以制度创新促进循环经济健康发展

本文认为,在我国现行体制下,市场失灵和制度建设不完善是企业发展循环经济的最大障碍,发达市场经济国家是发展循环经济的先行者,在完善制度建设、校正市场失灵方面为我们提供了不少普适性的经验,我国政府在推动企业发展循环经济的道路上要善于借鉴国际经验,从本国实际出发大胆探索,依靠制度建设和制度创新,为循环经济的发展开辟道路。     

Loose connections: The context of science teachers' work

This paper is based on an interview study with eighty science teachers in twelve secondary schools across Australia. The study was conducted as part of the Science Education Professional Development Project. The project's brief was to develop a national strategy for the professional development of science teachers and was commissioned by the Federal Government's Department of Employment, Education and Training. The aim of the interviews was to help define the problem that a national strategy needed to address and this paper reports on one theme that emerged from the interviews, the concept of “loose connections.” Loose connections reflects the weak sense of professional community we found among science teachers and their isolation from potentially beneficial influences on their work. The paper explores implications of loose connections for a national professional development strategy such as the need to strengthen areas of professional responsibility and links between professional development and career development.     

Creative Thinking in Five and Six‐Year‐Old Kindergarten Children

This study was carried out to investigate the effect of age and sex on the creativity of 5 to 6‐year‐old kindergarten children. The total points scored by the 6‐year‐old boys and girls included in this study were found to be higher than those scored by the 5‐y ear‐olds. No significant difference was found between the points scored by the girls and boys. However, the girls did better in flexibility, originality and elaboration and the boys in fluency criterion of creativity.

Children should be helped at home and school to develop their creative power. To achieve this, art, story‐telling, music and drama activities should be an integral part of the school curriculums. During such activities children should be allowed to take their time, and any despotic attitude on the part of the teacher should be avoided. In addition, children should be given a chance with unstructured play materials. Activities should be followed by a discussion with children, who should be taught that things can be done in more ways than one.     

Educational technology as a key to educational innovation:

Instructional technology, especially the use of computers and the Internet has been lagging behind in the German educational system in comparison to other European countries. When this lack was realized in the second half of the 1990s it had quite a “shock-effect” but one of the healthy kind: Since then numerous public and private initiatives have been started to advance the use of technology in schools, higher education, and in vocational training. At the college and university level, there is a trend towards connecting online and offline courses. Also, it was understood that it is not enough to just provide schools and universities with the technology needed but that the introduction of technology has to be accompanied by profound systemic and structural changes. Thus, there is great hope that the use of technology in education will fuel educational innovations at all levels needed for educating and training pupils and students to act as responsible and media-literate citizens in a modern world.     

Researching balance between cognition and affect in science teaching and learning

This paper is based on findings from a three year collaborative action research project on classroom teaching and learning. The research, which involved 33 teachers, over two thousand students from six schools, and the authors, centred on exploring how various features of the classroom context influence teaching and learning processes. We interpret project findings as indicating the importance of balance between cognition and affect for effective teaching and learning. We advance the notion of challenge as a way of conceptualising this balance. Challenge comprises a cognitive/metacognitivedemand component and an affectiveinterest component. Nine major features of a teaching/learning event were found to interact to influence these cognitive and affective components of challenge. Specializations: Collaborative research on science teaching and learning; staff development and school improvement; quality of science education. Specializations: Learning and teaching science; pre-service teacher education. Specializations: teacher development in science education; technology education. Specializations: Science and teachnology curriculum, environmental education, educational disadvantage. Specializations: learning theory, probing of understanding, conceptual change.