La Femme dans le Monde de la Science et de la Technique∗

The author imagines a television programme relating to the education, training and professional life of a young woman engineer and she points out the differences with her male schoolmates. She suggests that the Associations of Women Engineers should undertake actions towards grants to help them to choose scientific and engineering studies and to convince them to make a career in new technical fields of activity. At the same time, employers should become aware that women engineers are a plus in the firm of the future.     

La gestion des contre-arguments dans le texte argumentatif ecrit chez les elèves de 8 à 12 ans et les adultes compétents

The objective of this research is to determine to what extend children from 8 to 12–13 years old become able to compose coherent counter-argumentative texts. 116 children and 26 quasi expert adults were asked to write a text beginning and ending with 2 imposed counterargumentative sentences. In that specific metalinguistic situation, pupils from 8 to 10 hesitate what text type (whether argumentative or not) to produce. When 10–11 years old, they seem aware the situation needs an argumentative response, but that does not necessary enable them to counter-argue. By children from 11–12 years old and adults, texts are most frequently counter-argumentative. It is proposed to explain this evolution by a progressive mastery of a possible argumentative prototypical text schema which could enable pupils to understand the 2 imposed sentences as knots to be expanded from a complexe argumentative text, and, in the same way, to compose this text. This explanative hypothesis is apparently sustained by the positive effects on the performances of 40 pupils from 8 to 12–13 years old of didactic interventions intended to make them sensible to argumentative text properties.     

La socialisation des jeunes dans les villes du Tiers-Monde — le cas de l'Afrique

Résumé Les villes du Tiers-Monde sont des laboratoires du changement et de la formation. A partir de la situation de l'Afrique, on étudie ici les processus de socialisation des jeunes dans un environnement où se cotoient tradition et modernité. Les facteurs conduisant à l'exode, les différents circuits de prise en charge des migrants, la nécessité d'affronter la nouvelle vie dans un milieu complexe et souvent impitoyable, créent une situation et un processus d'apprentissage de la vie et du métier féconds d'initiatives et d'innovations. Cet entrainement à la vie est assuré par un réseau informel tissé par des nouvelles interactions sociales et par l'action des masses média.

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Third-World cities constitute quasi-laboratories for the study of change and learning. The present article takes the African situation of merging traditional and modern elements as its starting point and analyzes young people's socialization processes in this context. As a consequence of the activities of migrant organizations, the more general circumstances leading to migration and the fact that people are faced with a new lifestyle in a complex and often merciless environment, an atmosphere is created where learning for life and vocational training abound with initiative and innovation. This learning for life is borne by the informal fabric of new social interactions and the influence of the mass media.

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Zusammenfassung Städte der Dritten Welt stellen in gewisser Weise Forschungslaboratorien dar, in denen Veränderungen und Bildungsprozesse beobachtet werden können. Vor dem Hintergrund der gegenwärtigen Situation Afrikas werden im nachfolgenden Artikel Sozialisierungsprozesse von Jugendlichen in einem Umfeld untersucht, in dem Tradition und Moderne miteinander verschmelzen. Aus der Arbeit der diversen Hilfsorganisationen für Migranten, den allgemeinen Faktoren, die zu Migrationsbewegungen führen, und der Notwendigkeit für den Einzelnen, sich einem neuen Leben in einem komplexen und oft schonungslosen Milieu zu stellen, ergeben sich initiativ- und innovationsreiche Lernprozesse für Leben und Beruf des Einzelnen. Diese Bildung für das Leben wird durch die informelle Struktur neuer sozialer Interaktionen und durch die Einwirkung der Massenmedien gewährleistet.

     

L'Observation de classes et le paradoxe de l'observateur

In this paper, we try to determine the knowledge which can be drawn from classroom observations, and we consider what are the limitations and the powers of the different ways of using them. The most important limitations come from the observer's paradox (to look for what happens in a natural situation without any observer), and the subjectivity of witnesses. We analyze various pseudo-scientific methods and see that they have more inconveniences than the à l'oeil nu observation.In spite of these limitations, methodical observations (with video-tape, for instance) are a prodigious source of information for teacher-training and for educational research.     

La promotion de la mobilité dans les sciences de l'ingénieur en France et en Allemagne

Selon la Loi-cadre de l'enseignement supérieur de la République Fédérale d'Allemagne, les universités doivent encourager la coopération universitaire internationale, et notamment européenne, ainsi que les échanges entre les universités allemandes et étrangères.     

Organisation du produit de deux ensembles: Influence des interactions sociales entre pairs sur les procédures de résolution et les performances individuelles

This study investigates the efficacy of socio-cognitive confrontations between children upon their individual abilities to solve problems involving the organization of products of two sets. The focus is more precisely on the analysis of both the effects of interaction setting conditions, and the mechanisms that may yield progress. 67 5 to 6-year-old children were assigned to a control group in which they had to work alone and two experimental groups in which they had to work in pairs on two problems. The difference between the two experimental groups was where each child sat in relation to the other and to the matrix they had to fill. Results show higher proportions of progress and of changes of problem-solving procedures among children belonging to the experimental groups. The role played by the interaction setting conditions is also evidenced. Moreover, the «destabilization» of solving procedures appears to be a determining element for the efficacy of peer interactions. Finally in the discussion, we attempt at showing how a solving processes analysis enables us to understand better how activities carried out in socio-cognitive confrontation and individual cognitive activities can be articulated.     

La dictée et la rédaction de contes entre enfants du même age

In the pedagogical experiment reported below, carried out in a Kindergarden class with children aged between 5 and 6, the children themselves carried out reciprocal dictation and composing of tales. Some classroom observations show the conditions under which this task has been carried out. The following aspects have been analysed in connection whith collective reading, dictation and self-correction.     

La valeur de l'etude de l'IEA sur le rendement en mathematique pour la politique educative: La Belgique

Sans résumé     

La Socialisation Professionnelle des Instituters et les Pratiques Pédagogiques

Teachers’ professional socialisation is a total process which develops or modifies teachers’ behaviour during their professional life. Institutional teacher training is understood to be an integrated part of this socialisation process. Teaching practice is another integrated systematic part of this process. The early years of teaching practice have fundamental importance in the integration of pedagogic and educational behaviour. This socialisation process occurs in different ways and to varying degrees among teachers, resulting in certain stages being reached in teaching practice. These ‘steps’ are influenced by at least two types of factors: (i) the nature of models teaching training transmitted during institutional teacher training; (ii) the social composition of students and the institutional styles existing in the teaching practice.     

Lusage de la compensation additionner-soustraire et multiplier-diviser par les eleves de onze ans

A class of 32 11-year-olds (grade 4) was given three written tests, each followed by an interview. As students of grades 1–3, these children used text-books with numerous instances of explicit use of inverse operations (e.g. 3×2=6, 6:2=3, 6:3=2). The purpose of the research was to examine the extent to which these students understood and used relations between inverse operations in order to simplify computations. Samples of results:

A majority (21 students) was not able to find the value of 28+75?75 or 14×15:14 without performing all the operations.

About half fell in the preprogrammed traps writing e.g. that 100?19+100 equals 19 or 3×3/4?3/4 equals 3.

     

Le comportement de management des professeurs ou l'organisation et le contrôle des classes

This paper describes teacher, management of pupil behaviour and learning tasks in classrooms. Four categories of teacher behaviour were observed: maintenance of class discipline, designation of pupils, organization, and control of pupil activities. Results show that teachers usually see a directive‐managerial style which may be classified as follows: directive‐authoritarian style, directive‐monitoring style, directive‐methodical style and directive‐apathetic style.     

Comportements et attentes de formation continue chez les enseignants du secondaire

How do teachers in the second cycle regard in‐service training and what are their expectations? This article proposes to describe their attitudes on the basis of a postal survey carried out among a representative sample of teachers in lower and upper secondary schools and LEP (upper‐secondary vocational schools) in France. The survey brought in 2106 usable replies, of which a representative group of 988 replies have been analysed.

First it was noted that three‐quarters of the teachers had in the past had some in‐service training. It consisted of self‐training, done especially by reading and fairly short courses, bearing essentially on knowledge of the main subject and on the methods and techniques of teaching.

More than two‐thirds of the sample knew about academic plans of training, though in most Académies it was the first year of their existence. Half of them enrolled for at least one of the proposed courses and 60% of these candidates were accepted.

After multidimensional analysis of the expectations of contents, five concepts of training can be identified:

1. a traditional concept of didactic training, centred on the contents and methods of teaching, is widely shared by all the teachers;

2. a concept based on the ‘modern’ contribution of didactics, the pupil‐teacher relation and collaboration inside the institution;

3. a concept centred on pupils’ knowledge, external collaboration and innovation, (like the preceding one, this concept is shared above all by women, the young, vocational and general subjects teachers in the LEP);

4. a concept centred on interests not directly linked to classroom activities but related to teaching. It is especially held by vocational teachers in the LEP.

5. a concept centred on personal interests not directly linked to the teaching profession, especially held by men, the young, LEP teachers, auxiliary teachers and LEP teachers in technological teaching.

Teachers in the classical and modern upper secondary level and even more so the agrégé teachers are the ones who share the least in these concepts, except for the first one.     

La Formation de l'Ingenieur Européen: le point de vue des Grandes Ecoles Suisses

Although scientific and technical knowledge has grown considerably, the duration of studies in engineering of architecture has remained more or less constant for all institutes of technology and universities. Therefore, students have to specialize—to make premature and restricting choices for their careers—which is contrary to the objectives of a general education. In these circumstances, solutions must be found. At the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne, it was decided to give, at the undergraduate and graduate level, increased emphasis to the basic body of knowledge needed by an engineer or an architect during all their professional activity. The needs of the practice, regarding the deepening of knowledge in a specific field as well as the widening of knowledge in other fields, must therefore be satisfied by continuous education. This is structured in Switzerland according to the following three points: formation through research (Ph.D); postgraduate studies, following specific programmes for the different fields; proficiency retraining courses developed in close collaboration with the professional associations. For the European engineer, the consequences of this development should be rules guaranteeing the comparability of university-level diplomas conferred by different European institutions (duration of study, entrance qualifications, general aim of education). Some international equivalence is needed particularly with respect to postgraduate studies, in order to facilitate the exchange of teachers at a high level, and to increase the mobility of engineers and architects. The establishment of a European framework for postgraduate studies (acknowledged by all), the co-ordination of programmes, and the exchange of teachers, are the major objectives of this harmonisation.     

Les Effets de Coopération et de Feedback par les Compagnons de Classe sur la Performance Orthographique

European Journal of Psychology of Education -