Comparing the use of the empty number line in England and the Netherlands

Efforts to meet the needs of children's learning in arithmetic has led to an increased emphasis on the teaching of mental calculation strategies in England. This has included the adoption of didactical tools such as the empty number line (ENL) that was developed as part of the realistic mathematics movement in the Netherlands. It has been claimed that the English use of the ENL differs from that of the Dutch. In this study curriculum guidance materials are examined to investigate these differences. Two examples of teaching sequences are provided to illustrate them further. It is proposed that the different uses stem from different pedagogical principles. The implications of the English use are discussed in relation to the presentation of mental calculation strategies in an algorithmic way.     

Design and environmental technologies: Does ‘green-matching’ actually help?

This paper investigates whether a green kind of design helps firms increase their capabilities for inventing in the environmental domain and whether it does so more than ‘standard’ design. It also investigates whether the effect of ‘green-matching’ between new design and technologies is conditional on firms’ innovative capabilities, as reflected by their R&D expenditure. We address these research questions with respect to the world's top R&D investors, looking at their intellectual property rights at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and proposing an original textual identification of green designs and trademarks. We find that green design increases environmental inventions by top R&D investors, and to a greater extent than non-environmental ones. Standard design also stimulates environmental inventions, but to a lesser extent than green design. The ‘green-matching’ actually helps, but internal innovative capabilities are required to make it effective: a green-tech ‘prize’ emerges from green design, but only once a minimum threshold of R&D expenditure has been reached.     

Errors of programming and ownership of the robot concept made by trainee kindergarten teachers during an induction training

Education and Information Technologies - Computational thinking in the educational environment has awaken a rising interest, having been included as part of the curricula from the very beginnings...     

Can you see me thinking (about my answers)? Using eye-tracking to illuminate developmental differences in monitoring and control skills and their relation to performance

This study focuses on relations between 7- and 9-year-old children’s and adults’ metacognitive monitoring and control processes. In addition to explicit confidence judgments (CJ), data for participants’ control behavior during learning and recall as well as implicit CJs were collected with an eye-tracking device (Tobii 1750). Results revealed developmental progression in both accuracy of implicit and explicit monitoring across age groups. In addition, efficiency of learning and recall strategies increases with age, as older participants allocate more fixation time to critical information and less time to peripheral or potentially interfering information. Correlational analyses, recall performance, metacognitive monitoring, and controlling indicate significant interrelations between all of these measures, with varying patterns of correlations within age groups. Results are discussed in regard to the intricate relationship between monitoring and recall and their relation to performance.     

Plastic brains and the dialectics of dialectics

This article advances the thinking of Lima, Ostermann and Rezende’s “Marxism in Vygotskian approaches to cultural studies of science education” and Mark Zuss’ response to their paper. Firstly, it introduces Catherine Malabou’s concept of plasticity, from which Hegel’s dialectic can be re-read as historical materialist self-determination in a way that embraces science but non-reductively, and which leads to the possibility of challenging theoretical rigidity as a form of transformative action. Secondly, this response article provides political analysis of scientific concepts as they reproduce and reinforce particular interests and are expropriated by policy makers and unaware teacher educators whose understanding lies within a technical-instrumentalism and diluted humanism framework. Both arguments feature the human brain as an object of research in science education. From Malabou, the emancipatory conceptualisation of the brain as material, historical and sociocultural; whilst ‘Brain Gym’ exemplifies a non-science and nonsensical misappropriation of scientific concepts for commercial gain via a para-educational intervention.     

A known group analysis validity study of the Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education in US elementary and secondary schools

The Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (VAL-ED) provides educators with a tool for principal evaluation based on principal, teacher, and supervisor reports of principals’ learning-centered leadership. In this study, we conduct a known group analysis as part of a larger argument for the validity of the VAL-ED in US elementary and secondary schools. We asked superintendents to select the principals in their district who they believe in performance of their duties are in the top 20 % and the bottom 20 %. We ask how accurately VAL-ED scores can identify membership of the two known groups. Using a discriminant analysis, the VAL-ED places principals in the superintendent groups, on average, 70 % of the time for both elementary and secondary schools. Placement accuracy is greater for the top group than the bottom group.