Fostering Distributed Science Learning Through Collaborative Technologies

TACTICS (French and Spanish acronym standing for Collaborative Work and Learning in Science with Information and Communications Technologies) is an ongoing project aimed at investigating a distributed community of learning and practice in which information and communications technologies (ICT) take the role of collaborative tools to support social construction of knowledge. This community is composed of researchers, graduate students, and high-school teachers and their students, from six schools and four universities in Canada and Mexico. It set out in fall 2000 to develop a community around the general topic of integrating concepts in science school subjects. Once a prototype community is established, it can become a terrain where different aspects could be studied. Subsequently, researchers could gradually take a back seat allowing as well as ensuring the autonomy of the school members involved and, thereby, the viability of the learning community. The set up of the proposed prototype distributed science learning community was therefore an essential yet far from trivial first step. This paper discusses the process of setting up the community and the lessons learned.     

Effects of kindergarten retention for at-risk children’s psychosocial development

Kindergarten retention is a popular practice for children who are considered unready for primary school. However, past research has not yet succeeded to find consistent, strong empirical evidence supporting the practice. In the current study, kindergarten repeaters’ development in nine psychosocial domains is compared with that of equally at risk but (1) continuously promoted age-mates and (2) promoted age-mates who repeated first grade instead. Analysing data from a large-scale longitudinal study using propensity score matching and multilevel modelling, the findings reveal no harm of kindergarten retention for at-risk children’s long term psychosocial development. Rather, we find that, relative to equally at-risk but continuously promoted children, kindergarten repeaters benefit from retention with respect to higher levels of well-being, and peer relations, and lower levels of hyperactivity, aggression and asocial behaviour. Compared to similar children who were promoted but who were retained in first grade instead, kindergarten repeaters are found to benefit more from retention with respect to higher levels of well-being, self-confidence, attitude to work and independent behaviour, and lower levels of hyperactivity.     

Preschool Teachers' Perceptions about Conflict Resolution, Autonomy, and the Group in Four Countries: United States, Colombia, El Salvador, and Taiwan

Preschool teachers (N = 160) in four countries (U.S., Colombia, El Salvador, and Taiwan) were surveyed about their views of conflict resolutions for moral and social-conventional conflicts, providing choice in the classroom (autonomy), maintaining a sense of the group, and general pedagogical aims of early childhood education. The findings revealed cultural similarities regarding conflict resolution intervention techniques and providing choice in the classroom. Cultural differences were found for maintaining the group and encouraging traditional group values. The items regarding the general pedagogical aims revealed a mixture of cultural differences and similarities. The results have implications for formulating generalizable goals for facilitating social and moral development in early childhood development and education.     

African American college students excelling in the sciences: College and postcollege outcomes in the Meyerhoff Scholars Program

This paper describes and assesses the effectiveness of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). The Program is designed to increase the number of underrepresented minorities who pursue graduate and professional degrees in science and engineering. Until 1996 the program admitted African American students exclusively, and the current study focuses only on students from that group. The Meyerhoff students have achieved higher grade point averages, graduated in science and engineering at higher rates, and gained admittance to graduate schools at higher rates than multiple current and historical comparison samples. Student survey and interview data revealed that a number of program components were viewed as being especially important contributors to students' academic success: Program Community, Study Groups, Summer Bridge Program, Financial Support, Program Staff, and Research Internships and Mentors. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 629–654, 2000     

Innerfamiliale Beziehungen und Bildungserfolg

According to Coleman, social capital lies in the social relations between parents and children and constitutes a child’s social background in addition to the family’s human capital and economic resources. In this perspective, Coleman emphasizes the importance of social relations as an independent third factor for the acquirement of human capital. Considering the early selection into the different types of secondary education in the German educational system after fourth grade, not only effects of social relations at this decisive point in time are investigated, but also changes across time towards this transition. Therefore, using longitudinal data is of special advantage in this field of research, which is dominated by cross-sectional analyses. Applying multinomial logistic regression it is shown that structural aspects as well as process-related aspects of the parent-child-relation have a significant effect on academic achievement. Under this perspective indicators for school-related parent-child interaction are as important as everyday interaction. Additionally, positive change of school-related parent-child interactions affects academic achievement.     

Class-first analysis in a continuum: an approach to the complexities of schools, society, and insurgent science

This essay addresses Katherine Richardson Bruna’s paper: Mexican Immigrant Transnational Social Capital and Class Transformation: Examining the Role of Peer Mediation in Insurgent Science, through five main points. First, I offer a comparison between the traditional analysis of classism in Latin America and Richardson Bruna’s call for a class-first analysis in the North American social sciences where there has been a tendency to obviate the specific examination of class relations and class issues. Secondly, I discuss that a class-first analysis solely cannot suffice to depict the complex dimensions in the relations of schools and society. Thus, I suggest a continuum in the class-first analysis. Third, I argue that social constructions surrounding issues of language, ethnicity, and gender necessarily intersect with issues of class and that, in fact, those other constructions offer compatible epistemologies that aid in representing the complexity of social and institutional practices in the capitalist society. Richardson Bruna’s analysis of Augusto’s interactions with his teacher and peers in the science class provides a fourth point of discussion in this essay. As a final point in my response I discuss Richardson Bruna’s idea of making accessible class-first analysis knowledge to educators and especially to science teachers.     

ESD and lifelong learning: a case study of the Shangri-la Institute’s current engagement with the Bazhu community in Diqing, China

This article argues that ESD should be integrated into lifelong learning and provides an example of how this might be done. It draws on a case study of a joint project between the Shangri-la Institute and the Bazhu community in Diqing, southwest China, to analyse a community-based approach to Education for Sustainable Development and assess its implications for lifelong learning. The article examines the different knowledge, skills and values needed for ESD across the life span and asserts the need for these competencies to be informed by the local context. The importance of linking ESD with local culture and indigenous knowledge is emphasised. The article goes on to propose methods for integrating ESD into lifelong learning and underscore the need for learning at the individual, institutional and societal levels in formal, non-formal and informal learning settings. It calls for institutional changes that link formal, non-formal and informal learning through the common theme of ESD, and establish platforms to share experiences, reflect on these and thereby continually improve ESD.     

A comparison of behavioral and constructivist interventions for increasing math‐fact fluency in a second‐grade classroom

Although basic math skill deficits are commonly encountered across elementary and secondary school students, few empirically validated, group‐administered interventions are available for educators attempting to prevent or remedy such problems. This study compared the effectiveness of two theoretically distinct interventions for improving the subtraction‐fact fluency of a general education class of second‐grade students. An alternating treatments design was used to compare a behavioral intervention, Cover, Copy, and Compare (CCC), to an intervention from a constructivist‐oriented resource, Facts That Last (FTL). Results demonstrated that CCC led to increases in math‐fact fluency, whereas the classwide response to FTL activities did not differ from the control condition. Two months postintervention, maintenance data revealed that the fluency increases associated with CCC were sustained. Discussion focuses on practical implications of the study as well as possible theoretical explanations for the documented results. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Second and fourth graders' copying ability: from graphical to linguistic processing

Particularly in primary school, good performance on copy tasks is an important working technique. With respect to writing skills, copying is a very basic process on which more complex writing abilities are based. We studied the copying ability of second and fourth graders across four types of symbols which vary with respect to their semantic and phonological characteristics: arbitrary graphical objects, unpronounceable consonant strings, numerals and meaningful text. Results show, in terms of average copying speed, significant effects of both factors: fourth graders performed generally faster than second graders, and for both class levels, the number of copied characters per time decreased from meaningful text to graphical objects, all pair-wise contrasts between symbol types being statistically significant. Moreover, a significant interaction shows that fourth graders improved more when copying symbols that form pronounceable chunks, namely meaningful text and numerical strings. This indicates an increasing role of phonological (and probably also semantic) processes involved in copying across primary school.