Introduction to Vol. 8 No. 4 (2020)

Dear reader,

As you might already know, our dear colleague and friend Dr. Stuart Karabenick passed away on August 1^st. Just a few weeks ago, he finished a very thoughtful review for this issue of FLR. We are all very sad and will miss him and his valuable expertise. I am sure that his research ideas will continue to inspire a lot of researchers in the future.

This issue of Frontline Learning Research covers an interesting variety of learning research: person-centered approaches, interactions between teachers and students and interactions between peers. 

Li et al. show that interest-driven socio-digital participation between friends in grade 7 becomes more similar over time. This could be used for bridging the gap between students’ informal interests and educational practices.

Draijer et al. explore the structure of interest. With the help of latent profile analysis, they show that homogeneous and heterogeneous structures co-exist. Measures of interest should account for this multidimensionality.

Knoop-van Campen and Molenaar show ­that dashboards have the potential to enhance teachers’ feedback practices and to complement human-prompted feedback, especially when dashboards are integrated into teachers’ professional routines.

Broda et. al. examine the relations between student reports of their own writing-related self-regulation and teacher reports of student writing-related self-regulation. Preliminary evidence points to the durable nature of student-teacher discrepancy as a predictor of more subjective academic outcomes.

Hirt et. al. differentiate types of help-seeking strategies with a person-centered approach. Avoiding help-seeking can be separated from working independently and individual help-seeking strategies can be switched over time.

Stay healthy!

Prof. Dr. Thomas Martens

Editor-In-Chief Frontline Learning Research