students who wrote their notes. Follow-up student interviews and analyses of notes revealed a robust explanatory theme: many written notes contained barriers to learning (e.g., illegible handwriting, spelling errors, and/or indecipherable paraphrases), which likely reduced the bene t of study time. Implications for instructing this population of students to use copy and paste while gathering information on the Internet are discussed. Introduction Students more often are using the Internet as a signi cant information source (Dabbagh & Bannan- Ritland, 2005; Davidson-Shivers & Rasmussen, 2006). In a recent article published in Middle School Journal, Jackson (2009) described the need for middle school students to be able to use the Internet to gather and synthesize information relevant to learning. However, while the Internet can speed students’ access to varying sources of information, it may also present new challenges to learning. In © 2009 National Middle School Association 1 RMLE Online— Volume 33, No. 2 anticipation of one particular challenge, researchers have begun to identify effective Internet note-taking techniques (see e.g., Igo, Bruning, & McCrudden, 2005a; Igo, Riccomini, Bruning, & Pope, 2006; Pardini, Domizi, Forbes, & Pettis, 2005). To date, the vast majority of the extant research has focused on high school and college students in general education settings. Because educational practitioners must make critical decisions regarding how Internet technologies are used within middle schools (Consortium for School Networking, 2006), the present study sought to explore Internet note taking with middle school students who are learning disabled, mildly mentally retarded, or from the general education population but who need reading support. Note Taking and the Internet Taking notes is a common student behavior in academic settings (Kobayashi, 2005). However, students’ note-taking strategies vary, with better learning being associated with students who are better note takers (Peverly, Brobst, Graham, & Shaw, 2003). Most students’ default note-taking strategies can be categorized on the ineffective end of this continuum. For instance, many students fail to process ideas deeply as they take notes (Igo et al., 2005a). Creating an incomplete set of notes also is a typical problem for students (Kiewra, 1985, 1989). For no other population are these aws more evident than for middle school students, whose inexperience with note taking compounds the inadequacies of their note-taking approaches (Rinehart & Thomas, 1993). Recent middle school research has documented this phenomenon with general education students (Brown, 2005) and students with learning disabilities (Igo et al., 2006). For middle school students with learning disabilities (MSSLD), there may be even more problems associated with note taking. In addition to being novice note takers, MSSLD (in grades six, seven, and eight) can experience pressure and distraction stemming from spelling and grammar monitoring as they take notes (Igo et al., 2006; Hughes & Smith, 1990; Poteet, 1979). Further, creating a legible and comprehensible set of notes might be dif cult. For example, the legibility of students’ handwriting seems to plateau during the early middle grades ( fth and sixth) and plummet during the remainder of middle school (Graham, Beringer, & Weintraub, 1998; Graham, Weintraub, Beringer, & Shafer, 1998). In fact, many college students with learning disabilities struggle to create comprehensible and legible notes (e.g., Mortimore & Crozier, 2006; Smith, 1993; Suritsky, 1992), creating the potential for MSSLD to struggle with these same barriers. The popularity of using the Internet to gather information, coupled with the aforementioned problems associated with student approaches to note taking, led Igo, Riccomini, and Bruning (2006) to ask a basic research question: How should MSSLD approach note taking when they gather information from Internet sources? Their subsequent study attempted to nd an answer. Each of 15 MSSLD were assigned to take notes in three ways (type, paste, and write) from an Internet source. Immediate and delayed measures of learning indicated that students could recall little of the information they had noted, irrespective of note-taking style. Follow-up interviews with the students revealed more enlightening data. The students described typing notes as an especially unnerving task, attributing it to a troubling degree of anxiety. They described attempting to monitor spelling and searching the keyboard for the appropriate letter keys while typing notes. Further, an analysis of students’ notes showed that when students wrote or typed their notes, they did so in verbatim fashion, which has been linked to shallow mental processing. When the students attempted to type or write paraphrase notes, however, they tended to omit certain important details from the text. Subsequently, their paraphrase notes often were incomplete. In short, typing notes was too anxiety provoking, and writing notes yielded inferior sets of notes. Igo and colleagues (2006) thus concluded their study with a recommendation that MSSLD be instructed to use the copy and paste method to gather notes from the Internet. Based on the results obtained from their data, this instructional advice might seem reasonable. On the other hand, particular aspects of their study’s design necessitate further investigation before any instructional implications could be considered valid in actual school settings. For example, only 15 students participated in that particular study. Second, only students with learning disabilities participated in that study; the ndings might not be relevant to teachers of students who display several kinds of learning problems. Finally, students were not permitted to study their notes before delayed measures of learning were administered. In developing generalizations about school-based learning, the study of notes should be considered a vital part of note learning and, therefore, included in an investigation. Additional research needs to address the inadequacies of the earlier study in an effort to provide more robust © 2009 National Middle School Association 2 RMLE Online— Volume 33, No. 2 empirical backing for any instructional implications related to Internet note taking for middle school students with varied learning problems. Two Phases of Note Learning Ideally, note learning happens in two sequential phases: the encoding phase and then the external storage phase (Divesta & Gray, 1972; Kiewra et al., 1991). In the encoding phase, students learn text discomfort associated with participation in the study, a typed-notes condition was dropped. In the quantitative rst phase of the present study, 49 students read a Web-based text covering three topics and took notes by either writing or by copying and pasting. After taking notes, students were (a) immediately tested to examine any differences in encoding prompted by the two note-taking techniques, (b) prompted to study their notes on two separate days during the school week, and then, (c) given one-week-delayed measures of factual learning. In the qualitative phase of the study, 24 students (12 from each condition) were interviewed to help explain the experimental ndings. Finally, an analysis of student notes was conducted to provide further evidence of student learning. Quantitative Method The experimental method of the present study closely mirrored the Igo and colleagues study (2006). The same experimental text was targeted for students’ note taking, and identical dependent measures were employed. The procedure of the experiment was similar, albeit with a few variations related to student access to computers and the inclusion of study periods. A new, larger sample of students participated, however, and the present experimental design (two-cell design) differed considerably from the previous research (Latin square). Participants The study took place at a large Southeastern middle school serving a majority of Caucasian students, with minority populations of African American (18%), Hispanic (9%), Asian American (2%), and multiracial (2%) students. Forty-nine seventh and eighth grade students (one English class from each grade) participated in the study. The average age among seventh grade participants (n = 26) was 12 years 7 months (SD = 7 months), and among eighth grade participants (n = 23), it was 14 years 1 month (SD = 10 months). Across grades, an average of 50% of the special education participants’ school time was spent in special education environments, with the majority of their non-special education time being spent in elective courses and homeroom. Students who participated were identi ed as learning disabled (n = 27), mildly mentally retarded (n = 7), or as no disability/needing reading support (n = 15). Full Scale IQ scores (based on WISC-III, 1991) for seventh grade students with appropriate records ranged or lecture ideas as they are noted (see Kobayashi, 2005). For example, a graduate student might remember more from a research article if she takes notes as she reads the article than if she reads it alone. Documented bene ts of the encoding phase include better comprehension of ideas (Kiewra, 1985) and memory for a greater number of ideas (Aiken, Thomas, & Shennum, 1975) when notes are taken. But a great deal of research indicates that students might not learn much during the encoding phase if they do not engage in deep mental processes as they take notes (Igo et al., 2005a, 2006; Kiewra, 1989; Kobayashi, 2005). In such cases, the study of notes becomes critical to learning. In the external storage phase of note learning, students learn as they study a set of notes that already have been created (Kiewra et al., 1991). In previous research investigating MSSLD’s note taking from Internet sources, only the encoding phase was tested. Thus, the present study sought to address both phases of note learning by employing a student sample greater than triple the size of Igo and colleagues’ sample and by including students with varied learning problems. The Present Study Recently, researchers have called attention to the need for differing methods in educational research, in general (McKeown, Crowley, Forman, & O’Connor, 2002), and special education research, speci cally (Odom et al., 2005). The purpose of this sequential explanatory mixed-methods study (Creswell & Plano-Clark, 2006) was to explore the encoding and external storage functions of note taking when middle school students with learning problems write and copy and paste notes from Internet sources. A typed-notes condition was eliminated from the present study based partly on the ndings of Igo and associates (2006), which suggested that most MSSLD were anxious while typing notes from Web-based sources. Further, Strum and Rankin Erickson (2002) documented that MSSLD have a relatively low words- per-minute typing speed. In an effort to reduce the © 2009 National Middle School Association 3 RMLE Online— Volume 33, No. 2 from 79 to 109 (M = 87; SD = 12.1), with Verbal and Performance IQ averaging 82 and 93.3, respectively. Full Scale IQ scores for eighth grade students with appropriate records ranged from 70 to 105 (M = 88; SD = 13.1), with Verbal and Performance IQ averaging 83.6 and 95.4, respectively. Grade equivalent scores for students with learning disabilities (obtained from Woodcock Johnson, Revised, 1989) ranged from 1.6 to 7.7 (M = 3.8, SD = 2.2) for reading comprehension, whereas vocabulary achievement ranged from 1.5 to 6.1 (M = 3.4, SD = 2.0). Scores for students with mild mental retardation ranged from 1.9 to 3.7 (M = 3.1, SD = 1.1) and 1.7 to 3.5 (M = 3.4, SD = 1.2) for reading comprehension and vocabulary achievement, respectively. Students were assigned randomly to either a writing notes (n = 25) or copying and pasting notes (n = 24) condition. Materials Text. The text passage used by Igo and colleagues (2006) was also used in the present study. Describing three native Australian minerals, the text was designed to provide (1) content with which students would have little to no prior knowledge (which was con rmed with a brief pretest) and (2) a manageable length (763 words long) that could be addressed in one class period (1 hour and 5 minutes). Descriptions of coal, bauxite, and uranium were presented on a single, continuous web page (HTML document) and accessed through Microsoft Internet Explorer. The text described each mineral along parallel lines, identifying each mineral’s (a) supply, (b) production, (c) uses, (d) geographic location, (e) rst characteristic, and (f) second characteristic. Note-taking frameworks. Students took notes in a matrix-formatted chart presented in either paper or electronic form (depending upon assigned conditions). In each condition, the note-taking chart was designed to t the text’s structure and cued so that students were guided to note the correct information, allowing the researchers to test for the learning effects related to speci ed text ideas. The chart’s three columns were cued from left to right as bauxite, coal, and uranium. Cues in the six chart rows guided students to note the production, supply, uses, location, rst characteristic, and second characteristic of each mineral. Ultimately, then, 18 blank cells—6 for each mineral addressed in the text—were targeted for note taking and testing. The electronic chart (a kind of word-processing tool, see Igo, Bruning, & McCrudden, 2003) could be minimized, maximized, or reduced in the same fashion as other computer programs. Students could choose to have the tool appear on the screen as they engaged in note-taking decisions with the text, or they could expand the text to cover the screen and hide the chart. The researchers disabled the typing feature of the tool, leaving copy and paste as the sole data-entry function available for use. The paper note-taking chart was simply a paper version of the note-taking tool. It presented students with the same cues and blank cells, but students lled in the cells by writing. Dependent measures. Two tests assessed learning of facts from the text. The cued recall of facts test was an 8 1⁄2” by 11” sheet of paper, identical to the paper note-taking chart. The columns and rows were labeled in the same way that the electronic and paper note-taking charts were labeled; the cells were blank. Students were asked to ll in the cells with all, or any part of, the information that they could remember from their notes. The test was scored by awarding one point per idea recalled and placed in the correct, cued cell corresponding to an idea from the text, whether the idea was originally noted or not. Two raters scored the quiz, blind to experimental conditions, with a clearly acceptable level of inter-rater reliability (Cohen’s K = .97). An 18-item, multiple-choice test (a = .76 ) required students to recognize factual information presented in the text. For each item, students read a fact and then decided to which of the three minerals (a–c) the fact corresponded. Because each item contained only three options, and in an effort to more closely approximate what students actually learned, the students were instructed to answer only the items they knew and to refrain from guessing. One point was awarded for each correct response. Procedure The experiment occurred over one week. On Day 1, a Monday, laptops reserved from the school’s media lab were transported to the classroom prior to each period. Each laptop was equipped with an external mouse. Students met in their usual classroom where class roll was taken, and then students were assigned randomly to one of two different note-taking conditions (writing or pasting). Next, students were given an overview of the note-taking task, they were informed that they were going be asked to study the notes they created on Days 2 and 3 (Wednesday and © 2009 National Middle School Association 4 RMLE Online— Volume 33, No. 2 Friday, respectively, of the same week), and that they would be quizzed “later this period” and also on the following Monday. The classroom teacher reminded the students that they were going to read material on a preloaded web page (text about Australian minerals described above) and take notes over the text as per their assigned condition. Students then logged on to their computers and created user names and passwords, permitting their notes to be saved and printed for later study. Instructions to use the note-taking cues provided in the chart were provided by the teacher, as was a reminder to read and take notes at a comfortable pace. Students began the note-taking task, saved their notes on the computer (in the copy and paste condition) or turned in their paper note sheets (in the written notes condition), and completed a 5-minute word-association distraction task on a piece of paper (to prevent cognitive rehearsal of the text ideas). Consistent with previous research (Igo et al., 2006), most students completed the note-taking task in approximately 18–24 minutes. After the distraction task, students completed the cued-recall test and then the multiple-choice test. Cued-recall was given rst because it contained far fewer retrieval cues than the multiple choice measure. When students were nished, their teacher collected the cued-recall test. Then, the multiple-choice test was distributed, completed, and collected. Finally, Quantitative Results Immediate Learning ANOVA results indicated a signi cant effect on students’ immediate cued-recall test performances, F (1, 47) = 6.47, p < .05. Students who wrote their notes recalled more text ideas than students who copied and pasted their notes. The relationship between kind of notes and cued recall was strong as assessed by eta square, with note-taking method accounting for 12% of the variance in cued recall. The ANOVA for the multiple-choice measure showed no main effect, although students who copied and pasted their notes performed marginally better than students who wrote their notes. These effects are generally consistent with the Igo and colleagues study (2006). See Table 1 for means and standard deviations. Delayed Learning after Study ANOVA results indicated a signi cant effect on students’ delayed cued-recall test performances, F (1, 47) = 4.98, p < .05. Students who pasted their notes recalled more text ideas than students who wrote their notes. The eta square measure of effect size indicated a moderate effect associated with note-taking method on delayed cued-recall, with note-taking method accounting for 9.6% of the variance in recall. The ANOVA for the multiple-choice measure showed a similar main effect, F (1, 47) = 5.78, p < .05. Again, students who pasted their notes performed better than students who wrote their notes. The effect of note-taking method on delayed multiple-choice test performance was moderate (eta square = .11). Table 1 Immediate and Delayed Test Performance at the end of Day 1, the tests were collected, the students’ electronic notes were printed, and all the notes were placed in the teacher’s desk. On Day 2, that Wednesday, students were given their notes and asked to study them for 10 minutes. This occurred at the beginning of the period, when, presumably, the students would be freshest. No instructions were given in how to study the notes; students simply were told to study them in preparation for the upcoming delayed tests. At the end of the 10-minute study period, students’ notes were again collected and stored in their teacher’s desk until Day 3, at which time the note-study procedure was followed again. On Day 4, the following Monday, students were asked to “retake” the cued-recall and multiple-choice tests. The procedure for completion of the tests mirrored the rst administration, with students completing cued recall before the multiple-choice measure was administered. Written Notes Copied and Pasted Notes N 2425 Immediate Cued Recall M 3.95 SD 1.51 Immediate Multiple Choice M 8.32 SD 2.92 Delayed Cued Recall M 5.32 SD 2.85 Delayed Multiple Choice M 10.47 SD 4.42 3.04 .91 9.08 3.17 7.50 3.94 13.30 3.37 © 2009 National Middle School Association 5 RMLE Online— Volume 33, No. 2 Preliminary Discussion Based on the results above, two general categories of ndings are apparent: immediate learning effects (following the encoding phase of note learning) and differing delayed-learning effects (following the external storage phase). First, students who wrote notes during the experiment performed better on an immediate, cued-recall test of facts. But the same cannot be said for a multiple-choice measure of facts, where the copy and paste group performed somewhat, but not statistically higher. Similar results were obtained in a previous experiment by Igo and colleagues (2006), who explained this phenomenon as a transfer-appropriate-processing effect. In short, students who wrote notes in the cells of a cued chart may have been primed, mentally, for the test that required them to write ideas in cells of another cued chart. Although this explanation is interesting from a theoretical point of view, students’ scores on the two immediate tests in the present study indicate another and perhaps more important nding: students initially learned very little in either note-taking condition. This result suggests that students in each condition processed the text ideas at shallow levels as they took notes. Ultimately, then, the ef cacy of note learning’s encoding phase is suspect for MSSLD, as students in the present study—and indeed in the previous research—did not learn much as they took notes. The studying of notes seems to be especially important for this population. The second general nding relates to students’ delayed-test performances after two periods of study (external storage phase of note learning). Surprisingly, the copy and paste note takers performed considerably higher on each of the delayed tests than did the written notes group. Beyond mere statistical differences, the means of student scores indicate that substantially more learning occurred when students studied copied and pasted notes rather than written notes (roughly 25–30% higher, although all performances were quite low). Based on these results, the external storage function of note learning seems tied to the kind of notes that MSSLD study, a nding potentially of practical use to teachers and students. A particularly important question remains unanswered by the present experimental ndings, however: Why did the pasted notes group outperform the written notes group on the delayed tests? The answer to this question is elusive given only the experimental results, so we chose to follow up the experiment with a qualitative investigation. Qualitative Follow-up Because our experiment yielded an unexpected and unexplainable nding, we continued the investigation using a sequential explanatory mixed-methods approach (Creswell & Plano-Clark, 2006). Creswell and Plano-Clark suggest this “follow-up explanations model” be used when a quantitative investigation yields puzzling results. Our unexplained result was the difference in learning between the two note- taking groups on the delayed tests. In an effort to generate a plausible explanation for this effect, two types of data were collected, analyzed, and synthesized: student interviews and student notes. Interviews Two to four days after the delayed measures were administered and collected, 24 students participated in semi-structured interviews addressing their perceptions related to the note-taking activities Twelve students from each grade level (seventh and eighth) equally representing the two note- taking conditions were interviewed. Steps were taken to ensure that the interviewees proportionally represented the student sample from the experiment (i.e., students with learning disabilities > students needing reading support > students with mild mental retardation). Each student was given his or her notes for reference during the interviews, which were guided by a protocol developed by the lead researcher. The interview protocol focused on the external storage function of note learning (studying from notes), as this was the phase of the experiment (delayed tests) in which the unexpected results were obtained. However, during the interviews other informal questions were asked to prompt students to clarify vague answers or expand with more detail on especially salient answers. Also, additional questions were developed during the interviews when certain thematic consistencies or inconsistencies in students’ answers seemed evident. Interviews lasted from two to six minutes, were recorded on a digital audio recorder, and were transcribed and printed. Interview Data Analysis The interview data were analyzed by the primary researcher with a phenomenological technique adapted from Groenewald (2004) and Moustakas (1994). This technique included ve steps. First, a phenomenological reduction was performed. In this step, the primary researcher listened to the recorded interviews three times in an effort to gain both a © 2009 National Middle School Association 6 RMLE Online— Volume 33, No. 2 “holistic sense” of the data (Shank, 2006), and to alert the researcher to any particularly interesting phrases. No sorting or coding of data occurred in this rst step. Rather, the phenomenological reduction allowed the researcher to orient himself toward the nature of the data as a whole. In the second step of data analysis, meaning units were identi ed from transcripts of the data. In this step, all signi cant phrases were extracted from the text, and then those statements were examined for repetition of ideas and relevance to the phenomenon of interest (study of notes/delayed test performance). For example, one student stated, “Sometimes it’s hard to tell what I write.” When asked to further explain what he meant, he responded, “I can write really fast, but sometimes... it’s messy.” In another signi cant phrase, a different student (when asked to read part of his notes) referenced his handwriting, as well, saying uncomfortably, “It’s not usually this hard to read.” After identifying these signi cant statements, the primary researcher examined the students’ notes. He con rmed that the former student’s handwriting was, in fact, very dif cult to read and that the latter student’s handwriting was excruciatingly small. Given these and other signi cant statements and supporting evidence from the note documents, the researcher created a meaning unit labeled ‘legibility of written notes.’ Other preliminary meaning units included ‘comprehensibility of notes’ (including 9 statements addressing the clarity of pasted notes) and ‘organization’ (including 17 statements favoring the graphic organizer/chart). The third step in the data analysis was the formation of meaning clusters. Comparing and examining the meaning units, the researcher identi ed relevant relationships across units. In this step, sorting the subordinate meaning units into superordinate clusters allowed for the emergence of possible explanatory themes. For example, the meaning units ‘legibility of written notes,’ ‘incomplete propositions,’ and ‘misspellings’ were clustered under the superordinate thematic label study barriers. The second superordinate meaning cluster identi ed was labeled ef cient external store. Following the identi cation of the two major themes, above, the researcher performed the fourth step of analysis: comparison to original data. The transcripts were revisited with the goal of comparing the meaning clusters (themes) to the raw data. The researcher sought to uncover inconsistencies between the themes generated in the analysis and the original statements made by the interviewees. Two major inconsistencies were identi ed, summarized, and then used in the nal step of data analysis. In this nal step, the researcher constructed a “composite summary” (Shank, 2006) of the qualitative data, which included the themes from steps one through three as well as the inconsistencies found in step 4. Then, in a mixed-methods fashion, ndings from the experimental phase of the present study were mixed with the composite summary to create an explanation of the learning effect found on the delayed tests, and relevant learning theory and empirical ndings from previous research were incorporated into the qualitative and quantitative results. Composite Summary, Quantitative- Qualitative Mixing, and Explanation of Effects In the present study, some sets of notes were more ef cient study aides than others. Although students in each experimental condition believed the graphic organization of the notes was bene cial, certain qualities of the text contained within the charts differed among sets of written notes and between written notes and pasted notes. Some students who produced written notes experienced barriers to study that were imposed by physical characteristics of their own handwriting. Other students wrote notes that included comprehension barriers such as gross misspellings and incomplete ideas. Although misspellings and incomplete ideas were not present in every cell of those students’ note charts (indeed, not even in the majority of the cells), the quality of their notes suffered, nonetheless. Previous research has identi ed the barriers of legibility and comprehensibility in the writing of middle school (Graham, Harris, & Larsen, 2001) and college students with learning disabilities (Smith, 1993). Given these barriers, the learning differences resulting from the external storage phase (periods of note study) can be explained in terms of cognitive psychology. Illegible handwriting, gross misspellings, and incomplete ideas within certain students’ notes forced those students to perform two tasks simultaneously during the study periods: (1) learning the noted information while (2) deciphering their notes. Deciphering the text in their notes likely required those students to allocate some of their limited, cognitive resources to a task unrelated to the acquisition of knowledge © 2009 National Middle School Association 7 RMLE Online— Volume 33, No. 2 (see Paas, Renkl, & Sweller, 2003; Sweller, van Merrienboer, & Paas, 1998). Thus, splitting their mental efforts between two tasks may have diminished the potential for those students to learn the information (Igo, Bruning, & McCrudden, 2005b), and their performances on the delayed tests suffered. Other students—especially those in the copy and paste notes group, but also many in the written notes group—created study aides that were more ef cient. The clarity of those notes allowed students to focus their mental efforts more directly on one task—learning the ideas. In sum, (1) copied and pasted notes were, in general, clearer; (2) students with clearer notes were able to learn more while studying; and (3) students in the copy and paste condition recalled and recognized more facts on the two delayed tests than students in the writing condition. Implications for Teaching and Learning The major ndings of the present study are that when middle school students with learning problems take notes from the Internet, those who copy and paste notes tend to create more effective study aides than many of those who write notes. One explanation for this phenomenon is that many of these students may be inexperienced note takers, and they have not yet learned how to generate written notes in clear and succinct ways. A more speci c explanation backed by the present study is that fundamental aws in the students’ note-writing behavior impede the creation of effective study aides. Whatever explanation one chooses for the aws in these students’ written notes, both the present study and previous research (Igo et al., 2006) suggest that this population of students might pro tably copy and paste notes while gathering information from the Internet. Several reasons now support this suggestion. First, the previous research showed that MSSLD were anxious and stressed while typing notes, but less so while pasting them. Such anxiety can negatively affect student motivation (Barlow, 2000). Second, both the present and previous research indicated that this population of students learn little during the encoding phase (creation of notes), which makes the study of notes critical to learning. Third, the present showed that some students created written notes with aws that were barriers to the effective study of notes. And nally, students in the present study learned more when they copied and pasted notes and then studied those notes. If this population is to copy and paste notes from the Internet, however, they might bene t further from instruction in how to paste effectively. For example, in a study by Igo and colleagues (2005a), college students were able to learn more from Web- based text when they were prompted to paste more selectively (i.e., when they literally chose their words wisely and economically). Lessons designed to teach students how to evaluate which ideas to include in their notes could have positive consequences for both the encoding and the external storage phases of note learning. Future Research This study focused on the bene ts of copy and paste note taking for middle school students with learning problems. However, because older students might experience many of the same learning challenges stemming from note taking, more research addressing how high school and college students with learning problems gather and then study information from the Internet is warranted. Also, future research might address the impact of certain instructions on how students use copy and paste to gather notes. In the present study, the cued chart guided students’ note-taking behavior, but instructions prompting students to paste main ideas, supporting statements, or other speci c pieces of text might prove bene cial to learning. Finally, research could address how copied and pasted notes could be gathered and then transformed. That is, students initially could be guided to paste the appropriate information into their notes, but then lessons addressing how to appropriately paraphrase ideas they pasted could help them learn to process the gathered text ideas more deeply as they study. Limitations Aspects of the current research limit the extent of our ndings. During the experimental phase of inquiry, for example, students were prompted to study their notes, but they were not shown how to study their notes. Similarly, no observations were made of student study behaviors. Although student interviews provided important insights into their study behavior, direct observations of the students studying—or possibly think-alouds gathered as they study—could yield rich, additional data. Example of A Sample Literature Review At this point, it may be helpful to look at excerpts from what is, in our view, a well-written review of the related literature for a doctoral dissertation proposal. The author of the review, Kay Corbett, wanted to identify possible relationships between cognitive development and motor development (i.e., between the development of children’s thinking abilities and that of their movement patterns), especially between ages 4 and 8. Thus, the literature review focuses on both the cognitive and motor development of young children. Two qualities of the proposal are particularly worth noting. First, the author did not present the studies she had read in a piecemeal, one-at-a-time fashion; instead, she continually synthesized the literature into a cohesive whole. Second, the author’s organizational scheme is obvious throughout; she used an advance organizer, numerous headings and subheadings, and transitional paragraphs to help readers follow her as she moved from one topic to the next. Excerpts from the proposal itself appear on the left-hand side and our commentary appears on the right. The ellipses (. . .) indicate places where we have omitted portions of the text. In some cases, we have summarized the content of what we’ve omitted within brackets. ✔ Check Your Understanding in the Pearson etext Practice Thinking Like a Researcher
• Activity 3.1: Beginning a Literature Review Practice Thinking Like a Researcher
• Activity 3.2: Citing and Paraphrasing Previous Research dissertation ANALYSIS 1 Review of Literature The literature review will include three areas:
• (a) empirical studies relating motor and cognitive development,
• (b) motor development, and
• (c) the neo-Piagetian theories of development as they relate to both motor and cognitive development. The present review is limited to investigations of children within the 4- to 8-year-old age range. Studies targeting children with special needs are excluded. [The remainder of the chapter is divided into three main sections: “Motor and Cognitive Development,” “The Development of Gross Motor Skills,” and “The Neo-Piagetian Theories of Development.” We pick up the chapter midway through the section on “The Development of Gross Motor Skills.”]
• The Development of Gross Motor Skills . . . [T]he early childhood period is when many fundamental motor patterns are most efficiently learned. During this age period, children must have a daily practice and participation in movement education programs to develop the fundamental movement skills to a mature pattern (Gallahue, 1993, 1995b, 1996; Halverson & Roberton, 1984; Haubenstricker & Seefeldt, 1986; Haywood, 1993; Miller, 1978, cited in Gallahue, 1989; Williams, 1983). If the opportunity for this practice is not provided, children may move into adolescence with immature motor patterns that will hinder their ability to enter games or sports activities (Gallahue, 1995a; Haubenstricker & Seefeldt, 1986). Mature patterns can be acquired later in the developmental life span, but it requires much more time and practice to relearn the patterns. . . . The fundamental patterns for the 4- to 8-year-old age range include four categories of movements: (a) locomotor movements, (b) stability movements, (c) manipulative movements, and (d) axial movements (Gallahue, 1995b). The locomotor movements acquired and/or refined during this period of childhood are running, jumping, hopping, galloping and sliding, leaping, skipping, and climbing (Gallahue, 1995b). These movements “involve a change in location of the body relative to a fixed point on the surface” (Gallahue, 1989, p. 46). Stability movements refer to the “ability to maintain one’s balance in relation to the force of gravity even though the nature of the force’s application may be altered or parts of the body may be placed in unusual positions” (Gallahue, 1989, p. 494).
• Stability movements include weight transfer skills (Haywood, 1993). Weight transfer skills include inverted supports, in which the body assumes an upside-down position for a number of seconds before the movement is discontinued. “Stabilization of the center of gravity and maintenance of the line of gravity within the base of support applies to the inverted posture as well as to the erect standing posture” (Gallahue, 1989, p. 275).
• Other stability movements are dodging, one-foot balancing, beam walking, and rolling. The manipulative movements involve giving force to objects and receiving force from them (Gallahue, 1989). Movements practiced during childhood are overhand throwing, catching, kicking, striking, dribbling, ball rolling, trapping (feet or body used to absorb the force of the ball instead of the hands and arms), and volleying. The axial movements are “movements of the trunk or limbs that orient the body while it remains in a stationary position” (Gallahue, 1989, p. 271). Bending, stretching, twisting, turning, swinging, swaying, reaching, and lifting are all axial movements. They are used in combination with other movements to execute more complex movement skills. Researchers investigating the development of fundamental movement skills focus on qualitative changes as children’s developing movement patterns become more smooth and efficient. The following section will review studies investigating the development of fundamental movement patterns in children 4 to 8 years of age. Development of Locomotor Skills The locomotor skills, from earliest acquisition until mature patterns are established, develop through qualitatively different stages (e.g., Gallahue, 1995b; Haywood, 1993; Haubenstricker & Seefeldt, 1986). The studies reviewed investigated qualitative changes that occur as fundamental locomotor patterns are developed. Walking. The mature walking pattern is achieved between the fourth and seventh years (Eckert, 1987; Guttridge, 1939; Wickstrom, 1983; Williams, 1983). At this level, there are a reflexive arm swing and a narrow base of support (feet are placed no further apart than the width of the shoulders), the gate is relaxed, the legs lift minimally, and there is definite heel-toe contact (Gallahue, 1989). Although the mature pattern is achieved during the early childhood period, walking is not targeted in movement education programs as a skill needing concentrated focus (Gallahue, 1989, 1996; Werder & Bruininks, 1988). Running. Many investigators have studied the running pattern. Roberton and Halverson (1984) document the development of running by rating arm action separately from leg action but base the documentation on earlier work (Wickstrom, 1983; Seefeldt et al., 1972, cited in Gallahue, 1989). Gallahue (1995b) proposes a whole-body sequence of development based on the same earlier work. Running patterns develop from flat-footed, uneven patterns with arms swinging outward to smoother patterns with step length increased and a narrower base of support.
• The mature pattern includes a reflexive arm swing, a narrow base of support, a relaxed gait, minimal vertical lift, and definite heel-to-toe contact. Several University of Wisconsin studies of children between 1.5 and 10 years of age have documented qualitative changes in the running pattern (Haywood, 1993). Jumping. Early developmentalism defined age norms for children’s jumping achievements (Wickstrom, 1983). The children step down from a higher surface from one foot to the other before jumping off the floor with both feet. Then they learn to jump from progressively greater heights onto both feet. Later, they can jump forward, and over objects (Haywood, 1993). Developmental sequences in both the horizontal and vertical jumps are based on research on the standing long jump
• (Clark & Phillips, 1985; Hillebrandt et al., 1961; Seefeldt et al., 1972, cited in Gallahue, 1989; Wickstrom, 1983; Roberton, 1984;

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