Klassenwiederholen in PISA-I-Plus: Was lernen Sitzenbleiber in Mathematik dazu?

This study analyses the effects which repeating a class has on ninth grade students’ development of mathematical competency. The following research questions were addressed: How many students repeat grades in the different types of schools? How do students who repeat a grade differ from those who do not in their performance and background characteristics? How much extra mathematics do students repeating a grade learn in one school year? What are the differences between various types of school? Can students with poor mathematics grades in particular profit from repeating a grade? The sample is a sub-sample of the PISA-I-Plus study and comprises N = 360 ninth grade students. The total sample of PISA-I-Plus is representative for all ninth/tenth grade students from the different school types in Germany. The data survey was carried out in the ninth grade and then repeated after the students had repeated a year. The results document differences in the amount of grade repeat quotas between types of school. Furthermore, compared to students not repeating, those repeating a grade had lower mathematics (d = 1.02) and german (d = 1.14) grades, a lower level of mathematical literacy (d = 0.51), and lower test results with regard to basic cognitive abilities (d = 0.32). In terms of the development of mathematical literacy, the students repeating a grade could improve by an average of 23 points (d = 0.27) on the PISA mathematics scale. However, the results identify 38 percent of students repeating a grade who do not make any significant improvement in mathematics or even get worse. A differentiation according to school types shows that students repeating a grade in integrated comprehensive secondary schools and in schools with several educational levels in particular do not, on average, show any noteworthy improvement in their mathematical literacy. The analysis of the school grades received in mathematics shows that students whose mathematics grades are unsatisfactory do not benefit more from repeating a grade than students whose mathematics performance has been rated as being “satisfactory” or better. The article concludes with a discussion of the possible consequences of changing the way in which repetitions of grades are dealt with.     

The Implications of the 'New Literacy Studies' for Literacy Education

This paper deals with the following questions:

• 1 The ‘problem’: what is the ‘Literacy Debate’ and why do such apparently arcane accounts of language and literacy have such a high profile in popular media?
• 2 What are the New Literacy Studies (NLS) and what are the new understandings of language and of literacy on which NLS are based?
• 3 . What are the implications for literacy education?

     

Blended Perspectives: A Global Vision for High-Quality Early Childhood Education

What are the attributes of a high-quality early childhood education program worldwide? An group of experienced early childhood educators that represent diverse international backgrounds attempts to respond to this question by examining six dimensions of quality set forth by the Association for Childhood Education International: (1) philosophies and goals, (2) high-quality physical environments, (3) developmentally appropriate and effective pedagogy and curriculum, (4) attention to basic and special needs, (5) respect for families and communities, (6) professionally prepared teachers and staff, and (7) rigorous program evaluation. The article concludes with an annotated list of references, both in professional publications and online, that examine early childhood education from an international perspective.     

Religious Influences in Public Education: Political and judicial Developments

What can preservice teachers tell us about the impact of culture on literacy? Participants responded to an open-ended survey asking, “How do you think your culture influences what you read and write?” Three themes emerged in their answers: family influence, self-exploration through literacy, and the cultural politics of literacy. Further examination led to three premises about literacy. Findings highlight the importance of students’ literacy history and provide means for teachers to reframe their instruction, based on student voice.     

Cross‐cultural predictors of mathematical talent and academic productivity

The main goal of this paper is to investigate cross‐cultural factors that predict academic ability among mathematically gifted Olympians in Finland and the United States. The following two research problems are formulated: (1) What factors contribute to or impede the development of the Olympians’ mathematic talent? and (2) Do the Olympians fulfill their potential by making contributions to their fields? The results regarding the first research question indicate that the amount of cross‐cultural distinctive factors (computer literacy) is less than the amount of connective factors (school hindrances, effort attributions, negative home influences) contributing to the development of the Mathematic Olympians’ talent. The results regarding the latter research problem show that some factors are culture invariant (socioeconomic status, effort attributions) and some are culture dependent (school hindrances, computer literacy) in relation to both US and Finnish Olympians’ later academic productivity. Results show that high school grade point averages do not necessarily predict academic productivity in Olympians’ careers.     

PowerPoint Presentation Technology and the Dynamics of Teaching

This article presents a wide-ranging analysis of the use of PowerPoint technology in higher education. It addresses four overlapping issues. Has PowerPoint led to more effective learning? What impact has PowerPoint had on the dynamics of classrooms? What are some important aspects of the culture that accompanies PowerPoint? How has PowerPoint affected orality, visuality and literacy? The purpose of our article is to stimulate beneficial conversations about a prevalent educational software technology.     

母亲素养对儿童公民品质形成的影响

从某种程度上说,没有优秀的母亲群体,便没有优秀的公民,更没有优秀的人类.母亲素养对孩子公民品质的影响是不可低估的.母亲素养在潜移默化中影响着孩子公民品质的形成.孩子是国家、社会、家庭的未来,国家、政府、社会对母亲素养的关注就是对孩子健康成长的关心,就是对国家命运与国家未来的关心.     

Teachers’ academic training for literacy instruction

Literacy instruction is a powerful determinant of children’s academic and school outcomes. Teachers’ training for literacy instruction is therefore critical for children’s reading learning. The present study examined the contents of 130 courses related to literacy instruction from a representative national sample of primary teachers’ undergraduate programs (N = 81), to address the following issues: which courses, related to literacy instruction, are included in the curriculum of undergraduate training programs? Which is the weight of the courses in undergraduate programs? What are the contents of the courses? The results show that most critical features of literacy instruction are included in the course contents of most programs (e.g. phonics, theory of literature). Still, some other critical features are underrepresented (reading/writing comprehension skills) or apparently missing (assessment and intervention in reading/writing problems). Moreover, the time allocated to literacy instruction seems to be scarce. Still, wide differences across university programs and courses were found.     

The doctorate unbound: relationality in doctoral literacy research

What do literacy events look and feel like for doctoral students, and how do these events overlap intertextually, materially and relationally? The last three decades have seen a rapid diversification in doctoral education where new opportunities for study, combined with an increasingly competitive landscape, have disrupted what it means to undertake a doctorate, as well as reshaping the literacy practices that comprise doctoral experiences in new ways that have not been fully explored. To understand literacies in new ways, we put to work the construct of literacy-as-event, and engage ideas from assemblage theory, to theorise the relationality of literacy practices. Crucially, our study seeks to examine how literacies are emergent and entangled within a wider network of relations. This article draws on data from interviews involving critical incidents with 12 doctoral students, in order to unpack the literacy moments, beyond the thesis, that comprise students' experiences. Our data suggest that we can understand doctoral literacies, not as bounded occurrences, but as assemblages of practices. We contend that thinking with concepts of assemblage and of event offers new insights into the evolving experiences of doctoral students, as well as offering an enriched understanding of literacies and literacy research.     

Trying to Get Ahead of the Curve: Raising and Understanding Current Themes in New Literacies Practices

Abstract

This article addresses the following questions: What impact does using the theoretical framework of new literacies have on understanding language, literacy, and learning practices today as technologies are constantly being developed and used? What is the state of research in this area? What are some new directions the field might take in order to develop in new ways? The conclusion suggests some possibilities for new research questions and positions in relation to new technologies.     

PISA,TIMSS and Finnish mathematics teaching: an enigma in search of an explanation

Finnish students’ success on all three content domains of each of the four cycles of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has created much international interest. It has also prompted Finnish academics to offer systemic explanations typically linked to the structural qualities of Finnish schooling and teacher education. Less well-known has been the modest mathematics performance of Finnish grade 8 students on the two Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in which Finland has participated, which, when compared with its PISA successes, has created something of an enigma. In this paper, we attempt to shed light on this enigma through analyses of Finnish mathematics classroom practice that draw on two extant data sets—interviews with Finnish teacher educators and video-recordings of sequences of lessons taught on standard topics. Due to the international interest in Finnish PISA success, the analyses focus primarily on the resonance between classroom practice and the mathematical literacy component of the PISA assessment framework. The analyses indicate that Finnish mathematics didactics are more likely to explain the modest TIMSS achievements than PISA successes and allude to several factors thought to be unique to the Finns, which, unrelated to mathematics teaching practices, may be contributory to the repeated Finnish PISA successes. Some implications for policy-borrowing are discussed.     

Integrating technology and reading instruction with children who are deaf or hard of hearing: the effectiveness of the Cornerstones project

In a comparison between the Cornerstones approach--a literature-based, technology-infused literacy project--and an instructional method designated the Typical approach, a mixed-method design was used to answer three research questions: (a) Will children who are deaf or hard of hearing demonstrate differences in beginning reading skills as measured by three outcome variables: Identification of Words in Print (or Word Identification), Word Knowledge, and Story Comprehension? (b) Are there carryover effects from the Cornerstones approach to the use of the Typical approach in subsequent experiments? (c) What is the feasibility of using the Cornerstones approach for literacy instruction? There were significant differences between the Typical and Cornerstones approaches in Word Identification and Story Comprehension in Experiments 1 and 2, though none in Word Knowledge or Story Comprehension in Experiment 3. Teacher feedback provided some evidence for the feasibility of using Cornerstones in the classroom.     

Effective International Non-Governmental Organisation (INGO) and Local Non-Governmental Organisation (LNGO) partnerships in education programmes: a case study of an Irish INGO and its partner LNGOs in Ethiopia

A review of donors’ most recent policies highlights that the term ‘partnership’ is firmly embedded in the lexicon of international development. Most donors now only fund INGO programmes if they are partnering LNGOs. This article considers key questions in relation to such programmes: What is meant by an education partnership? Are there features common to all education partnerships? What are the features of an effective education partnership between an INGO and an LNGO? How do these features enable an effective partnership? Based on a review of international developments, research in the field, and case study data of the experience of a programme implemented in Ethiopia, the appropriateness of a planning, implementation and evaluation tool for education partnerships between INGOs and LNGOs, and the strengths and weaknesses of current programmes is explored.     

Socioscientific issues via controversy mapping: bringing actor-network theory into the science classroom with digital technology

ABSTRACT

What are the current challenges and opportunities for bringing actor-network theory (ANT) into issues-based science education? This article discusses experiences gained from introducing an educational version of ANT deploying digital technology into an upper secondary school science class. This teaching innovation, called controversy mapping, has been pioneered in different contexts of higher education before being adapted to school education. Experimenting with controversy mapping in a Swedish science class raised both conceptual and practical issues. These centre on: (1) how ANT-inspired controversy mapping redesigns the citizenship training enacted by institutionalized approaches to issues-based education as socioscientific issues (SSI); (2) how controversy mapping reconfigures the interdisciplinarity of issues-based science education; and (3) how controversy mapping displaces scientific literacy and knowledge of the nature of science as guiding concerns for teaching in favour of new preoccupations with digital literacy and digital tools and methods as contemporary infrastructures of free and open inquiry.     

Challenging the premises of international policy reviews: an introduction to the review symposium

In 2009, a think tank called the International Alliance of Leading Education Institutes (IALEI) announced the results of a study entitled Climate Change and Sustainable Development: The Response from Education. Intended for a policy audience, the study offered a glimpse into the status of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and an early look at the emergence of Climate Change Education (CCE), in 10 different nations. As with most international reports, the IALEI report provoked many questions, some of which are more broadly relevant to scholarship and practice. This paper introduces a review symposium that addresses three such questions: (1) How coherent is the concept of ESD across national contexts and what conceptual tensions continue to surround ESD and CCE? (2) Can nation-level analyses tell us anything useful about countries where education is not centrally governed? and (3) In light of the evolving relationship between educational research and policy, how should researchers engage with ongoing policy debates?     

‘The way I understood it,it wasn’t meant to be understood’ – when 6th grade reads Franz Kafka

In recent years, literacy problematics and different concepts (Cooperative Learning, Learning Styles) have taken up much of the school’s literature teaching. It has pushed discussions of the professional content into the background. This article takes up the content discussion for renewed debate, but now also with the aim of discussing the literary texts one can present to children in school. The research questions posed are: Which texts can justifiably be presented to children as part of teaching in school? What will happen if 10 to 12-year-old Danish school pupils are presented with classical and canonized texts by authors like Kafka, Proust and Dostoyevsky? How will they react? How will they read the texts? The point of departure for the article is an observational and interview study of a Danish 6th grade’s reading and analysis of classical and canonized adult literature. The study takes its starting point in three concepts rooted in theory, i.e. unpredictability, defamiliarization and entitlement, which are subsequently used to get to grips with the empirical part of the study. The article does not attempt to depict a hard-and-fast picture of all children being equally enthusiastic about the new texts. Instead it presents a picture of a class in which lively literary conversations are conducted. And irrespective of whether the child is one of those who enjoys the texts, whether the children are irritated, challenged or provoked by them, they are never experienced as trivial or irrelevant.     

Why university students choose an international education: A case study in Malaysia

Why has Australian offshore higher education become the educational investment of choice for many students? What benefits do students anticipate from this education? What is the relationship between educational goals and educational experience? To address these questions, this paper draws on findings from empirical research conducted with students studying at an offshore campus of an Australian university in Malaysia. It was found that students typically chose to enroll with the Australian university to receive an international education. Reasons offered for seeking an international education effectively delineated two groups of students. For Malaysian nationals, an international education was valued largely as a passport to employment with (Western) multinational corporations operating in Malaysia. Generally the Malaysian students made positional investments in Australian offshore higher education. For non-Malaysian students an international education was typically selected as an aid to procuring a new identity. These students chose an international education with the hope of expunging provincial outlooks. From international education, they wanted new ways of viewing the world, new habits of thinking and new skills and approaches. They sought a personal metamorphosis. These students, therefore, typically made self-transformative investments in international education. The paper further shows that investment choices influenced the way students experienced their education. Of the two populations distinguished by investment type, students who made self-transformative investments were more likely to respond positively to challenging education experiences associated with studying at the campus.     

FACTORS IMPLICATED IN HIGH MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT

The most recent Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) (2009) mathematical literacy results provide evidence that in Western English-speaking countries, including Australia, the gender gap in achievement appears to be widening in favour of males. In the study reported in this article, the aim was to explore the effects of gender, school type (a measure of socioeconomic background), school learning setting and geographic location on mathematics performance amongst the highest achievers (top 2 %) in the grade 12 Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) mathematics subjects based on results reported in a metropolitan newspaper. The analyses revealed that over the period 2007–2009, males, students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds and those attending metropolitan schools predominated amongst the highest achievers in all three VCE mathematics subjects. Students in single-sex settings, particularly males, were also over-represented. For each factor, the dominance was more pronounced as the level of difficulty of the mathematics subject increased.     

Reflecting on international educative experiences: Developing cultural competence in preservice early childhood educators

ABSTRACT

Given urgent need for culturally competent early childhood educators and the strategic encouragement by colleges for students to travel internationally, this analysis focuses on the question: What is the relationship between international experiences and preservice early childhood educators’ cultural competence? More specifically, three questions were examined: 1) What theories are applied to explain this relationship? 2) What pedagogical strategies are most frequently used during international experiences to develop cultural competence among preservice educators? and 3) What evidence is provided that preservice educators changed (if at all) as a consequence of international experiences? PRISMA analysis of the literature from 2002 to 2016 revealed pedagogical strategies such as immersion and critical reflection led to preservice educators’ self-reports of gains in personal and professional growth, cultural awareness, cultural sensitivity, and cultural competence. Faculty using international travel to develop cultural competence should consider engaging preservice educators in higher order thinking assignments before, during, and after international experiences.     

An instructional intervention's impact on the science and literacy achievement of culturally and linguistically diverse elementary students

This research examined the impact of the first‐year implementation of an instructional intervention to promote achievement and equity in science and literacy for culturally and linguistically diverse elementary students. The research addressed three areas: (a) overall science and literacy achievement, (b) achievement gaps among demographic subgroups, and (c) comparison with national (NAEP) and international (TIMSS) samples of students. The research involved 1,523 third‐ and fourth‐grade students at six elementary schools in a large urban school district. Significance tests of mean scores between pre‐ and posttests indicate statistically significant increases on all measures of science and literacy at both grade levels. While achievement gaps widened with third graders on some of the measures, the gaps tended to narrow with fourth graders. The results based on item‐by‐item comparisons with NAEP TIMSS samples of students indicated overall positive performance of the students in the research at the end of the school year. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 42: 857–887, 2005