INTERLOCKED PROBLEM POSING AND CHILDREN’S PROBLEM POSING PERFORMANCE IN FREE STRUCTURED SITUATIONS

The aim of this study is to explore the mathematical problem posing performance of students in free structured situations. Two classes of fifth grade students (N??=??30) were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The categories of the problems posed in free structured situations by the 2 groups of students were studied through inductive and deductive content analysis and coded in categories before and after a 5-week treatment. The treatment for the experimental group was the Interlocked Problem Posing Instruction in which student cognitive engagement was emphasized, and for the control group, it was Traditional Problem Posing Instruction. The results revealed that the experimental group students posed more solvable, reasonable and start-unknown problems than the control group students after the treatment.     

Fay Weldon’s KEHUA!:A GHOST STORY

The"She-devils"or"wicked women"in Fay Weldon’s fictions are frequently discussed among many readers and critics.Some pluralistic narrative strategies including parody,anti-genre and non-linear and so on are employed to refract her pluralistic feminist ideas.Her new novel Kehua!:A Ghost Story is a metaficiton which indeed breaks the traditional linear structure of a novel.She gives us ample room and encouragement in this novel as we contemplate the future of women,which surely can be of our own making.     

ENGINEERING EDUCATION: A TOTAL CONCEPT?

Engineering education is about intellectural and personal development in relation to some branch of engineering.

Engineering is a profession. Any profession is defined by its knowledge base and the inherent skills used with that knowledge base. Within any engineering course it is the quality of understanding of the knowledge base along with the quality of inherent skills which is being developed. As a total concept, engineering education is about the development of the quality of thinking of students.

This paper identifies some implications of seeking development in the quality of thinking of engineering students, and pursues these implications into the issues of assessment and evaluation.     

TESTING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MATHEMATICAL GAMES AS A PEDAGOGICAL TOOL FOR CHILDREN’S LEARNING

In an effort to engage children in mathematics learning, many primary teachers use mathematical games and activities. Games have been employed for drill and practice, warm-up activities and rewards. The effectiveness of games as a pedagogical tool requires further examination if games are to be employed for the teaching of mathematical concepts. This paper reports research that compared the effectiveness of non-digital games with non-game but engaging activities as pedagogical tools for promoting mathematical learning. In the classrooms that played games, the effects of adding teacher-led whole class discussion was explored. The research was conducted with 10?C12-year-old children in eight classrooms in three Australian primary schools, using differing instructional approaches to teach multiplication and division of decimals. A quasi-experimental design with pre-test, post-test and delayed post-test was employed, and the effects of the interventions were measured by the children??s written test performance. Test results indicated lesser gains in learning in game playing situations versus non-game activities and that teacher-led discussions during and following the game playing did not improve children??s learning. The finding that these games did not help children demonstrate a mathematical understanding of concepts under test conditions suggests that educators should carefully consider the application and appropriateness of games before employing them as a vehicle for introducing mathematical concepts.     

EXAMINATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD PRACTITIONERS’ GENERAL PERCEPTION OF GENDER DIFFERENCES IN YOUNG CHILDREN

This study attempts to explore and discuss preschool teachers’ perception of gender differences in young children through their verbal expression. The teachers (Study I, n —121, Study II, n= 31) in this study perceive female preschoolers as positive and sensitive learners. While many learner qualities such as inventive, problem‐solver, builder, hands‐on, questioning, etc. are identified more often for boys than girls, overall the teachers’ perception of the boys’ group is less “teachable” and “easy to work with” than the girls group. In addition, one of the most intriguing and concerning observations is that girls are perceived as “passive learners” and therefore they are more “teachable” than boys. As implications of the study, the paper discusses an important understanding of gender‐fair and gender‐congruent pedagogical awareness for developmentally and culturally appropriate practice in early childhood education.

This study was originally presented at the 1999 AERA Annual Meeting, April 19‐23, Montreal, Canada, and was titled Examination of Preschool Teachers’ Biased Perception on Gender Difference.     

IDENTIFICATION AND ASSESSMENT OF TAIWANESE CHILDREN’S CONCEPTIONS OF LEARNING MATHEMATICS

The aim of the present study was to identify children’s conceptions of learning mathematics and to assess the identified conceptions. Children’s conceptions are identified by interviewing 73 grade 5 students in Taiwan. The interviews are analyzed using qualitative data analysis methods, which results in a structure of 5 major conceptions, each having 2 subconceptions: constructivist (interest and understanding), interpretivist (liberty and innovation), objectivist (academic goal and perseverance), nativist (confidence and anxiety (reverse)), and pragmatist (vocational goal and application). The conceptions are assessed with a self-developed questionnaire, titled “the Conception of Learning Mathematics Questionnaire” (CLMQ), which is administered to 513 grade 5 students in Taiwan and examined with a reliability measure, confirmatory factor analysis, and correlations with 2 criteria: mathematics achievement and approaches to learning mathematics. The results show that the CLMQ has desirable internal consistency reliability and construct validity. The conceptions are also sensibly in relation to the 2 criteria, suggesting that the CLMQ is a valid measure for evaluating the quality of children’s learning mathematics in relation to teaching contexts.     

FROM A MARGINAL INSTITUTION TO INSTITUTIONAL MARGINALIZATION. DEVELOPMENTS IN THE TREATMENT OF ‘CRIMINAL’ CHILDREN IN THE DUTCH PRISON SYSTEM. 1833‐1884

In half a century's time, between 1830 and 1880, the common treatment of criminal children in the Netherlands was totally overhauled. After discovering that the criminal child needed a different treatment than its adult companion, it was swiftly concluded that confinement in special prisons on its own wasn't a sufficient guarantee for better results. Next attention was shifted toward those children in the general group of criminal children, who hadn't been convicted by the judge and had been expressly sent in to receive reeducation. In the end, by an interplay of demand and supply, the majority of criminal children was not convicted but sent in to be re‐educated in newly founded reformatories.

This development wasn't initiated by the government but fostered by private enterprise, embodied in the Dutch Prison Society (the ‘Nederlandsch Genootschap tot Zedelijke Verbetering der Gevangenen’).

Although the reported results of the new institutions were positive, their animators lost interest and left for the neighbouring working area of residential care for children in danger who hadn't been tried in court.     

MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION – GOOD FOR BUSINESS BUT NOT FOR THE STATE? THE IB CURRICULUM AND GLOBAL CAPITALISM

ABSTRACT:  In the 1970s and the 1980s, multicultural education spread in many countries. However, in the mid-1980s the golden age of multiculturalism came to an end. Neo-conservative political forces attacked multicultural policies and progressively a neo-liberal discourse pervaded economic and social policies, also affecting national education systems. In contrast, multicultural approaches have emerged with tremendous vigour in the field of business management. Juxtaposing cognitive, emotional and socio-communicative multiculturalism found in organisational studies onto multiculturalism in the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum indicates whether multiculturalism in international schools aims to respond to the needs of global capitalism. The findings show that emotional, cognitive and socio-communicative multiculturalism are seen as essential traits for good performance in transnational corporations, and they are strongly encouraged in the IB curriculum. The relevance of multicultural skills in global management alongside the decay of multiculturalism in public education systems entails a growing educational disparity between lower class and higher class children. A new educational structure in which two differentiated systems – a national system and an international system – emerges and redefines the terms of inequality of opportunities.     

WHAT GOOD IS GRATITUDE IN YOUTH AND SCHOOLS? A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW AND META‐ANALYSIS OF CORRELATES AND INTERVENTION OUTCOMES

The development of gratitude in youth has received increasing attention during the past several years, and gratitude‐based interventions have often been recommended for use in schools. Yet, the empirical status of the correlates of gratitude and the effects of gratitude‐based interventions on youths’ outcomes remains unclear. The present study addressed this ambiguity by systematically reviewing and meta‐analyzing original empirical journal articles investigating gratitude in youth through September 2014 (N = 20). Findings from the meta‐analysis of correlates indicate small‐to‐moderate convergent and discriminant evidence for gratitude as a subjective well‐being indicator in youth, yet other results indicate that gratitude measures have relatively poor test–retest reliability and/or predictive validity and that they have questionable concurrent validity with other gratitude measures. Moreover, findings from the meta‐analysis of intervention outcomes indicate that gratitude‐based interventions are, as a whole, generally ineffective and that much more intervention research is warranted. Implications of these findings for theory, future research, and the practice of school psychology are discussed.     

WILLIAM FAULKNER‘S STYLE IN A ROSE FOR EMILY

William Faulkner was born in New Albany,Mississippi and raised in nearby Oxford where he spent mostof his life.His family came from the old,white upper class.Though in decline in the 2 0 th century,the familyretained some of the old customs and itwas from his own family history,the southern region' s characteristicsof white social status,racial violence,honor codes,and traditional moral values that Faulkner drew the mate-rial for most of his fiction.His first novel Soldier' s Pay was publis…     

PRESERVICE ELEMENTARY TEACHERS’ GROWTH IN KNOWLEDGE OF MODELS IN A SCIENCE CAPSTONE COURSE

We used four different methods to determine the best means of assessing over 200 preservice elementary teachers’ growth in knowledge of models and their use in K-8 classrooms while participating in the Science Capstone course that focused on the unifying themes of models in science. Each assessment method probed a different aspect of models (from growth in scientific use to need for greater emphasis on the role and use of models) and each used a different method of gathering student responses (Likert-type responses to concept maps). We determined that growth in student knowledge was demonstrated by all instruments, but some instruments were more useful than others for determining preservice elementary teachers’ prior knowledge as well as growth in knowledge of models necessary for K-8 teachers.     

THE HAPPY AND SUFFERING STUDENT? ROUSSEAU'S EMILE AND THE PATH NOT TAKEN IN PROGRESSIVE EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT

One of the mantras of progressive education is that genuine learning ought to be exciting and pleasurable, rather than joyless and painful. To a significant extent, Jean‐Jacques Rousseau is associated with this mantra. In a theme of Emile that is often neglected in the educational literature, however, Rousseau stated that “to suffer is the first thing [Emile] ought to learn and the thing he will most need to know.” Through a discussion of Rousseau's argument for the importance of an education in suffering, Avi Mintz contends that the reception of Rousseau by progressives suggests a detrimental misstep in the history of educational thought, a misstep that we should recognize and correct today. We ought to revive the progressive tradition of distinguishing the valuable educational pains from the harmful ones, even if we disagree with the particular types of pain that Rousseau identified as educationally valuable.     

WHO’S NO.1?

娱乐江湖风起云涌,四方寮杰各显才能。Who’s No.1直指全球星头牌,超速搜罗劲爆红人榜。随着日剧《极道鲜师3》的热播,仲间由纪惠的名字再次回到人们的视野,这部轰动一时的作品.第三部首集的收视高达26.4%,也让人,到了主演仲间由纪感的火摄人气。由于在《极道鲜师》中的久美子老师形象深     

你知道“’S”吗?

初一课本里,缩略词“'s”随处可见,同学们往往把它统统看作“是”,以致闹出许多笑话来,如把Li Lei's cat(李雷的猫)说成Li Lei is cat(李雷是描)。“'s”有两种意思,同学们在理解句意时应注意分辨。(1)“'s”是is的缩写,表示“是”、“在”等意思。如:     

A TEACHER’S SURVIVAL KIT FOR EVERYDAY LIVING

TOOTHPICK-reminds us to look for the good qualities in our students. You may be the only teacherwho says something positive to them that day.RUBBER BAND-reminds the teacher that they have to be flexible. Things don't always go the waywe plan, but flexibility will help to work it out.