Critical Viewing of Television News: the impact of a Dutch schools television project

Using a quasi‐experimental pretest‐posttest control group design, the study investigated the educational effects of a six‐programme schools television series designed to teach children aged 10‐12 that television news broadcasts give a selective and thus subjective and incomplete impression of the news. Results indicated that the schools television series led to an increase in children's knowledge of the selection processes involved in the production of news programmes, and an increase in children's proficiency in recognizing the moments of selection in news items. However, the television series did not result in a decrease in the level of credibility children attribute to television news broadcasts. The reason for the latter finding probably is that the series showed that the makers of news programmes are conscious of the selection processes involved in making news programmes and do their utmost to make the choices in the most responsible way possible. As a result, the series may have unintentionally created the impression that the problem of selectivity can be satisfactorily solved.     

Implementation Effects of a Pre‐service Training Course for Secondary Education Teachers

A quasi‐experimental, treatment‐control group investigation was designed to test the effects of a pre‐service training course for secondary education teachers. Previous findings from teacher effects research and cognitive strategy instruction were translated into two direct instructional models: a model of executive acting directed at well‐structured skills and a model of strategic acting directed at higher‐level thinking strategies. Pre‐ and post‐training comparison of classroom observations by trained observers revealed significantly more effective instruction by the student teachers after training. No treatment effect was found for pupil engagement rates. The ratings from the supervising teachers did not show significantly better use of the recommended instructional skills by the trained student teachers than by the untrained student teachers.     

Factors which influence the well-being of pupils in flemish secondary schools

The Flemish government considers well-being of pupils as an important output indicator for the quality of education. The education inspectorate needed an instrument to measure this well-being in a school context, an instrument that should also be a basis for actions plans aimed at enhancing pupils' well-being. The development of this instrument is described in this article. A total of 342 pupils were interviewed. The material from these interviews was used for construction of—mainly Likert-type—items for a questionnaire. A pilot version of the questionnaire was examined by experts and tested with a random sample of 306 pupils. The experimental version was tried out on a random sample of 2054 pupils. This resulted in a questionnaire with four consistent scales and thirteen subscales. Significant differences between schools were found. Atmosphere at school, contacts with teachers, involvement in class and at school, school regulations and infrastructure were among the best predictors.     

Second chance education for Maori school ‘dropouts’: A case-study of a community training centre in New Zealand

This article provides an overview of an innovative development programme in the field of second chance education for young Maori people who for various social and cultural reasons have failed at school and who have consequently low aspirations and little expectations for the future. In order to improve their disadvantaged position within the European-dominated society of New Zealand the Community Training Centre discussed in this article has developed a new approach to education and training by attempting to empower trainees so that they become aware of alternatives and can make choices about their future.     

Modification of Reconciliation Behavior through Social Experience: An Experiment with Two Macaque Species

Reconciliation, defined as a friendly reunion between former opponents shortly after an aggressive encounter, is common in the stumptail macaque (Macaca arctoides) but rare in the rhesus macaque (M. mulatta). Juveniles of the two species were cohoused for 5 months, after which they were observed with conspecifics only. Control rhesus monkeys, matched in age and sex to the experimental subjects, went through the same procedure without exposure to the other species. A threefold increase in the proportion of reconciled fights was measured in the rhesus subjects. The difference emerged gradually during cohousing with the tutor species and was sustained following removal of this species. Other behavior, such as grooming and aggression, decreased over time. It is suggested that the social attitude of the subjects was affected through contact with a species characterized by a more relaxed dominance style.     

Beyond additive and multiplicative reasoning abilities: how preference enters the picture

While previous studies mainly focused on children’s additive and multiplicative reasoning abilities, we studied third to sixth graders’ preference for additive or multiplicative relations. This was investigated by means of schematic problems that were open to both types of relations, namely arrow schemes containing three given numbers and a fourth missing one. In study 1, children had to fill out the missing number, while in study 2, children had to indicate all possibly correct answers among a set of given alternatives. Both studies explicitly showed the existence of a preference for additive relations in some children, while others preferred multiplicative relations. Mainly younger children preferred additive relations, whereas mainly children in upper primary education preferred multiplicative relations. Number ratios also impacted children’s preference, especially in fifth grade. Moreover, the results of study 2 provided evidence for the strength of children’s preference and showed that calculation skills do not coincide with preference, and hence, that preference and calculation skills are two distinct child characteristics. The results of both studies using these open problems resembled previous research results using classical multiplicative or additive word problems. This supports the hypothesis that children’s preferred type of relations may be at play in solving classical word problems as well—besides their abilities—and may hence be an additional factor explaining the mistakes that children make in those word problems. This research line thus seems promising for further research as well as educational practice.     

The intra-active production of normativity and difference

Drawing on memory stories told in a collective biography workshop about children’s encounters with schooling, this paper experiments with re-imagining the child-student-subject as an ‘emergent intracorporeal multiplicity’ [Fritsch, K. 2015. “Desiring Disability Differently: Neoliberalism, Heterotopic Imagination and Intra-Corporeal Configurations.” Foucault Studies 19: 43–66, 51]. From the feminist new materialist perspective that the authors work with, the child is configured not as an entity prior to, or separate from, encounters with education systems, but emergent with-in them. This paper focuses on difference in human relations, and in particular on the intersections of disability and gender. It does so not in terms of essential characteristics of individuals, but as emergent, in-the-moment, with others. In focussing on the detail of lives-in-their-making, the authors ask, with Barad [2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press], if we are interested in justice, how we are to ‘understand our role in helping constitute who and what come to matter?’     

Unrealistic responses to realistic problems with missing information: what are important barriers?

Abstract

It is a well-documented finding that students tend to neglect their real-world knowledge when solving word problems, even when realistic assumptions are needed. Although studies have successfully shown the extent to which students tend to provide unrealistic responses, the question of where this tendency comes from has yet to be answered. We focused on two major steps needed to solve realistic word problems: noticing missing information and making realistic assumptions. We conducted two studies with fifth graders (Study 1, N?=?108; Study 2, N?=?60) in which we compared students’ (un-)realistic responses to problems that differed in how obvious the missing information was. Study 1 fostered only students’ ability to make assumptions. Study 2 fostered this ability plus the ability to notice missing information. The results indicate that, if the missing information is not obvious, students’ failure to notice it seems to be what prevents them from arriving at a realistic solution.