What Can the Study of Genetics Offer to Educators?

This article explores the potential contribution of modern genetic methods and findings to education. It is familiar to hear that the “gene” for this or that behavior has been discovered, or that certain skills are “highly heritable.” Can this help educators? To explore this question, we describe the methods used to relate genetic variation to individual differences in high‐level behaviors such as academic skills and educational achievement. These methods include twin studies and genome‐wide association studies. We address the key question of what genetic data imply about the ability of educators to optimize educational outcomes for children across the range of abilities.     

Can Schools Survive in the Age of the Web?

英语时事类文章以其丰富的内容(涉及社会、科学、文化、体育、金融、生活、生物等方方面面)、多样的体裁(记叙文、说明文、议论文、广告等)以及鲜明的特性(新闻性、知识性等),多年来深受命题专家的青睐,牢牢占据各地高考试题的一席之地.通过阅读英语时事类文章,同学们不但可以随时了解天下大事,激发学习英语的兴趣,而且可以学到许多生动鲜活的英语语言知识,从而提高综合应用英语的能力.     

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.

     

Using Multimedia Graphic Organizer Software in the Prewriting Activities of Primary School Students: What Are the Benefits?

The use of multimedia graphic organizer software and how it influenced the prewriting process for primary school children were evaluated. An analysis of writing samples generated by second-grade students with diverse writing abilities was carried out. Students were given two opportunities to participate in prewriting activities—one without and one with the use of multimedia graphic organizer software. The results indicated that the use of multimedia graphic organizer software can provide some benefits to writing for elementary school children.     

Can Rural Community Initiatives Improve Learning Outcomes in Local Primary Schools?

We evaluate the impact of initiatives of a rural community in Bukedea District (Eastern Uganda) aimed at improving learning at their local primary school (School A) between 2016 and 2018. We focus on how these community-driven initiatives influenced enrollment, survival, infrastructure development and academic outcomes (test scores) at the local school. As a natural control, we use a primary school (School B) where such initiatives were non-existent. Using methodologies developed by UWEZO, we also collect and analyze household socio-economic data from both communities to develop possible explanations for the observed outcomes. The approaches, achievements and lessons described in this study may inform efforts to improve learning environments at rural primary schools through community involvement.     

Integrated Science Education in Primary Schools in Rome: the Research Project of the ‘University‐School’ Group

In response to global climate change, loss of biodiversity, and the immense human impact on the carrying capacity of the earth systems, attention has been given to sustainable development worldwide. In this paper, we explore the emerging field of sustainability science within the context of the socio‐cultural milieu of Malawi, a sub‐Saharan African country. Through interviews in vernacular languages and observations in the field, our research explores how traditional agriculture practices of African elders may contribute to the sustainability of the environment and culture in Africa. Findings indicate that traditional farmers and food preservationists choose to practice indigenous ways of living with nature to live sustainably in a globalized economy. Further discussion elucidates how merging worldviews and hybridized knowledge and languages can be leveraged to create a third space for dialogue and curriculum development by connecting indigenous ways of living with Eurocentric science.     

Pedagogical renewal in sub‐Saharan Africa: the case of Uganda

There has been an unprecedented interest in reforming pedagogical practices in sub‐Saharan Africa in the past two decades. The reform efforts are often characterised by a move away from teacher‐centred instruction to child‐centred pedagogy (CCP). Uganda has been no exception to this trend as the new curriculum adopted the principles of CCP and efforts were made to popularise and institutionalise the reformed pedagogies in primary schools. Based on a fieldwork study in selected schools in Kampala, this article seeks to explore teachers’ views on CCP, their classroom practices, and the perceived challenges in implementing CCP. The article suggests that the implementation of CCP in Ugandan classrooms has not occurred in the ways intended by policy‐makers and offers some explanations for the discrepancy between policy and practice. It also raises questions with regard to the appropriateness of CCP as the most suitable pedagogy in African classrooms.     

Engaging Primary School Students in Mathematics: Can iPads Make a Difference?

Research on the impact of the integration of technologies such as iPads on primary students’ attitudes and engagement in mathematics is limited. Further, there have been claims that teachers’ pedagogical choices can strongly influence the effectiveness of iPads for engaging students in mathematics. This paper presents an investigation of the influence of teaching and learning mathematics with iPads on students’ attitudes and engagement in mathematics. The participants in this study were students in a large urban primary school, implementing an iPad program for teaching and learning across the curriculum. Surveys with five-point Likert-type items were used to measure students’ attitudes to mathematics. Students from Years 2 to 6 completed the survey at the beginning and end of two consecutive school years. Survey results suggested that iPad use in mathematics has the potential to impact positively on students’ attitudes to mathematics. At the end of the second year of the study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers and students. The interview responses confirmed that iPads had a positive influence on students’ engagement and attitudes to mathematics, and that the pedagogical approaches utilised by teachers for embedding iPads in their mathematics lessons contributed positively to these outcomes.     

The Democratization of Schools and the Politics of Teachers’ Work in South Africa

As the South African state begins to democratize, so questions are raised about how this process might be mediated by schools and teachers or how schools’ and teachers’ practices might inform the wider process of social change. This paper explores these issues through an examination of how teachers sought to alter relations of authority and the nature of their work within schools, and how these have interacted with new managerial and state initiatives. It examines the conditions of teachers’ work under apartheid, the challenge to these by the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union and the struggles in schools over changing relations of authority and teachers’ work in the crucial transition years of 1990‐1997. It argues that alternative conceptions and practices were developed and institutionalized. This paper uses the results of both a 3 year longitudinal study and research conducted on teacher appraisal with the teachers’ union.     

Exploring Opportunities and Challenges in Parent–School Partnerships in Special Needs Schools in the Gauteng Province,South Africa

In this study, opportunities and challenges in parent–school partnerships in special needs schools were explored as the researchers’ noted that parents were usually reluctant to participate in curricular planning, learning support provisioning and the development of Individual Education Support Plans. Three focus group interviews were conducted with parents and data were analysed for recurrent themes within an interpretive framework. The challenges identified were related to family emotional stability, socio-economic constraints and the stigma of attending a special educational needs (SEN) school. Since parents’ experience trauma when placing their children in a SEN school, they turn towards the school for emotional support and guidance. However, parents felt disconnected from the school by inadequate teacher knowledge of family circumstances, insufficient opportunities for interaction amongst families and limited school communication to parents. These challenges led to misconceptions by parents and subsequent marginalizing of many families from the school, which further exacerbated their child’s learning problems. These challenges provided opportunities for SEN schools to develop guidelines for improving parent school partnerships.     

Can the History of Science Contribute to Modelling in Physics Teaching?

A characterization of the modelling process in science is proposed for science education, based on Mario Bunge’s ideas about the construction of models in science. Galileo’s Dialogues are analysed as a potentially fruitful starting point to implement strategies aimed at modelling in the classroom in the light of that proposal. It is argued that a modelling process for science education can be conceived as the evolution from phenomenological approaches towards more representational ones, emphasizing the role of abstraction and idealization in model construction. The shift of reference of theories—from sensible objects to conceptual objects—and the black-box models construction process, which are both explicitly presented features in Galileo’s Dialogues, are indicated as highly relevant aspects for modelling in science education.     

Views of Nature and the Human-Nature Relations: An Analysis of the Visual Syntax of Pictures about the Environment in Greek Primary School Textbooks—Diachronic Considerations

This paper explores the function of the visual syntax of images in Greek primary school textbooks. By using a model for the formal analysis of the visual material, which will allow us to disclose the mechanisms through which meanings are manifested, our aim is to investigate the discursive transition relating to the view of nature and the human-nature relationship between two series of natural science textbooks. The model is applied to a total of 635 pictures; 434 coming from the old series of textbooks introduced in the early 1980s and 201 from the new introduced in 2006. The results show that a) no differences in the codes of the visual representation of nature or human-nature relationship were recorded between the two series of textbooks, b) the environmental rhetoric mediated by the pictorial material of the textbooks appears closer to its lay counterpart than to scientific rhetoric, c) both series of textbooks favor a viewer-picture relation which diverges from the epistemological (subject/object) ideas of the romantic worldview and comes closer to the baroque one that depicts the world as non-linear and disconnected, while gives more freedom to the viewer to proceed to subjective interpretations. Thus, we assert that the baroque approach adopted by both series of textbooks does not aim at the initiation of students to the highly conventionalized ways of expression, and ultimately to the formalized and scientific rhetoric. On the contrary, within a constructionist context, the textbooks’ visual mode allows students to equally share power with a quite familiar world.     

Breadth and Balance? The Impact of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies on Art in the Primary School

This paper presents the findings of a small-scale qualitative research enquiry into some of the effects on the primary school art curriculum of the introduction of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies in 1988 and 1999. Five art curriculum co-ordinators and an additional part time specialist art teacher, drawn from five inner city primary schools in two London boroughs, were the subject of a semi-structured interview designed to elicit data on the broad changes in primary art education. Key external factors were the introduction of the Art National Curriculum in 1992, its subsequent development and its current condition during a period of ‘relaxation’ of the Orders, following the government's introduction of the Literacy and Numeracy Strategies. Little official attention has been given to other, perhaps unintended, outcomes of the latter strategy across the curriculum. This study gives an insight into the experience and perceptions of some of those carrying the responsibility for leadership of art in school in the primary phase.     

Science and Technology Education in the STES Context in Primary Schools: What Should It Take?

Striving for sustainability requires a paradigm shift in conceptualization, thinking, research and education, particularly concerning the science-technology-environment-society (STES) interfaces. Consequently, ‘STES literacy’ requires the development of students’ question asking, critical, evaluative system thinking, decision making and problem solving capabilities, in this context, via innovative implementable higher-order cognitive skills (HOCS)-promoting teaching, assessment and learning strategies. The corresponding paradigms shift in science and technology education, such as from algorithmic teaching to HOCS-promoting learning is unavoidable, since it reflects the social pressure, worldwide, towards more accountable socially- and environmentally-responsible sustainable development. Since most of the STES- and, recently STEM (science-technology-engineering-mathematics)-related research in science education has been focused on secondary and tertiary education, it is vital to demonstrate the relevance of this multifaceted research to the science and technology teaching in primary schools. Our longitudinal STES education-related research and curriculum development point to the very little contribution, if any, of the traditional science teaching to “know”, to the development of students’ HOCS capabilities. On the other hand, there appears to be a ‘general agreement’, that the contemporary dominant lower-order cognitive skills (LOCS) teaching and assessment strategies applied in science and technology education are, in fact, restraining the natural curiosity and creativity of primary school (and younger?) pupils/children. Since creative thinking as well as evaluative system thinking, decision making, problem solving and … transfer constitute an integral part of the HOCS conceptual framework, the appropriateness of “HOCS promoting” teaching, and the relevance of science and technology, to elementary education in the STES context, is apparent. Therefore, our overriding guiding purpose was to provide any evidence-based research to the vital LOCS-to-HOCS paradigm shift in STES education. The findings of, and conclusions derived from our longitudinal research on HOCS development within STES-oriented and traditional education, suggest that both—science and technology education (STE) and STES education—are relevant to primary school education. Based on this, what it should take to insure success in this context, is thoroughly discussed.     

Bureaucracies in Schools—Approaches to Support Measures in Swedish Schools Seen in the Light of Skrtic’s Theories

In Sweden, policy changes for provision of special support have been introduced, implying that teachers are obliged to provide and evaluate extra adaptations in regular classrooms prior to referring pupils to special support. The policy changes raise questions about school staffs’ views of support measures and of necessary professional competence for provision of the support measures. We conducted focus group interviews with 60 school staff representatives—headmasters, general education teachers, and special educators/school welfare teams—about their understandings of the new policy. The data were analyzed qualitatively, with the objective to explore school staffs’ approaches to the policy changes. Two main “ideal type approaches” were discerned, using Skrtic’s theories, viz. the bureaucracy approach and adhocracy approach. In the light of Skrtic’s theory, professionals’ reasoning about the new policy may reflect difficulties that are encountered in the process of implementing the policy in bureaucracy-steered schools.     

Who Benefits from the Massification of Higher Education in Taiwan?

The objectives of expanding higher education are to foster advanced personnel and realize the concept of achieving equal access to education. The problems created by the expansion of higher education in many countries, including Taiwan, in fact indicate a divergence from originally anticipated objectives. Such problems include the uneven allocation of resources, tuition differences between public and private schools, and vicious competition in the face of declining student enrollments, all of which contribute to concerns about educational quality issues. Of additional interest is whether Taiwan's focus on university enrollments of disadvantaged ethnic groups has created a trend toward greater educational opportunities for its aboriginal people. Nevertheless, the distribution of resources is increasingly concentrated on elites from high socioeconomic backgrounds and in a few public universities. All of these factors have facilitated an increasing class reproduction in higher education. The original elites continue to enjoy a wealth of resources. Yet while more and more students gain access to higher education, their institutional teaching quality and learning environment still fall behind that of the elites.     

People＇ s Livelihood： Problems and Solutions --A Case Study of the Farmers in Harbin

目前哈尔滨市农民民生建设主要存在的问题有：农民收入低、社会保障不完善、教育资源分配不公。针对哈尔滨市农村发展的实际情况,只有通过发展农村特色经济、完善农民社会保障体系、加大对农村教育的投入力度等对策才能改善哈尔滨市的农民民生问题。