DETERMINANTS OF GIRLS' CHOICE OF MATHEMATICS

Questionnaires concerning the self‐concept and evaluations of maths and French, as well as an intelligence test, were administered to secondary school students more than six months before they had to decide whether or not to take maths courses during the following school year. At the same time their school grades for maths and French were recorded. Students’ decisions were related to self‐concept, evaluations of maths and French, and aptitude measures, by means of discriminant analyses. Results indicated that sex, in combination with students’ (positive) evaluations of mathematics, their achievements in mathematics and their intellectual abilities, as well as a focus on French and self‐concept of French abilities, could adequately predict their choice of mathematics courses. No interaction effects were found between sex and the other predictor variables. These results suggest that stimulating more girls to choose mathematics during their secondary school years should focus upon achievement, self‐concept and evaluations of mathematics in comparison with other options.     

Consistency of report card grades and external assessments in a Canadian province

The study investigated how well report card grades communicate to students and parents that state educational standards are being met, standards that are objectively measured by infrequently administered mandated assessments. Data sources were report card grades and external assessment scores for 2006–09 for Ontario Canada. The information that parents and students received about student performance from report cards and external assessments were similar (r _s  = .47) to the r = .40–.60 range previously reported. Teachers assigned higher grades than external assessments warranted, even after a major source of construct irrelevant variance in report card grades (teacher ratings on multiple scales measuring student effort and school commitment) was controlled. The relationship of grades to assessment scores was robust across genders, school district types (Public versus Catholic) and language (English and French). Agreement of assessments was higher for grade 6 than for grade 3 and for Writing than for Reading or Mathematics. Report cards provided information about students’ future achievement that was accurate and delivered up to 2 years prior to the administration of external assessments. Seventy to 80% of students who reached the provincial achievement standard on one or both prior report cards were successful on the subsequent external assessment, compared to 30–50% of students who failed to meet the report card standard at least once.     

French-Arab students and verbal intellectual performance: Do they really suffer from a negative intellectual stereotype?

Stigmatized group membership leads to deleterious consequences for individuals. More specifically, according to stereotype threat literature, the awareness of negative intellectual stereotypes can impair stereotyped group members’ performance. Based on this framework, two studies were designed to explain the lower grades obtained by French-Arab students, compared to French students. An Implicit Association Test (Study 1) revealed that native French students automatically expressed a negative stereotype regarding French-Arab students’ intellectual abilities. The second study (Study 2) examined whether this negative stereotype could alter French-Arab students’ intellectual performance in a threatening context. As expected, French-Arab students underperformed when the verbal task was presented as a measure of intellectual ability, compared to French students. When the task was presented as non-diagnostic, their performance equaled that of French students. The discussion herein addressed implications of these results in terms of discrimination against the French-Arab population.     

中法信任文化的差异及其对跨文化交际的影响——中国留法学生情况分析

以信任文化论为理论基础就中法信任文化的特点进行了比较,并通过定性分析方法就中法信任文化的差异对5位中国留法学生跨文化交际的影响进行了研究。研究结果表明,（1）中法信任文化的矛盾凸显在跨文化交际的各个层面;（2）留学生对本国信任文化的无意识和对法国信任文化的不理解阻碍了跨文化信任的建立。因此,在跨文化交际中,应合理运用跨文化交际的各种能力创造有利条件减弱两种信任文化的冲突,进而促进跨文化信任的产生。     

Approaches employed by sixth-graders to compare rival solutions in socio-scientific decision-making tasks

The present study explores the approaches employed by sixth-grade students to compare rival solutions in socio-scientific decision-making situations. Data were collected using three specially developed open-ended tasks. Two of them were administered to 96 students in a written form while the third was administered to 20 of these students through individual follow-up interviews. Our findings suggest that students failed to consistently apply coherent decision-making approaches. Instead, they employed a diversity of approaches ranging from non-compensatory strategies that avoided tradeoffs between advantages and disadvantages of rival solutions, to strategies that sought to synthesize these two aspects, though in an invalid manner. We demonstrate that these strategies are the outcome of a number of prevalent reasoning difficulties.     

Latent Profiles of Reading and Language and Their Association With Standardized Reading Outcomes in Kindergarten Through Tenth Grade

The objective of this study was to determine the latent profiles of reading and language skills that characterized 7,752 students in kindergarten through tenth grade and to relate the profiles to norm-referenced reading outcomes. Reading and language skills were assessed with a computer-adaptive assessment administered in the middle of the year and reading outcome measures were administered at the end of the year. Three measures of reading comprehension were administered in third through tenth grades to create a latent variable. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was conducted on the reading and language measures and related to reading outcomes in multiple regression analyses. Within-grade multiple regressions were subjected to a linear step-up correction to guard against false-discovery rate. LPA results revealed five to six profiles in the elementary grades and three in the secondary grades that were strongly related to standardized reading outcomes, with average absolute between-profile effect sizes ranging from 1.10 to 2.53. The profiles in the secondary grades followed a high, medium, and low pattern. Profiles in the elementary grades revealed more heterogeneity, suggestive of strategies for differentiating instruction.     

Supplemental Instruction Online: As Effective as the Traditional Face-to-Face Model?

Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a well-recognized model of academic assistance with a history of empirical evidence demonstrating increases in student grades and decreases in failure rates across many higher education institutions. However, as college students become more accustomed to learning in online venues, what is not known is whether an SI program offered online could benefit students similarly to SI sessions that occur in face-to-face settings. The in-person (traditional) SI program at California State University San Marcos has demonstrated increases in grades and lower fail rates for courses being supported in science and math. Students enrolled in four biology courses who participated in online SI received increases in academic performance similar to the students in the courses who attended traditional SI. Both the online and traditional SI participating students had higher course grades and lower fail rates as compared to students who did not participate in either form of SI. Self-selection, as measured by past cumulative college grade point average, did not differ between students who attended either form of SI or who did not attend. Student perceptions of online SI were generally positive and appeared to offer an alternative path to receive this valuable academic assistance for some students. Overall, results are promising that the highly effective traditional model can be translated to an online environment.     

暗夜行路,天又黎明——浅论《约翰·克里斯朵夫》与东西方美学融合

本文试就法国作家罗曼·罗兰的长篇小说《约翰·克里斯朵夫》中的西方美学和艺术观,傅雷译介到中国后对中国产生的影响,以及译介过程中所体现的东西方美学差异作简单论述。     

Choice of helpers,types of problems and sex of helpers of college students

A study was conducted to determine what sort of problems beset college students and whether they select different helpers for different problems. A two page questionnaire listing 20 common problems, and 18 different helpers was administered to 80 male and 155 female students at Kuwait University. It was found that males and females differed significantly on six problems (family, self-confidence, behavior, death, work and grades). Different helpers were selected for different types of problems, and for 18 of the 20 problems, males and females chose a same-sex helper. The results are explained within the context of the Arab culture and the implications for counseling are discussed.Paper presented at the meeting of the Fourteenth International Round Table for the Advancement of Counselling, Helsinki, Finland, July 1–5, 1990.     

Teaching Huygens in the rue Huygens: Introducing the history of 17th-century mathematics in a junior secondary school

This article gives an account of the teaching of some aspects of 17th-century mathematics in a French junior high school. The mathematics was taught in the context of interdisciplinary, or thematic, studies focusing the attention of all students in different subjects upon a specific period in French history. Extracts of original works by Leibniz and Huygens were read; connections between mathematics and technology were made; some historical puzzles were investigated; and a variety of mathematical problems arising out of the texts were worded upon. Class reactions were uniformly enthusiastic.This paper was originally presented in French to ICME 6 (International Congress on Mathematics Education) in Budapest during 1988. It was translated by Chris Weeks and was first published in 1990 in a publication of the British Mathematical Association — History in the Mathematics Classroom, John Fauvel (ed.).     

Student Authoritarianism and Teacher Authoritarianism as Factors in the Determination of Student Performance and Attitudes

Recent investigations designed to elucidate the teacher behaviors which are facilitative of positive student attitudes and increased student performance have presented inconsistent results. It is hypothesized that the inconsistency between studies may be due to an interaction between teacher characteristics and student characteristics in the determination of the dependent variables involved. To test this hypothesis, teachers and students in a West Coast high school were administered a revised version of the California F-Scale (a measure of authoritarianism). High- and Low-F groups of both teachers and students were selected, and students’ grades and attitudes toward their teachers were observed. It was found that High-F students exposed to Low-F teachers showed particularly low attitudes toward their teachers and particularly low grades. Data for other combinations of student and teacher characteristics were essentially equivalent.     

论法语教学中的跨文化意识

语言所传递的文化信息，是外语教学内容中不可忽视的重要组成部分。法语文化的特性决定了在法语教学的过程中培养学生的语用能力和培养他们的语言能力同等重要。法语教师不仅要传授语言知识，更重要的是要培养学生的跨文化意识，进而提高他们运用法语进行跨文化交际的能力。跨文化意识的培养应贯穿于法语教学的始终。     

试论旅游法语人才跨文化交际能力培养

影响我国旅游市场法语从业人员服务水平的因素,主要是跨文化交际的障碍。提高旅游法语专业学生跨文化交际能力尤为重要。高职旅游院校的法语教学必须渗透法国文化,改选教学手段,加强国际合作教学,并在教学中注重学生综合素质的提升,才能为我国旅游业培养高质量的服务人才。     

Trends of progression of student level of reasoning and generalization in numerical and figural reasoning approaches in pattern generalization

This study explored progression of students’ level of reasoning and generalization in numerical and figural reasoning approaches across grades and in different pattern generalization types. An instrument that included four figural patterns was administered to a sample of 1232 students from grades 4 to 11 from five private schools. The findings suggest that there was progressive development in the level of reasoning and generalization in each reasoning approach across clusters of grades. The level of reasoning and generalization in figural approach was higher than that for numerical approach in each grade. In addition, the level of reasoning and generalization for each approach and in each grade was not limited to one level but to several levels. The type of generalization influenced the progression of students’ level of reasoning and generalization in each approach.     

Attitudes of intellectually gifted youth toward school

This article focuses on the attitudes of intellectually gifted students toward school. The average WISC‐R IQ was 127, the average Stanford Binet was 140. The School Attitude Measure (SAM) was administered to 119 students, grades four through nine, participating in an enrichment program. The SAM scores for this group of students were well above average; most were significantly higher than the standardization sample. The results are discussed.     

A survey of antecedents of attitudes toward science

Relationships among attitudes of students toward science, as measured by the WASP (Wareing Attitudes Toward Science Protocol), perceived antecedents of such attitudes, and class achievement or performance indicated by reported grades were investigated for a survey sample of 1,740 students in 87 high school science classes from five communities. Additionally, students' self-reported number of tests administered in a given course, perceived rewards, degree of stress, and internal structure of the course were examined as potential predictor variables. Results indicate a significant correspondence between report card grades, degree of structure, degree of stress, gender, degree of rewards, number of tests, and students' attitudes toward science.     

Fluency and comprehension of narrative texts in Turkish students in grades 4 through 8

The present study attempted to extend our knowledge of the role of reading fluency in contributing to reading comprehension among Turkish students in grades 4 through 8. One hundred students at each grade level were administered assessments of reading fluency, word recognition automaticity and prosody, and silent reading comprehension. Word recognition automaticity was found to be a significant predictor of comprehension at all grade levels tested. Prosody predicted comprehension at all grades levels except grade 4. Regression analyses at each grade level indicate that, except for grade 4, word recognition automaticity and prosody, together contribute to the prediction of reading comprehension. The magnitude of fluency’s prediction of comprehension ranged from approximately a quarter to a third of comprehension. The results are discussed in terms of policy and instructional changes that may be considered for reading instruction for Turkish students.     

Cognate Awareness in French Immersion Students: Contributions to Grade 2 Reading Comprehension

Cognate awareness is the ability to recognize the cognate relationship between words in two etymologically related languages. The current study examined the development of cognate awareness and its contribution to French (second language) reading comprehension among Canadian French immersion children. Eighty-one students were tested at the end of Grade 1 and again at the end of Grade 2. Children were administered a cognate awareness task in French, in which they were asked to decide whether a French word had a cognate in English. Overall, performance on the cognate awareness task was significantly above chance at both time points, and it improved overtime. Thus, for the majority of the participants, cognate awareness was evident as early as first grade. Regressions revealed that cognate awareness measured in Grades 1 and 2 made a significant contribution to Grade 2 French reading comprehension, beyond multiple controls. The results of the study suggest that cognate awareness is a unique aspect of second-language reading comprehension in young bilingual children.     

Are there differences in ethnic majority and minority adolescents’ friendships preferences and social influence with regard to their academic achievement?

Research has established that adolescents both befriend peers based on their academic achievement and adjust their own achievement to that of their friends’ over time. However, these processes may be different for ethnic minority students, because some of them may adhere to an oppositional culture that rejects striving for academic success. We examine respective differences between self-identified ethnic minority and majority students using longitudinal social network analysis (stochastic actor-oriented models) in a sample of 1175 students (aged 13) from 12 grade-level networks in Germany secondary schools. Among the students, we find that academically successful students in particular prefer friends with high grades, but that students with poor grades exert more social influence on their friends to adjust their performance. Moreover, while minority students are indeed less inclined to select friends with higher grades, both ethnic majority and minority youth prefer friends with similar academic achievement and are similarly influenced by their friends’ achievement. However, social influence is stronger from same-ethnic than from inter-ethnic friends. In sum, there is mixed evidence for an oppositional culture among ethnic minority students in our sample.     

GRADE LEVEL,SEX, AND SELECTED ASPECTS OF TEST-WISENESS1

Measures of four selected aspects of test-wiseness (TW) were constructed for use in grades 5 through 11, and administered to students in two school systems. In each case the grade effects were significant at the .05 level, with a linear trend indicated. There was no evidence of sex, or sex by grade interaction effects.