Theory and legitimacy in professional education: a practitioner review of reflective processes within programmes for new academic staff

The authors review research literature on coherent theoretically based approaches to the use of reflective processes within programmes of initial professional education for new academic staff. Employing a novel methodology that incorporates practitioner perspectives, they establish a framework that highlights the role of personal and social factors, and also pedagogic and theoretical considerations, in shaping reflective processes. The included studies identified participants who had engaged in certain categories of reflection. Certain fundamental outcomes, however, such as changes in professional commitment, were never seen across an entire cohort. The article thus discusses the intended learning outcomes that programmes might legitimately seek to meet.

Dans cet article, nous examinons la littérature de recherche portant sur les approches théoriques cohérentes sur l’usage des processus réflexifs dans le cadre de programmes d’éducation professionnelle initiale pour le personnel académique novice. A l’aide d’une nouvelle méthodologie incorporant les perspectives du praticien, nous établissons un cadre qui met en lumière le rôle des facteurs sociaux et personnels, de même que les considérations théoriques et pédagogiques, mettant en forme les processus réflexifs. Les études visées par l’article ont permis d’identifier des participants s’étant engagés dans certaines catégories de réflexion. Des conséquences fondamentales, telles que le changement au niveau de l’engagement professionnel, n’ont cependant pas été observés pour l’ensemble de la cohorte. Nous discutons donc des objectifs d’apprentissage que les programmes pourraient, de façon légitime, chercher à atteindre.     

地沟油在日本

2009年9月,日本东近江市面向乘坐本市公交快线的居民,开展了收集废弃食用油的活动。收集上来的食用油通过提炼,最终变成生物柴油,为运营在该市1 2条线路上的快速公交车提供燃料。由于发起"油菜花"环保项目,东近江市已受到日本全国的关注。该项目涉及一系列旨在为东近江市创建基于资源循环利用的基础设施的倡议,其中包含油菜的种植、菜子油的日常食用、废弃食用油的回收和提炼成燃     

Educational Achievement of Immigrant Adolescents in Spain: Do Gender and Region of Origin Matter?

This study explores the educational achievement of immigrant youth in Spain employing data from 3 waves of the Longitudinal Study of Families and Childhood (Pànel de Famílies i Infància), a representative sample of children in Catalonia first interviewed at ages 13-16 in 2006 (N = 2,710). Results suggest consistent disadvantage in achievement among first-generation students. Differences in achievement between the second and third generations are apparent in bivariate analyses, but are explained by observable characteristics in multivariate analyses. Gender-specific analyses uncover a large achievement gap between first-generation girls and their third-generation counterparts, but no equivalent gap for boys. Region-of-origin differences are modest, with the exception of Latin American adolescents who exhibit the lowest educational outcomes. The significance of perceptions about school on achievement are discussed.     

Student Decision-Making about a Globally Familiar Socioscientific Issue: The value of sharing and comparing views with international counterparts

This paper focuses on the views of 16–17-year-old science students from England, Germany, Hong Kong and Sweden on whale hunting, and their perceptions of the views of their international counterparts. The students were all provided with the same decision-making task, discussed the issue in small groups and then presented their views on video, which were shared with their counterparts. The findings show that the decision-making task served to deepen and modify students' views across all nationalities, and the students generally valued and learned from the sharing of views with students of the same age from around the world. However, an important discovery was that the German students' opinions often ran counter to those from the other 3 locations, and the paper cautions against making broad-sweeping generalisations about students' views on socioscientific issues.     

English,French and German summaries of major articles in this issue

Science has a role to play in the resolution of many of the issues deemed controversial in all societies. However, evidence of a lack of public confidence in science and scientists as effective problem‐solvers continues to accumulate. This paper speculates that this lack of confidence might in part be due to the way in which science educators present controversial issues. In particular, we argue that current approaches to teaching about controversy do not sufficiently acknowledge the nature of the issues themselves. The paper proposes a set of principles as the basis for a reconceptualization of the teaching of controversial issues and gives an example of how they might be applied.     

Relations Among Two Teachers’ Practices and Beliefs,Conceptualizations of the Nature of Science,and their Implementation of Student Independent Inquiry Projects

In this study we sought to understand factors that shaped teachers’ use of student inquiry projects. We examined, over 3 years, the practices and conceptions of two teachers involved in implementing student inquiry projects. Neither teacher was initially satisfied with her success at supporting student inquiry, but the two had very different responses to difficulties they faced. These responses related strongly to their ideas about how learning should be structured. There was less relation between their stated views about the nature of science and their use of inquiry than was expected. The teacher with espoused views about the nature of science generally in accord with reform documents did not support student inquiry projects that involved actual investigations. The teacher with views on the nature of science less aligned with reform documents worked hard to support student investigations in her classroom. Our findings support the claim that merely learning about the nature of science or about student inquiry may not generate changes in a teacher’s practice. On closer analysis, we found that the two teachers understood aspects of the nature of science from two quite different perspectives, the proximal and the distal. The proximal view of the nature of science was more closely aligned with implementation of actual student investigations. The efforts of these two teachers in implementing inquiry illustrate the dilemmas and challenges they faced as they attempted student inquiry projects.     

El desarrollo del lenguaje en un caso de carencias afectivas graves en la primera infancia

Resumen

Los datos lingüísticos fueron registrados mediante un vídeo en un contexto natural y habitual del niño. Se analiza el lenguaje desde los tres planos lingüísticos, sintáctico, semántico y pragmático. Además, para observar el nivel de desarrollo lingüístico, se comparó la producción del lenguaje del sujeto estudiado con la de otro niño cuyo desarrollo es adecuado.

Tras los resultados obtenidos del trabajo, se puede concluir que los factores externos, en los aspectos que están relacionados a pautas de cuidado y de interacción diádica adulto-niño, son fundamentales para la adecuada adquisición y desarrollo lingüístico y, además, la rehabilitación del mismo no es muy esperanzadora.