Pupils’ conceptions of force in inanimates and animates

The objective of this work was to highlight the conceptions of force held by students aged 10–17 years old, in situations where animate and inanimate objects interact. In the proposed experimental situations, we varied parameters such as the motion and position of an object and the agent’s effort. We asked questions about both inanimate and animate objects. Results show that pupils are able to use a small number of conceptions coherently, but that these are influenced by the context. For inanimate objects, conceptions develop gradually. Initially, force is regarded as a property of objects related to their weight and/or motion/position. With age, however, pupils begin to regard it as a process of interaction. For animates, conceptions evolve much more slowly, insofar as all pupils consider force to be a human property related to the result that is obtained and/or the agent’s effort.     

Collective Effects of Individual,Behavioral, and Contextual Factors on High School Students’ Future STEM Career Plans

This study explored the structural relationships among secondary school students’ conceptions, self-regulation, and strategies of learning science in mainland China. Three questionnaires, namely conceptions of learning science (COLS), self-regulation of learning science (SROLS), and strategies of learning science (SLS) were developed for investigating 333 Chinese high school learners’ conceptions, metacognitive self-regulation, and strategies in science. The confirmatory factor analysis results verified the validity of the three surveys. Moreover, the path analyses revealed a series of interesting findings. Learners with lower-level COLS, namely “memorizing,” “testing,” and “practicing and calculating,” tended to use surface learning strategies such as “minimizing scope of the study” and “rote learning.” However, learners’ higher-level COLS, namely “increase of knowledge,” “applying,” “understanding,” and “seeing in a new way,” had complicated connections with their SROLS and SLS. On the one hand, learners’ higher-level COLS had negative relations to “minimizing scope of the study” and “rote learning.” On the other hand, their higher-level COLS were powerful predicators for their metacognitive self-regulation and further affected their use of “deep strategy” and “rote learning.” Though Chinese secondary students with higher-level COLS usually have a negative view of “rote learning,” the functioning of their metacognitive self-regulation may change their initial attitudes towards the surface strategy. Learners with higher-level COLS still used “rote learning” as a prior step for achieving deep learning. Therefore, we concluded that the SROLS played an important mediating role between the COLS and SLS and may change learners’ original intention to utilize learning strategies.     

Secondary School Students’ Construction and Use of Mathematical Models in Solving Word Problems

This study focussed on how secondary school students construct and use mathematical models as conceptual tools when solving word problems. The participants were 511 secondary-school students who were in the final year of compulsory education (15–16 years old). Four levels of the development of constructing and using mathematical models were identified using a constant-comparative methodology to analyse the student’s problem-solving processes. Identifying the general in the particular and using the particular to endow the general with meaning were the key elements employed by students in the processes of construction and use of models in the different situations. In addition, attention was paid to the difficulties that students had in using their mathematical knowledge to solve these situations. Finally, implications are provided for drawing upon student’s use of mathematical models as conceptual tools to support the development of mathematical competence from socio-cultural perspectives of learning.     

Relationships between Pupils’ Sociocultural Background,Instruction in School and Writing Achievement

The aim of this study was to explain differences between pupils’ achievements in composition. A theoretic causal model of factors of importance to pupils’ proficiency in writing has been tested with data collected in the Swedish part of the IEA‐study. These data involve the pupils’ sociocultural background, the teachers’ experiences and the teaching of writing. The pupils’ marks for an argumentative composition represent the standard of their achievement in writing. The present analysis includes pupils in grade 9 of the Swedish compulsory comprehensive school. The causal model was verified concerning the relationships between pupils’ sociocultural background and their writing achievement. However, no relationships could be found between teaching in school and pupils’ achievement, a result which is discussed critically.     

Inquiry-Based Laboratory Activities in Electrochemistry: High School Students’ Achievements and Attitudes

This study aimed to investigate the effects of inquiry-based laboratory activities on high school students’ understanding of electrochemistry and attitudes towards chemistry and laboratory work. The participants were 62 high school students (average age 17 years) in an urban public high school in Turkey. Students were assigned to experimental (N?=?30) and control groups (N?=?32). The experimental group was taught using inquiry-based laboratory activities developed by the researchers and the control group was instructed using traditional laboratory activities. The results of the study indicated that instruction based on inquiry-based laboratory activities caused a significantly better acquisition of scientific concepts related to electrochemistry, and produced significantly higher positive attitudes towards chemistry and laboratory. In the light of the findings, it is suggested that inquiry-based laboratory activities should be developed and applied to promote students’ understanding in chemistry subjects and to improve their positive attitudes.     

Chinese High School Students’ Plans in Studying Overseas: Who and Why

This study is among the first to use a large-scale dataset to better understand the driving forces behind the large outflow of Chinese international students. Based on data collected from 3,001 students at 18 high schools located in the three cities of Beijing, Shenzhen and Chengdu, this paper highlights the importance of students’ academic preparation and their families’ financial capability. It shows that sociocultural factors such as Experiencing Another Culture and Gaining Global Perspective play a significant role, but are often understudied in the case of Chinese students. In addition, the disadvantaged social strata tend to be influenced more by the pushing force of low- quality education in China, and deterred by the high cost of studying overseas, whereas the advantaged social strata tend to be influenced more by the pulling force of higher-quality education overseas and the pulling force within China such as relatively privileged lives.     

The Impact of School Development Plans in Primary Schools∗

In the U.K., in common with a growing number of countries, school development planning has been embraced with enthusiasm by practitioners and policy makers. Both groups have responded to the potential benefits of an improvement process which can integrate educational, financial and human resource needs and set and monitor the achievement of measurable goals. This paper describes the outcomes of a thirty‐two month research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council which studied the impact of development planning in nine primary schools. It draws out the implications for practitioners and policy makers and explores some methodological issues arising from the study. The paper concludes by identifying further research priorities.

     

Deliberative Communication in Elementary Classroom Meetings: Ground Rules,Pupils’ Concerns,and Democratic Participation

Previous research has identified numerous obstacles that counteract attempts to involve pupils in democratic processes in schools. Drawing from deliberative democratic theory and sociolinguistic research on dialogic teaching we discuss an intervention grounded on the ideas of deliberative communication and decision-making in an elementary classroom in Finland. We show that deliberative communication can provide pupils with opportunities for democratic participation. This process involves altering conventional classroom interactional patterns and the power processes they uphold. The possibilities of expanding deliberative communication from isolated democratic meetings to everyday schooling are considered.     

The Development of Individualized Audio‐Visual Learning Units in Junior High School Biology and the Students’ Achievements

Summaries

English

The development of series of audio‐tutorial units for biological education at junior high school level is described. The effectiveness of these units was tested with students from a Kibbutz school and found to produce higher achievement than a ‘normal’ teaching approach, based on the BSCS Yellow Version (Israeli adaptation) materials. The audio‐tutorial method led to a particularly high achievement gain in the case of girls. The achievement gains resulting from the audio‐tutorial approach are explained in terms of the motivational effect of this method on students.     

The Impact of Primary School Teachers’ Expectations of Pupils,Parents and Teachers on Teacher Track Recommendations

To advance the understanding about primary school teachers’ allocation process of pupils during the transition to secondary education, this study aims to investigate the influencing teacher expectations of teacher track recommendations. Using a qualitative research design consisting of an inductive approach, interview data were gathered from 15 Flemish sixth-grade teachers. The results indicate that foremost teacher expectations of pupils, more specifically of pupils’ perceived motivation or interests and learning attitude, were considered by teachers as influencing their track recommendations. Although empirical evidence was also found for the impact of expectations held by teachers about pupils’ parents and about themselves as teachers, as well as about teaching, teachers’ awareness of the impact of one’s own expectations was limited.     

Developing Future Women Leaders: The Importance of Mentoring and Role Modeling in the Girls’ School Context

In this article, I explore the concepts of mentoring and role modeling with regard to developing student leaders within the girls’ school context. The foundation for this discussion lies in two qualitative studies involving staff and students from girls’ schools located in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Both survey and focus groups were used as methods of data collection. Mentoring and role modeling in school settings is reported in this study as taking place in two different forms: student/student and staff/student. This research identified the multidimensional nature of these relationships with regard to female school staff who then became role models for female students. Ultimately, mentoring and role modeling may help female students in developing the knowledge and skills required for leadership as well as assisting in an understanding of gender barriers in relation to leadership roles.     

Improving Prospective Teachers’ Counseling Competence in Parent-Teacher Talks: Effects of Training and Feedback

Counseling parents concerning students’ learning processes is considered to be an increasingly important competence area of teachers. However, few educational programs exist specifically focusing on improving this essential teacher competence, particularly in early teacher education. The current study, which took place at a German university, describes the evaluation of a corresponding training program for prospective teachers as well as a process-oriented feedback intervention. We conducted a quasi-experimental study with three treatment groups (training group, training + feedback group, control group) combining pre-, post-, and follow-up test measures with time–series data. By means of multivariate repeated measures MANOVAs and time-series analyses, we were able to demonstrate that prospective teachers’ counseling competence can be successfully fostered by training and individual process-oriented feedback. Our results provide several practical implications concerning the improvement of teachers’ counseling competence within the context of teacher education.     

Pupils’ Perceptions of Teachers

Abstract

The study, with 536 second-sixth graders as subjects, attempted to investigate the relationships between teacher and “idea”-teacher discrepancies (hereafter designated as discrepancies) and six dependent variables. Results of the study were summarized as: (a) high-school achievement scorers tended to manifest low discrepancies, and vice versa; (b) boys appeared to exhibit higher discrepancies than girls did; (c) those more socially acceptable children seemed to exhibit low discrepancies, and vice versa; (d) those children who indicated higher school attitude scores had a tendency to show low discrepancies, and vice versa; (e) those children who rated themselves high on aggressiveness were inclined to show high discrepancies, and vice versa; and (f) there was no statistically significant relationship between peer-report aggressiveness and such discrepancies.     

High School Students’ Exposure to Diversity in an Urban Teaching Academy and Their Conceptions of Its Place in Future Practice

This study explored the meaning high school Urban Teaching Academy participants ascribed to the critical term of diversity and how that translated into shaping their philosophies on how to address the issue in their future classrooms. Findings indicated that perceptions of diversity and its place in the curriculum were most likely related to the emphasis of the concept in the program. Thus, those participants who were taught by a teacher who included more discourse on the topic of diversity embraced a culturally relevant pedagogical stance. Whereas, those participants taught by a teacher who discussed diversity through the lens of differentiated instruction adopted a color-blind perspective.     

Teachers’ and Pupils’ Perceptions of Technology and the Implications for Curriculum

The recent explicit inclusion of technology into the science component of the school curriculum in Western Australia necessitates changes in both curriculum materials and the nature of classroom teaching. This paper reports an investigation of the perceptions of technology of senior teachers who are heads of the science department in their schools, and relates these perceptions with those of a sample of 13‐year‐old pupils in this state. The investigation reveals that many teachers have a restricted view of technology which may be interpreted as a view that technology is dependent upon science. Such a view may neglect the historical aspects and societal influences on science and technology. Further, the available evidence indicates that local pupils have a low level of awareness of technology. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for curriculum change and suggests a starting point for achieving a successful balance in the teaching of technology, science and society issues in the classroom.     

The Role of School Managers in Monitoring and Evaluating the Work of a School: inspectors’ judgements and schools’ responses

The paper presents an analysis of inspection findings for 22 secondary schools, selected from a larger sample of 100, in order to explore the nature of, and the responses to, OFSTED inspectors’ recommendations about the use of internal monitoring and evaluation to improve classroom practice. Inspectors’ reports, and schools’ action plans, were examined in order to determine inspectors’ expectations of senior managers in schools in relation to monitoring responsibilities and the means managers intend to use to meet these expectations. In their action plans some schools respond with bureaucratic procedures, while others indicate a more collaborative approach. This paper describes the first stage of a research project; the differences in implementation of the planned changes in schools will be the subject of further research.     

Pupils’ Liking for Physical Education as a School Subject

Stensaasen, S. 1975. Pupils’ Liking for Physical Education as a School Subject. Scand. J. educ. Res. 19, 111‐129. The intention of the present study was to assess adolescent pupils’ liking for physical education as a school subject and what aspects of this subject they particularly liked and disliked. The empirical data stem from 1321 pupils at the 7th, 8th and 9th grades levels at youth schools situated in eight densely populated areas in south‐east Norway. Data on the pupils’ liking for physical education and other school subjects were gathered by means of a five‐graded Likert scale and on aspects which the pupils liked or disliked by means of open‐ended questions. Physical education was found to be one ‘of the best liked subjects in school. No sex or grade differences could be detected. The results showed a very high degree of consistency over time from fall to spring.     

School climate in Mongolia: Translation and validation of the What’s Happening in This School

Learning Environments Research - School climate measures are important tools that assist educators in evaluating the “norms, values, and expectations that support people feeling socially,...