科技创新中心的人才建设从基础开始:德国中小学创新教育的启示——著名“战略大师”、德国罗兰贝格管理咨询有限公司创始人罗兰·贝格专访

创新教育是指为迎接知识经济时代的挑战,以培养学生创新精神、创新能力、批判性思维为基本价值取向的教育。围绕习近平同志提出希望上海"加快向具有全球影响力的科技创新中心进军"的要求,上海对于"全球科技创新中心城市应具有哪些特征和内涵"、"如何建设具有全球影响力的科技创新中心"进行了研讨和筹划,许多专家指出,培育具有创新素质的人才是建设科技创新中心城市的基本内涵之一。2014年10月举行的浦江创新论坛以"协同创新、共享机遇"为主题,本刊特约记者在论坛上就全球创新中心城市建设与中小学教育中的创新教育、德国中小学的创新学习与创新教育(Kreatives Lernen & Innovative Lehr)对罗兰贝格教授进行了专访。     

Predicting/preventing child abuse: value of utility maximizing cutting scores

Any standardized method for identifying cases of likely child abuse requires specification of a cutting score (or scores) on a predictor variable. In this paper, we describe two criteria for determining cutting scores--utility maximizing (UtilMax) and error minimizing (ErrMin)--and we demonstrate that UtilMax is often the superior, and never the inferior, criterion. Two types of ErrMin cutting scores, true and artificial, are distinguishable based on whether realistic or artificial base rates are used to find the cutting score. Since studies often compute artificial ErrMin cutting scores, these scores must be modified to produce true ErrMin cutting scores. UtilMax cutting scores are explained and a numerical example is presented to show that maximizing utility is the preferable criterion in that it optimizes the balance between the costs of incorrect decisions and the benefits of correct decisions. The example also illustrates how UtilMax cutting scores help one to decide whether attempting to predict abuse would be worthwhile or not.     

Fostering Faculty Collaboration in Learning Communities: A Developmental Approach

Colleges and universities are adopting learning communities to increase student learning and build cohesion. As learning communities grow in popularity, institutions need to invest in faculty development (Oates, 2001) and understand faculty experiences (Mullen, 2001). The University of Hartford created a program that prepared faculty for collaborative teaching in first-year learning communities. Faculty learned to engage in collaborative behaviors, to think outside disciplinary borders, and to employ a specific template as a heuristic for course development. Results of focus group research about the faculty experience and the impact of the experience on their pedagogy are summarized.Catherine B. Stevenson, whose M.A. and Ph.D. are from New York University, is currently an Associate Professor of English and Drama and Academic Dean of International and Honors Programs. She and her coauthors are affiliated with the University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT. Her special interests include nineteenth and twentieth century literature, curriculum reform, pedagogy, and international education. Robert L. Duran, Professor in the School of Communication, who earned his M.A. at West Virginia University and Ph.D. at Bowling Green State University, is a specialist in program evaluation, evaluation research, and research methods. Karen A. Barrett, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies, has an M.S. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her special interests include interdisciplinary general education curriculum, higher education administration, and diagnostic hematology and microbiology. Guy C. Colarulli, earned an M.A. at the University of Connecticut and a Ph.D. at The American University. He is the Associate Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Studies, whose special interests include Higher Education Administration, First-Year Experience, as well as American Government, and Politics     

Attrition in the liberal arts college of a major metropolitan university

A variety of data was collected about students in the liberal arts college of a major metropolitan university. Random samples of 120 students were selected from each of two groups: stayers and leavers. The data include only those variables that would be known to administrators at the time an admissions decision is to be made. These data were then subjected to a stepwise linear discriminant analysis. Significant results are found for discriminating between the two groups, and nine variables are found to contribute to the discrimination.     

La gestion des contre-arguments dans le texte argumentatif ecrit chez les elèves de 8 à 12 ans et les adultes compétents

The objective of this research is to determine to what extend children from 8 to 12–13 years old become able to compose coherent counter-argumentative texts. 116 children and 26 quasi expert adults were asked to write a text beginning and ending with 2 imposed counterargumentative sentences. In that specific metalinguistic situation, pupils from 8 to 10 hesitate what text type (whether argumentative or not) to produce. When 10–11 years old, they seem aware the situation needs an argumentative response, but that does not necessary enable them to counter-argue. By children from 11–12 years old and adults, texts are most frequently counter-argumentative. It is proposed to explain this evolution by a progressive mastery of a possible argumentative prototypical text schema which could enable pupils to understand the 2 imposed sentences as knots to be expanded from a complexe argumentative text, and, in the same way, to compose this text. This explanative hypothesis is apparently sustained by the positive effects on the performances of 40 pupils from 8 to 12–13 years old of didactic interventions intended to make them sensible to argumentative text properties.     

A Study of Home Emergent Literacy Experiences of Young Latino English Learners

This empirical study explored the home environment literacy practices of young Latino English learners and their families. The participants were 217 incoming Kindergarten Latino EL students and parents. The data collection included a completed HLEQ by the parents. In addition, children were administered the PPVT, the preLAS, the PALS-K screening, the Woodcock Reading Mastery assessment, and the Wide Range Achievement test. All of the literacy assessments given to the children provided the researchers with comprehensive look at their literacy knowledge base. The results of this study indicate that there were two significant paths for students’ achievement: availability of books and child initiated literacy factors that were directly related to the phonological processing efforts of students.