L'enseignement des mathématiques

Sans résuméConférence à la fête du 70ème anniversaire de Hans Freudenthal, le 17 septembre 1975.     

Developing social competence and other generic skills in teacher education: applying the model of integrative pedagogy

The purpose of the study was to examine how social competence and other generic skills can be developed in teacher education using a pedagogical model called Integrative Pedagogy. This model is based on the idea of integrating the four basic components of expertise: Theoretical knowledge, practical knowledge, self-regulative knowledge, and sociocultural knowledge. The subjects of the study were 95 student-teachers. The data were collected with questionnaires. In addition to social skills, the student-teachers reported learning of domain-specific skills, generic academic skills, skills for acting creatively in different situations and development of independence. We conclude that the model of Integrative Pedagogy is feasible in teacher education.     

Can the English Baccalaureate act as an educational equaliser?

ABSTRACT

Ensuring equal access to a broad and balanced curriculum for all students is a key component of a socially just education system. Yet in England, the freedom that 16-year-old students have to choose the GCSE subjects they study has created divisions in the pathways taken by students from different backgrounds. In 2010, a new accountability measure, the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), was introduced to encourage more disadvantaged students to study the ‘core academic’ GCSE subjects. This paper investigates the success of this initiative by analysing the relationship between free school meal (FSM) eligibility, studying the EBacc subjects and GCSE attainment. The findings are used to illustrate the complexities of balancing equal access to academic subjects against fair access to future opportunities, which often depend on good grades, when trying to deliver social justice in an education system that has an entrenched attainment gap.     

Growth goals and growth mindset from a methodological-synergistic perspective: lessons learned from a quantitative correlational research program

This review explores predictors and consequences of students’ growth goals and growth mindset in school with particular emphasis on how correlational statistical methods can be applied to illuminate key issues and implications. Study 1 used cross-sectional data and employed structural equation modelling (SEM) to investigate the role of growth goals in mediating the link between interpersonal relationships and academic engagement. Study 2 conducted multi-group path analysis to investigate the role of growth goals in the academic outcomes of two groups of students (ADHD and non-ADHD). Study 3 used longitudinal data and SEM to test a cross-lagged panel design to investigate reciprocal links between growth goals and growth mindset. Study 4 conducted multi-level SEM where the effects of a growth orientation on engagement and achievement were investigated at the student-level (level 1) and the classroom-level (level 2). Taking these four studies together, we aim to show how correlational data and multivariate correlational analyses have been effective in answering research questions in a way that have practical and theoretical implications for students’ academic growth. We also position this review as a substantive-methodological synergy – an approach recently recommended in response to concerns about the increasing polarization of substantive and methodological research and researchers.     

Effects of a Pre‐service Teacher Preparation Programme on Effective Instruction

A quasi‐experimental, treatment‐control group investigation was designed to test the effects of a pre‐service training course on effective instruction. Research findings from teacher effects research and cognitive strategy instruction were translated into two direct instructional models: one model for explicit or well‐structured skills and one model for implicit skills or higher‐level thinking strategies. Following a course on effective instruction from their teacher educators, student teachers implemented standardised lessons to apply selected research‐derived teaching behaviours and to increase pupil engagement rates. Based on trained observers’ pre‐and post‐training classroom observations, a significant treatment effect was found for student teachers’ teaching behaviours regarding effective instruction and for pupil engagement rates. Ratings from supervising teachers also showed that the student teachers who participated in the course on effective instruction used the recommended instructional skills after completion of the course significantly better than prior to the course.     

The role of experimenter-odor cues in the performance of object-memory tasks by rats

Two experiments assessed whether odors left on stimulus objects by experimenters who handle them might confound the interpretation of ostensibly visually guided object-memory tasks for rats. In Experiment 1, rats were able to discriminate the relative recency with which an experimenter touched two otherwise identical objects (intertouch interval = 4 sec), presumably on the basis of an odorintensity discrimination. However, after the rats mastered the odor discrimination with no delay between when the second of the two stimulus objects was last touched by the experimenter and when the rats were permitted to attempt the discrimination, their performance dropped to chance levels when this delay was increased to 15 sec. In Experiment 2, rats were trained in two slightly different ways to perform a delayed-nonmatching-to-sample (DNMS) task, one that involved systematic differences in the temporal order in which the experimenter handled the sample and novel stimulus objects and one that did not. There were no significant differences in the rate at which rats mastered the DNMS task with these two procedures, and the performance of rats that were trained according to the former procedure was unaffected when they were switched to the latter procedure. Moreover, rats required considerably fewer trials to master the DNMS task than the rats in Experiment 1 required to master the odor discrimination. These findings demonstrate that, under certain circumstances, rats can discriminate the relative recency with which two objects are handled by an experimenter, but that this ability contributes little to their performance of conventional object-based DNMS tasks.     

Promoting VET teachers’ innovative behaviour: exploring the roles of task interdependence,learning goal orientation and occupational self-efficacy

Changing employer demands, new technological and pedagogical insights are examples of developments which urge Vocational Education and Training (VET) institutes to continually renew and innovate their educational programmes. This, in turn, requires teachers to show innovative behaviour. Our study focuses on the effects of task interdependence on VET teachers’ innovative behaviour. In addition, the mediating roles of learning goal orientation and occupational self-efficacy in this relationship are examined. A two-wave survey study among 342 teachers, from 54 teams of 6 Dutch VET institutes, showed that task interdependence enhanced teachers’ learning goal orientation, which enhanced their engagement in innovative behaviour over time. Task interdependence also increased teachers’ occupational self-efficacy, which in turn increased their engagement in innovative behaviour. This effect, however, appeared short lived. Apparently, once teachers exceed a certain level of occupational self-efficacy, other variables, like learning goal orientation, play a more important role in sustaining innovative behaviour.     

Bright and Beautiful: High achieving girls,ambivalent femininities,and the feminization of success in the primary school

This paper refocuses attention on and problematizes girls’ experiences of school achievement and the construction of schoolgirl femininities. In particular, it centres on the relatively neglected experiences and identity work of high achieving primary school girls. Drawing upon ethnographic data (observations, interviews, and pupil diaries) from a broader study of girls’ and boys’ perceptions and experiences of schoolwork and achievement from two contrasting primary schools in a city in South Wales (UK), the paper will explore the gendered subjectivities of high achieving girls from diverse social and cultural backgrounds. Three narrative case studies are re-presented and analysed to explore the feminization of success and thus the tensions and contradictions as girls negotiate the pushes and pulls to be both “bright” (i.e. succeeding academically) and “beautiful” (succeeding in “doing girl”). Of key interest are the possibilities, costs, and consequences of girls producing ambivalent femininities and the rearticulation and transgression of normative ways of “doing clever” and “doing girl” in 21st century primary schools.     

Effectiveness of paraeducator-supplemented individual instruction: beyond basic decoding skills

A total of 46 children in Grades 2 and 3 with low word-level skills were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups that received supplemental phonics-based reading instruction. One group received intervention October through March (21.5 hours), and one group served as a control from October through March and later received intervention March through May (17.5 hours). Paraeducators trained in a standard treatment protocol provided individual instruction for 30 min per day, 4 days per week. At the March posttest, the early treatment (ET; n = 23) group outperformed the controls (late treatment, LT; n = 20) on reading accuracy and passage fluency. Across both groups, second graders outperformed third graders on these same measures. At the 3-month follow-up, the ET group showed no evidence of decline in reading accuracy, passage fluency, or words spelled; however, 3rd-grade ET students had significantly higher spelling skills compared to 2nd graders. The LT group demonstrated significant growth during their intervention in reading accuracy and spelling, but not passage fluency. When we compared the ET and LT groups on their gains per instructional hour, we found that the ET group made significantly greater gains than the LT group across all 3 measures. The results support the value of paraeducator-supplemented reading instruction for students below grade level in word identification and reading fluency.